The Communicative Approach is originally proposed by William Littlewood (1980) which emphasised that language learning should involve active mental processes and the importance of meaningful practise 1 like games, songs, role plays and dialogues.

 

This approach is based on the basis that competence must be priored to performance. Once the student has developed and mastered an adequate degree of cognitive control 2over the rules of a language (i.e passive voice), facility will develop automatically with the newly learnt knowledge in the learner’s daily communications.

 

We have modified this approach to fit our context. In order to let young second language learners to master the usage of passive voice, teachers could play songs that tells the rules of passive voice while comparing the usage of passive voice in Cantonese and English. Teachers could also play games like swapping cardboards to help students master the swapping of words when it comes to passive voice, also, making the entire process as a competition could motivate to learn.

 

Another way we have discovered is by watching clips of cartoon or popular TV programmes that shows examples of  using passive voice, this could help them connect the dreary grammatical rules with real life situations and trigger their interest. According to Rasing Children Network, children tend to be drawn to light colourful movements on televisions especially those with simple storylines (Raising Children Network, 2013)3

 

 

 

                  Strengths                                               Weaknesses

 

• Students could connect the usage of                                    --> Time-consuming

passive voice with daily communications                                    --> Students might be distracted

• Gain students’ interests and have a

high motivation to learn 

• Student could understand the difference

between using passive voice in their

mother tongue (Cantonese) and English

 

 

 

 

The major difference between the Communicative Approach and the Deductive Approach can be seen from the following two aspects: ‘more appealing to students’ and ‘students as the centre of the classroom’.

 

Through games, role-playing and songs, hands-on experience can internalize their thinking process and it can create a memorable impression on them. Cognitive-code method also allow students to utilize their creativity and respect students’ intelligence, it places a focus on students rather than the teacher-oriented learning style in Deductive Approach.

 

 

 

1Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). The Language Environment. In Language Two (p. 19). New York: Oxford University Press.

 

2 Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). The Language Environment. In Language Two (p. 19). New York: Oxford University Press.

 

3 Raising Children Network (2013).How children see television. Retrieved from:http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/tv_how_kids_view.html

 

 

The following are some examples to show how games and songs could be applied in learning passive voice: