Group Practice with the Communicative Method

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Group Practice with the Communicative Method

• Jeff Parker

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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

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The problem

• Two conflicting parts of the method
• Authentic input
• Student to student practice
• If good input rubs off, then why wouldnt bad
  input rub off too?

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Two sides

• 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)

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Assumptions

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

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Methodology

• Take two classes one communicative, the other
  not
• Analyze test scores
• Take all items, discard items where lt30 or lt90
  of students answered incorrectly
• Add up remaining items
• Significant difference 15 (of total items)

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And the winner is . . .

• Flop

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The problem

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

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Conclusion

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