The Elaboration of Cultivating Learners’ English Communicative Competence in China

Yuxiang Zhang,Jiling Wang

doi:10.5539/elt.v5n12p111

Abstract

The communicative competence is the ultimate goal of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is thought to be the eclectic approach in the place of other approaches and methods and which begins to gain momentum in the recent years. Hence, the comprehensive understanding of the communicative competence is prerequisite to the cultivation of the students’ communicative competence. This study did some investigation with a view to elaborating the cultivation of learners’ English communicative competence in China. It did an investigation into 9 senior middle schools in Anhui, China. 9 schools in three areas were visited. About 400 students were asked to do a questionnaire on the self-assessment of their English communicative competence. 27 English teachers and 9 headmasters/mistresses were interviewed about their teaching practice in senior middle school. Based upon the data collected from the investigation, the paper puts forward some problems as well as some suggestions in the implementation of the cultivation of students’ communicative competence.

Highlights

In the early 1970s, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was developed by D
The communicative competence is the ultimate goal of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is thought to be the eclectic approach in the place of other approaches and methods and which begins to gain momentum in the recent years
The significance of CLT lies in that it provides “one possible solution to bridge the gap between classroom language teaching and real life language use” (Wang, 2000)

Summary

Introduction

In the early 1970s, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was developed by D. CLT has been the hot topic on the lips of the language teachers with a lot of disputes in terms of its concept and its implementation. Many language teaching methodologists subscribe more or less consciously to one or other aspect of communicative teaching. It has incorporated many of the characteristics of earlier language teaching innovations, CLT has avoided the narrowness and dogmatism of the method concept and covers a wider range of components (Stern, 1999). The significance of CLT lies in that it provides “one possible solution to bridge the gap between classroom language teaching and real life language use” (Wang, 2000)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion