The Strategy Of Cognitive-Communicative Approach To Foreign Language Teaching

The author has been engaged in foundation English teaching formore than 25 yeas undergoing the trials and hardships in English teachingreform and tried out every kind of teaching method from grammartranslation method to direct method, audio-linguial method, and fromcognition to communication on to task pattern. The publication of thesemethods is the process that falls behind alignment to advance. However,there's no doubt that there are many deficiencies in them, there are notbeyond the scope of the theories from stimulus---response---intensification pattern,thereafter to the theory of "acquisition and learning" in accordance with thetheory of Krashen .The system of these pedagogies have played an effectrole, the indraught or introduction of which result in many Englisheducators by all means coping indiscriminately the theories into ourcountry's English teaching field, however, almost no one really can suit ournational conditions practically.In recent years, along with development of the second language acquisition theory of the west nature acquisition inside the brain ( Innate Theory ) .The theory has a tendency to stream into or to be applied into our English teaching realm. First of all, it is necessary for us to clear up the problem like this. Is English teaching in China the second language teaching or foreign language teaching? The two different kinds of teaching bring about the different teaching modes, different compilation of textbooks and also bring about differences in study motivation, principle, strategy process, style, etc. For this, in order to proceed the foreign language teaching reform, we must regard the suitability of national conditions as prerequisite. As the purpose, the author exactly strives to search both theoretically and practically for a new teaching approach suited for our national conditions (the devotion of the learners' study time is limited; the language environment is needy; unified Chinese culture; The teaching terms fall behind; large heterogeneous class; input and output are unbalanced; occasion that use the foreign language is a test; the unbalance of the development of the education between the areas; deeply-rooted conventional education thought and speciality of the Chinese language, etc) an approach both tallying with the actual nations of our country and with the language regularity. Thus, the author has tried out a cognitive-communicative approach in teaching practice. As a teaching approach, its teaching principle is to advocate'Theme—Function—Structure—Task' and its goal is to foster a linguistic competence in actual application, whose virtue is to emphasize the development of intelligence factor, encourage the students' to think positively and take part in the creative communicative activities, on the other hand, lay emphasis on arousing the students' study enthusiasm, stir up the students' learning motivation, master a scientific study method, develop a good habit of study and take an active part in the communicative activity. Cognitive-communicative patterns being used as a kind of teachingapproach, it synthesizes the essence of the structuralism, linguistics psychology, and combines linguistic structure with its function. It can be said that the approach is an effective approach according with our national conditions. The approach brings the-teaching of linguistic form into the big frame of communicative teaching, channels the teaching of linguistic form into content-centered communication, including situation—structure or form—communication or meaning. It can be seen the approach has synthesized the advantage of foreign language teaching reform of our country, it focuses on cognition as well as on communication, and on rule as well as on activity. ( Hu Chundong 2002.4VoL.25 ) It surmount the demerits of attaching great importance to linguistic structure and underestimating the application of language, but also remedy the weakness of only emphasizing communicative competence but neglecting the linguistic structure in communicative method, meanwhile it combines the form with the structure organically, turning foundation knowledge into skill .This thesis will expound and prove its significance and the important role that the cognitive-communicative approach has played in teaching reform theoretically and practically, demonstrate the supplement and each other complement of acquisition and learning. The subjects are 128 from a certain key high school, Senior HI students and Senior II 556 students in the same school. The experiments are divided into two stages .One is the classroom teaching experiment, the other is reading-test, investigations, questionnaires and data analysis, the teaching effect is very remarkablethrough years of the experiments, excellent rate, average rate and examination-passed rate is over 22 %—36 % beyond the reach of average of the whole province from 1996 to 2002. In the 97' National English Competence Contest two students won the top grade (the highest) prize, one the first grade prize, two the second grade and five the third rank prizes, also in the 99'—2002'National Olympic English Contest, one Senior I student won the second grade prize, but many more won the first grade prizes in the English contests of the whole province and city.We have every reason to prove that the adoption of cognitive and communicative strategy can avoid causing the students only to hear and speak but not to read and write because of a single teaching organizational form, at the same time, it can't coordinate the need for the items of linguistic function and the grasp of the linguistic structure, so it results in many more linguistic errors. However, our country's foreign language teaching ultimate goal is to develop the students' synthetic language application competence, yet the competence must be based on the students' language skill, language knowledge, affection, style, strategy, and culture consciousness etc. The students only have communicative competence is not equal to say it is a successful teaching, therefore, the application of synthetic competence = communicative competence (language skill) + language competence (language knowledge), while communicative competence = language competence (conform to grammar rules) + language in appropriate terms. Therefore, the speech (language competence) is thefoundation of communication, while communicative competence can be embodied only applying this kind of the linguistic structure to the linguistic actuality. For this reason, it is necessary to seep into some cognitive elements in English teaching. This means communicative teaching and language knowledge teaching are related and can't be isolated. The real linguistic communications is as follows:1. Language communications = Oral speech (listen, speak)+Written speech (read, write)2. Language knowledge = phonetics +grammar+ function+ topicOnly when "acquisition" and " learning " are combined in teaching, can it be assured a thorough grasp of synthetically applied language competence and also it guarantees its fluency and accuracy. Many researchers in the world from the aspects of theory linguistics and applied linguistics have made a lot of brilliant exposition about the necessities of the combination of the cognition and communication, and have demonstrated the teaching method of the cognitive method without communication or communicative method without cognition is not a perfect teaching. That communicative method inclines towards the combination with cognition and rules is supposed to bring about a cognitive-communicative approach, which merges into an internal whole and the integration. It proves that the approach is accord with science, with actual situation and natural situation, which is a communicative method with Chinese features.