The Effect Of Teaching Grammar Communicatively On Students’ Grammatical And Communicative Competence At Nguyen Tat Thanh University

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97 Vo Van Tan Street, District 3, HCMC, Vietnam

Student’s name : NGUYEN THI HOANG TRINH

THE EFFECT OF TEACHING GRAMMAR COMMUNICATIVELY ON STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AT NGUYEN TAT THANH

UNIVERSITY

Ho Chi Minh City Open University

Table of Content

s

INTRODUCTION 3

Research Question: 5

Definitions of terms Error! Bookmark not defined.5 Delimitations and Limitations of the Study Error! Bookmark not defined.6 LITERATURE REVIEW Error! Bookmark not defined.6 Previous research 25

METHODOLOGY Error! Bookmark not defined.10 Study Design Error! Bookmark not defined.10 Research site and Participants 10

Instruments 10

Procedures 30

Validity and Reliability 13

Data analysis 13

TIME LINE Error! Bookmark not defined.14 References Error! Bookmark not defined.16

APPENDICES 35

CHAPTER 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION

1.2 Background to the study

Throughout the years grammar has been playing an important role in teaching English as

a second and foreign language Grammar can be defined as “the whole system and structure of alanguage or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology(including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.”(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/) A futher definition is given by Rutherford (1987) whodescribes grammar as “a necessary component of any language teaching program” According toBrown (2007), language is chaotic and unintelligible without grammar In the history of EFLteaching method, a variety of grammar teaching methods have been introduced and implemented

in the hope that learners can enhance their competence in a foreign language Typically, first ofall, Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) which is described as one of the oldest and traditionalmethod of teaching is based on analysis of the written language using translation exercises,reading comprehension and written imitation of texts Learning mainly involves the mastery ofgrammatical rules and memorization of vocabulary lists The Direct Method (DM) of teachingwas developed as a response to the GTM It is based on the active involvement of the learner inboth speaking and listening to the new language in realistic everyday situations The processconsists of a gradual acquisition of grammatical structure and vocabulary The learner isencouraged to think in the target language rather than translate He or she hears and uses thelanguage before seeing it written Similar to Direct Method, the Audio-lingual method (ALM)advised that students should be taught a language directly, without using the students’ nativelanguage to explain new words or grammar in the target language However, unlike the direct

method, the audio-lingual method did not focus on teaching vocabulary Rather, the teacherdrilled students in the use of grammar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-lingual_method).Due to the increase in demand for language learning, the introduction of CommunicativeLanguage Teaching (CLT) was in response to the lack of success with language teachingmethods proceeding it So far CLT has become prominent as it proposed an alternative to theformer methods It switched traditional language teaching’s emphasis on grammar, and theteacher-centred classroom to that of the active use of authentic language in learning andacquisition This means that it places less focus on the learning of specific grammatical rules andmore on developing the learners’ communicative competence in the target language with real-lifesituations Moreover, it highlights learners as center of instruction The teacher’s role haschanged when compared to previous methods The teachers talk less and listen more to thestudents They no longer control all activities in classroom, instead, they ask the students to takepart in meaningful communication Communicative itself has own advantages and it trulyprovides learners benefits in various ways In this paper, the term communicative grammarteaching is used to refer to teaching grammar communicatively.

In spite of the importance of communication skill, it can not be denied that grammar laysthe groundwork for effective communication Grammatical competence is a part ofcommunicative competence; in order to obtain effective communication people shouldconcentrate on grammar Similarly, Nunan (1991) states that learners can not communicate well

if they do not know the basic grammar Recently, therefore, there have been many new issuesand ideas concerning the importance of the relationship between grammar and oralcommunication skill The disagreement about methods of teaching grammar has developed in theongoing past, but the question stays as to the effectiveness of various methods

1.3 Statement of the problem

Vietnam has been considered as a developing country with many potentials, whichexplains why English has been so dominant Therefore, many Vietnamese educators have shown

an increasing interest in teaching English as a foreign language taught in Vietnam In Vietnam,however, teaching English is not easy because the term of English and Vietnamese aredistinctive English language is taught mainly by Vietnamese teachers and English appears to betaught through Vietnamese as the medium of instructions The lessons are limited to grammaticalpoints and comprehension reading which require heavy explanations via use of mother tongues

In the past decades English has become a global language which is considered as anopportunity door for a better future life In fact, in spite of its incredible importance, there isalways a big obstacle that make communication skill of Vietnamese students challenging Thereare some explanations for this undeniable fact First of all, the teaching of English in secondaryand high schools strongly focus mainly on grammar, sentence structures and vocabulary Inaddition, English learning and teaching is purely examination-based which are mainly grammarfocused As a result, Vietnamese students eventually fail to see the importance of English Due tothe fact that most students only study English to pass school exams, they are not high-motivatedand are prevented from the opportunities to practice English in real life situations They mightmaster every aspect of grammar points and succeed in written examinations; however, they cannot connect those grammar points with larger communication contexts There is another reasonfor which students fail to improve the command of English, particularly fail to achieve fluency inEnglish It is all the embarrassment or lack of confidence that prevents them from speaking This,eventually, will result in forgetting what they have already learned This is the big problem with

a lot of students no matter how large the amount of vocabulary and grammatical points they havegained.

Last but not least we can not deny the significantly important role of teaching methodsthat teachers use in classrooms There is no single methodology that can consistently beconsidered the best The correct approach is the one that meets the learners’ objectives and can

be implemented in learners’ environment A global challenge EFL teachers face with respect topedagogical approaches to teaching grammar is how to “bridge the gap between traditionalteaching focused on grammar translation and receptive skills and communicative teaching aimed

at well-rounded communication skills (Stephen, 2012) Sadly, however, there is a commonreality that the researcher has experienced during over five years of teaching English at Tan Phuhigh school and Ngyen Tat Thanh University, through examining my own practice, observingmost of my colleagues, and discussion about the thoughts and ideas about teaching learning witheach other In spite of the awareness of the great impact of teaching method, most of them doenjoy being the ‘sage on the stage’ and feel confident in their present style of teaching It meansthey are satisfied with the application of Grammar Translation Method to teach grammar withouttaking into account the fact that their students can not use the language for communication Theyadmit that their preference for GTM derives from its demand for fewer efforts from teachers.Teachers who are not fluent in speaking English can teach it easily through this method Evensome of them who have a deep understanding of the advantages of CLT over GTM show theirgreat reluctance to apply CLT in the classroom They state it requires teachers to make muchgreater effort in GTM classroom For students, when being asked about their experience intraditional grammar lessons, most of them state that what they learn is a series of grammaticalstructures provision followed by mechanical practice in the form of isolated sentences, which

only serves conventional grammar-paper tests Consequently, though they have considerableknowledge of grammar, they can not use English to communicate, even in simple situation likepersonal introduction.

That is the reason why language teaching methods have changed dramatically over time

As mentioned in previous part, one of the oldest and traditional method, Grammar TraditionalMethod, whose focus is on formal knowledge of the language, specifically nowadays has beenreplaced with others because of its weaknesses The latter methods (Direct Method, AudioLingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching, emerged as a response to the perceivedinability of the preceding one to teach learners to communicate It is important to note that each

of them has their own advantages and disadvantages

1.4 Aims of the study

Based on the problems above, there are two primary aims of this study Firstly, this study

is conducted to investigate whether students get a greater achievement in English grammaticalknowledge and communicative competence with the instruction of the communicative grammar

teaching from teachers Secondly, this paper will make contributions to develop a sharpunderstanding of students’ attitudes towards this teaching method

It is the central issue for the language educators to choose the most feasible way Somelanguage specialists think that for language students, meaning should be more emphasized thanthe form and the instructors should teach the language in order to convey meaning and forcommunication (Prabhu, 1987) This contrasts with that of some others (Dickins and Woods,1988) who had the argument that being competent about the grammatical structures of a specificlanguage is very critical in light of the fact that grammatical competence is recognized equivalent

to being fluent in communicative skills In such manner, teachers who have a conventionalperspective on language teaching may utilize deductive method to present the structures;notwithstanding, the ones who concede that students can secure the language without grammarinstruction may use inductive method as language teaching Nonetheless, there is not a generalagreement about the effectiveness of grammar teaching Accordingly, the motivation behind thisstudy is to investigate the effect of Communicative Language Teaching on students’ grammaticaland communicative competence

What are the students’ attitudes towards the communicative grammar teaching method?

1.6 Scope of the study

In order to achieve the purpose of this study is to investigate whether or notcommunicative grammar activities enhance students’ grammar knowledge and oral production.The study concentrates on the 70 samples which are first-year students at Nguyen Tat ThanhInstitute of International Education in 2020-2021 academic year The samples are selected for thefollowing reason In my more than 2 years of teaching as an English teacher, I have worked withhundreds of students at college level From my observation, I have realized that the ability tospeak English seems to be impossible for most students who are not majoring in Englishlanguage Therefore, the focus of the study is on freshmen who are non-English major students atNguyen Tat Thanh

1.7 Significance of the study

This study provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding ofcommunicative grammar teaching techniques as an alternative to the existing traditional ones Itwill help EFL teachers and educators recognize the problems they might face in the process ofteaching, and might apply communicative language teaching method in order to enhancestudents' oral communication skills This study also helps learners to express themselves incommunication and makes them active participants in the learning of grammar items in theclassroom

1.8 Organization of the Thesis

The overall structure of the study takes the form of three chapters, including thisintroductory chapter which consists of Statement of the Problem, Significance of the Study,Scope of the Study, Organization of the Thesis Chapter two begins by laying out the review of

related literature in which important issues related to communicative grammar The third chapter

is concerned with the methodology used for this study

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter reviews the literature related to the study It first presents some definitions

of key terms; an overview of communicative language teaching and some of its importancecharacteristics Finally, the chapter reviews studies that have been reported on the target teachingmethod and students’ attitudes towards communicative activities

2.2 DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS

2.2.1 Attitude

The concept "attitude" is one that has been frequently studied in social science.According to Longman Dictionary, ‘attitude’ is defined as “the opinions and feelings that youusually have about something” and “the way that you behave towards someone or in a particularsituation, especially when this shows how you feel”

An attitude can be also defined as an evaluation of an attitude object ranging fromextremely negative to extremely positive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_psychology) Inthe similar way, psychologists (e.g Hockenbury, 2007; Myers, 1999; Smith and Mackie, 2007)define attitudes as a learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain way This can includeevaluations of people, issues, objects or events Such evaluations are often positive or negative,but they can also be uncertain at times For example, you might have mixed feelings about aparticular person or issue

From the above concerned views, attitudes generally refer to the positive or negativeoutlooks or opinions one has regarding people, objects, places or simply anything within his orher environment Attitudes are known to have a powerful effect on one’s behavior towards theobjects of attitude People with positive attitudes often have positive correspondence with theirobjects as opposed to those with negative attitudes Therefore, to investigate learners’ attitudestowards their learning in order to provide them with suitable conditions, activities and methods,which result in successful acquisition, is a vital mission of language researchers as well asteachers in EFL/ESL classrooms.

2.2.2 What is Grammar?

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in literature on grammar It is crucial

to establish a general background of researchers’ thoughts about the definition of grammar

While a variety of definitions of the term grammar have been suggested, this paper willuse the definition first introduced by Chomsky who saw it as a device of some sort for producingthe sentences of the language under analysis (1957:13) For Crystal (2004) uses the termgrammar to refer to “the structural foundation of the ability to express ourselves The more weare aware of how grammar works, the more we can monitor the meaning and effectiveness of theway we and others use language It can help foster precision, detect ambiguity, and exploit therichness of expression available in English.” Grammar is described as a part of language thathelps the learners express themselves Moreover, according to Crystal, with the significance ofawareness in use of grammar, learners can explore the ability of expressing themselves byvarious ways in English

According to Bruder and Paulston (1976), grammar is defined as the possible forms andarrangements of words in phrases and sentences Whereas, Cambridge Dictionaries Online

defines grammar as the way you combine words and change their form and position in asentence, or the rules of this

2.2.2.1 How to teach grammar

Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages It is also one of the moredifficult aspects of language to teach well (Byrd, 1998) Many people, including languageteachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage.They associate "good" grammar with the prestige forms of the language, such as those used inwriting and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used ineveryday conversation or used by speakers of non-prestige forms

Teaching grammar has been regarded as crucial to show how language works Accurateteaching of grammar guides learners how to use the language correctly Azar highlights thesignificance of teaching grammar as: ―One important aspect of grammar teaching is that it helpslearners discover the nature of language, i.e., that language consists of predictable patterns thatmake what we say, read, hear and write intelligible Without grammar, we would have onlyindividual words or sounds, pictures, and body expressions to communicate meaning Grammar

is the weaving that creates the fabric‖ (Azar, 2007) Similarly, (Ellis, 2006) found that grammarteaching involves any instructional technique that draws learners’ attention to some specificgrammatical form in such a way that it helps them either to understand it metalinguisticallyand/or process it in comprehension and/or production so that they can internalize it

Traditionally, grammar teaching is considered as the presentation and practice of discretegrammar patterns As illustrated by Cook (1994), the mainstay of grammar teaching has been thetechnique of grammatical explanation That is to say language teacher explains the rules to the

learners and give them examples of it in order that they first get a conscious understanding of itand then start to use it

Nevertheless, teaching grammar is not always defined in this way Ellis (2006) mentionedtwo typical kinds of grammar teaching First, some grammar lessons may include presentation byitself (i.e., without any practice) whereas other may entail only practice (i.e., no presentation).Second, students can be involved in discovering grammatical rules for themselves (i.e., nopresentation and no practice)

Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms andrules They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them.This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests,but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context

Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference betweenlanguage learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all Believing thatchildren acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students tolearn their second language the same way They assume that students will absorb grammar rules

as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities This approach does notallow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding ofwhat grammar is and how it works in the language they already know

The communicative competence model balances these extremes The model recognizesthat overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but itincorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use

the language Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know toaccomplish defined communication tasks.

There raised a question of importance of teaching grammar in classroom Some teachersassume that grammar is really vital in teaching English However, others claim that teachinggrammar is not necessary in a classroom setting In fact, there are a large number of teacherswho are aware of the value of grammar and that it should not be over-emphasized

Also, there is an argument over the success of communication Many people think that ifthere is no grammar, communication will fail and there will, as a matter of fact, no interaction.Meanwhile, others believe that with an ungrammatical sentence, the communication may evensucceed Nevertheless, the knowledge of grammar can help students to communicateappropriately, which is the goal that the learners of English aim at

2.2.3 GRAMMARTICAL COMPETENCE

The scholars described grammatical competence as an aspect of competence whichencompasses the knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, semantics andphonology (Canale & Swine, 1980) In the construction of grammatical competence, as acomponent of communicative competence, the readers have specified no single aspect ofgrammar to be selected over the others Rather, they stress that grammatical competence will be

an important concern for any communicative approach whose goal is providing learners with theknowledge of how to determine and express accurately the literary meaning of the utterance

In Canale and Swain (1980, 1981), grammatical competence is mainly defi ned in terms

of Chomsky’s linguistic competence, which is why some theoreticians (e.g Savignon, 1983),whose theoretical and/or empirical work on communicative competence was largely based on themodel of Canale and Swain, use the term «linguistic competence» for «grammatical

competence» According to Canale and Swain, grammatical competence is concerned withmastery of the linguistic code (verbal or non-verbal) which includes vocabulary knowledge aswell as knowledge of morphological, syntactic, semantic, phonetic and orthographic rules Thiscompetence enables the speaker to use knowledge and skills needed for understanding andexpressing the literal meaning of utterances

2.2.4 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) understood communicative competence as asynthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for communication In theirconcept of communicative competence, knowledge refers to the (conscious or unconscious)knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of language use According

to them, there are three types of knowledge: knowledge of underlying grammatical principles,knowledge of how to use language in a social context in order to fulfill communicative functionsand knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect todiscourse principles In addition, their concept of skill refers to how an individual can use theknowledge in actual communication According to Canale (1983), skill requires a furtherdistinction between underlying capacity and its manifestation in real communication, that is tosay, in performance Unlike Hymes, Canale and Swain or even Widdowson, Savignon (1972,1983) put a much greater emphasis on the aspect of ability in her concept of communicativecompetence Namely, she described communicative competence as «the ability to function in atruly communicative setting – that is, in a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competencemust adapt itself to the total informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one ormore interlocutors” (Savignon, 1972:8) According to her, and many other theoreticians (e.g.Canale and Swain, 1980; Skehan, 1995, 1998; Bachman and Palmer, 1996 etc.), the nature of

communicative competence is not static but dynamic, it is more interpersonal than intrapersonaland relative rather than absolute It is also largely defined by context As to the distinctionbetween competence and performance, Savignon referred to competence as an underlying abilityand to performance as an open manifestation of competence In her opinion, competence can beobserved, developed, maintained and evaluated only through performance Like manytheoreticians in the field of language learning and teaching (e.g Stern, 1986), Savignon equatescommunicative competence with language proficiency Due to this, as well as to thecontroversial use of the term «competence», Taylor (1988) proposed to replace the term

«communicative competence» with the term «communicative proficiency» At approximately thesame time and for similar reasons, Bachman (1990) suggested using the term «communicativelanguage ability», claiming that this term combines in itself the meanings of both languageproficiency and communicative competence Leaning especially on Hymes, Widdowson andCandlin, Bachman defined communicative language ability as a concept comprised ofknowledge or competence and capacity for appropriate use of knowledge in a contextualcommunicative language use In elaborating on this definition, Bachman devoted specialattention to the aspect of language use - that is, the way how language is used for the purpose ofachieving a particular communicative goal in a specific situational context of communication

2.2.5 Communicative Language teaching

Communicative language Teaching has in recent years become a fashionable term tocover a variety of developments in syllabus design and in the methodology of teaching foreignlanguages There are some reasons listed why Communicative Language Teaching has become

so dominant As mentioned in the introduction, Communicative Language Teaching is aneffective approach to make students develop communicative competence The Communicative

Language Teaching emphasizes the ability to communicate the message in terms of its meaning,instead of concentrating exclusively on grammar Therefore, the understanding of the secondlanguage is evaluated in terms of how much the learners have developed their communicativeabilities and competences In the same way, Wilkins’s contribution was an analysis of thecommunicative meanings that a language learner needs to understand and express Rather thandescribe the core of language through traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary, Wilkinsattempted to demonstrate the systems of meanings that lay behind the communicative uses oflanguage

The terms “Communicative Language Teaching” means different things to differentteachers Dr Abrams emphasizes “real-life language use” in her definition of communicativelanguage teaching In her discussion, she takes the “speech event” as the point of departure forlanguage teaching, rather than a discrete grammar point or set of vocabulary items

The teaching of grammar has always been a central aspect of foreign language teaching.Widodo (2006:123) states that in the context of EFL, teaching grammar has traditionally beendominated by a grammar-translation method where the focus is on the form and structure Theteaching of grammar was the only activity of language classroom However, in the last half ofthe twentieth century, it has changed dramatically Lindblom and Dunn (2003:46) mention that:

At the present time, language teachers are often eliminating the place of grammar in thecommunicative classroom Many teachers feel guilty when they teach grammar directly in theclassroom… now grammar has returned as a more balanced viewpoint that is seen as one of theseveral organizational aspects of communicative competence

As a result, CGT has replaced these traditional methods CGT is based on the principles

of the communicative approach to second /foreign language teaching It focuses on language

structures which should be taught in an integrated way with the four skills such as listening,speaking, reading and writing The teaching of grammar should not be at the sentence level only,but it should also be presented in meaningful context (Woods 1995 and Ellis 2006) In line withthis idea, Bygate and Tornkyn (1994:19) explain: Communicative grammar is an approach togrammar teaching in which its goal is to explore and formulate the relation between the formalevents of grammar (words, phrases, sentences and their categories and structure) and conditions

of their meaning and use In linguistic terminology, this means relating syntax and morphology

to semantics and pragmatics

2.2.5.1 Teaching the Communicative Language Teaching

From the goal of CLT that develops communicative competence that is a practical ability

to use and speak the target language; that is, for students to be able to communicate proficiently

on their own However, CLT has no flexible methodology, it is somewhat open to interpretationand different implementations depending on how teachers want to adapt it, define it or practise it.For the purpose of understanding CLT, there is a necessity to get knowledge about thetheoretical foundations and principles lying behind the specific methods to avoid misusing ormisleading These are some of the most common principles of CLT suggested for teachinggrammar communicatively

In CLT approach the main focus of the approach is to make the learners able tounderstand and express their intention and ideas It is believed that communicative functions aremore important rather than linguistic structures Littlewoold states that “one of the mostcharacteristics features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic attention tofunctional as well as structural aspects of language, combine these into a more fullycommunicative view’’ (1981:1) Each language has limited number of sentence patterns

Mastering only those sentence patterns does not help the learners to communicate in the targetlanguage The learner needs to learn the communication functions of those structures.

While using CLT approach in teaching language, the target language is used in theclassroom The target language is a vehicle for class room communication, not just the object ofstudy (LarsenFreeman, 2000:125) Because if the learners continue to use their native languages,they are not able to communicate in the target language It is believed that native languageshould be used judiciously

Appropriate use of language is emphasized rather than accuracy Accuracy comes at thelater stage It is believed that when the learners learn to use the language appropriately accuracycomes automatically

Language should be taught by integrating all language skills and not by only one skill Itmeans communication approach is not limited to only speaking skill; reading and writing skillsshould be developed

While using this approach, the major focus is to make the learner able to communicate inthe target language Errors are tolerated by the teacher because what is more important is tomake them able to speak in the target language Teacher should not correct them during theactivities in which they are using target language The teacher can note the errors of the learnersand make it correct after the activities are over

Language teaching techniques should be designed in such way that it encourages thelearners to use the target language Functional aspects of language should be given importance.Dramas, role plays, games should be used in the class room to promote the real communication

It is apparent that a certain idea came to mind that CLT is like a full group of principlesthat predict ideas about language learning and teaching These principles can be applied in

different ways and they address different aspects of the process of teaching and learning Theresearcher concludes that the main purpose of language teaching is to help learners to use thelanguage communicatively Communicative grammar plays a significant role in supportinglearners to acquire language and use it accurately Although, grammar instructions help learners

to acquire the language more efficiently, it should incorporate grammar teaching and learninginto a larger context of teaching students to use the language communicatively In this study,teachers are advised to teach grammar not with rigid and old-fashioned techniques as drilling,memorizing, and answering written exercise on grammar rules Instead, they are advised to teach

it communicatively in real life context through various techniques like using songs, dialogues,games, charts, objects and even role-plays So, students do not feel that they are learninggrammar rules, but they feel that they are learning the language itself in order to improve theircommunicative competence

2.2.5.2 CLT activities

CLT teachers choose classroom activities based on what they believe is going to be mosteffective for students developing communicative abilities in the target language (TL) Oralactivities are popular among CLT teachers, as opposed to grammar drills or reading and writingactivities, because they include active conversation and creative, unpredicted responses fromstudents Information gap, role play, interview, discussion are some outspoken activitiescommonly used in CLT classrooms

Information gap is a common collaborative activity to get students talking, because that isthe point of communication – to exchange information This activity involve giving pairs ofstudents texts or pictures that are each missing different details, so they can work together to fill

in all the information gaps

Role playing is an important communicative activity It allows students to practice thetarget language in a safe environment where mistakes are not big deal They will get a feel forpracticing speaking in different real situations or contexts Language is meaningful only incontext

Interview is an oral activity done in pairs, whose main goal is to develop students’interpersonal skills in the target language It can zone in on one specific aspect of grammar orvocabulary, while still being a primarily communicative activity and giving the studentscommunicative benefits

Debates and group discussions are activities involving deriving new information fromgiven information through the process of inference, practical reasoning, etc In this activity, thestudents can give their opinions to others and compare their or others values, opinions, or beliefs(Richards, 2006, p 18)

These activities vary based on the level of language class they are being used in Therange of exercise types and activities compatible with a communicative approach is unlimited Inthis regard, Ellis (1990:33) comments that in the teaching of grammar for communicativecompetence, teachers should focus on communicative framework based on tasks ofcommunicative activities These grammar activities should be interesting and meaningful enoughfor students to attain the communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners incommunication, and require the use of such communicative processes as information sharing,negotiation of meaning, and interaction In order to achieve that they should be centered on thestudents’ own lives, their opinions and their experiences of real life situations to learn English.(Ehreworth 2003:92) Besides, a teacher must provide communicative practice for students toachieve non - linguistic goals such as: (asking for permission to do something, getting someone