In 1980, based on the theory called communicative competence of Hymes, M. Canale and M. Swain further expanded and improved the following four kinds of abilities: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence, that is, learning a foreign language not only includes pronunciation, syntax, semantics of target language, but includes text organization, appropriateness of social language, as well as the linguistic and non linguistic strategies. In the next 10 years, Candlin, Nunan, and other experts, scholars has enriched the theories of Communicative Language Teaching from different aspects of language teaching (Hu 95). Influenced by the traditional teaching methods, English teaching in junior middle school in China gives too much attention to language knowledge and complex rules of grammar learning, but do not take communication skills seriously, so that listening and speaking teaching has been ignored for a long time. However, with the development of the times, the teaching principle of traditional teaching methods has been unable to meet the needs of current English teaching. At the end of 1970s, communication teaching method was first introduced in China by Candlin and Hu Wenzhong. Since then, Communicative Approach has a big impact on China’s English teaching. But domestic scholars did not introduce the Communicative Approach comprehensively and systematically, which making a lot problems in understanding of the Communicative Approach in China, also suffering a defeat in practice (Lin and Dong 117). But the research and exploration of the Communicative Approach in China were never interrupted because of these failures and outages. Under the efforts of a large number of experts and and foreign language educators, the understanding of the Communicative Approach in both theory and practice has been continually developing and improving. The current domestic research on the Communicative Approach has entered into a deeper stage, and the Communicative Approach is changing our beliefs and strategies of language learning.
Junior middle school is the initial stage of English learning, and also the most important stage that students can develop positive habits and improve listening and speaking communicative competence. Current researches on this aspect are many, but most put college or senior middle school students as the research objects, rarely junior middle school students, especially how to improve China’s ability to listening and speaking ability. So this paper hope to explore the present situation of Communicative Approach in junior middle school English teaching application through the empirical research, finding the problems and the reasons that exist, and then finds teaching strategy of application in junior middle school English Communicative Approach so as to improve the quality of the application of Communicative Approach.
II. Understanding of Communicative Approach
2.1 The Theoretical Basis of Communicative Approach
Any kind of teaching method has its theoretical basis, communicative language teaching is no exception. It is directly or indirectly affected by the three theories-social linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatic. Social linguistics, essentially, a regular science, is to study the use of language to communicate. A social linguistic study does not pay attention to language form and language structure, but focus on the study of language and social function. At the beginning of the 1970s, Del. Hymes, an American anthropology professor, as well as, a social and language linguist first proposed the theory of communicative competence (Brown 284). Communicative Approach is formed on the basis of the theory which has been proposed by American society linguist Hymes and British linguist Halliday in the 1970s. Hymes points out, whether a person can learn a language well or, not only because he can create a grammatical sentence, more important is that he has the ability to use language properly, and this ability is his communicative competence of Communicative Approach (Doff 226). The Communicative Approach, a language teaching system, aimed to develop the ability to use language in a specific social context, requires not only the correctness of the use of language, but also requires appropriateness. With characteristics of students-centered, and highlighting students’ language communicative competence, the Communicative Approach achieves learning for practice, combing study and application. Hymes put forward the theory of communicative competence in his book named On Communicative Competence, including not only having the knowledge of the language, but also the ability to use language, especially the appropriateness of language use. Communicative teaching method mainly has two aspects of theoretical basis: First, the language of communication theory. Language is a system composed of the basic unit; the most basic function of language is communication; language structure reflects its function and usage of communication; the basic unit of language is not the grammatical and structural characteristics, but rather reflect the functional and communicative meaning in discourse category. Second, learning theory. Activities related to real communication can improve the efficiency of learning; language is used to complete the task of activities; language materials learner interested in can speed up the learning process. 交际法在初中英语听说教学中的应用(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_30783.html