CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

A. Background of The Problem

Any teaching curriculum is designed in answer to three interrelated

questions: What is to be learned? How is the learning to be undertaken and

achieved? To what extent is the former appropriate and the latter effective? A

communicative curriculum will place language teaching within the framework

of this relationship between some specified purposes, the methodology which

will be the means towards the achievement of those purposes, and the

evaluation procedures which will assess the appropriateness of the initial

purposes and the effectiveness of the methodology.

This paper presents the potential characteristics of communicative

language teaching in terms of such a curriculum framework. It also proposes

a set of principles on which particular curriculum designs can be based for

implementation in particular situations and circumstances. The diagram

summarises the main areas with which this paper will deal. In discussing the

purposes of language teaching, we will consider (1) communication as a

general purpose, (2) the underlying demands on the learner that such a

purpose may imply, and (3) the initial contributions which learners may bring

to the curriculum. In discussing the potential methodology of a

communicative curriculum, we will consider (4) the process of teaching and

learning, (5) the roles of teacher and learners, and (6) the role of content

within the teaching and learning. Finally (7) we will discuss the place of

evaluation of learner progress and evaluation of the curriculum itself from a

communicative point of view.

Inevitably, any statement about the components of the curriculum runs

the risk of presenting in linear form a framework which is, in fact,

characterised by interdependence and overlap among the components. In

taking purposes, methodology, and evaluation in turn, therefore, we ask

readers to bear in mind the actual interdependence between them.

1

What follows is a consideration of those minimal requirements on

communicative language learning and teaching, which, in our view, must now

be taken into account in curriculum design and implementation.

B. Problem Identification

1. What is the purpose of the curriculum?

2. What underlies the ultimate demands on the learner?

3. What are the learner's initial contributions?

4. How are the curriculum purposes to be achieved?

5. What are the roles of the teacher and the learners within a communicative

methodology?

6. What is the role of content within a communicative methodology?

7. How is the curriculum process to be evaluated?

8. What is the Achieving Communicative Language Teaching

C. Purpose

1. To know What is the purpose of the curriculum

2. To know What underlies the ultimate demands on the learner

3. To know What are the learner's initial contributions

4. To know How are the curriculum purposes to be achieved

5. To know What are the roles of the teacher and the learners within a

communicative methodology

6. To know What is the role of content within a communicative methodology

7. To know How is the curriculum process to be evaluated

8. To know What is the Achieving Communicative Language Teaching

2

CHAPER II

DISCUSSION

A. What is the purpose of the curriculum?

The communicative curriculum defines language learning as learning

how to communicate as a member of a particular socio-cultural group. The

social conventions governing language form and behaviour within the group

are, therefore, central to the process of language learning. In any

communicative event, individual participants bring with them prior

knowledge of meaning and prior knowledge of how such meaning can be

realised through the conventions of language form and behaviour. 2 Since

communication is primarily interpersonal, these conventions are subject to

variation while they are being used. In exploring shared knowledge,

participants will be modifying that knowledge. They typically exploit a

tension between the conventions that are established and the opportunity to

modify these conventions for their particular communicative purposes.

Communicating is not merely a matter of following conventions but also of

negotiating through and about the conventions themselves. It is a

convention-creating as well as a conventionfollowingactivity. So, in learning

how to communicate the learner is confronted by a variable process.

In communication, speakers and hearers (and writers and readers) are

most often engaged in the work of sharing meanings which are both

dependent on the conventions of interpersonal behaviour and created by such

behaviour. Similarly, the ideas or concepts which are communicated about

contain different potential meanings, and such potential meanings are

expressed through and derived from the formal system of text during the

process of communication. To understand the conventions which underlie

communication, therefore, we not only have to understand a system of ideas

or concepts and a system of interpersonal behaviour, we have to understand

how these ideas and this interpersonal behaviour can be realised in language-

in connected texts. Mastering this unity of ideational, interpersonal and

textual knowledge allows us to participate in a creative meaning-making

3

process and to express or interpret the potential meanings within spoken or

written text

B. What underlies the ultimate demands on the learner?

A language teaching curriculum, from a communicative point of

view, will specify its purposes in terms of a particular target

repertoire. Different curricula will hopefully select their own particular

repertoires from a pool of communicative performance on the basis of

a sociolinguistic analysis of the target situation. This does not imply

that any one curriculum will be neces• sarily entirely distinctive in the

target repertoire to which it is devoted. At the surface there will be

inevitable overlap among different repertoires. However, underlying any

selected target repertoire there will- be an implicit target competence. It

is this target competence which we may define as the capacity for actual

use of the language in the target situation. So, in specifying the purposes

of the curriculum, a requirement for the communicative approach would

be to make an initial distinction between the target repertoire ultimately

demanded of the learner and the target competence which will underlie

and generate such a repertoire.

How can we characterise this target competence? We have already

proposed that learning to communicate involves acquiring a

knowledge of the conventions which govern communicative

performance. In addition, we have proposed that such communicative

knowledge can be seen as a unified system.

We have also suggested that communication and learning how to

communicate involve the participants in the sharing and negotiating of

meanings and conventions. Such sharing and negotiating implies the

existence of particular communicative abilities as an essential part of

competence. Therefore, we may identify within competence both the

knowledge systems and the abilities which call upon and act upon that

knowledge. These abilities can be distinguished within competence more

4

precisely. In order to share meaning, the individual participant needs to be

able to interpret the meanings of others and to express his own meanings.

However, such interpretation and expression.

will most often take place in the context of interpersonal and

personal negotiation. The ability to negotiate operates between participants

in communication and within the mind of the individual participant-the

latter negotiation is perhaps more conscious during new learning. More

obviously, participants in communication negotiate with one another. But,

in endeavouring to interpret and express with a new language, the learner

will himself negotiate between the communicative competence he already

possesses and that which underliesthe new learning.

C. What are the learner's initial contributions?

A communicative curriculum will focus on the learner from the

very beginning by relating the initial contributions of the learner to the

ultimate purposes of the curriculum. More precisely, the communicative

curriculum seeks relationships between any specific target competence and

relevant aspects of the learner's own initial competence. We need to ask:

What communicative knowledge-and its affective aspects-does the learner

already possess and exploit? What communicative abilities-and the skills

which manifest them-does the learner already activate and depend upon in

using and selecting from his presently established repertoire? Also, can

the curriculum build upon features of that performance repertoire which

we describe rather narrowly, perhaps, as the learner's first language or

mother tongue? Similarly, can the curriculum build upon what the learner may

already know of and about the target repertoire-however fragmentary or

'latent' such an awareness may be?

A communicative specification of purposes supports the principle

that the roots of our objectives can already be discovered in our learners-

however beneath the surface of the actual target repertoire these roots may be.

We need to try to recognise what the learner knows and can do in

5

communicative performance with the first.language and not assume that the

learner's ignorance of the target repertoire implies that the learner is a naive

communicator or someone who evaluates communication in only a superficial

way.

This principle, which seems to require us to credit the learner with a

highly relevant initial competence of communicative knowledge and

abilities, has often been overlooked or only partially applied in language

teaching. In the past, it has seemedeasier to somehow separate the learner

from the knowledge to be learned-to 'objectify' the target language as

something completely unfamiliar to the learner. This objectification of the

language in relation to the learner has perhaps been encouraged by a narrow

definition of what the object of learning actually is, and by an incomplete

view of what the learner has to offer. We have tended to see the target only in

terms of 'linguistic competence' or textual knowledge, and we have limited

such knowledge to the level of syntax without reference to structure above

the sentence. Thus, ideational and interpersonal knowledge, which continually

interact with textual knowledge and from which textual knowledge evolves,

have tended to be overlooked or neutralised. We have often seen the learner

primarily in terms of the first language, and we have often assigned to it

'interference' value alone-again taking a narrow textual knowledge as our

criterion. More recently, due to developments within sociolinguistics, we

have recognised the significance of 'sociolinguistic competence' and also of

the 'functional' aspect of language

D. How are the curriculum purposes to be achieved?

1. Methodology as a Communicative Process

Language learning within a communicative curriculum is

most appropriately seen as communicative interaction involving all

the participants in the learning and including the various material

resources on which the learning is exercised. Therefore, language

6

learning may be seen as a process which grows out of the interaction

between learners, teachers, texts and activities.

2. Methodology as a differentiated process

The emphasis given in the previous section to the interactive

nature of the communicative curriculum suggests, in turn, the need for a

communicative curriculum to be differentiated. A communicative

curriculum begins with the principle that we should differentiate within

purposes between the target repertoire and the communicative knowledge

and abilities which underlie it. A second principle is that the learner's

process competence needs to be dif• ferentiated from the target

competence, and that different learners may exploit different process

competences as the means towards some particular target. These kinds

of distinctions involve differentiation at the curriculum level between

purposes and the methodology adopted to achievesuch purposes. Within

methodology, differentiation is a principle which can be applied to the

participants in the learning, the activities they attempt, the text-types with

which they choose to work, and the ways they use their abilities. It is

worth considering differentiation within these areas in more detail:

a. Learners' Contributions

b. Routes

c. Media

d. Abilities

Whatever the route chosen or the media and text-types selected

for communicative learning, different learners will have differentiated

ways of making use of the abilities within their communicative

competence, and will therefore adopt different learning strategies.

Such heterogeneity is often seen as problematic for the teacher,

but a communicative methodology would take advantage of this

differentiation among learning strategies, rather than in• sisting that

all learners exploit the same kinds of strategy.

7

3. Methodology exploits the communicative potential of the learning

Teachingcontext

The communicative curriculum seeks to exploit the classroom in

terms of what it can realistically offer as a resource for learning. This

would not necessarily mean changing or disguising the classroom in the

hope that it will momentarily serve as some kind of 'communicative

situation' resembling situations in the outside world. The classroom itself

is a unique social environ• ment with its own human activities and its own

conventidns governing these activities. It is an environment where a

particular social-psychological and cultural reality is constructed. This

uniqueness and this reality implies a communicative potential to be

exploited, rather than constraints which have to be overcome or

compensated for. Experimentation within the prior constraints of any

communicative situation is, as we have seen, typical of the nature of

communication itself, and the prior constraints of classroom

communication need be no exception.

We can make a distinction between the different contributions

offered to learning by, on the one hand, the 'formal' language learning

contexts of the classroom and, on the other, the 'informal' learning which

takes place at any time, anywhere. The classroom can be characterised by

the kinds of learning which are best generated in a group context, while

'informal' learning under• taken beyond the classroom is often an

individual commitment, especially in the context of foreign language

learning. Thus the 'formal' context is one where the interpersonal

relationships of the classroom group have their own potential

contribution to make to the overall task. Within the communicative

curriculum, the classroom-and the procedures and activities it allows-

can serve as the focal point of the learning-teaching process. In

adopting a methodology characterised by learning and teaching as a

communicative and differentiated process, the classroom no longer needs

8

to be seen as a pale representation of some outside communicative

reality.

E. What are the roles of the teacher and the learners within a

communicative methodology?

1. The Teacher

Within a communicative methodology the teacher has two main

roles. The first role is to facilitate the communicative 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

interdependent participant within the learning-teaching group. This

latter role is closely related to the objective of the first role and it arises

from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher: first,

as an organiser of resources and as a resource himself.

Second, as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities.

In this role the teacher endeavours to make clear to the learners what they

need to do in order to achieve some specific activity or task, if they

indicate that such guidance is necessary. This guidance role is ongoing

and largely unpredictable, so the teacher needs to share it with other

learners. Related to this, the teacher-and other learners-can offer

and seek feedback at appropriate moments in learning-teaching activities.

In guiding and monitoring the teacher needs to be a 'seer of potential'

with the aim of facilitating and shaping in• dividual and group

knowledgeand exploitation of abilities during learning. In this way the

teacher will be concentrating on the process competences of the learners.

2. The Learner

Regardless of the curriculum in which they work and regardless of

whether nor not they are being taught, all learners of a language are

confronted by the task of discovering how to learn the language. All

learners will start with differing expectations about the actual learning,

but each individual learner will be required to adapt and continually

readapt in the process of relating himself to what is being learned. The

9

knowledge will be redefined as the learner uncovers it, and, in

constructing and reconstructing his own curriculum, the learner may

discover that earlier strategies in the use of his abilities need to be

replaced by other strategies. Thus, all learners-in their own ways-have

to adopt the role of negotiation between themselves, their learning

process, and the gradually revealed object of learning.

A communicative methodology is characterised by making this

negotiative role-this learning how to learn-a public as well as a private

undertaking. Within the context of the classroom group, this role is

shared and, thereby, made interpersonal.

F. What is the role of content within a communicative methodology?

Language teaching curricula have often been traditionally defined by their

content. Such content has itself been derived from a target repertoire in terms

of some selected inventories of items analysed prior to the commencementof

the teaching-learning process and often acting as predeterminants of it.

Similarly, sets of formal items taken from an analytic grammar of the

language, or sets of 'functions' taken from some list of semantic categories,

have been linked to themes and topics deemed in advance to be appropriate to

the expectations of the particular learners. We will now consider the possible

criteria for the selectionand organisation of content within the communicative

curriculum with reference to each of these five aspects in turn:

1. Focus

2. Sequence

3. Subdivision

4. Continuity

The need to provide continuity for the learner has, in the past, been based

upon content. Within a communicative methodology, continuity can be

identified within at least four areas

G. How is the curriculum process to be evaluated?

10

The communicative curriculum insists that evaluation is a highly

significant part of communicative interaction itself. We judge

'grammaticality', 'appropriateness', 'intelligibility', and 'coherence' in

communicative performance on the basis of shared, negotiated, and

changing conventions. Evaluation within the curriculum can exploit this

'judging' element of everyday communicative behaviour in the assessment of

learners' communication and metacommunication. The highly evaluative

aspect of communication can be adopted as the evaluation procedure of the

curriculum. If so, the essentially intersubjective nature of evaluation can be

seen as a· strong point rather than, possibly, a weakness.

How might we evaluate learner progress? Evaluation of oneself,

evalua• tion of others, and evaluation of self by others is intersubjective. In

this way, evaluation need not be regarded as external to the purposes of the

curriculum or external to the actual process of learning and teaching. In

recognising that relative success or failure in the sharing of meaning, or in the

achievement of some particular task, is most often an intersubjective

matter, the com• municative curriculum would rely on shared and

negotiated evaluation. Criteria for eventual success-in some particular

task-could be initially negotiated, achievement of the task could be related

to these agreed criteria, and degrees of successor failure could be

themselvesfurther negotiated on the basis of the original criteria.

Evaluative criteria, therefore, would be established and applied in a

three-stage process: (i) What might 'success' mean? (ii) Is the learner's

performance of the task successful? (iii) If so, how successful is it? Each

stage would be a matter for communication. Instead of the teacher being

obliged to teach towards some externally imposed criteria• manifested most

often by some external examination or standardised test-he can exploit the

interpretation of these external or standardised criteria as part of the joint

negotiation within the classroom. The group's discovery of the criteria

inherent in such end-of-course or summative assessment would be one means

11

for the establishment of the group's own negotiated criteria and, crucially,

for the sharing of responsibilities during the learning-teaching process.

H. Achieving Communicative Language Teaching

We emphasised at the outset of this paper that any curriculum

framework for language teaching and learning necessarily involves

designers, materials writers, teachers and learners in a process of relating the

three components of purpose, methodology and evaluation. Even so, we need

to acknowledge that any curriculum-including a communicative

curriculum-cannot strictly be designed as a whole from the start. We can

only deduce and propose the principles on which a variety of communicative

curricula may be based. Any curriculum is a personal and social arena. A

communicative curriculum in particular, with its emphasis on the learning

and teaching of communication, highlights a communicative process

whereby the interrelating curriculum components are themselvesopen to

negotiation and change.

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CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

The communicative curriculum defines language learning as learning

how to communicate as a member of a particular socio-cultural group. The

social conventions governing language form and behaviour within the group

are, therefore, central to the process of language learning. In any

communicative event, individual participants bring with them prior

knowledge of meaning and prior knowledge of how such meaning can be

realised through the conventions of language form and behaviour. 2 Since

communication is primarily interpersonal, these conventions are subject to

variation while they are being used.

A language teaching curriculum, from a communicative point of

view, will specify its purposes in terms of a particular target

repertoire. Different curricula will hopefully select their own particular

repertoires from a pool of communicative performance on the basis of

a sociolinguistic analysis of the target situation. This does not imply

that any one curriculum will be neces• sarily entirely distinctive in the

target repertoire to which it is devoted. At the surface there will be

inevitable overlap among different repertoires.

B. Suggestion

We realize that in this paper are still many shortcomings and oversight

therefore, readers and experts writer’s main suggestions and criticisms or

scolds courtesies that are build will be accepted gladly for the perfection of the

next paper.

13

FOREWORD

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Praise and thanksgiving authors say over the presence of God Almighty,

for His grace, His taufiq and guidance was, I can finish this paper. This paper is

intended to fulfill the first task of the author in this course, which can thank God

the author completed on time. Authors say thank you to those who have helped in

the completion of this paper.

Hopefully this paper can be useful not only for authors, but also for those

who deign to take the time to read this paper. Given the limitations of the writer as

an ordinary man who did not escape the errors and sins, the authors realized that

this paper is very far from perfect. Therefore, criticism and constructive

suggestions very authors expect. So that the future can be better writers. Wrong

and make mistakes authors apologize. to God, the author of forgiveness.

Wassalammu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Bengkulu, 2016

Author

14

LIST OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

FOREWORD..................................................................................................i

LIST OF CONTENTS....................................................................................ii

CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY

A. Background...........................................................................................1

B. Problem Identification..........................................................................2

C. Purpose.................................................................................................2

CHAPTER II DISCUSION

A. What is the purpose of the curriculum?.............................................3

B. What underlies the ultimate demands on the learner?...........................4

C. What are the learner's initial contributions?...........................................5

D. How are the curriculum purposes to be achieved?................................6

E. What are the roles of the teacher and the learners within a

communicative methodology?..............................................................9

F. What is the role of content within a communicative methodology?......10

G. How is the curriculum process to be evaluated?....................................10

H. Achieving Communicative Language Teaching....................................12

CHAPTER III CLOSING

A. Conclusion............................................................................................13

B. Suggestion ...........................................................................................13

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