Communicative Language Teaching

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

If we speak about Communicative Language Teaching or about the Communicative Approach, we know that it has different meanings to different people . There are different approaches seen as a part of an extended family and “ …as is in the case with most families , not all members live harmoniously together all the time. There are squabbles and disagreements, if not outright wars, from time to time. However, no one is willing to assert that they do not belong to the family” ( Nunan 2004:7).

It all started in the 1970`s , when pioneers like David Wilkins ” …looked at what notions language expressed and what communicative functions people performed with language. “( Wilkins 1976). So, there was set a balance between “spoken functions” and “written grammar”, in order to say what is appropriate or not.

CLT talks about the use of language. One of the main aims of it is how to develop the communicative competence among students. “A major strand of CLT centres around the essential belief that id students are involved in meaning communicative-focused tasks, then `language learning will take care of itself` and plentiful exposure to language in use and plenty of opportunities to use it are vitally important for a student`s development of knowledge and skill” ( Harmer:69).

When Communicative Language Teaching was created ,“ language teachers and teaching institutions all around the world soon began to rethink their teaching, syllabuses, and classroom materials. In planning language courses within a communicative approach, grammar was no longer the starting point. New approaches to language teaching were needed”. ( Richards, 2006: 9).

There were different proposals for the Communicative Syllabus. The teaching process started to be focused on the four skills, where all were integrated. This was a skills-based syllabus. After that a functional –syllabus was presented., where the learner was able to express his or her likes and dislikes., to introduce himself , to offer personal information , to offer and accept apologies etc.

The notional syllabus and the task syllabus were other types , the first one based on notions and the second on the tasks that the students had in their classrooms.

Communication started to play an important role and to become one of the main purposes in language learning, by taking the place of the grammar . The learners were given the chance to experiment the language in different context and to discover grammar rules.

Accuracy and memorization were left, being replaced with interactive activities focused on fluency.

The ability to interact with other people is essential. It all starts with imitation, but first we are the ones who produce the language in front of our students. Therefore, the language we expose plays an essential role. After that, we can speak about the opportunities we offer to our students and here we must encourage them to produce the language they have learnt.

We should try as much as possible to involve our students in real situations, where they try to communicate something, starting from simple dialogues, where they speak about daily routines , or describing people until we get to role-plays , where they have to simulate different life situations.

The desire to communicate is very important. The way we motivate our students is very important. Even if developing language skills is not easy, we should focus on the content of speaking and writing, and to use a variety of activities in order to develop these skills.

Language means communication and our students must acquire confidence in their linguistic abilities if they want to succeed. We all make errors, teachers and students , too. Anyway, when we speak about productive skills, we should not concentrate so much on our students` errors , because they feel embarrassed when the teacher interferes in their speaking activity, and this can demotivate them.

If we have great expectations from our students, then we should create real communication in our classes.

“ Not all activities in CLT occur at either extreme continuum, however. Some may be further towards the communicative end, whereas some may be more non -communicative”

( Harmer: 70).

The following figure illustrates “ The communication continuum”:

Non communicative activities Communicative activities

Figure 1 The communication continuum

Using CLT in our teaching process helps us to improve the communicative abilities of our students. We have to determine our students to stay active and to be affective involved in their learning process. Our student must become our partner in learning, by bringing his or her contribution to the class or even by trying to personalize some of the activities in which they are involved. Spontaneity can be efficient in so many cases, because students must bring their personal experience and their real-life situations

The way we communicate represents the way we interact with others. All the situations in which we involve our students must have a purpose which must be real set from the beginning of our activity.

The materials we use in our Communicative Language teaching must not always be be authentic. We should not stop our activity in using just our textbooks, because they represent only a framework for our lessons. We can find a great variety of materials, from guidebooks, literature and newspapers` articles to different worksheets that we can find on the internet, it depends on us to improve our teaching process, because we should never stop in taking to our class something new, motivating and interesting for our students.

Communicative teaching must take place in a natural way, by offering our students the chance to learn the language which later has to be used in different communicative activities.

The interaction which takes place inside our English classes is centered on our students’ activity. Even if it feels like a continuous struggling for our students when it comes to expressing their feeling and their thoughts , we should encourage them to go on. The clear instructions given to our students and the way we motivate them can build a successful activity.

If during these communicative activities teachers usually act like facilitators, organisers, prompters, resources , our students have their own roles ,too. They become negotiators, discoverers and many times researchers.

In Introduction to Communicative language teaching, Littlewood suggests the following:

The learner must attain as high a degree as possible of linguistic competence. That is, he must develop skill in manipulating the linguistic system , to the point where he can use it spontaneously and flexibly , in order to express his intended message.

The learner must distinguish between the forms he has mastered as part of his linguistic competence , and the communicative functions which they perform. In other words, items mastered as part of a linguistic system must also be understood as part of a communicative system.

The learner must develop skills and strategies using the language to communicate meanings as effectively as possible in concrete language situations. He must learn to use feedback , to judge his success, and if necessary ,remedy failure by using different language.

The learner must become aware of the social meaning of language forms. For many learners, this may not entail the ability to vary their own speech to suit different social circumstances, but rather the ability to use generally acceptable forms and avoid potentially offensive ones. ( Nunan, -Language Teaching Methodology:13,14)

As we can see, Communicative Language Teaching functions as set of rules or well established principles. It starts from the way in which the students learn and uses the language, the activities that we use in our classroom to the roles or the teachers and students in the classroom.

Everything takes place in a collaborative way. The way our students interact with each other, how they manage to create each situation they are involved in, the feed back they are exposed to, all these are should be met in our lessons.

THE SKILLS TOGETHER

Teachers can not conceive their teaching process without integrating the four skills and that is true , because the ability to use a language represents a language skill. Learning a language is not easy, and even if we speak about our mother tongue we must mention the fact that when we are children, first we listen, then we speak, when we grow up a little bit- around seven years old we start reading and finally we get the chance to write.

I think that the same happens with a foreign language. We must follow some small steps in order to get to the final result , and our activity as teachers never ends. Due to the fact that I began my teaching career in a kindergarten , I had to learn that working with small children is not easy at all. Even if at first I found it difficult, in time I realized that if you try to get close to them by creating a pleasant atmosphere and by bringing colorful materials, English will be for them just a game. Anyway , as I have mentioned before learning a language involves some steps, that we must also follow in teaching.

These four skills ( listening, speaking, reading, writing) can not be separated. Therefore we have to try and integrate them all. The four skills have been divided into receptive skills and productive skills. Receptive skills is a term used for reading and listening, skills where the meaning is extracted from the discourse. Productive skills is the term for speaking and writing, skills where students actually have to produce language themselves.( Harmer, 2007, p.265)

Receptive skills are considered to be passive because the students receive the language, they try to understand it because they are exposed to it, whereas Productive skills tend to be more active, because the language that the students had received must be used in several contexts, so here the student play their roles by producing, by practising language in different situations, through speech or written texts.

As Eli Hinkel says in meaningful communication, people employ incremental language skills not in isolation, but in tandem ( Hinkel 2006, p113). Productive skills go hand in hand with receptive skills, we can not produce language without receiving it first. So, students must receive the information, by listening to unknown words, a song or a conversation or by reading a text and after they have received the message , we must think about producing the language. It is about the input the students get from the first year of studying English , starting with Greetings,Directions, Commands, Animals, Fruits and Vegetables until they manage to read a short text , after repeating it many times. The moment the students start understanding the language, we can think about following the next step- the output. Once the language has been learnt, we can think about using it. All these represent small steps that each teacher should take into consideration during his teaching process. Acquiring language is a difficult process related to language learning . There are so many students who can understand the language, but later they have difficulties in producing the language.

Receptive skills involve a process of extracting the meaning from a message. This message has to be sent forward, and here reading and listening have to meet speaking and writing., all these skills have to work in an integrated way. Let`s not forget that a question always requires an answer, and while our students are listening to a text, automatically they take notes in order to complete the tasks , all these involve both receptive and productive skills.

Anyway, even if most of the time we do not integrate these all four skills once , I am sure that each one of us, as teachers try to integrate in their process of teaching at least two of the skills I have mentioned before.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVATION IN TEACHING ENGLISH

There are so many reasons why people decide to learn a foreign language, some of them learn for pleasure, others because they want to emigrate while others learn because they have to. When it comes to children, I think the major roles in learning a foreign language are played by the teachers or by the student themselves.

Students who are really motivated to learn English, tend to love this language and they always try to improve some aspects related to learning, and their chances to succeed in the future grow very fast . Not the same thing happens with those students who are not motivated, they find English quite difficult, and it is like they have a lack of will and they do not want to succeed or to overpass that barrier.

Nowadays, when English represents that international language which is spread all over the world, being taken for granted, every student should least have a basic knowledge of it. It is true that English is on the school curriculum and each student has to learn , but we must face the fact that teaching a foreign language like any other subject is not easy at all. It implies great efforts and a lot of work for the teachers and for the students , too. That is why, motivation plays an important role in teaching English as a teacher and in learning English as a student.

Motivation is the key to success for both , teachers and students. It is hard to describe motivation, , that is why as Harmer says motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something( Harmer: 98). Most of the time, motivation comes inside us, it is like someone is pushing you to learn or maybe you have a strong will to do something that you find useful ,this is intrinsic motivation. It must exist in our teaching activity , inside us and inside our students, but it depends also on many factors like : the physical condition, the method , the success and not last the teacher`s role plays an important role.

The atmosphere in which a language is being taught is a key to success, because by creating a pleasant and supportive atmosphere we manage to bring our students close to us, to English. The way we encourage students, the way we create our own space for teaching , all these motivate our students. Of course, we must mention the methods that the teacher use in his teaching process: these seem to be so difficult to choose. As a teacher, you always have to find the right method, which is convenient for your students, for their personality and for their needs. It is always very hard to find the appropriate method in order to motivate your students, this implies a lot of work and preparation. The success comes in time, after years and years of working hard with different classes, different personalities etc.

The teacher`s role is so important. Teachers are considered to be actors in their everyday life at school, by playing different roles at each class, and by modelling his or her personality. The way they dress, the way they stand, the way they act ,expose or facilitate the learning process ,all these are part of teaching.. Trying to make learning possible is not too easy. No matter if we act like organisers, controllers, prompters, resource, tutors or participants, our role is to create and to maintain a good rapport with our students, by showing them the enthusiasm they want to see in everything we do.

If we speak about extrinsic motivation, then we should think about anything that has connection with the outside factors, like the need to pass an exam, or to travel abroad ,the society we live in, the people that are around us, the goals that we are following. Here we must mention the difference between integrative motivation ( where a language learner wishes somehow to integrate into the target language culture) and instrumental motivation( where a language learner is studying because with the English they will get a better job- or for some other materialistic reason). ( Harmer- Essential Teacher Knowledge-98).

Teachers must support their students, by sustaining their motivation from the first day of school and this implies a lot of effort. The affection we show during our English classes can determinate our students to succeed , to improve their English. By showing them a positive and a professional attitude, by bringing in our class a number of different activities, will convince them to learn more and more.

The way we encourage our students to participate, to take decisions, if we give them the freedom in order to act on their own, by bringing their own contribution during the English class by letting them investigating the language, all these have a great importance in their individual learning.

HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUNG LEARNERS AND TEENAGERS

YOUNG LEARNERS

We generally call students between the ages of two and eleven young learners. But young learners are not all the same.( Harmer- Essential Teacher Knowledge, 202). It is true there is a great difference between a five-year old child and an eleven –year old child, that is why each child has his own needs and answers differently at the teacher`s tasks.

It is so important to study their age particularities , but in the same time we must understand how they behave in different circumstances, how they must be taught and most important how they learn.

When they are “ small”, their basic feature is curiosity and all they want is to play, that is why teachers try to use games as much as they can. By using colourful materials, big flashcards, songs and poems we can attract them to learn. The children appreciate every material that their teacher brings to class, because it was made especially for them. Anyway, playing with them and singing with them by being all the time in a movement and around them, we can manage to stimulate their curiosity.

Working with small children represents a real challenge every day. As teachers, we must pay attention to activities we prepare, because they need to be changed quite frequently.

Pictures, stories, games and songs motivate children and make their lessons enjoyable. Even if some of the small children hate colouring, and prefer all the time moving around singing or playing, there are cases in which many children ask their teacher colouring worksheets..

By using visual and audio materials, we can motivate our children in order to learn English. The teacher must find the right combination in his or her teaching process , because each child is different in acquiring a language.

Trying to tell them short stories and using in the same time pictures, can determinate children to learn new words, make simple sentences. We must use games and try to make our lessons look like a real and pleasant adventure.

Children aged five to seven, seem to be more enthusiastic about learning if the teacher uses the right method. Only by bringing to class enjoyable activities and elements from their physical world can motivate them in learning English. Their age asks for a special and familiar language at the same time, so we must encourage our students by telling them how well they answered or how well they behaved during our class. Their imagination is so rich at this age that many times they really surprise us through their attitude or gestures.. In their mind, everything seems to be possible, and sometimes we can notice the fact they do not make a distinction between reality and fiction .

As I have mentioned before, due to their age ( between five and seven), children can not manage to concentrate for a long period of time., that is why sometimes they move, or they go to their toys or they even come next to their teacher, only by giving him or her a hug, or showing their affectivity.

Sometimes, they interrupt the activity only because they feel like they want to add something or they have just remembered something that happened to them yesterday, two days before or last week. Everything seems to be so beautiful for them, that is why we try to understand them and to answer their needs.

“Various theorists have described the way that children develop and the various ages and stages they go through. Piaget suggested that the children start at the sensori-motor stage, and then proceed through the intuitive stage and the concrete and operational stage before finally reaching the formal operational stage where abstraction becomes increasingly possible. ( Harmer,82).

Teaching young and very young children requires a dedicated teaching, because we must understand them, trying to see which are their interests in order to motivate them.

If we speak about eight- year-old and ten year-old children, things start to change a little bit, because even if we meet some similar characteristics among them, some start to understand the basic concepts and try to make a connection .

The feelings we create, the learning general atmosphere and the methods used in our English class can motivate or demotivate our children. Whereas some children like English because they like the teacher, others like it because it is funny , because they can play games and learn a lot of things and new words.

Our role in motivating the young children is important. Only by bringing a positive attitude in our classroom and using a great variety of activities or appropriate methods can determine children to learn English. The rewards have their own role , too. It is so important to show your affection and you appreciation by bringing them some stickers. They usually like smiley faces and they want to gather as many as they can.This is another thing that motivates the young children.

The fact that they are involved in a competition or in different contests, can encourage them to learn more and to bring their own contribution in learning.

So , motivation starts from the first English class, and it depends on us at the beginning, later it will depend more on our students if they want to success and to improve their English. Our sustaining process is long and sometimes difficult, but in time, we can have good results. The fact that we start teaching real beginners (who know nothing at all) and false beginners( those who have already picked up a few words and bits and pieces of English), represents a real challenge.(Harmer-94). That is why, in very young learner classrooms we always use our mother tongue, too. It is necessary, because it helps our little children to feel safe, happy and it encourages them in their English learning process.

Making learning successful involves a lot of work. Teachers have to organize activities that will offer the chance to every child to have his or her own role during the activity, because each child has his or her own style of learning and acquiring a language.

HOW TO MOTIVATE TEENAGERS

Children aged ten and above seem to be harder to teach. Their life and their needs change so their start having a “special sensitivity” to everything that surrounds them. Now, we start dealing with a great lack of curiosity, as their identities are changing.

Even if they have a clear perception between what stands for reality or fiction, they “start” taking their own decisions of what and how they need to learn. If young children are curious, teenagers are not inspired by curiosity, and they even start expressing their “strong” feelings about what they like or dislike.

Sometimes, they are seen “as problem students” because they see in their teacher their enemy, and not the person who teaches them English. At this age, teenagers have a great potential to learn a foreign language, because they can understand and make the difference between what is right and fair, they can understand the abstract concepts and symbols by generalising.

According to Harmer, “it is perfectly true that there are times when things don`t seem to go very well. Adolescence is bound up, after all, with a pronounced search for identity and a need for elf-esteem” adolescents need to feel good about themselves and valued. ( Harmer,83.). For a secondary student, the teacher “ is someone who knows our names”( Harmer2007 :26)

The teacher must ensure a pleasant learning by looking up for the right materials ,developing the right skills and by using appropriate methods for the group every time it is necessary, to build and to rebuild a the connection between the students and their teacher.

|It is necessary to convince our students that it is very important to set some goals in order to achieve something. The language we use in order to motivate them is very important ,too. The way we encourage them, by communicating the progress that he or she has achieved can increase our student`s motivation.

The style we use in our teaching puts our print on their personalities. The way we use our materials, the way we plan our lessons, or the attention we give to them will engage our students in Learning English. As each person has his or her own needs, the same happens with our teenage students.

The methods we use, must help and motivate our students in order to perform better during the English classes. By bringing the right resources to our class will motivate our students, because let`s face it, teenagers have a greater learning potential than young children.

Nowadays, teenagers hear everywhere how important is English. Some of them want to learn in order to succeed in the future, to travel, to make friends, because they have real purposes to learn, They seem to be conscious that it is necessary to learn at least one foreign language if in the future they want to work abroad. For some of them, English is not a complicated language that is why they try to find many things about the English culture. Being a language with a great relevance in the world, English is interesting for the great majority of the teenagers when it comes to computers, games and everything that is connected to technology.

If we compare English among young children and teenagers, we must add that the last category is learning English for real purposes, while young children learn because they are curious. Both categories are energetic, therefore the majority of their activities must bring joy and energy in thei classrooms. Our students must see our enthusiasm that we bring in our classroom. Even if sometimes teenagers are not so talkative or so involved as we expect, and their lack of interest is so visible, we have to get up and try to bring changes in their classroom. The right methods or the right material can determine our students to be interested in “something”. Therefore , we can use activities related to the English culture, or just talk about the movies they saw last week, or about their favourite artists or even something related to fashion can make them start something.

We all know that children like competitions , so do teenagers. They like being involved in contests or competitions related to what they like, for example playing sports , fashion, movies or computer games, these are only a few topics that can determine teenagers to work during their English classes. If use as a warm-up activity a game involving movement, the atmosphere will be a pleasant and energetic one. .Songs and funny videos, everything that has a connection with technology, will keep our students focused on the tasks. Movie trailers and interviews are other enjoyable activities. As I have mentioned before, we teach at mixed-ability classes, so we have children with multiple intelligences.

Each student has his own talent at one thing or another. Only in time , we can discover their personalities, but once we have discovered them, we can create contests or competitions for those who are artistically –inclined or essay competitions or why mot some “Teenagers have got talents”.

For each skill, we can create something beautiful. For example, if we pay attention to reading, we have to choose a material that will pick up his or her interest, like books or stories about teenagers or biographies about celebrities, articles from newspapers related to sports, fashion, music, movies, everything which is connected to “their world”. These kind of activities will strongly increase their reading level.

For listening, we can use songs or movie trailers, activities I have mentioned before. Sometimes, it feels like, our students do not really like those audio activities that come from our text books, they like movement, colour and images. Video lessons have a great potential and there so many types of video that can be downloaded from the internet and used in out English teaching.

Most of teenagers do not like so much writing assignments. For some of them is quite boring. From what I have noticed, a way of motivating writing is to use pen pals . It must be something funny for them to stay motivated on the topic. If we tell them to create a web site, to create their own articles for a magazine, can keep our students involved. Advertisements or questionnaires represent a good way of integrating writing in our English class.

Speaking is used more frequently than writing in our English classes. Even if some of our students find speaking difficult from various reasons, one because they do not know how to speak and twice because they are afraid of doing it. In each class , there are students who dominate our activities when it comes to speaking. Our role here is to encourage the other students to bring their minimal contribution in these types of activities.

We have to help the students to reduce their fears by creating a comfortable environment . Another thing is how do make them feel safe? How do we build their self-esteem? We should try and work differently, by setting tasks with different ranges of difficulty, if we want to maintain our students` interest in English.

Each activity must be adapted to their needs and their abilities, therefore we must be tolerant with our students, by encouraging them all the time. We do not want a quiet classroom, we want our students to come with pleasure to our class, to feel happy. Speaking activities involve the use of free language. Students make mistakes, and teachers make mistakes, too. So, we should not interrupt their speaking activity when they are involved in it, because students will tend to associate speaking activities with negative experiences, and we do not want that to happen.

Working in pairs or groups will help them to develop their skills, to have a better communication and to stand motivated. Penny Ur (275) describes motivated learners as:

Positively task oriented- willing to solve tasks, confidence in their success;

Ego-involved- find it important to succeed in order to increase their positive self-image;

Need for achievement- need to achieve, overcome difficulties;

High-aspirated –ambitious, want demanding challenges;

Goal oriented- must be aware of goals of learning (or specific activities) and fulfil them;

Perseverant- not to be discouraged by setbacks;

Tolerance of ambiguity- not to be frustrated by situations involving a temporary lack of understanding or confusion, must be patient since understanding will come later;

MOTIVATION AND THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

Teachers do not just stand in front of their class and tell their students different things. The role of the teacher is very important, from the way we create the conditions in which the learning process takes place, the skills and the techniques we use to our attitude , intentions and our personality that we expose in front of our students.

As Rose Senior says “Students can pick up much from the way their teacher walks into the room at the start of that first lesson” ( Senior 2006:93). This is really true, the way we dress, the way we act, our attitude in front of our students, all these make a positive or negative impression on our students.

We have many roles in our classrooms and therefore we have to establish a good relationship with our students; this will help us in the success of our lessons. Our voice and our personality represent in many cases the key factors related to learning.

In this sense we need to make some kind of distinction between who we are and who we are as teachers. This does not mean that we should somehow be dishonest about who we are when we face students( Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching:108)

The moment we enter our class, we want our students to see in us a person who looks and behaves like a teacher. Our positive attitude, the way we talk and demonstrate the language, but what should be above all these is our passion for teaching English. As our students, we have different personalities, that is why some of us are quiet and shy, while others seem to be loud and extrovert.

No matter how our personality is, we have to show our students that we care about them and that we love our teaching career. In class, we have a variety of roles like: facilitators, controllers, prompters, participants, resources, tutors, organisers, performers, etc. If we want to work well with these teacher`s roles I have mentioned before, we need to establish an appropriate relationship with our students.

In order to maintain a strong motivation among our students and to protect it, Dorney Zoltan (34) suggests to :

Make learning stimulating and enjoyable by breaking the monotony of classroom events. That means to vary the learning tasks and other aspects of teaching, focus on the motivational flow and occasionally do unexpected.

Make learning stimulating and enjoyable for the learners by increasing the attractiveness of the tasks. It means to make tasks challenging and attractive by adapting it to students` natural interests.

Make learning stimulating and enjoyable for the learners by enlisting them as active task participants;

Present and administer tasks in a motivating way. Provide appropriate strategies to carry out the task;

Encourage learners to select specific, short term goals for themselves and offer ongoing feedback;

Provide learners with regular experiences of success. Try to adjust the difficult level of task to the students, design tests that focus on what learners can rather can not do;

Build learner`s confidence by providing regular encouragement. Draw learner`s attention to their strengths and abilities;

Help learners to accept the fact that they will make mistakes as a part of the learning process;

Encourage learners to explain their failures by the lack of effort;

Provide students with positive motivational feedback. This means to ntice and to reac to any positive contributions from students and provide regular feedback about the progress and areas which they should concentrate on;

Try to raise students` awareness of the importance of self-motivation;

These are only some of the things a teacher should do during his or her English class. It is difficult to create a good rapport with our students, but it depends on us if we help the relationship teacher-students to flourish. We should not forget that students need our appreciation every time we are around them, that is why we must find anything to praise our students, this is a good way of encouraging their activity. The respect we show our students is vital for our lessons, therefore we need to answer each student differently, without being critical. Let `s not forget that we have to treat all our students the same.

DEVELOPING PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

Learning the vocabulary or the grammar rules are not enough in the process of learning a language. Only by focusing on receptive skills, we would not be able to explore and to produce the language. We can not say that a student learns a language, if we do not offer him/her the chance to demonstrate or to produce what our student has learnt so far.

Normally, receptive skills can not be separated from productive skills, because listening and speaking will always interfere with reading and writing.

It is true that first our students meet the receptive skills. So, they act as receivers because their first contact with English is through listening. From the very first moment we enter the class, our students listen to our greetings, commands or directions.

The next step we take can be reading a short message ,a short text and try to determine our students to repeat it in a mechanical way. In time, students start developing their receptive skills.

Once they have understood the spoken or the written message, they are ready to start learning and using the language. All these imply small steps, very important, which will lead to the necessary skills.

Studying a foreign language, no matter if we speak about English or French, requires the receptive skills and the productive skills on the same balance. Receptive skills seem to be more easily to acquire when it comes to language learning. Among our students, a great majority of them understand very well the language, but others seem to have difficulties in producing the language.

Developing receptive or productive skills requires a lot of time, work and attention in order to make our students understand and produce the language. Teaching and developing these four skills represent a complex and hard process . Only by motivating our students and helping them to practice the language will help them to improve their skills.

Most of our classes integrate at least two skills , so we can speak about a balance between the receptive and the productive skills . As teachers, we must find ~that something ~ in order to activate our students. Therefore, we have to bring to our classes attractive and enjoyable activities, interesting texts and topics and many colourful materials for the beginners.

Creativity , talent and the way we dedicate for our students , all these demonstrate our ability in teaching and helping our students to learn English. The way our student progress will help them to gain the confidence they need. So, even if at the beginning students need our help, in time they will become more confident in using and producing the language.

A BASIC METHODOLOGICAL MODEL FOR TEACHING PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

The way students use language in order to produce a message through speaking or through written texts will help them in developing the productive skills.

In The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer provides a Basic Methodological model for teaching the productive skills.

In the lead-in stage we engage the students in the topic(Harmer:275).In order to prepare our students for the topic, we can check the previous knowledge, or maybe we can create some questions, some clues that will lead our students to the topic. This stage can be seen like a click that will turn on the light.

The next stage represent setting the task, when we explain exactly what students are going to do.

( Harmer:275). Our explanations will have to be clear, so that our students understand what they will have to do next. Many times, this situation depends on the level of our students, that is why we have to be very explicit and demonstrate the activity. During this stage, we act as models and this role is very important. Repeating the task by some of the students will help the teacher to see if they have understood the task.

The way we monitor the task represents the next step. Now we act like supervisors. Walking in the class and watching our students working, but also helping those who have difficulties in solving the tasks, will allow us to notice the way our students work and progress. The way our students react when they work in pairs or in groups is very important too because we act like observers when it comes to our students` attitude. In each class we meet good students , but also weak students. A step forward for the weak students represents a huge progress. If we can find the right methods and use challenging activities in order to motivate our students in learning English, then we can consider our activity a real success.

When the activity has finished, we give task feedback.(Harmer:275). This stage allows us to see how well our students have done their work. The feedback we offer to our students must always be a positive one. That is why we must appreciate their work, and try to underline the positive aspects and their achievements. Even if there are mistakes, we should not focus on these . A slightly correction is necessary, and the way we correct our students can be motivating or really demotivating for them.

A task-related follow-up can be another stage in teaching productive skills. This step will have a repetitive value that will help the teacher to see if the students have understood the previous task and if they can deal with similar situations or activities.

STRUCTURING DISCOURSE

In order for communication to be successful, we have to structure our discourse in such a way that it will be understood by our listeners or readers.( Harmer: 276). Our discourse can lead to a successful communication if we organize and structure our discourse well. As we know, there are many similarities and differences in writing and speaking.

In writing, for example we must pay attention to cohesion and coherence. If cohesion implies technical matters because it is concentrated on different linguistic ways of connecting ideas, coherence represents the sense and the ideas, all connected in different sequences.

The production of written texts is very complex and as we know it requires a lot of work, preparation and of course it involves gradual development. The process of writing implies a lot more organization, grammar, vocabulary than speaking, because here the information is highly concentrated.

If we speak about the conversational discourse, this one seems to be more casual and many times very informal. Conversation takes place under time pressure and it requires an immediate feedback; everything that happens during a conversation needs to be adapted to the interlocutor`s reactions. In order for this construction to be successful, participants need to know how to take turns, and what discourse markers, for example , they can use to facilitate the smooth progression from one speaker to the next. Such structuring devices include language designed to “buy time”quite specific markers such as firstly, secondly or even as if it wasn`t enough.( Harmer: 276).

The rules play an important role if we speak about a successful communication. As learners of a foreign language , we first receive the information through reading or listening and only afterwards we produce the language through speaking and writing.