This document outlines principles of communicative grammar. It begins by defining key concepts like grammar, communicative grammar, and communicative competence. Communicative grammar teaches grammar through meaningful communication and tasks. The document then lists 8 principles of communicative grammar: using tasks, promoting learning by doing, providing rich input, making input meaningful and comprehensible, cooperative learning, focusing on form, giving error feedback, and considering affective factors.

1. Pari Naz
MS English Applied Linguistics

2. Presentation Topic
Principles of
Communicative
Grammar

3. Learning Objectives
• What is Grammar?
• What is Communicative Grammar?
• What is Communicative Competence?
• Communicative Grammar for foreign
language learning
• Principles of Communicative Grammar

4. Grammar
• Grammar is basically part of
language consisting of syntax
and morphology and it often
includes semantics and
phonology.
• Grammar is the way we arrange
words to make proper
sentences.
• Grammar is defined as a system
of language rules that allows you
to combine individual words to
make complex meanings.

5. What is Communicative
Grammar?
• Communicative Grammar is based on
the communicative approach to the
teaching of second/foreign Language.
• Language learning defined as
developing the ability to communicate
in a second/foreign language.
• So, Communicative Grammar, in
simple words, is the communicative
approach of foreign language learning
by the method of communicative
competence of learning the rules of
Grammar (by communication).

6. What is Communicative
Competence?
• Communicative competence means tacit
knowledge of a language and the ability to
use it effectively.
• Communicative competence refers to a
learner's ability to use language to
communicate successfully.
• Grammatical Competence relates to
language system mastery, such as,
understanding and using:
• Vocabulary
• Word formation(morphology)
• Sentence formation(syntax)
• Language conventions( grammar,
punctuation and spellings)

7. Doughty and Long (2003) define principles as a
list of design features that can be generally regarded
as being facilitative to second language acquisition.
• Principle 1: Use Tasks as an Organizational Principle
• Principle 2: Promote Learning by Doing
• Principle 3: Input Needs to Be Rich
• Principle 4: Input Needs to Be Meaningful,
Comprehensible, and Elaborated
• Principle 5: Promote Cooperative and Collaborative
Learning
• Principle 6: Focus on Form
• Principle 7: Provide Error Corrective Feedback
• Principle 8: Recognize and Respect Affective Factors
of Learning
Principles of Communicative
Grammar

8. Principle 1: Use Tasks as an
Organizational Principle
• Communicative Grammar must be taught
by using different tasks i.e. classroom tasks
given to the students to learn and discover
language grammar on their own.
• Nunan (1989) considers a task as “any
classroom work which involves learners in
comprehending, manipulating, producing, or
interacting in the target language while their
attention is principally focused on meaning
rather than form (p. 10).”
• Using tasks as organizational principles has
to do with the focus on meaning by giving
learners “a purpose to use grammar in a
meaning context”

9. Principle 2: Promoting Learning
by Doing
Promoting learning by doing refers to how
new knowledge can be better retained in
long-term memory if it is tied to real-
world events and activities.
Communicative Grammar can be learned by
doing i.e. by actually communicating in
the target language to properly
understand the grammar of that
language by speaking (doing).

10. Principle 3: Input needs to be rich
For Communicative Grammar learning,
the input provided needs to be as rich as
possible.
• In the classroom environment, this can
be achieved by following two main
points:
1. Materials need to be authentic to reflect
real-life situations and demands.
2. The teacher needs to maximize the use of
the target language.
•

11. Principle 4: Input needs to be meaningful,
comprehensible and elaborated
The assimilation of new knowledge heavily
depends on how easily it can be attached to
already existing knowledge.
1. the information we process must be
meaningful
2. Input cannot be meaningful unless it is
comprehensible: The learner must be able
to understand most of what the speaker (or
writer) is saying
2. Elaborating input can be enhanced through
a thoughtful plan of how input is presented
•

12. Principle 5: Promoting cooperative
and collaborative learning
• Promoting cooperative and collaborative
learning by pairing or grouping students
together so that they can work cooperatively
on a task. This practice promotes
communicative interaction in the target
language.
• Collaboration: The social interaction
between the teacher, as the expert, and the
student, as the novice, is of equal
importance and should not be ignored.
Through the assistance of the teacher and
the social interaction, the learner is led to
reach a potential that exceeds his current
level of development.

13. Principle 6: Focus on Form
According to Long (1991)
• A focus on formS approach represents a fairly
traditional approach to teaching grammar where
“students spend much of their time in isolated
linguistic structures in a sequence
predetermined externally and imposed on them
by a syllabus designer or textbook writer . . .,”
while meaning is often ignored (Doughty and
Long 2003, p. 64)
• A focus on form approach to explicit grammar
teaching emphasizes a form-meaning
connection and teaches grammar within
contexts and through communicative tasks. And
so this focus of form is also one of the principles
of Communicative Grammar.

14. Principle 7: Providing error corrective
feedback
• Providing error corrective feedback is
important for the learner, but it is a long
term process. It depends not only on how
the teacher provides the feedbacks, but
also on individual learner factors.

15. Principle 8: Recognizing and
respecting affective factors of
learning
• Finally, recognizing and respecting
affective factors of learning is essential
for teachers to understand and provide
learners with an environment where they
can feel motivated.

16. Thank you