Communicative Language Teaching: the Secondary School Level.

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DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH BAYERO UNIVERSITY KANO ENG 8317: REASEARCH METHOD AND SEMINAR MUSA BABA SPS/11/MEN/00005 Communicative Language Teaching: Achieving communicative competence at the Secondary School level. Being a Seminar Paper presented to the department of English and French March, 2013. Introduction For decades many applied linguists with a primary interest in the theory of language acquisition and the theory of language testing gave their valuable contribution to the further development of the concept of communicative competence. Competence is one of the most controversial terms in the field of general and applied linguistics. Its introduction to linguistic discourse has been generally associated with Chomsky who in his very influential book “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax” use it to distinction between “competence’ (the monolingual speaker-listener’s knowledge of language) and “performance” (the actual use of language in real situations). Soon after, many scholars applied linguists, who are advocates for communicative view, began to criticize Chomsky’s concepts of “competence” and “performance”. They argued that the idea is purely theoretical, grammar-focused and narrow to explain actual language learning. Hymes’s communicative competence which is believe to be broader and more realistic in nature that it is seen as an alternative to Chomsky’s concept of competence. This paper is theoretical in nature which based its argument on many studies conducted by great scholars and experts in the field of Language teaching especially in the area of Communicative Language Approach. The main aim of this paper is to explore how communicative competence can be achieved through various communicative activities and tasks especially within the classroom environment in our secondary schools. The term communicative competence is broader than just
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