Communicative Approach And Its Pedagogical Implications For English Teaching And Learning In Vocational School

Secondary Specialized School Education is an important part of the whole education enterprise in China. Its development has long been received high attention from the State Council. But in the past few years, owing to the upgrading enrollment number of high schools, colleges and universities as well as the individual-invested schools, Secondary Specialized School has been in the great trouble of enrollment. As a result, the English level of Secondary Specialized School students is becoming lower and lower. Generally, they have limited command of vocabulary (not more than 500 words), and know only a little about English grammar (far less than expected). They are poor at oral English, unwilling to, even unable to express themselves in simple English in class. On the other hand, they lack clear learning motivation and have no interest in English study. In order to fulfill the requirements of English Course Standard for Secondary Specialized School, to help the students to set up self-confidence, to improve their skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing on the basis of their original level, and to enhance their communicative competence, we must use an approach suitable for the students of Secondary Specialized School. Adopting Communicative Approach in English classroom teaching and learning has its own edge. Communicative approach made its first appearance in the 70s of last century, on basis of the development of Social Linguistics, Psychological Linguistics and Chomsky's Transformational Grammar, for at that time, many people felt traditional grammar/translation methods inadequate and structural methods with too much emphasis on meaningless pattern drills and repetition. In the early 1990s, China saw its first movement toward communicative language teaching (CLT) in secondary schools. In 1992 the State Education Development Commission (SEDC) introduced a functional syllabus that set the goal of communicative teaching and listed the communicative functions to be taught. Since then, English teachers have gradually adapted to teach communicatively in classrooms and communicative approach now...