THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
The acquisition of language is a long and tiring process. If you are in that stage of dilemma well, you’re not the only one. This semester, my major elective is Japanese 101, and believe me, it wasn’t that easy. In the first week of the class, my professor asked us to write an essay about the challenges we expected to encounter in learning Nihongo as Filipino students. I wrote that the most difficult will be I have to start from scratch so basically, it’s like learning two courses at the same time. I needed to go back to relearning grammatical structure. I do believe that it applies to everyone who wants or needs to learn a specific language. Right now, I am getting the hang of it through the use of essential applications and materials.
But is there an easy way to do it? Well, there is none actually but I know something which would make learning a whole lot better.
And with that, let me introduce to you the communicative approach. This approach is very prominent nowadays, especially in the field of teaching English as a second language. The communicative approach started off in the 1970s in Europe and has been revolutionizing throughout the years its goal is to teach a specific language, especially English through the use of interactive and real-time communication. The development of this approach has brought a significant impact on the pedagogical field. As social animals, we, human beings are primarily dependent on communication to rely on as well as receive information in the messages. This is where language serves its rightful purpose as an avenue for communication to take place. Since communicative competence gives emphasis on the inculcation of language by making use of their ability to communicate, learners became much more self-directed. Active participation in communication is more concerned with the application of the language itself and not entirely involves memorization but accuracy. Activities are situational which allows the learners to contextualize the use of the language and how can it be effectively applied.
In this way, the communicative approach is a whole better because it fuses learning and having fun at the same time. Its also been proven effective. Teaching became student-centered and the teacher only facilitates the whole process. But we cannot deny that this approach has downsides because it has a tendency to overlook the grammatical structure of a certain language. Good use of grammar is essential also because outlines the language to avoid misunderstanding. I do believe that the communication process is still the best way to learn nevertheless, modifications must have opted in order to fully make use of this approach.
