Implementation of communicative-based teaching approaches in the English language classroom

Abstract

The importance of English as lingua franca and its high demand has boosted the requirement of an effective teaching method that is useful and motivates students into learning the language. The exploration of some of the methods and approaches resulting from the three big language learning theories clarified that there was still room for improvement, even though some of them contribute with profitable suggestions. This is the main reason why in this paper there has been a selection and blend of diverse communicative-based approaches, with the aim of creating a unique teaching proposal that increases students’ motivation in their English language learning process. This 10-day lesson plan was designed in order to be implemented in a Spanish High School. Its main feature is the fusion between Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), Kagan’s Cooperative Principle (KCP), Project Based Learning (PBL) and Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT). The incorporation of this wide variety of approaches foster the cooperative work of the students and the use of English as a tool to learn about Ancient Egyptian Culture, Mathematics and Art. Students will be asked to work together with the purpose of presenting in teams a hand-crafted art gallery with their own Ancient Egyptian discoveries. Therefore, this proposal can be a fruitful separation from the grammar-oriented approaches that lack the motivation that students need.