Teaching Communicative English Language in Non-Native Contexts using Simulations

Abstract

After graduation, students find themselves confronted with the challenges of the world. These demanding situations expect from students to be proficient enough to be able to cope with them in an intellectually mature way. Trying to recall what they have learnt at school, all what students can think of is how they used to be regarded as passive members in the classroom, which was shaped by the all-time-dominance of the instructor, thus ending up feeling unprepared to face life regardless of the years spent at school and university. Currently, there is a paradigm shift in the roles of both teachers and students. The backbone of the new methodology of teaching is based on a shift from the traditional teacher-centered classroom to the modern student-centered mediums, where the student takes control of the approach while the teacher oversees the flow of the process. In this modern methodology, the student, as an individual learner, is handed the responsibility of self-learning and self-instruction where he/she is ought to explore, indirectly, his attitudes and values. My paper explores, in detail, the theoretical and empirical dimensions of “simulations” which is one of the basic learning activities in communicative English courses.