Cultivation Of Students’ Discourse Ability In The Light Of Communicative Language Teaching Theory

We live increasingly in a world of accelerated change. Not only is the world a world of accelerated change, it’s a world of intensifying complexity. If our students are not guided to transcend the cultures which bound their thinking, how do they change their thinking in keeping with the changes of the world? English has been the most important international language for cross-cultural communication. But the present situation of first-year-college students’communicative competence is far from being satisfactory. English writing is a headache for Chinese students. Many students learn to write English passively just for passing the English writing tests. There exists communicative crisis rather than intellectual crisis among the English learners, so there is a pressing need to develop communicative competence among the first-year students in order to cultivate their discourse ability and improve their writing.People have realized that it is essential for language learners to’learn and practice’the language rather than’learn about’ the language. Researches show that successful or intelligent language learners take responsibility for their own learning and play active roles in practice. Learner communicative competence would help shift the responsibilities from the teacher to the learners.The present research attempts to probe into the following questions:(1) Can CLT improve students’interests in learning English writing?(2) Can CLT approach effectively improve students’discourse and rhetoric in English writing?(3) How CLT approach effectively improve Students’discourse ability?The study aims to examine the possibility of developing communicative competence based on the communicative approach in teaching and learning of English writing and its effectiveness on the improvement of English writing performance by means of questionnaire, experiment, and interview and class observation.This thesis is organized into five major sections. Chapter one is a brief introduction of current problems on the writing performance of the first-year-college students. Chapter two is literature review of previous studies in the field of the significance of communication, English communicative writing competence, communicative approach and its definition. Chapter Three is the methodology. A questionnaire explores the students’ beliefs and attitudes toward language learning and the level of learners’English writing competence. A pre-test and post-test are conducted at the very beginning and at the end of the experiment to check whether developing communicative competence can help students’ improve English writing performance in terms of discourse and rhetoric. Questionnaire, interview and class observation are used to know the level of students’ English writing ability after the experiment. Chapter Four demonstrates the research data analysis. Chapter five is about conclusion and suggestions.In this study, we have some findings. First, the English writing level among English students is generally low. Developing communicative competence can help learners improve their English writing proficiency in terms of discourse and rhetoric. The students who have received training in communicative learning perform better than those without training. Second, traditional teaching methods influence students’ English writing. The teacher should help the students to avoid negative influence from traditional teaching methods and help them improve their English writing ability.