Misunderstandings of Communicative Approach in College English Teaching

Abstract

The Communicative Approach, started in the 70s, focus on real communication and interaction. This approach is prevalent in English teaching as it proposed an alternative to the then ubiquitous systems-oriented approaches. In the Communicative Approach, instead of focusing on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar, it emphasizes the development of learner’s competence to communicate in real-life situations. In other words, it aims at cultivating communicative competence rather than the grammatical or linguistic competence. Although the Communicative Approach is an effective method to teach English, it is often misunderstood and misused by many English teachers, especially college English teachers. This thesis explains what the essence of communicative teaching method is, what are its characteristics, and what misunderstandings teachers usually have about it, in the hope that the Communicative Approach can be used correctly and effectively in college English teaching and students can actually increase their English competence from this approach.