perceptions of and perspectives on the term communicative

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Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term "Communicative"Author(s): Bill VanPattenSource: Hispania, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 925-932Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and PortugueseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/345805 .Accessed: 06/09/2011 17:09

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PEDAGOGY: ALL LEVELS

Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term"Communicative"

Bill VanPattenUniversity fIllinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: An analysis of the term "communicative" s used by scholars and as realized n textbooks suggestsa gap between theory and practice as well as substantial differences between the perspectives held by schol-ars and the perceptions held by instructors, publishers, and others. These differences are reviewed and theirsources traced to attempts o adapt he term itself to existing methodologies as well as to the education oflanguage nstructors.

Key Words: communicative, extbooks, heory and practice

Introduction

The term "communicative" as come tobe commonplace n second anguage each-ing. Whether one is engaged in theory and

research, language instruction, textbookdevelopment nd publishing, r technologi-cal innovations, t is understood, f not ex-plicitly tated, hat contemporary anguageteaching means communicative anguageteaching.

The purpose of the present article s toexplore hree perceptions f the term "com-municative" nderlying ommercially mar-keted materials hat in turn reflect percep-

tions held by practitioners. These percep-tions are subsequently contrasted with theperspectives held by scholars and research-ers in both second language acquisitionand anguage eaching, revealing a consid-erable gap between theory and practice.The final section of the article traces thesource of this gap through an examinationof historical processes, the relationshipbetween teaching and commercially pub-lished

materials,and teacher education.

Having been deeply involved n the de-velopment of two textbooks (QSabiasque...? and Destinos), wo experiences con-vinced me that that authors and users mayhave very different deas about their com-municative nature. In the first, a SpanishLanguage Program Director at a large uni-

versity who was considering adoptingjSabias que...? for his basic Spanishcourses told me that a colleague remarked,"You would adopt hat? But it's not commu-nicative at all!" On hearing this, I was as-

tounded, because my co-authors and I be-lieved that we had produced he first trulycommunicative extbook on the market. nthe second case, at a panel session by us-ers of Destinos, an instructor xpressed dis-appointment n the materials or not havingany communicative ctivities. Once again Iwas surprised, or as far as I knew, Destinosfit squarely within communicative ap-proaches to language teaching. I began to

suspect that other instructors across thecountry had similar reactions to these ma-terials, and I asked myself, "Why are thesematerials ot perceived as communicative?"

What does the term "communicative"mean in textbooks?

An examination of university-level ext-books in Spanish that claim to be commu-nicative or to teach toward communicativeability revealed the following quotes fromthe prefaces of six top-selling exts from sixdifferent publishers.1

The primary bjective of the program s to offer stu-dents an opportunity o acquire communicative killswhile developing an awareness and appreciation f



926 HISPANIA 81 DECEMBER 998

Hispanic culture.

...the second edition s a complete package of instruc-tional materials or beginning Spanish ourses whose

primary oal is proficiency n communication kills.

We believe that he text...can be adapted o individualteaching situations and goals-among them, aproficiency orientation nd teaching or communica-tive competence.

A recognized eader n the field [title of text] owes itssuccess to its emphasis on developing ommunicativeskills....

[Title of text]...suggests a sequence of activities de-

signed to lead students o develop he complete spec-trum of language skills and a readiness to use Span-ish for personally meaningful ommunication.

These materials were created o prepare tudents tocommunicate imply but effectively n Spanish....

In one way or another, he authors andpublishers of these textbooks make explicitclaims about their materials and aboutteaching toward communicative anguage

ability. Justhow are these claims realized

in these textbooks? An examination f sev-eral chapters n each reveals hat, irst, eachand every textbook lesson begins with avocabulary ist and words to be learned.Second, each one has a clearly markedgrammar section with exercises separatefrom the vocabulary ection. Third, five ofthe six books contain special sections thatrefer specifically to communication asspeaking. These sections always ollow hepreviously described vocabulary nd gram-mar sections and are abeled "You Have heFloor!," "Situations," "Let's Converse!,""Conversation," r something similar. Thelatter sections are of immediate interest,since they point o the following perception.

Perception 1. "Communicative" efers tospeaking.

A strong connection appears to exist be-tween the concept of communicating andoral interaction. Why is this? Although it iscertainly possible that a lay person'sdefinition of communication and communi-cative might be restricted to oral use of lan-guage, in the language teaching profession

certain events may play a role in Perception1. These events are those surrounding hedevelopment and promotion of the ACTFL

Proficiency Guidelines.Contemporary ommunicative anguageteaching n the United States can be tracedback to the early 1970s, with the pioneeringwork of Savignon (1972). Savignon's re-search stressed the functional ature of lan-guage and how anguage eaching can allowroom for "free" ommunication without asubsequent loss in grammatical accuracyand other areas of discrete anguage knowl-

edge. While the term "communicative"crept nto teacher education, nothing muchhappened with communicative anguageteaching on a large scale until he early 80s,when the ACTFL provisional proficiencyguidelines appeared. hese guidelines weredeveloped to provide a common yardstickfor measuring communicative languageability. While guidelines were developed orthe so-called four skills as well as for cul-tural

knowledge, estingmechanisms were

developed and disseminated or only one:the oral skill. Since the early 80s, hundredsof teachers have attended Oral ProficiencyWorkshops, and hundreds have gainedworking knowledge of or certification n theOral Proficiency Interview. Great debatesfollowed regarding he nature of the guide-lines and he nature of the interview s a test(for example, Valdman 1987). As the po-lemic unfolded, he professional discoursewas dominated y an almost exclusive ocuson oral communication. By the end of the80s, the average practicing eacher, a goodnumber of methodologists, publishers, andothers had come to equate communicationwith oral proficiency.

In further examining he similarities oflesson structure in Spanish textbooks, asecond probable perception related to theterm "communicative" merges. This per-ception has to do with when communicativeactivities are appropriate. In the six text-books previously mentioned, there seemsto be a standard lesson sequence: presen-tation ->practice -> communication. Thisprogression may look familiar, since it fol-lows closely the widely known concept of




involve:

1. brainstorming talking and listening);

2. checking a recipe (reading);3. making a list (writing, eading);4. verifying (talking and listening).

Based on a reading of Savignon andNunan, among others, and based on every-day tasks that we all perform, a research-based perspective on the term communica-tive would be the following:

Perspective 1. Communicative efers o allmodes of language use and is not restrictedto speaking or so-called roductive bilities.

A communicative activity, then, is anyactivity n which the conveyance fmeaningis primary. A communicative ctivity s anyactivity in which there are both messageexpressers and message interpreters whoare responsible or communication. illingout a

surveyis a

communicative activity.Playing Trivial Pursuit s a communicativeactivity. Reading and taking notes on a pro-spective graduate student's ile in order toprepare or a Graduate Studies Committeemeeting is a communicative ctivity. Thus,Perspective 1 encompasses a much widerrange of tasks that those that only involvespeaking and also encompasses the notionof co-participants n communication.

A reading of the literature n second lan-guage acquisition and use suggests thatcommunication s not the result of learningdiscrete bits of language and then puttingthem together (for example, Hatch 1983;Lightbown and Spada 1993). It is not clearat all that linguistic analysis or knowledgeof grammar ecessarily-if at all-precedesuse. What seems more reasonable s thatthe internalization of grammar and lan-guage is a result of the ongoing process ofcommunication. To state this another way,the nterpretation, xpression nd negotiationof meaning may precede and actually causelanguage acquisition. The interchange be-low is a very typical communicative nter-change that occurred n a locker room af-ter a tennis match. ("John" s a native

speaker of English, while "Wu" s not.)

John: So why isn't Dennis here?

Wu: He is vacation.John: (verifying what he heard) He's onvacation?Wu: On vacation, yes.John: Lucky guy.

In this example, t is clear that the learneris not only engaging n a communicative ct,but that some kind of language earning shappening as part of that nteraction. n the

third line, John is questioning what heheard, wanting o make sure he understoodWu. In the fourth line, Wu realizes thatsomething is not quite right and alters hisoutput based on what he just heard fromJohn.

In short, scholars' perspectives on theterm communicative o not distinguish be-tween skill-getting and skill-using. Appliedto a classroom, f part of a lesson is for stu-

dents to begin internalizing he vocabularyand grammar or talking about families, alesson may very well begin with an instruc-tor describing and talking about his or herfamily. Out of the interaction, ppropriationof language begins.3 To summarize heseideas in another perspective:

Perspective . "Communicative" efers o lan-guage acquisition. Or, better et, language

acquisitionccurs because

fcommunicativeevents.)

A third scholarly perspective n the termcommunicative refers to purpose. Peopleengage in communication or one of twobasic purposes: ocial-psychological r cog-nitive-informational Lee and VanPatten1995, Chap. 8). These purposes are notmutually exclusive but can be describedseparately. The social-psychological atureof communication nvolves the use of com-munication o establish, enhance, assure, orchange social or psychological relation-ships between people. Everyday saluta-tions, for example, are simple acts of socialcourtesy. How we express them and howwe interpret hem are related to our social



PEDAGOGY: ALL LEVELS 929

relationships. What's p,boss?" s differentfrom "How are you today, sir?" And at thecocktail party, the statement "I hear you

teach at the University of Illinois" may re-ally mean "I have no one to talk to. Can Ihang out with you for fifteen minutes or so?"

A great deal of language use, however,is cognitive-informational n nature. Everyday thousands of students n classrooms is-ten to teachers, ask questions, and processlanguage in order to get information bouta topic. Every day hundreds of bank tellersask someone "Do you want your bills n tens

or twenties, or does it matter?" ecause theyneed the information n order to completea task. Every day thousands of people readthe stock market eports because they needthe information to make important eco-nomic decisions. These are all exampleswhere the communicative ct is about get-ting information nd processing t for somepurpose.

The point here is that speaking, reading,

writing,or

listeningwithout

purposecannot

be communicative. When one speaks, onedoes so because one has a reason. Whenone reads, one does so because one has areason. Likewise, o be communicative, nactivity n the classroom must have someinformational utcome (or social purpose).Students and teachers exchange meaningbecause they are going to do somethingwith the information or because they aresocial beings who are establishing andmaintaining ocial and psychological rela-tionships. All this can be summed up in athird perspective on the term "communica-tive."

Perspective 3. "Communicative" efers topurposeful anguage use.

It should be clear by now that there aresome fundamental differences betweenhow scholars interpret the term communi-cative and how many instructors, publish-ers, and others do. These differences inperceptions and perspectives may be sum-marized as follows (T/I = textbooks andinstructors; S= scholars):

ModeT/I: Communication s speaking.S: Communication an involve any mode of

language use and any symbolic system.

SequencingT/I: Communication s an end point, some-thing to do after building up discrete knowl-edge of language.S: Communication s language acquisition.or.Language acquisition s communication.

PurposeT/I: Communicative ctivities are for prac-ticing communication.S: Communicative ctivities nvolve social-psychological or cognitive-informationaloutcomes.

Where do perceptions come from?

It should be clear that the perspectiveson communicative

(and communication)held by scholars s research based. After all,research s what scholars do. But where dothe perceptions ome from hat are embod-ied in the six textbooks reviewed previ-ously, perceptions that probably reflectthose held by instructors and others? Cur-rent perceptions of the term "communica-tive" held by many instructors, textbookauthors, and others in the field are mostlikely a result of two tightly ntegrated pro-cesses. The first is the adaptation of theterm "communicative" o fit traditional e-liefs about grammar, ocabulary, anguagelearning, and language teaching. The sec-ond s the internalization y practitioners fhow they perceive hat communicative an-guage teaching is realized n existing text-books. A review of each of these processesfollows.

The history of language teaching is, in-terestingly, reflected in a constant tensionbetween theory and methodology. AsMusumeci (1997) points out, scholars havenever truly disagreed about how languagesare learned. Languages are learned throughthe act of communication. However, schol-ars are not often in charge of the class-




rooms, so one must ook at how methodolo-gists and materials developers "translate"theory into practice. In this century, when

language eaching again urned ts attentiontoward communicative ability n the early1970s, the profession was well entrenchedin teaching practices hat were antitheticalto theory. This time the contrast was be-tween anguage earning as communicationand the solid and extended use of drills andmechanical practice in the classroom aspart of audio-lingual methodology.

As the concern for communicative bil-

ity once again emerged into the profes-sional discourse (again, n the early 70s),the profession was confronted with severaloptions. The first was to do nothing, hat s,ignore the scholars and keep pluggingalong with audio-lingual methodology. Theprofession did not take this option. The sec-ond option was to drop current practice al-together and put together classroom ap-proaches from scratch. Except for a few

renegades, language teachers did not takethis option either. The last option was tosomehow make the new focus on commu-nication and learning-as-communication"fit" nto the existing audio-lingual peda-gogy. This became the option hat the pro-fession accepted. In 1972, Cristina BrattPaulston published an influential paper inwhich she proposed "a theoreticalclassification of structural pattern drillswhich

attemptsto

incorporateboth the

theories of Chomsky and Skinner" 131).Her attempt o reconcile two irreconcilabletheories resulted in the development andwidely promulgated ierarchy nd sequenc-ing of drill and exercise types for languagelessons. This sequence is something all in-structors have seen in textbooks and arefamiliar with, whether they share the sameterminology or the exercise types or not:

mechanical practice '---> meaningful prac-tice -> communicative practice4

Thus was born the most contemporaryattempt to adapt the "new" o the traditional.And because communicative practice wouldalways follow mechanical and meaningful

practice, t would always be constrained bythe grammatical focus of the sequence.Communication would be at the service of

learning grammar.The second process that has led to seem-ingly universal erceptions fthe term com-municative among teachers and textbookauthors has been the sheer ubiquity ofPaulston's model, which most, if not all,textbooks have followed. Choice betweentextbooks is not that different rom choos-ing among he myriad products vailable orsale. One chooses a product because t does

or does not have a particular eature, or be-cause one has been persuaded by televisioncommercials. However, with few excep-tions, the products or a given purpose arenot all that different. n the same way, text-books are similar; not much is really peda-gogically different rom one product o thenext. Selection becomes a matter of wherethe subjunctive s introduced, whether ornot there s a testing package, what he pho-

tos look like and whether or not they are incolor, and so on. Thus, teachers never seeanything ruly different. n short, teachers'very perceptions about the nature of com-municative activities and their "properplace" in language learning is shaped inpart, by the materials hey have seen overthe years.

One might rightly ask why researchersand scholars are not writing cutting-edgetextbooks that

incorporatethe latest in

scholarship on language teaching and ac-quisition. Some do. But publishers are re-luctant to publish anything that doesn't"look amiliar" o language teachers. Pub-lishing is a competitive business and pub-lishers need to sell their products. Thus,there is a cycle of teachers' perceptions andexpectations that shape what publisherswill produce (see Figure 1). These materi-als in turn reinforce eachers' perceptionsand expectations and the cycle is difficult tobreak.

A final aspect of constraints on textbooksand language teaching merits at least somemention: teacher education. What do aspir-ing 20-21-year-olds or graduate teachingassistants learn about communicative com-



PEDAGOGY: ALL LEVELS 931

Figure .The Relationship etween eachers' erceptionsand he Publishing f Commercial aterials

Teachers' CommercialPerceptions MaterialsExpectations

petence and language teaching? Who isteaching these instructors-in-training ndwhat are they teaching them? The resultsof Teschner's survey of the profiles of uni-

versity level language program directors(1987) are revealing. He found hat n termsof the educational background of those incharge of the education and training of uni-versity graduate assistants in three majorlanguages: 59% re likely to have obtainedthe Ph.D. n a literary ield; 19% n traditionallinguistics; and 14% n applied or educa-tional inguistics. These are the people whotrain graduate eaching assistants, who then

graduatewith the Ph.D.

degreeand

goout

in the world o teach at universities and col-leges. These people in turn teach othergraduate students as well as undergrads,and the cycle continues. It is not unreason-able, then, to conclude hat anguage each-ing does not change much over the years,since, in fact, the personnel n higher edu-cation does not change much. Teschner'sprofile of language program directors be-comes more revealing when one makes thefollowing calculation: if only 14% of lan-guage program directors n the entire coun-try are applied inguists, and if there is usu-ally only one person n applied inguistics na language department, hen probably essthan 1% of the entire anguage professoriatein the U.S. is a specialist n applied inguis-tics related o language earning and teach-ing. In short, we have no large populationof language educators at the Ph.D. level.University anguage departments are, byand large, departments of literature andculture.

Conclusion

It s now easier for me to understand why

some individuals questioned the "commu-nicative" nature of the textbooks I thoughtwere clearly communicative. Obviously

those colleagues did not recognize he com-municativeness f books which acked "thefamiliar" nd did subscribe to certain per-ceptions about communication nd commu-nicative activities. With regard o pedagogy,the tremendous gap that exists betweentheory (supported by research) and prac-tice is a real concern. In a certain sense,those of us who are involved in languageacquisition and teaching cannot assume

that communicative language teachingdominates he profession. The more that weinteract with language instructors and themore we examine what is in textbooks andhow instructors use them, the more we re-alize that the term "communicative" s nota mutually hared construct between schol-ars and practitioners. We share the wordbut not its meaning.

The future may be different. Perhapscommunicative

anguage teachingwill ac-

tually be communicative n the sense thatscholars and researchers use the word.What s needed is continued xamination flanguage eaching materials s well as whathappens n classrooms. If scholars want tohave an impact on language eaching, theymust continually review how theory andresearch are "translated" nto practice.5

* NOTES

1The extook names and publisher nformation reintentionally mitted. The texts were selected becausethey have enjoyed a great deal of popularity. My owntexts have been omitted rom analysis.

This article originated s keynote speeches. Dis-cussions with instructors who were in the audiencesuggest that these are widely held perceptions.

3It s not uncommon o hear teachers and method-ologists alike say something ike, "That's ll well andgood, but the classroom s a confined place with a lim-ited amount of contact time. Thus, we have to havesome short cuts (e.g., practice with grammar)." Al-though reasonable n the surface, his argument s notsupported by theory and research. Acquisition anduse of language are acquisition and use of language,period. Their undamental ature annot be changed.There is no way to acquire a language "in X easy les-sons." The point here is that n some cases, there arenot substitutes or the real thing.




4Mechanical practices may be defined as thoseduring which the learner need not pay attention omeaning n order to successfully complete the prac-tice. In addition, here is always one and only one cor-rect response. Meaningful practices are those inwhich the learner must pay attention o meaning norder o successfully complete he practice but again,there is one and only one correct esponse, hat s, theteacher knows the response to the question. Commu-nicative practices are those in which the learner mustpay attention o meaning n order o successfully om-plete the practice but the meaning contained n his/her response is unknown to the teacher (Lee andVanPatten 1995, Chaps. 5 and 6, review thesedefinitions and the sequencing of practices).

'This is a revised version of several keynote ad-

dresses delivered at various state language eachingconferences during 1997 and 1998: he Michigan For-eign Language Teachers' Association and the Ala-bama Association or Foreign Language Teaching.

0 Works Cited

Hatch, Evelyn. 1983. "Simplified nput and SecondLanguage Acquisition." Pidginization andCreolization s Language Acquisition. Ed. RogerAndersen. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 59-86.

Lee, James F., and Bill VanPatten. 995. Making Com-municative anguage Teaching Happen. New York:McGraw-Hill.

Lightbown, Patsy, and Nina Spada 1993. How Lan-guages Are Learned. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Musumeci, Diane. 1997. Breaking Tradition. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.

Nunan, David. 1989. Developing CommunicativeTasks. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Paulston, Christina Bratt. 1972. "Structural atternDrills." Teaching English as a Second Language.Eds. H. B. Allen and Russell N. Campbell. NewYork: McGraw-Hill. 29-38.

Rivers, Wilga R. 1964. ThePsychologist nd the ForeignLanguage Teacher. Chicago: U of Chicago P.

Savignon, Sandra. 972. Communicative ompetence:An Experiment n Foreign Language Teaching.Philadelphia: enter or Curriculum evelopment.

-. 1997. Communicative Competence: Theory andClassroom ractice. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Teschner, Richard V. 1987. "A Profile of the Special-ization and Expertise of Lower Division ForeignLanguage Program Directors n American Univer-sities." The Modern Language ournal 71: 28-35.

Valdman, Albert. 1987.Proceedings n the EvaluationofForeign Language roficiency. loomington, N:Indiana University, Center or Research and De-

velopment n Language nstruction.

perceptions of and perspectives on the term communicative

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