Communicative Competence through Grammar

Abstract

For the past 20 years, the Ministry of Education in Korea has tried to improve students’ communicative language competence by implementing the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach in Korean classrooms. At first, it was adopted against previous grammar-oriented methods and particularly emphasized meaning-based oral skills in elementary school; however, the emphasis of language fluency focusing on meaning has led to a lack of learners’ language accuracy as well as fluency in their speaking and writing (Yoon, 2004). In order to address such problems, this textbook is designed to help students who have difficulty in using appropriate language in communicative contexts. To help learners achieve communicative competence with accuracy on their language product this book provides students with primary language items based on meaningful context and offers lots of communicative activities for real life communication (Nunan, 2004). This book targets ten 6th grade public elementary school students who have been assessed as being in the intermediate mid level based on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). They have been studying English for about four years in a regular English class based on communicative approach which exclude explicit grammar instructions. Most Korean learners have a tendency to make grammatical errors in their speaking or writing, which make them more embarrassed and lead them to avoid communicating in front of other people. My students seem to have low confidence in speaking and writing and they hope to practice language forms in a meaningful context. Furthermore, they need to prepare for middle school grammar instructions which will be regarded as more important than communicative competence on the middle school exams.