Making Communicative Language Making Communicative

Making Communicative Language
Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen in Chinese Classroom:
Activities, Activities, Activities
Dongdong Chen
Seton Hall University
May 15, 2010
[email protected]
Agenda
 What is the goal of teaching Chinese?
 What is Communicative Language Teaching?
 How to make Communicative Language Teaching happen in class?
1. What is the goal of teaching Chinese?
What is the goal of learning Chinese?
117 Students of
Beginning Chinese
Purpose of
Learning Chinese
78%
6%
Communication
Career
6%
Culture
3%
Challenge
3%
Study abroad
3%
Other
The goal of learning Chinese is
Communication
 The core of the 5C’s
What does communication include?
a.
interpersonal:
engage in conversation, provide/obtain information, express oneself,
exchange ideas with others
b.
interpretive:
understand/interpret spoken and written language on a variety of topics
c.
presentational:
present information/concepts/ideas to an audience (listeners or readers)
on different topics

Make Communicative Language Teaching happen in class
2.What is Communicative Language Teaching?
Communicative Language Teaching is an approach which seeks to
develop learners who have “communicative competence”(Hymes,
1971).
A communicatively competent learner is someone who “knows
how, when, and why to say what to whom.”
--grammatical
--appropriate
--natural
--socially acceptable
 bring real-life communication to the class
Communicative competence
• Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence
a. Whether something is formally possible
b. Whether something is feasible in virtue of means of implementation available
c. Whether something is appropriate in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated
d. Whether something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails
• Canale and Swain’s (1980) four dimensions of
communicative competence
a.
b.
c.
d.
Grammatical competence: knowing what are good language forms, i.e., grammar, lexis
Sociolinguistic competence: knowing when to use what language in a what context
Discourse competence: knowing how to interpret the language and work out implications
Strategic competence: knowing how to initiate, maintain, repair or terminate a
communication
What do we, instructors, usually do in class?
Learn to communicate
Repetition, pattern drills
Learners end up not able
to communicate
Presentation
Presentation
Presentation
Practice
Practice
Production
Why is learners’ communicative competence not developed?
Because we didn’t provide a communicative language teaching.
3.How to Make Communicative Language Teaching happen in class?
Activities, Activities, Activities
3. How to make Communicative Language Teaching happen in class?
Follow 3 Principles of CLT Practices (Richards & Rodgers 2001, p. 161)
1. Communication principle:
“Activities that involve real communication promote learning.”
2. Meaningfulness principle:
“Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.”
3. Task principle:
“Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks
promoting learning.”
What are Activities/Tasks?
“Tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the
learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an
outcome.”
(Willis, 1996, p. 23)
What is Task-Based Learning? (Willis, 1996, p. 38)
“Communicate to learn”
Traditional ways of teaching: Presentation, Practice, Production
“learn to communicate”
Criterial features of a task (Ellis 2003, pp. 9-10)
 A task is a workplan.
 A task involves a primary focus on meaning.
 A task involves real-world processes of language use.
 A task can involve any of the four language skills.
 A task engages cognitive processes.
 A task has a clear defined communicative outcome.
王朋是学生，李友也是学生。
都
 _____________________
Is filling in the blank a task?
How about translation?
Ａ：
May I ask what your surname is?
____________________
Ｂ：
My surname is Li. May name is Li You.
____________________
Examples of
Activities
Integrated Chinese Level 1 Part I (Liu et al, 2008)
Chapter 1 (Part I)
A: 你好！
B: 你好！
A: 请问，你贵姓？
B: 我姓李。你呢？
A: 我姓王。李小姐，你叫什么名字？
B: 我叫李友，王先生，你叫什么名字？
A: 我叫王朋。
Chapter 1 (Part II)
A:王先生，你是老师吗？
B: 我不是老师，我是学生。李友，你呢？
A: 我也是学生。你是中国人吗？
B: 是，我是北京人。你是美国人吗？
A: 是，我是纽约人。
Activity 1 ---- Role-plays in a Real-life Situation
 Procedures:
1. Students are required to work in pairs to greet to each other
2. Students are required to use the dialogue in the text, but they should use their names
3. Students are required to act in front of the class
• Objectives:
This activity aims at practicing what being learned in an engaging fashion.
ENGAGING
Activity 2 ----Watch, Listen and Learn
 Procedures:
1. Play a silent movie clip or a video tape which involves an authentic dialogue on Greetings
2. Ask students to create a possible dialogue that best reflects the scene in the clip
3. Have students to watch the clip (with the sound) and dictate what is said
4. Introduce the useful expressions used in the movie clip (put the expressions on PPT)
e.g.,
Formal
A:
认识您很高兴。
B:
认识您我也很高兴。
A:
Person’s name,
Person’s name,
Person’s name,
Person’s name,
B:
person’s name ，还好，你呢？
person’s name ，挺忙，你呢？
person’s name ，不错，你呢？
person’s name ，吃了，你呢？
Informal
好久不见，怎么样？
忙吗？
还好吗？
吃了吗？
• Objectives:
This activity aims at arousing students’ attention that people greet to each other differently depending
on circumstance, and that different expressions are used accordingly. This activity also introduces new
vocabulary and expressions.
EXPANDING
Activity 3: ---- Greeting on Different Occasions
 Procedures:
1. Divide students into several pairs
2. Provide each pair with a written description or a picture reflecting a different situation
3. Each pair makes a dialogue involving Greetings based on the description
4. Each pair is required to act their dialogue in front of the class
5. Ask the class to make notes while listening to other pairs performing, and then compare
notes
• Objectives:
This activity aims at engaging students to determine various circumstances, identify right
expressions, and perform a dialogue. Students communicate with each other for the real-life
purposes
Enhancement
Activity 4 ----Communicate in the real-life Situations
 Procedures:
1. Each student is required to greet to a Chinese speaker after the class
2. Each student is required to record the conversation
3. Each student must submit his/her recorded conversation
Or
Get a native speaker to come to the classroom
• Objectives:
COMMUNICATION
Family
 Activity 1
1.
2.
Students work in pairs to describe their family photos
Students describe to the class what his/her partner’s family
Engaging
•
1.
2.
Activity 2
Students working in pairs are each provided with a family photo,
which looks similar, but is different in some aspects (e.g.,
grandfather vs. father; doctors vs. teachers in terms of profess)
Each student is required to talk about the family photo
Expanding
•
Activity 3
How to Make Communicative Language Teaching Happen in Chinese Classroom?
Activities, Activities, Activities
Engagement, Expansion, Enhancement
References
 Bruton, A. 1999. Communicative Task-based Learning: What does It Resolve? Paper presented at




the Annual Convention of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages,
(TESOL), Seattle, WA, March 17-21, 1998.
Canale, M, and M. Swain. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language
teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1 (1): 1-47.
Ellis, R. 2003. Task-based Language Learning and Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Long, M. 1985. “A role for instruction in second language acquisition: task-based language teaching”
in K. Hyltenstam and M. Piennemann (eds.): Modelling and Assess Second Language Acquisition.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Prabhu, N.S. 1987. Second Language Pedagogy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Richards & Rodgers 2001. Approaches and methods in language Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 Willis, J. 1996. A Framework for Task-Based Learning, Longman.

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