practitioners view materials as a way of influencing the quality of classroom interaction and language use. Materials thus have the primary role of promoting
communicative language use. Richards and Rodgers mention three kinds of materials currently used in CLT. The first one is text-based materials, which consist of a theme,
a task analysis for thematic development, a practice situation description, a stimulus presentation, comprehension questions, and paraphrase exercises. The second one is
task-based materials, which are usually in the form of one-of-a-kind items: exercise handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, pair-communication practice materials, and
student-interaction practice booklets. In pair-communication materials, there are typically two sets of material for a pair of students, each set containing different kinds
of information. The last one is realia, which might include language-based realia, such as signs, magazines, advertisements, and newspapers, or graphic, and visual
sources around which communicative activities can be built, such as maps, pictures, symbols, graphs, and charts.
d. Communicative Competence
The main goal of Communicative Language Teaching is communicative competence: the ability to use the target language in the real life. The goal can be
gained by focusing the teaching-learning activities on how to use the target language, not only on what to understand. According to Hymes 1972, concluded by Richards
and Rodgers 1986:70, communicative competence is what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community. Here, the students
12
should be able to understand and apply the aspects of competence such as structure, vocabulary, and expressions of communication in order to actively communicate.
Canale and Swain 1980, as cited by Richards and Rodgers 1986:71, identify four dimensions of communicative competence. The first one is Grammatical
competence, which refers to linguistic knowledge that contains the knowledge of lexical items, morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology. It helps the students
solve the problems of what wordssentences to say and how to produce them accurately.
The second is Sociolinguistic competence, which refers to an understanding of the social context in which communication takes place, including role
relationships, the shared information of the participants, and the communicative purpose for their interaction.
The third is Discourse competence, which refers to the interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and of how meaning
is represented in relationship to the entire discourse or text. The forth is Strategic competence, which refers to the coping strategies that
communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication.
e. Communicative Activities
Activities conducted in classes using communicative approach should focus on the use of the target language, not only on the understanding of the language.
13
