Can CA really be carried out?

[smicky]

In China, almost each classroom is crowded with at least 40 students. And also the teacher have to finish a big sum of grammar, vocabulary and reading or listening in the limited 45 minutes. So how dare he perform the CA strategy in the risk that he can't fulfill his teaching mission before final exam? Simply and easy choice is that he doesn't want to bother the new and effective teaching method though it is more important in term of language learning in the long run.


Smicky
Beijing

[smicky]

I would be very thankful for anyone who'd like to give me some advices or just want to share the same feeling with me

[Lorikeet]

What is "CA"?

[smicky]

Thank you first. CA means Communicative approach, which is a popular teaching methodology now

[Lorikeet]

Oh I see. I just know about the "Communicate Approach" but I never heard it abbreviated. In your mind, what exactly is the "Communicative Approach?"

[Sally Olsen]

There is a really interesting research paper about just this problem. The researcher visited many classrooms in many countries and documented when the teachers were using a communicative approach. He defines communicative approach as well of course because it means so many things to so many people. These teachers all identified themselves as using the communicative method. He said that teachers who really understood what they wanted to do, did that in any situation from having few students to many, to having a place at the front of the classroom to working in groups. It just depended on whether the teacher believed in what he/she was doing. If you want to use this method you could find out what has worked for other teachers in similar situations and try it. You will cover your curriculum no matter which way you teach so don't worry about that. The communicative method gives your student more input and more chances for output than they would get in a translation method classroom.