This article discusses the communicative competence of students, as well as the difficulties that teachers face during the development of this competence. The authors present various difficulties in the development of communicative competence given by different scholars, followed by the methods they will use when doing the research and the results they came up with by doing this research.
Key words: communicative competence, challenges, teachers, students.
With the later trends in language teaching, the development of communicative competence has become the main aim of foreign language education. In the context of Kazakhstani education, such competence is reflected in curricula, teacher training, and methodologies of foreign languages. Teaching communicative competence is an inevitable part of the foreign language education program. The reason for the urgency and importance of teaching communicative competence is related to the fact that negotiation with foreigners and building relations with representatives of other countries is essential in the contemporary world. Consequently, there is no doubt that communicative competence is a high priority among students who are wondering to master a specific language. Therefore all educators have a clear purpose to achieve proficiency among the learners regarding this issue. The spread of communicative language teaching was confirmed by the majority of scholars researching foreign language education and second language acquisition. The importance of communicative competence in FLE is outstanding [Lyutova S., 2017]. Firstly, it affects academic achievement; second, it influences the student’s adaptation to university and their relationships in the classroom; and thirdly, it is a resource for the efficiency and well-being of the student's future life. Acquiring complete knowledge of communicative competence gives the learners opportunities to explain to the public who they are, and their purposes, and finally to shape their own character and demonstrate it with the help of verbal communication. Communicative competence, itself was initially defined by Canale and Swain (1980) who claimed that it is the capability to utilize the language and manipulate it with all its features in order to construct effective interaction. Despite the fact that communicative competence is quite significant in language learning, teachers, as a mentor for students, are faced with a lot of challenges while developing this competence. Problems associated with students are low language proficiency, a passive learning style, a lack of motivation to learn the language, and a fear that it will have a negative impact on their grades if they are paired with weaker peers during communicative activities [Passov, 2017]. The presence of these facts during the education of communicative competence shows that the problem is urgent and needs to be addressed.
Literature review .
Prior to explaining what communicative competence is, at first it is important to define what the word “competence” means in general. Kiessling (2012) in her work notes that the notion of competence has a wide variety of definitions from scholars and she cites Weinert by saying that competence is the set of cognitive skills that people possess or may gain in order to solve specific problems, as well as the corresponding motivational, volitional, and social preparedness and capacity to employ problem-solving in a variety of settings successfully and responsibly Communicative competence itself is also defined in many various ways by other different researchers and scholars. Researchers use different words however they all give the exact same meaning and definition of what communicative competence is. When it comes to communicative competence, the first scholar who comes to people’s minds is D.Hymes. According to him, communicative competence refers to both an innate grammar proficiency and the capacity to apply grammar in a range of communicative contexts [D.Hymes 1972]. Basically, he believes that using grammar to properly convey and deliver one’s speech and express one’s opinion is the notion of communicative competence. Murcia defines communicative competence as the ability of the learner to comprehend and use language effectively to communicate in real-world social and academic settings, and notes that it is a key component of the communicative approach to language teaching [Murcia 2008]. Above mentioned Kiessling notes that the capacity to accomplish communication goals in a socially acceptable way is known as communicative competence. It comprises the capability to choose and apply abilities that are appropriate and effective in the relevant situation. It is organized and goal-oriented [Kiessling 2012].
Historically, it has become obvious that developing students’ communicative competence is a serious challenge for both students and teachers that requires hard commitment and desire to achieve it. Nowadays it is still the same, as developing a certain, even a single competence requires a lot of time and work. Both teachers and students often face obstacles, problems, and challenges during their path of forming a certain competence as it is a part of the long journey. Throughout many research works, scholars have found different challenges encountered by teachers during the development of students’ communicative competence. For example, Saleh (2013) mentions that language instructors will have a tough time deciding which skills to teach students when they decide to develop their communicative competence, as well as how to best enhance their communicative ability. Carneiro mentions that another pertinent issue is the challenge of assessing language learners' communicative competence or communicative language ability because performance in the language domain is influenced by a variety of factors other than the language ability we are trying to assess. According to Farooq (2015), there are numerous challenges, one of them being the size of the class. It means if there are too many students, then it will be difficult for the teacher to develop students' communicative competence as the number of students is excessive. Some students may fall behind, others may not understand the topics. Another challenge mentioned by Farooq and also Maryslessor (2014) is students’ lack of motivation to develop their communication abilities. Moreover, Maryslessor (2014) mentions that students refuse to participate in the lessons which show their low level of interest. The most popular challenge noted by all the above-mentioned scholars is students’ low-level English and their attitude towards the development of communicative competence.
Methodology. Data collection
To conduct the study and find the answers to the research questions, the researchers use a mixed-method which includes both quantitative and qualitative approaches. To collect the data about the challenges EFL teachers face during the development of students’ communicative competence and the reasons for certain problems, a questionnaire is going to be used.
Design: Since the aim of the study is to identify the problems of teachers during the development of the students’ communicative competence, the research has an exploratory design. According to Cuthill (2002), an exploratory design of the study is chosen by the scholar when the area of study is not discovered enough before. Despite the fact that there are a lot of researches concerning communicative competence development in the foreign countries, there are not many of them conducted in Kazakhstan.
Participants and Setting: To find the answers to the research questions and reach the main goal of the study approximately fifty Kazakhstani university teachers are involved in the process. The authors chose random sampling to conduct the study. Thomas (2020), claimed that random sampling is used to make statistical analysis. In this type of sampling, every single person has an equal chance to take participation in the study.
Instrumentation: To achieve the purpose of the research, the authors utilized questionnaire as data collection instrumentation tool. To gather the data concerning difficulties educators face, the questionnaire is going to be constructed and provided to the university teachers. Teachers are going to be offered to answer multiple choice questions and give more detailed answers in open-ended questions.
Data analysis: Since the researchers used a mixed-method approach, the data will be analyzed with both quantitative and qualitative data analysis types. The results collected from the questionnaire will be examined statistically and thematically.
Limitations
The biggest problem the researchers faced during the study is the process of data collection. This specific drawback was directly connected to the number of participants. Since the amount of people taking part in the study was insufficient, the study might be considered as not valid enough and conducted on a smaller scale.
Results
In order to show the relevance of this topic, a questionnaire was conducted among FLE teachers from public schools and private higher education institutions in Almaty. Based on the results of the survey, it was found that 41.2 % belonged to 18–25-year-olds, 41.2 % to 25–40-year-olds, 17.6 to 40–60 years old and all the representatives were female. The first question in this questionnaire was «How long have you been teaching English». The results of this question showed that the majority (47.1 %) have been teaching English for 1 to 5 years, then 29.4 % chose 6–10 years, 11.8 % have been teaching around 11–20 years and 11.8 % for 21–40 years. The next question was «how do you understand communicative competence», this question was asked in order to find out what teachers think about this competence and how they understand this competence. Based on the variations of answers, this survey showed that teachers' opinions are divided as follows:
Table 1
The notion of communicative competence
|
How do you understand the notion of communicative competence? |
It is the readiness and ability of students to communicate with foreigners on a proper level |
|
It has several constituent parts; different classifications exist; for, example, it might include strategic subcompetence, linguistic, discursive, socio-cultural, etc.; it's the learner's ability and readiness for the socio-culturally adequate, or professionally-oriented conversation in the context of the certain domain and theme; in the oral or written form. |
|
|
It seems to be an ability of a student to communicate well, and express their ideas in a coherent way in English. However, personally, for me, com. competence goes beyond demonstrating good proficiency in a language, its more about the set of skills which help an individual to be a member of a community where that language is used |
Based on the answers, it can be concluded that for teachers, communicative competence primarily means being able to communicate with people from different cultures and backgrounds, as well as having a good enough level of English to enable communication. After this question, teachers were asked what skills are included in communicative competence. This question showed a picture of exactly what teachers emphasise when helping pupils develop competence. Based on the answers, we can conclude that the most common skills were:
– the ability to listen to others,
– the ability to work in groups,
– the ability to participate in monologues and dialogues,
– the ability to explain complex concepts in simple words.
The next question in the questionnaire was asked to find out about the methods used by English teachers to develop communicative competence. In this questionnaire, many teachers answered specifically about the techniques they use in their classrooms, as case-study, debates, discussions, and role-play. However, after reading these answers, it can be concluded that many use the method as PBL, audio-visual and foster methods. After questions about the methods used, teachers were asked to choose from the choices they made about the difficulties they encountered in developing students' communicative competence (Table 2). Based on the data in Table 2, it can be concluded that the most common challenges for teachers are: students’ low English proficiency, and being shy.
Table 2
Teachers’ challenges to the development of communicative competence
|
students' low English proficiency |
76.5 % |
|
students’ nervousness or fear of talking |
58.8 % |
|
students being shy |
64.7 % |
|
students’ low motivation and interest |
58.8 % |
|
students’ narrow knowledge on topics |
47.1 % |
|
lack of required equipment |
23.5 % |
|
lack of training courses |
11.8 % |
|
large classes |
47.1 % |
|
lack of time |
23.5 % |
|
poor peer relations |
23.5 % |
Teachers were also given the opportunity to write their response options and in this survey, most of them answered: undisciplined students, variety of learners with different language proficiency levels in one group, students' bad mood and unwillingness to speak, poor class dynamics and poor peer relations. After this question, it was asked how they usually cope and prevent these difficulties. Teachers wrote that they mainly try to get into a trusting relationship with pupils, divide pupils into subgroups according to level and give them different materials, and prepare additional tasks in case they get bored. The last question was «what approach do they use when they prevent these difficulties». As with the previous question, many gave the answer that they use PBL, foster learning approach, and audio-lingual approaches.
Discussion
When it comes to the definition of communicative competence, both previous researchers and the participants of this study have the same answer and understanding of the notion of communicative competence. Participants explained what communicative competence is, in their own way and words, however in general, they all meant the same thing. They defined communicative competence as the ability to communicate with people not only in terms of language, but also it is about the ability to choose proper words and understand your partner.
The challenges that teachers face during the development of students’ communicative competence are identical, both the results of previous researchers and the teachers that took part in this study. It has been often mentioned in the literature review part, that mostly teachers face such challenges as low English proficiency of students. The same result appears here, almost 80 % percent of people mentioned this problem. Additionally, it has been proved that students’ emotional state hugely affects their education, as both in previous works and here, it was found out that shy and nervous students find it hard to work with their peers and develop their communication. Another huge challenge is students’ motivation. Teachers find it hard to motivate students in the process of the development of communicative competence and this problem has been topical for a while. Overall, almost all challenges are similar and it shows that these problems have not been solved throughout the years.
The methods and approaches that are used by teachers were quite the same. Most teachers have mentioned pair-work and interesting activities, and highlighted that they are focused on a student-centered approach.
Conclusion
The main purpose of this study was to identify the challenges EFL teachers face during the development of students’ communicative competence. Based on the secondary data, the previous studies mostly mentioned such obstacles as: students’ low English proficiency, lack of motivation, students’ unwillingness to participate in the classroom activities. Generally, the results from the present study are identical to the previous researchers' findings.
Since the study is conducted in Kazakhstani university, some portion of collected data is unlike the one that is in literature review. Thus, several different challenges like poor textbooks, bad peer relationship, and lack of teacher training courses were recognized throughout the study. Accordingly, it was identified that all the teachers have their own ways of solving existing issues. All of the resolutions vary from simply fostering the students to negotiate and develop their communicative competence to creating their own activities and tasks to help the learners in improving their skills.
Since the researchers were limited with an insufficient number of participants, the recommendation to the further investigations is to conduct the study on a larger scale. Moreover, researching the solutions and ways of dealing with certain challenges EFL teachers face during the development of students’ communicative competence might be purposeful and useful for upcoming studies.
References:
- Celce-Murcia, M. (2008). Rethinking the role of communicative competence in language teaching. In Intercultural language use and language learning (pp. 41–57). Springer, Dordrecht.
- Cuthill, Michael. “Exploratory Research: Citizen Participation, Local Government, and Sustainable Development in Australia.” Sustainable Development 10 (2002): 79–89;
- Farooq, M. U. (2015). Creating a Communicative Language Teaching Environment for Improving Students' Communicative Competence at EFL/EAP University Level. International Education Studies, 8(4), 179–191.
- Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. sociolinguistics, 269293, 269–293.
- Lyutova, S. N. (2017) Fundamentals of psychology and communicative competence. Course of lectures, MGIMO-University. p 201.
- Maryslessor, A. O., Barasa, P. L., & Omulando, C. A. (2014). Challenges teachers face in the use of the communicative language teaching approach in the teaching listening and speaking lessons in Lugrari District, Kenya.
- Passov E. I. (2015) Communicative method of teaching foreign language speaking. A manual for foreign language teachers. p. 208. Moscow: Prosveshcheniye.
- Thomas, L. (2020) Simple Random Sampling | Definition, Steps & Examples. Retrieved from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/simple-random-sampling/#:~:text=Simple %20random %20sampling %20is %20a,possible %20of %20this %20random %20subset
