“Communicatively Handicapped”
I found some time to wind dust from my old articles. Here is
one of them:
Strange as it may seem, one of my students said he wanted
to learn ‘how to communicate’ but he refused to learn the
conjugation of verbs, which makes the whole notion of
communication absurd. He thought he could go by with using
simple structures and not minding the grammar. In English,
this could equal to the sentence like ‘I are going to the shop
yesterday’ : communication takes place but the level of
success is difficult to say.
As I was collecting the material and working on my article
„Using Translation in A Foreign Language Classroom“, I could
finally put a finger on that strange sensation I have been
experiencing ever since strating to follow the principles of
the communicative language teaching back in 2005. As for
today, I believe this aproach brings more harm than use.
First of all, the teacher is put in a very stupid situation both
as a person and a professional when one is trying to explain
the meaning of a word or phrase to an elementary class
instead of translating. When the students still fail to understand,
the embarrasement is dificult to put down in writing.
Next, there is a notion of time economy. One can explain grammar
rules in five or fifteen minutes. I vote for less which in a
time-constrainted lesson means more. The students put down
the rule, which is clear to them, and can practice it in English
for the rest of the lesson and the sky is not going to fall down
on them.
People tend to think that the communicative appraoch
to language means that they can go about with their broken
grammar because the most important thing is that other
people understand the message even with broken grammar,
so why bother? I don’t think this is right. Sucessful
communication is successful grammar.
I intend to make it into an article, so if you know any
literature I should have a look at or you want to add your
opinion, please leave a comment.