Fostering Communicative Competence Of Senior Middle School Students

Communicative competence is the core of English communicative teaching. The theory is advocated by Hymes, an American anthropology professor and socialinguist. He put forward the theory at the beginning of the 1970s and he has developed Chomsky's linguistic views. During the first stage of the 1980s, Canale and Swain had additions to the theory. American scholar, Bachman, has made further development between the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s .Fostering students' communicative competence is a concept full of implications. It involves contents of a textbook, concrete teaching method, and requirement or testing for students, etc. The scholars and educationists of China have explored the field of communicative teaching, and they formed luxurious views, which make communicative teaching like a tree more verdant. The author has found some research questions to this field both among teaching theory and teaching practice:1. Does communicative teaching only lay stress on oral teaching?2. What activities should we provide for students to foster their communicative competence?3. How should we test achievement in communicative teaching?4. How is the learning strategy theory embodied in commmunicative teaching?5. How should we deal with the roles of teacher and learner?6. There are different cultures, what's the Chinese students' learning style?After reading many scholars' literature and through the observation and practice in actualEnglish teaching, I made great deal of study and research on the followings:1 Communicative competence contains both oral and written coinmunication. We should foster students' ability from four aspects: listening, speaking, reading and writing.2 Teachers can use 13 questions provided by reflective teaching theory to test the achievement of interactive decision.3 Teachers should apply various activities to meet the requirements from students of different level and different teaching contents.4 While carrying out communicative strategies, teachers should pay attention to avoidance, prefabricated patterns and language switch.5 As for learning style of Chinese students, we can adopt Salzman's theory.6 In English class, teachers should maintain the authority roleThe thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter One The author presents the background of the researches concerning with this topic. It also describes the literatures published in China and other countries. At last the author points out that it is very necessary and meaningful to do the research of this kind.Chapter Two Through. Bachman's components of language competence (Figurel-1) and H. G. Widdowson's Teaching Languae As Communication,, we know language competence is many-sided. We should foster students' ability from all sides.Chapter Three The author introduces reflective teaching theory by Richards and its employment in teaching practice.Chapter Four The author draws the conclusion that in English class teachers should create vivid situation for the students to learn .grammar. Also, the author tries to solve the potential conflict between communicative teaching and grammar teaching. At the same time, the author refers to the great significance of challengable activities.Chapter Five The author makes a further exploration, in. communicative strategy and its usage in English teaching practice of senior middle-school. Chapter Six Conclusion.