known as a prompt and invite students to say what possessions the characters have got.
Oral prompts can also be given and students are invited to make sentences with the prompts. For example:
Teacher T says: she big house Students Ss say: she’s got a big house
T: he old car Ss: he’s got an old car
T: she old car Ss: she hasn’t got an old car
Such exercises are known as drills and are used to encourage automatic use of language; i.e. students respond automatically without stopping to think about what
they’re saying.
When students have mastered the structure in the same lesson or in the following lesson the teacher might present the question form by showing the picture of the
woman and saying “big house; has she got a big house?”. The lesson will continue in the same way as above. This description of a lesson has been adapted from the
course book “Streamlines”.
Lessons in this approach are very predictable but at lower levels they provide a familiar environment where students at least get the chance to produce the phrase orally and
correctly. This method has been criticised for not being communicative; i.e. there is no real communication; there is no need to say ‘she’s got a big house; everybody can see
she has
2.3 Communicative approach
This approach developed out of a need to have students communicating for real. It is based on the theory that children acquire language rules by using language rather than
through the study of grammar. It involves creating situations where the students have a genuine need to say something, just as children do. I’ll illustrate this by describing two
approaches to the same activity.
Let’s say you’ve set up an activity where your students are planning a dinner party. They’ve decided what food to cook and serve and have the recipes as well as
ingredients and quantities required. They’re about to go shopping and are writing up their shopping lists. You could give each student the list of ingredients and quantities
and tell them to perform the following dialogue:
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Ingredients and quantities: 1kg lamb
1 kg potatoes 500g tin of tomatoes
50g butter 500g apricots
1 pot of yoghurt
Conversation: How much lamb do we need to buy?
1 kilo will be enough. Do we need any butter?
Yes, 50g will be enough. This will provide speaking practice but will not create a real need for communication;
students already know what they need to buy from the shops because they all have the list.
If you prepare 2 lists – each contains all the ingredients needed but on one list the quantities for some items are noted and the other list contains the quantities needed
for the remaining items. Thus:
List A List B
1kg lamb lamb
1 kg potatoes potatoes
500g tin of tomatoes tomatoes
Butter 50g butter
Apricots 500g apricots
Yoghurt 1 pot of yoghurt
You can now give list A to one student and list B to another student and instruct them to carry out the dialogue below in pairs:
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How much lamb do we need to buy? 1 kilo will be enough.
Do we need any butter? Yes, 50g will be enough.
There will be a real need for communication because the student with list A doesn’t know how much butter is required. Similarly, the student with list B doesn’t know how
much lamb is needed. Such activities are called information gaps because there is a gap between the various bits of information the students have.
The communicative approach often refers to speaking activities, however the other skills can also be practised in a communicative way. The essential element is to
ensure that there is a reason for carrying out the task other than just practising language.
2.4 PPP
