The Definition of Communicative Approach

The Communicative Approach refers to the theory of teaching to the principles that the students and teachers should genuinely communicative with each other using the target language. It was brought up in 1970s in European, and it is one of the most popular and influential teaching approaches in the world. The linguists have been enriching it by their opinion from their practices and research.

The Communicative Approach is also called Functional Approach, which regards the function of language as the basics and pays much more attention to communicative competence. Some linguists thought that the Communicative Approach is much well than Functional Approach as it reflects the master of the communicative competence. Functional Approach believes that language is the tool of communication and that learning a language well is based on the application repeatedly.

Communicative Approach reflects the transformation from emphasizing on language forms to communicative competence, meaning the importance is not grammar or vocabulary any more but ability to apply language properly. Linguists prospect the major function of language is to express oneself, while sociolinguists believe the main purpose of language is to keep the interpersonal relation.