Practices and Roles in Communicative Approach- Part 2

Some suggest that instructional and classroom management arrangements in the communicative approach have much in common with predecessor methods, such as the audio-lingual method. The communicative approach does not reject traditional methods; it reinterprets and extends them into a more cohesive whole.

Teaching points may continue to be introduced via dialogues that resemble dialogues from the audio-lingual method. What distinguishes communicative dialogues from audio-lingual dialogues is how they are used. Instructional arrangements in the communicative approach contextualize the teaching points introduced via dialogues by drawing from them in role play or simulation activities.

However, there is disagreement about the level of control learners need over language skills before they can apply them to communicative tasks. Some maintain that learners must first have control over language skills before applying them to communicative tasks; others advocate for learner engagement in communicative tasks from the beginning of instruction.

Its strengths notwithstanding, the communicative approach surfaced a number of criticisms. For instance, in countries with educational traditions from different those in the United States and Great Britain, where the communicative approach is rooted, the communicative approach may be less successful because teacher and learner role expectations in the approach may not be culturally universal. Also, when teacher and learner role expectations are culturally appropriate, teachers may be underprepared for the additional expectations beyond content knowledge that are integral to the communicative approach, especially group process management and instructional materials development.

 Also, because of a lack of a learning theory common to all and consequent instructional models, it is difficult for teachers to learn how to use the approach in classrooms. Finally, without a structural foundation and minimal attention paid to pointing out errors, language learners are at greater risk for replicating each other's errors, which can lead in rare cases to the formation of a classroom dialect. Because evaluators focus on communication, learners may never achieve learning the second language completely, because it is more difficult, in this approach, to learn to recognize one's own errors.

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