EAL- Communicative Learning

       This lesson, we were with Mary. She gave us texts about "Communicative Learning". First part of the lesson we read whole text. There were eight questions about communicative learning and we tried to give answer all these questions as a group. Each group had one questions and we presented our question's answer. My group's question is that:

• What are the communicative tasks and what are their roles in teaching and learning?

     

        Now I give you our answer about it:

      If communicative language learning is the an aim of classrooms then they need communicative practice. It is not just among English Language Teaching classrooms, it is also essential English lessons. Brumfit suggests that the need for 'fluency activities'. According to his definition, fluency activities develop a pattern of language interaction within the classroom which is as possible to that used by competent performers in the mother tongue in real life. And he lists critters, they are:

1. The focus should be on meaning, not form.
2. The learners have to formulate ideas, information and opinions.
3. The learners hears should not be predictable.
4. The learners should practice and develop strategic competence.
5. The learners should have pragmatic and discourse competences as well as fluency.
6. Teacher's role should be minimum.

    These critters help students to be more communicative, active and they easily understand items which thy learn in the classroom. Learners need some activities about communicative learning. These communicative activities are:

1. Information-gap activity: Involves a transfer of given information one person to another.
2. Reasoning-gap activity: Involves deriving some new information from given information through processes of inference.
3. Opinion-gap activity: Involves identifying and articulating a personal preference, feeling or attitude in response to a given situation.

    According to the text, teacher's role is asking questions the learners to help them. Giving tasks to the learners.

     After I read this text, I realize that communicative learning belongs to constructivism. John Dewey says about this theory, the learners learn by doing. Learners can learn with their experiences. In this theory teacher should not give the answer directly, he/she is just a guide to help the learners to find the correct answer or to learn. The learners also study as a group. The learners are creative and active.