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sharing and interaction. The teacher places herselfhimself as a facilitator of the communication process, counselor and process manager.
Based on the explanation about the Communicative Approach, it is important to develop the students’ English communicative skills in reading, writing, listening, and
also speaking. Therefore, the writer uses the Communicative Approach as the principal method applied to teach and learn English. It is adopted in order to meet the
learners’ specific communicative needs on learning English.
a. Teachers’ Role in the Communicative Approach
There are several teachers’ roles in the Communicative Approach. Breen and Candlin as cited by Richards and Rodgers 2001: 167 divide three roles. The first role
is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. The second role is
to act as an independent participant with the learning-teaching group. A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of
appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities. The other roles from teachers are needs
analyst, counselor, and group process manager. The teacher plays the role as a facilitator, participator, a manager of classroom
activity, and an advisor in the learning process. They only give the instruction for the students in doing some activities. Therefore, the teacher cannot dominate the
classroom activities.
b. Learners’ Role in the Communicative Approach
Breen and Candlin as quoted by Richards and Rodgers 2001: 116 affirm the
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learner plays the role as “a negotiator between the self, learning process, and the object of learning emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator within
the classroom procedures and activities, which the group undertakes.” Based on the students’ role in the Communicative Approach, they should be active and contribute
as much as they gain. Besides, the students also determine the achievement of the learning process.
c. Communicative Activities
According to Littlewood 1983: 85, there are two types of activities in the communicative language teaching. They are pre-communicative activities and the
communicative activities. a.
Pre-communicative activities In these activities, the students’ main purpose is to produce language which is
acceptable rather than to communicate meaning effectively. Through pre- communicative activities, the teacher isolates specific elements of knowledge or skill,
which compose communicative ability, and provides the learners with opportunities to practice them separately. Littlewood 1983: 85-86 states that there are two major
types of pre-communicative activities: structural activities and quasi-communicative activities. The first, structural activities, proposes on performance of mechanical drills.
The second one is quasi-communicative activities, which aim to create links between the language forms and their potential functional meanings. In the pre-communicative
activities, the students practice certain language forms and functions that lead to communicative work. The students are prepared by practicing some activities orally.
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b. Communicative activities
Littlewood 1983: 86 states that communicative activities are the activities in which the learners activate and integrate their pre-communicative activities
knowledge and skills, in order to use them for the communication of meanings. According to Littlewood 1983: 20, there are two major types of communicative
activities. The first is functional communicative activities that have a purpose to ask the learners to use the language they know in order to get meaning across as
effectively as possib le. The second is social interaction activities which have a purpose to convey meaning effectively by paying greater attention to the social
context where the interaction takes place. Furthermore, the types of communication activities are puzzles, problem solving, questions and answers, dialogues, debates,
matching activities, following direction and role plays. The teaching learning activities are communicative. Hopefully, the activities encourage the students to be more active
in expressing their communicative ability. Pre-communicative activities and communicative activities present flexible
process. A sequence of pre-communicative activity and communicative activities can be reversed. The teacher can start his teaching unit with communicative activities first
if the teacher wants to know the learner’s weaknesses in a particular kind of communication situation.
3. Elementary School Students
