A Study Of The Application Of Communicative Approach In College English Language Teaching In China

China's economy is developing fast, international exchanges are increasing and the demand of the public to know about the world is expanding as well. This has brought forth a large demand for talents who can use English for real communication. However, the existing English language teaching in China, especially college English language teaching cannot meet the need. The application of Communicative Approach is ineffective, because it is not completely suitable to the specific situations in China.Since its first appearance, the Communicative Approach has been successfully applied to English Language Teaching in many countries and won great acclaim. For a long period of time, we put too much emphasis on the teaching of language structures, but neglect the training of communicative competence in China. Undoubtedly, the introduction of Communicative Approach is a challenge to the traditional teaching methods, and it indeed arouses the reconsideration of the old teaching methods. It is certain to say that Communicative Approach has brought new changes to China's English Language Teaching and improved the current situation of English teaching in China as well. However, it is a pity that since we adopted Communicative Approach in the late 1970's, its application hasn't produced as much communicative competence in learners as expected. There are still a lot of problems facing teachers of English. Now it is necessary to explore the problems, their causes and some successful experience after many years of application, during which we talked too much about this method, but did little to improve it. It is more a matter of form rather than a useful method.As a western originated teaching method, Communicative Approach meets some problems in the process of its application in China. Besides the disadvantages of Communicative Approach itself, we have some misconceptions about it too. The traditional teaching practice and cultural resistance also add the difficulty to the smooth application of Communicative Approach as well. Therefore, due to the specific situations in China, we have to adopt Communicative Approach critically...