Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan termez state university

2.THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
The communicative approach – or Communicative language teaching (CLT) – is a teaching approach that highlights the importance of real communication for learning to take place.
In the communicative approach, real communication and interaction is not only the objective in learning, but also the means through which it takes place. “⁶This approach started in the 70s and became prominent as it proposed an alternative to the then ubiquitous systems-oriented approaches, such as the Audiolingual method.” That means that, instead of focusing on the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, the communicative approach aimed at developing the learner’s competence to communicate in the target language (communicative competence), with an enhanced focus on real-life situations.
Communicating meaning is the main goal in CLT, and language is seen as a tool for learners to reach this aim. For this reason, the syllabus of courses that adopt a communicative approach to teaching favour lesson aims that will help students practice and develop their linguistic competence, rather than their grammatical competence. In order to achieve this, different types of syllabi were created, amongst them, the functional-notional syllabus, that enables learners to focus on the meaning of language and practice it in a realistic setting.
If the previous lesson is just the same as the next one, students will be bored with it before the lesson start. Even the most trivial dialogue can be transformed to a communicative one if no one knows a word of what will be said about. If the dialogue starts:
A: - How are you?
B: - And you? Then it all can be boring, definite and predictable. This dialogue is not informative, and rather similar to those which the students must learn by heart in terms of a prepared situation recipe. By contrast, the dialogue below is unpredictable, interesting and informative:
A: -How are you?
B: -Is it true, that you... or
A: -What is the result of the match?
B: - Tell me, where I can get repaired my Japanese TV set? It broke down in the middle of the match.
The answer is unexpected and related to the questions only associatively. During a language lesson, such dialogues can reflect spontaneous situations. Those unexpected dialogues are really communicative and built according to the scheme "stimulus - response". This principle stimulates active thinking process, intuitive thought and use of language in the frame of fixed communicative habits.
Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. The communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction.
They felt that students were not learning enough realistic, whole language. They did not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; in brief, they were at a loss to communicate in the culture of the language studied. Interest in and development of communicative-style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another became quite popular. In the intervening years, the communicative approach has been adapted to the elementary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary levels, and the underlying philosophy has spawned different teaching methods known under a variety of names, including notional-functional, teaching for proficiency, proficiency-based instruction, and communicative language teaching. Margie S. Berns,an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak) . In communicative language teaching when teachers deal to grammar function they try to use more the inductive method of teaching grammar involves presenting several examples that illustrate a specific concept and expecting students to notice how the concept works from these examples. No explanation of the concept is given beforehand, and the expectation is that students learn to recognize the rules of grammar in a more natural way during their own reading and writing. Discovering grammar and visualizing how these rules work in a sentence allow for easier retention of the concept than if the students were given an explanation that was disconnected from examples of the concept. The main goal of the inductive teaching method is the retention of grammar concepts, with teachers using techniques that are known to work cognitively and make an impression on students’ contextual memory unlike deductive method of teaching grammar which is an approach that focuses on instruction before practice. A teacher gives students an in-depth explanation of a grammatical concept before they encounter the same grammatical concept in their own writing. Deductive teaching methods drive many students away from writing because of the tediousness of rote learning and teacher-centered approaches. Each teaching method is based on a particular vision of understanding the language or the learning process, often using specific techniques and materials used in a set sequence.

CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features. “⁷One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan's five features of CLT” :

1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the Learning Management process.
4. An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.
These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom. Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction.
In the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities.
As such the aim of the communicative approach to language teaching is to focus on real conversations about real subjects so that communication is the engine of learning. This communication may lead to explanation, but that this in turn will lead to further communication.
⁸“ Communicative approach is based on ten principles”.
1. Interactivity: the most direct route to learning is to be found in the interactivity between teachers and students and amongst the students themselves.
2. Engagement: students are most engaged by content they have created themselves
3. Dialogic processes: learning is social and dialogic, where knowledge is co-constructed
4. Scaffolded conversations: learning takes place through conversations, where the learner and teacher co-construct the knowledge and skills
5. Emergence: language and grammar emerge from the learning process. This is seen as distinct from the `acquisition' of language.
6. Affordances: the teacher's role is to optimize language learning affordances through directing attention to emergent language.
7. Voice: the learner's voice is given recognition along with the learner's beliefs and knowledge.
8. Empowerment: students and teachers are empowered by freeing the classroom of published materials and textbooks.
9. Relevance: materials (e. g. texts, audios and videos) should have relevance for the learners.
10. Critical use: teachers and students should use published materials and textbooks in a critical way that recognizes their cultural and ideological biases.
Today, we see our primary aim as teaching the practical use of English for communication with native speakers and others.
Conversation is seen as central to language learning within the communicative approach framework, because it is the fundamental and universal form of language and so is considered to be language at work. Since real life conversation is more interactional than it is transactional, this approach places more value on communication that promotes social interaction.communicative approach also places more emphasis on a discourse-level (rather than sentence-level) approach to language, as it is considered to better prepare learners for real-life communication, where the entire conversation is more relevant than the analysis of specific utterances.
Communicative approach considers that the learning of a skill is co-constructed within the interaction between the learner and the teacher. In this sense, teaching is a conversation between the two parties.
⁹“Students regularly work in groups or pairs to transfer (and if necessary to negotiate) meaning in situations where one person has information that others lack (Celce - Murcia 1991)”. More emphasis should be given to active modes of learning such as pair or group work in problem-solving tasks in order to maximise the time allotted to each student for learning to negotiate meaning. Many people assume group/pair work is applicable in all contexts. However, classroom group and/or pair work should not be considered an essential feature used all the time, and may well be inappropriate in some contexts. Thompson (1996) and Savignon (2002) claim that group and/or pair work are flexible and useful techniques than that suggests and they are active modes of learning which can help the learners to negotiate meaning and engage in problem- solving activities. The use of pair/group work is a physical signal of some degree of control and choice passing to the learners; but that needs to be complemented by real choice (learners need to be given some degree of control over their learning). Therefore, the use of pair/group work needs to be complemented by real choice for the following reasons: they can provide the learners with a relatively safe opportunity to try out ideas before launching them in public; they can lead to more developed ideas and therefore greater confidence and more effective communication; they can also provide knowledge and skills which may complement those of their partners which in turn lead to greater success in undertaking tasks (Thompson 1996). Errors are seen as a natural outcome of the development of the communication skills and are therefore tolerated. Learners trying their best to use the language creatively and spontaneously are bound to make errors. Constant correction is unnecessary and even counter-productive. Correction noted by the teacher should be discreet. Let the students talk and express themselves and the form of the language becomes secondary. If errors of form are tolerated and are seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills, students can have limited linguistic knowledge and still be successful communicators (Larsen-Freeman 1986). Evaluation is carried out in terms of fluency and accuracy. Students who have the most control of the structures and vocabulary are not necessarily the best communicators. ¹⁰”A teacher may use formal evaluation i.e., he/she is likely to use a communicative test, which is an integrative and has a real communicative function (e.g., Madsen 1983; Hughes 1989).The students’ native language has no role to play (LarsenFreeman1986).” The target language is used both during communicative activities and for the purpose of classroom management. The students learn from these classroom management exchanges, too and realise that the target language is a vehicle for communication.
The teacher is the facilitator of students' learning, manager of classroom activities, advisor during activities and a 'co-communicator' engaged in the communicative activity along with the students (Littlewood 1981; Breen and Candlin 1980). But he does not always himself interact with students; rather he acts as an independent participant. Other roles assumed for the teacher are needs analyst, counsellor, researcher and learner. Students, on the other hand, are more responsible managers of their own learning. They are expected to interact with other people, either in the flesh, through pair and group work, or in the writings. They are communicators and actively engaged in negotiating meaning in trying to make themselves understood. They learn to communicate by communicating (Larsen-Freeman, 1986). Above all, since the teacher's role is less dominant, the teaching / learning process is student-centred rather than teacher-centred. In other words, it is the learner who plays a great role in a large proportion of the process of learning.