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The Communicative Approach Rethought

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The communicative approach or communicative language teaching (CLT) is based on a very interesting idea. A strong point of the communicative approach is that it focuses on the student's ability to transmit ones ideas in the target language, in this case English and Dutch.

Unfortunately, the way it is often interpreted and implanted, in my opinion, doesn't quite have the result one could expect. All too often it is interpreted as: "If the teacher understands what the student says, we have communication. Great!" The problem of this interpretation is that teachers from the same region as the students, easily understand the students' mistakes because they are used to the typical mistakes resulting from the first language influence. This reduces the student teacher interaction to an imitation of communication.

In the beginning of my teaching career in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, I saw how this can be a problem. I asked one of my students of intermediate level if next class he would bring his book. His response sounded to me like: "ah wuw" [ a wəʊ ]. I had no idea of what he wanted to say. Another student had to tell me he wanted to say: "I will" [ aɪ wɪl ]. The fluency of the student in case indicated no further lack of practice in 'communicating' in English. Apparently previous teachers had always accepted this pronunciation.

This case in particular lead to the idea to always simulate to be a normal user of the target language, pretending not to understand errors like those that are typical of first language interference.

As a teaching method a mere imitation of normal communication is far from enough, one should use good simulations of real life communication.



Communication and Pronunciation

Communication problems do not only result from vocabulary or idiomatic errors. Pronunciation errors can also cause communication problems. A good illustration is an anecdote I got as feedback from one of my students. I had taught him the correct pronunciation of the 'l' sound at the end of a syllable and the importance if this, using the above mentioned example of "I will". This is something difficult to learn for Brazilians.

One day, during the time my student was attending course in Sweden, he and a friend, both Brazilians, went to a bar. When they wanted to pay, the friend asked the waiter what sounded like: "Two biws, please." [ tuː bɪʊz ]. A bit later, the waiter came back with two beers [ tuː bɪɚz ]. This reminded my student of what I told him about the pronunciation of the 'l' and asked for "two bills" [ tuː bɪlz ]. The waiter said sorry, took the beers back and brought them their separate bills.

Now, if they had known the standard expression: "separate bills" and only had pronounced it wrong, probably the waiter would have understood them, just like she understood them when my student only corrected the pronunciation. Making both mistakes, pronunciation and idiomatic, led to misunderstanding.

What is important in communication is if the listener understands the speaker. In foreign or new language learning this means if any regular user of the target language can understand the language produced by the speaker, in this case the learner. This is were simulations come in. A good communication teacher should, as a first reaction, pretend to only understand what can be expected that any user of the target language would understand and react accordingly. It leads to the simulation principle, don't tell learners they are wrong, show them what is wrong, give'm what they ask for.

Hearing the sounds of the IPA characters

To hear the sounds indicated by these and other IPA characters, the best options are the clickable IPA charts of Eric Armstrong from York University, of the International Phonetic Association and of Seeing Speech. Just click on a symbol in a chart to hear a recording of the corresponding sound. With the charts of the International Phonetic Association it is even possible to hear variations in pronunciations by choosing different speakers. As the name suggests, the site of Seeing Speech also shows the movement of the mouth. There are videos of ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging as well as animations.

https://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/

https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/inter_chart_2018/IPA_2018.html

https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/

Showing What's Wrong

Basically, I don't tell students what's wrong, I show what's wrong. I react according to what the students say, not according to what they want to say (even though, very often, I have quite a good idea of what it is). One result is that, rather than feeling corrected, students get surprised because my reaction is different from what they expected. They conclude that something went wrong. Apparently I didn't understand what they wanted to say. They find out they have a communication problem to solve which is much more motivating than being told to have made a language mistake.

Learning a Language and Behaviour

There seems to be little doubt that one of the purposes of learning a language is to be able to communicate, to interact with others. In this respect one can't overlook the importance of cultural differences such as standards of politeness and other aspects of social behaviour. A language is a communication tool, the communication tool of a certain people with a certain culture. If one wants to speak with people, communicate with them and have good contact, only knowing their language is not enough. One has to know at least that much of their culture as to be able to avoid unpleasant situations.

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