English-learning must serve communication

A new notion of cross-cultural communicative competence is needed, which recognises “English as a world language” serving as a productive means to enhance regional, international and intra-cultural perspectives.

Achieving communicative competence will help transform developing young minds into knowledgeably curious, creative thinkers as adults.

The individualised learner-centred focus should help enable each and every student to freely express himself or herself on matters relevant to everyday life and to become savvy participants in determining their own future decision-making priorities.

Communicative competence integrates learning and playing, for a fun-tastic edutainment blend of high-energy tasks and activities, including games, songs, role play, improvised dialogs and oral interviews, all intended to motivate and interest students with authentic functional-notional content from across the curriculum which appeals to a variety of learning styles. The developmental focus is on:

_ stimulating communicative competence and applied usage, not boring, obsolete grammar-translation 

_ active involvement, not passive indifference 

_ lively activity, not deadly passivity 

_ understanding and being understood, not faultless fluency 

_ daring to risk making mistakes, not fear of committing errors 

_ realistic pursuit of excellence, not idealised, unachievable perfection 

_ striving for practical “want to” know-how, not compulsory, theoretical “have to” abstracts 

_ becoming self-aware, articulate speakers, not mimicking parrot-like squawkers

It should be noted that English is “an” not “the” international language, standing alongside respectable alternatives such as Chinese, Arabic and Spanish, with the shared goal of encouraging and promoting linguistic multiversity.

Already nearly a quarter of the world’s population is fluent or functionally competent in English, and the figure is growing steadily, especially via the Internet where 80 per cent of computerised data and 85 per cent of all information stored are in English. The IT future is now.

Charles Frederickson

Bangkok