Increasing Communicative Competence Symposium

This symposium will explore the concept of communicative competence, and examine how teachers in EFL/EIL classrooms are putting communicative methodologies into practice in
various parts of the world. There will be an emphasis in this symposium on explaining and critiquing what actually happens in classrooms, so presenters will demonstrate the activities they have gone through with their students, what students say about these activities, and how these increase learners’ communicative competence in peaking and writing. The audience will have a chance to discuss methodologies and ideas as to how we should understand EFL/EIL lassrooms.

To set the theoretical context of the symposium, Catherine Matsuo, Fukuoka University, Japan, will briefly outline the history and development of theories of ompetence and their relevance to EFL/EIL edagogical theory and practice in a lobalizing world.
Guozhi Cai, The Open University, United Kingdom, will then demonstrate how the concept of communicative competence works in reality. She will reveal that English teachers are still clinging to the traditional grammar translation method. She will argue that the root of this lies in the conflict between Western Methodology and hinese ideology.
Catherine Matsuo will explain how she tries to synthesize theories of dialogic learning and knowledge building, language acquisition, and communicative pedagogy, and put these into practice in her classroom. She will demonstrate sequences of activities that she has used with students, explaining what the activities do to activate students ’ extensive but “inert” grammar knowledge. She will also explain how she tries, through task sequencing and adjustments and variations in her “teacher talk”, to maximize language acquisition and change students ’ understanding of language and language learning.
Blanka Klimova, University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, will, based on Bachman, (1990) outline five key components of successful communicative competence. Moreover, she will support this theory with practical examples from her writing classes at the university.
Elizabeth Anthony, University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, will conclude the symposium by focussing on learners ’ experiences and understanding of an innovation in methodology, specifically Problem-Based earning, which is small group collaborative learning centred on real-world problems. She will discuss what the learners say about
how the methodology enhances real world language skills and encourages them to become more independent and self-directed.