The survey result of participants’ view on communicative competence teaching is displayed in the following figure.
Figure 6.8 – Communicative Competence Q25. I have good chance
to speak in class. 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
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Q26. I have learned more knowledge than communication skills in English. 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
Pe
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Q31. I’m more confident with my reading than listening and speaking.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
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Q32. I have had good training of productive skills like LISTENING, SPEAKING and WRITING. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% Disagree
strongly Disagree commentNo Agree stronglyAgree
Pe
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en
Cameron (2002, pp. 71-73) found that employers cited oral communication ability as the most important soft skill, even more important than the specialist subject
knowledge new recruits bring with them from education. However, it was perceived to be sorely lacking in recruits coming straight from further or higher education. For those who aspire to work in multinational corporations, many jobs in exports and imports, tourism, leisure and hospitality require English competence. The students were aware of this demand of communication skills and were worried about the lack of training in this regard. As shown in the result of Q18 in Figure 6.9, 62 per cent of the participants indicated their awareness of the need of higher English competence in response to China’s WTO membership and nobody made any objection to the judgement that productive English skills are better required in this case.
Unfortunately, focus on reading rather than on these productive skills in the national curriculum becomes a hindrance that stops students from achieving their objectives. The following excerpts from interview transcripts provide evidence for the common feedback of students towards the current situation of College English. The strong voices from many students indicated the problem in College English: there was simply no importance attached to the training of productive skills.
P2 In the English education system of our school, oral-English class is not enough. Many students want to study English without "do-it-for- exam". They want to talk more for not only practicing oral-English, but also strengthening what have been learnt in class.
P6 There should be more emphasis on the actual use of English and more opportunities and better environment for students to do listening and speaking.
P9 Priority should be given to students’ listening and speaking abilities and their ability to use English to express themselves.
P12 There’s not enough attention to developing students’ competence, their listening and speaking, especially speaking.
The survey result of Q32 in Figure 6.8 revealed that as many as 85 per cent of the participants believed that they received poor training of productive skills like listening, speaking and writing. This result is not unexpected considering that College English lessons focused on Intensive Reading, which occupied three-fourth of the total class hours allotted to College English. Listening, in strange isolation with speaking, or any other macro skills, took up the remaining one fourth. This scenario results in the possibility that a graduate has well-documented English language competence in terms of standard CET scores, but is unable to perform the everyday communication in the language that they were certificated to be proficient. The current CE education practice is different from Harmer’s (2001, pp. 84-86) notion that ‘what to teach’ aspect of CLT places the priority on language functions rather than focusing on vocabulary and grammar. Listening and speaking, perhaps the more important functions of human communication are secondary, if not totally neglected, in CE education. As is known, the aim of the Communicative Approachis for instructors to engage learner in communication so that communicative
competence is developed. The basic assumption is that by actively communicating in English, learners develop their communicative skills, strategies and knowledge of the language itself.
Grammar-translation method in combination with the Audiolingual Method has been dominant in China for years. This method upholds that language learning is
deductive process-rules first, examples later. The learner needs the skill of translating in writing from mother language to target language and vice versa. The class is mainly in form of teacher-to-student instruction. And the teacher is considered as all- knowing and ever-correct authority. In English classes it is typical for the teacher to take up the entire teaching hours, explaining usually in the native language the rules of grammar at great length. Little or no attention is paid to oral communication. Students feel they do not have enough two-way communication with their teachers, so the student-teacher contact is emotionally distant.
P14 Listening and speaking should be enhanced and class hours for English be increased.
P27 ELT should give further priority on listening and speaking competence…. This would be where we can benefit.
P41 Learning English is for communication, not for passing the exam.
P42 We need some helpful textbooks to develop communicative competence.
Judging from the above unanimous appeal for productive ability from the students, it is fair to state that most of the commonly accepted principles of the communicative approach have not been adopted in CE education. That is, language is not used as a tool of communication; teaching is not student-centered; and learning tasks do not reflect real life communication. English is basically taught through English and there is some student involvement in the process of classroom teaching and learning. However, according to Krashen (1982), acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language, that is natural communication, in which speakers are
concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.
The phenomenon of ‘deaf-dumb’ English, the ultimate result of the whole process of English teaching and learning thus becomes unavoidable and astonishing. Based on the result of Q31in Figure 6.8, less than 30 per cent of the participants were confident with their listening and speaking ability in comparison with their competence in reading. However, being deeply involved in the process of globalisation, the students were keenly aware of the demands of communicative English competence in the WTO era and they anticipated the reform in the field of College English teaching and learning. The next section will focus on these anticipations of the students.