Group Practice with the Communicative Method

1. Group Practice with the Communicative Method Jeff Parker

2. Background: The Communicative Method • Input: linguistic term, not just what you “put in” • Comprehensible • Meaning bearing • Authentic • Output: Communication • Negotiation • Information gap • Interaction • Student to student practice activities

3. The problem… • Two conflicting parts of the method: • Authentic input • Student to student practice • If good input rubs off, then why wouldn’t bad input rub off too?

4. For— Not a significant impact on development Benefits outweigh the possible downsides “group work may increase the efficiency of accuracy” (Brumfit, 78) Against-- Classroom is inherently not authentic language (Lier, 123) Group work is a “management device ”, not a language development tool (Brumett, 76) Two sides:

5. Assumptions: • Mistakes will rub off • Test scores determine how mistakes were acquired • The mistakes will show up in distribution of scores

6. Methodology • Take two classes; one communicative, the other not • Analyze test scores: • Take all items, discard items where <30% or <90% of students answered incorrectly • Add up remaining items • Significant difference: 15% (of total items)

7. And the winner is . . . • Flop

8. The problem… • The communicative method is so fashionable right now that everyone (at BYU) uses it, or at least they claim to.

9. Conclusion: • Needs future work • Longitudinal study • More strict situation in order to assure correlation of mistakes and language development