Traditional or Communicative Classroom?

I was reading through several articles for my Course Design project when I realised that in designing a good course, we need to look deeper into a lot of things. Designing a course does not solely mean it's about what the students need (yes, it's a factor, but not the only factor). Another point that I would like to highlight is the importance to understand the structure of the course itself, and the type of approach that we plan to use in our classroom. What is the best approach to make sure that students will listen, and will be interested in the course? Yes, needs analysis is important, but we need to explore more on how to ensure that our needs analysis doesn't go astray due to poor approach in teaching ESP.

Imagine this:

I was in my grammar class. The class began with me greeting my students. When I was in a chatty mood, I would ask them about their weekend, or the latest celebrity gossips, but most of the time, I just greeted them with a smile. I started my class with the textbook on my right and the name list on my left. I began my class by discussing (not!) – clarifying the given homework. I would call a random name and the student will answer the posed question. The activity continued until all the homework questions were answered.

I would then continue the class with a fresh topic. Again, I would open the textbook to the designated page, and read the grammar explanation from the book. I asked whether the students understood, then I started to explain. When it came to the parts of speech, I would explain with such a confident tone, but when it came to explaining the differences between the present perfect and the present perfect continuous, it began to be more painful. The worst part of teaching grammar was that some tenses can be so difficult to explain. Theoretically. Then when I was done on the explaining part, I would pose some questions and the students would take turn answering them.

I have just described a typical traditional classroom. By now you probably guessed that I had a lot of those.

I can recall coming out of classes feeling like I had run for an election candidate. When I managed to entertain the class, I always felt good as if I just won my first parliamentary seat but if it went badly, I felt like losing the election with the lowest number of votes. Always there I was, in the centre of the class, talking, being stared at, desperately thinking of something entertaining to do or say. It can be very tiring to be the one who does the talking.

My first degree was in English Language and Literature, and not TESL. To be exact, I am not a trained English teacher. I never learned any of the methodologies or theories of teaching ESP, and haven’t got any clue what kind of approaches had I been doing in my class. I was taught that way, and taught that I should teach that way too.

During my first teaching year, that was what I did. Until I realized that my students did not have the desire to communicate at all, and merely attending my class for the sake of attendance, and examination. There was no real communication and they hardly practice what they have learned in class.

Since the college had few twinning programmes with local universities, sometimes it really helped to be sent to the courses organized by them. I started attending short courses on language teaching. Even though most of the courses are short ones, they did help me to improvise my teaching approach.

This is an example of what happened in my (much-improved) grammar class. There were more role plays and simulation games in class. The students dreaded the activities in the beginning, but once they were familiar with the approach, they began to enjoy themselves in English class. I start posing some debatable questions or problems instead of expecting a direct answer. I was more interested to hear them communicate instead of being the one in the centre of attention.

(I later learned about the term ‘communicative approach’ when I enrolled for my Masters.)

According to Jeremy Harmer (2001), what matters in these activities is that students should be able to use a variety of language rather than just one language structure. In other words, such activities should attempt to replicate real communication. Hedge in her Teaching and Learning in Language Classroom also agree with the notion by stating that the ability to communicate effectively in English is now a well-established goal in English Language Teaching (ELT). Thus, I can’t agree more with both statements as I also believe that the products of our teaching should be able to accommodate what the real world has to offer. Thus, to be able to accommodate to the real world experience, I do believe that students need to practice the language used in contextual situations. Hence, I should be preparing them for effective communication instead of exams!

However, there were certain issues that need to be addressed when I tried to adapt the communicative approach in my classroom. I am not 100% sure how efficient the communicative approach when applied on different contexts and culture. Is the communicative approach really appropriate and suitable for all cultures or is it a culture bound approach?

In Malaysia for example, a tremendous number of students (and teachers) still expect the traditional teaching approach – if the teacher doesn’t put on a good show, and does something boring like making the students read, write, or do grammar exercises, the students are likely to leave the class complaining. The teachers are expected to be the one in the centre stage, not the students. To quote a (not-so-polite) student of mine, “Teachers are paid to teach the students, then why are we the ones who should do the talking?”

We cannot deny that such mentality still exists in Malaysia education culture. If we were to compare our culture to the Western culture alone, there lie huge differences that separate us from them. Peace Corp website (2006) states that Americans tend to be baffling frank with each other even if that causes disagreement. This is probably related to their individualistic culture where everybody concerns more of himself/ herself than the community at large. However, we Malaysians (and Asians in general) have this quality of face, of honor, integrity and pride. We are such a hierarchical community that we can hardly tolerate any violation against the norms of the community.

To relate this to language learning, the differences in culture do play a part in establishing communicative approach in classroom. Educators, teachers and lecturers in Malaysian community have always been respected and the students are always expected to show similar amount of respects towards their lecturers or teachers. Thus, to be communicative and outspoken in class are taboos for some. This is especially different from the Americans where their culture allows them to be openly unrestrained in classrooms.

The question now is, should we change our approach to suit our culture, or should we change the culture to suit the approach?