Communicative activities

In Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), it is believed that second language learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in interaction and meaningful communication. They learn to communicate when they are actively engaged in negotiating meaning in order to be understood. In CLT, meaningful communication can happen when learners are provided with the opportunities to experiment with the language for communicative purposes and effectively use the communication strategies. This can only be accomplished through real communication: “language learning activities that involve real communication promote learning” (Richards & Rodgers, 1987, p. 93). Therefore, it is essential to engage the learners in doing things with language where they use language for a variety of purposes in the learning process. By using language, learners are able to analyse and reflect on the language, and utilize the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions of the language, which are important to the development of learners’ competence. Such opportunities will indirectly enhance students thinking skills.

The opportunities for students to engage in meaningful communication can be created through the use of communicative activities. Communicative activities in the classroom provide opportunities to develop students’ speaking proficiency in English as communication is an exchange of knowledge, ideas, information, opinion and feelings between people (Xuru, n.d.), and communication that is meaningful and appropriate involves communication, interaction and negotiation of meaning which results from students processing relevant, purposeful, interesting and engaging content. Hence, communicative activities are those activities that encourage and need a learner to talk with and listen to other learners in real purposes such as to find information, break down barriers and talk about oneself (Bilash, 2011). Furthermore, research on second language acquisition (SLA) suggests that a dynamic learning environment where students are engaged in relevant tasks increase learning than a traditional teacher-led classes (Moss & Ross-Feldman, 2003). Furthermore, as students learn to communicate, they are more motivated to study a foreign language if they realise that they are learning to do something useful with it (Larsen-Freeman, 2000).

Activities such as role-playing, problem-solving, situational dialogues, small group interaction and language games can be seen as communicative activities because

through these activities students have the opportunities to negotiate meaning, which means expand their language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful social exchanges; they allow the class (and classroom) to become a communicative social community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing. Through these activities students acquire and practise aspects of linguistic competence that develop the student’s pragmatic, strategic and socio-cultural competence, which will together build up their productive and receptive skills needed (Thongwad, 2011). Hence, the curriculum needs to have in an increasingly wide range of communicative events, if learners are to expand their communicative competence.

In addition, through communicative activities, the learning process enables the learners to be actively involved and develop higher-order thinking skills. In language teaching, this suggests that students not only learn language for its own sake however to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that transcends the language classroom. According to Savignon (2002), “by encouraging learners to ask for information, to seek clarification, to use circumlocution and whatever other linguistic and non-linguistic resources they could muster to negotiate meaning, to stick to the communicative task at hand, teachers are invariably leading learners to take risk, to venture beyond memorized patterns” (p. 3). Littlewood (1981) states that communicative activities are relevant to language learning because “they provide ‘whole-task’ practice, they improve motivation, they allow natural learning and they can create context, which supports learning” (pp. 17–18). Through communicative activities learners are provided with opportunities to practise real communication and experiment the language in real-life settings and thereby promote interaction (Demo, 2001). Lan (1994) explains that “as language is for communication, learning a language without experiencing the satisfaction of speaking and using it, puts a distance between the learner and the language and this can be a major obstacle to developing general proficiency” (p. 2).

In short, every programme with the goal of communicative competence should focus on providing opportunities for meaningful language use. Special attention needs to be given to providing learners with opportunities to experience the new language (Savignon, 2003). Conducting activities that are communicative is one essential technique to help students become communicatively competent.

4.3.1 Types of communicative activity

There are various different kinds of communicative activity and Littlewood (1981) has divided them into two broad types:

1) Functional communication activities 2) Social interaction activities.

4.3.1.1 Functional communication activities

Functional communication activities are activities that are aimed at developing certain language skills and functions through sharing and processing information. In these activities there is no appropriate language to choose; rather, students use the language they have at their disposal. The purpose of these activities is for learners to use the language they know to get meaning across as effectively as possible. Hence, the language can be ungrammatical and in this type of activity success is measured primarily by how well students cope with the communicative demands of the immediate situation. Activities include language games, scrambled sentences, rearrangement of picture strip stories and puzzles. The use of games can be a powerful language-learning tool, because games stimulate communicative skills, being task-based and having a purpose beyond the production of correct speech. Games provide a natural opportunity for learners to work together as they communicate using the target language to persuade and negotiate their way to desired results (Chen, 2005). The attention is on the message, not on the language, because the ultimate aim of all language games is for students to use the language. This process involves productive and receptive skills simultaneously. Furthermore, by integrating playing and learning, students practice the linguistic knowledge they have learned in a vivid and meaningful context (ibid).

4.3.1.2 Social interaction activities

Social interaction activities, on the other hand, are ones that emphasise social and functional aspects of communication. In this type of activity learners choose language that is functionally effective and socially appropriate, because activities in this category aim to convey meaning but pay attention to the social context in which the interaction takes place. Thus success is measured in terms of the functional effectiveness of the language and the acceptability of the forms that are used. Nunan (1991) refers to this

type of activity as ‘communicative tasks’. The task is meaning-focused where learners are required to comprehend, produce and/or interact in the target language. The tasks are analysed or categorized according to their goals, input data, activities, settings and roles. Task-based teaching activates a series of effective tasks for communication, which lead to a natural process of language acquisition and active participation in the EFL classroom (Nakamura, 2005). Through the tasks, two general goals are achieved: communicative effectiveness and second language acquisition, because task-based language instruction provides learners with experience of spontaneous interaction, the chance to notice how different speakers express similar meanings, chances to negotiate turn taking, use language purposefully and cooperatively, participate in complete interaction and try out communicative strategies in order to achieve communicative goals (Ellis, 2000).

Examples of social interaction activities include activities such as conversation and discussion sessions, problem solving, dialogues and role-plays, simulation and information-gap activities. Activities such as role-play provide students with opportunities to practise or rehearse situations that may happen in real life. Indirectly, they prepare the students for real-life language use (Aliakbari & Jamalvandi, 2010). Moreover, communicative activities such as role-play are effective at arousing students’ motivation to speak English (Liu, 2010). High motivation leads to a greater interest in speaking the language and eventually contributes to the development of language proficiency, specifically the ability to communicate effectively. Activities such as collaborative problem solving have a slightly different impact, fostering “a dynamic engagement with ideas amongst partners, with language as the principal means for establishing shared understanding, testing out possible solutions and trying to get some agreement” (Mercer & Littleton, 2007, p. 4). All in all, this second type of activity encourages thinking and communication, which are essential in the language development of the students.