The elaboration of cultivating learners' English communicative competence in China

Abstract

The communicative competence is the ultimate goal of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is thought to be the eclectic approach in the place of other approaches and methods and which begins to gain momentum in the recent years. Hence, the comprehensive understanding of the communicative competence is prerequisite to the cultivation of the students' communicative competence. This study did some investigation with a view to elaborating the cultivation of learners' English communicative competence in China. It did an investigation into 9 senior middle schools in Anhui, China. 9 schools in three areas were visited. About 400 students were asked to do a questionnaire on the self-assessment of their English communicative competence. 27 English teachers and 9 headmasters/mistresses were interviewed about their teaching practice in senior middle school. Based upon the data collected from the investigation, the paper puts forward some problems as well as some suggestions in the implementation of the cultivation of students' communicative competence.