THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

IN THE FRAMEWORK OF
INTEGRALIST LINGUISTICS

Magdalena Ciubancan
“Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University
Bucharest
 Teaching methods – overview 1
• The grammar – translation method

16th century  18th century (Europe)

Focus on grammar and translation
1 to 1 equivalents
No communication
 Teaching methods – overview 2
• The direct method

Second half of the 19th century (commerce)

Use of the target language only
Focus: use of language
Difficult for inexperienced teachers
 Teaching methods – overview 3
• The Audio-Lingual Method

Science (20th century)

4 skills
Pattern practice
 Teaching methods – overview 4
• Silent Way
– ‘teaching is subordinated to learning’
- learners’ autonomy
- Use of sound-colour charts, rods etc.
• Suggestopedia
- removing the psychological barriers to learning > comfort
• Community language learning
- the student = “whole person” (intellect, feelings,relationships)
• Total Physical Response
- response to commands
 The communicative approach
• Communicative competence (Dell Hymes)

use the language appropriate to a given social

context (information gap>choice>feedback)
tasks  real-life communication
Linguistic aspects Pragmatic aspects
Phonological competence Functional competence
Lexical competence Interactional competence
Grammatical competence Cultural competence
Discourse competence
 Integralist linguistics
• Eugeniu Coseriu (1921-2002)
 sciences of nature (necessity) vs. sciences of culture (freedom)
 Human language – science of culture

Language
- a human activity
- exerted by individuals as representatives of communitary traditions of speech
competence
- at an individual level;

Any activity (including the activity of speaking) can be regarded

- as activity as such
- as the knowledge or competence underlying the activity
- as the product of that activity
 Aspects of language as a creative
cultural activity
VIEWPOINT ACTIVITY KNOWLEDGE PRODUCT Adequacy
Level judgement
Universal Speech in Elocutional Empirically Congruence
Speaking in general infinite totality
general of utterances
Historical Concrete Idiomatic [Abstract Corectness
Particular language language]
languages
Individual Discourse Expressive Text Appropriateness
Discourse/text
(individual
speech)
 Teaching methods – Integralist
linguistics
Language levels Teaching methods
Universal (speech in general) ---------
Historical (speaking in a particular Grammar-translation
language) Audio-lingual
Silent way
Direct method
Total physical response
(Suggestopedia)
Individual (speaking in a particular Community language learning
language, in a given social context) Communicative approach
 Communicative approach –
Integralist linguistics
• What you teach
- language
- use of language

• What you evaluate

- language
- use of language