On Teaching Communicative Competence in ESL

Abstract

The competence level of most learners of English as a second language has continued to decline in spite of the adoption of the Communicative Competence model in the teaching of English to those learners in Nigeria and other parts of the world. This paper reviews the inadequacies of the Grammatical Competence and the Communicative Competence models which render them inadequate for the teaching of English as a second language in non-EMT situations. It argues that grammatical competence is as desirable a goal of English language learning as communicative ability and recommends Communicative Grammar as a compromise that combines the virtues of the two earlier models while avoiding their shortcomings.

儘管奈及利亞和世界部分地區引用了溝通能力模型在英語教育上，但大多數將英語視為第二語的學習者在英語溝通能力的水平上卻仍有持續下降的趨勢。本篇文章將重新檢視文法能力與溝通能力模型的不足之處，因為這些不足的部份促使它們無法適當的應用於非以英語為母語的學習情境中。文中指出文法能力與溝通能力在學習過程中同樣值得重視，所以筆者建議一折衷的溝通文法模組，集合了以上兩者的優點，也避免了缺點的產生。