Communicative competence in teaching speaking

THE
IMPORTANCE
OF
ORAL
COMMUNICATIVE TASKS IN
DEVELOPING
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

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The success of developing communicative
competence in teaching speaking is inseparable with the
materials or tasks given to the students. The speaking
teachers should really pay attention to tasks given that
are more focused on oral communicative ones. The
tendency of relying on student- centered communicative
task is strongly expected to achieve the target of
communicative competence development. Absolutely,
the oral communicative tasks will activate the students’
interest to communicate their ideas in oral form
naturally. They will enjoy their communication process
created 
without 
much 
interference 
of 
teacher.
Negotiation of meaning and management of interaction
in their speaking activities will automatically occur well.
Brandl (2008:289) suggests that student-centered
communicative task results are far more opportunities for
negotiated meaning than teacher-centered activities.
improved grammatical accuracy.
greater sociolinguistic awareness.
increased self-correction.
improved pronunciation.

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As a teacher, you should find most challenging
about communicative oral activities in accordance with
the students’ need. If the teacher is currently teaching, it
is better to ask the students about what they find most
challenging about these kinds of activities and share the
results with classmates. Then the teacher has considered
the defining features of real communication and has
discussed the difficulties of keeping students on task,
finally the teachers and students are ready to analyze
what makes some communicative tasks succeed and
others fail.
It is better to begin by thinking about the demands that a
communicative task places on the student: cognitive,
linguistic and communicative. It is important to strike a
balance when designing a task (not too hard, not too
easy). Next, the teacher will look at the features that
most well-designed communicative tasks have in
common.
The way a communicative task is structured (or not) has
a great deal to do with its ultimate success in the
classroom. When considering how to structure a task,
Lee (2000: 35-36) suggests that designers ask
themselves these four questions:
1. What information is supposed to be extracted
from the interaction by the learners?
2. What are the relevant subcomponents of the
topic?

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3. What tasks can the learners carry out to explore
the subcomponents? (e.g., create lists, fill in
charts, etc.)
4. What linguistic support do the learners need?
In other side, Haycraff (1978: 82) supports that the
effective way of stimulating the students’ talking is to
issue materials with natural situations that consist of the
exchanges such as questions and answer, suggestions,
and reactions, opinions and arguments, etc. furthermore,
various changes and challenges in materials encourage
the students to explore their ideas that whole class is
involved each with everyone.
Selecting materials according to students’ need will
bear the natural oral communication effectively and
efficiently. The students need opportunities to develop
their skills by being exposed to situations where the
emphasis is on using their available resources.
Littlewood (1981: 62) cites the personal interpretation of
the situations is encouraging general confidence and
fluency in speaking, allowing the learners to explore and
exploit their communicative repertoire in any ways they
wish. Moreover, Littlewood also gives considerations of
some kinds of activities, situations and roles that can
help the speaking teacher in developing oral
communicative tasks as follows:
1. The idea of capability covers not only the level of
complexity of the language forms that learners
can handle, but also the degree of independence
with which they can handle them. Thus, as

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learners increase their linguistics competence,
there will be scope for both greater complexity
and greater independence.
2. The teacher should remember the point made in
connection with classroom interaction, that
structures and functions are not bound no specific
situations. Therefore, the situations that he selects
do not have to be restricted to those in which the
learners expect to perform outside the classroom.
Communication skills can be developed in the
context of, say, a classroom discussion or a
stimulated detective enquiry, and later be
transferred to other contexts of language use.
3. On the hand, teacher has to aim for maximum
efficiency and economy in his students’ learning.
It therefore makes sense to engage them in a
large proportion of situations which bears a direct
a resemblance as possible to the situations where
they will later need to use their communicative
skills. In this way, he can be confident that most
aspect of tha language practiced (function,
structures, vocabulary, and interpersonal skills)
are relevant to learners’ needs. This is particular
important with older learners, whose need are
comparatively well- defined.
4. The situations must be capable of stimulating
learners to a high degree of communicative
involvement. In part, this is another aspect of the
point just made: learners are more likely to feel
involved in situation where they can see the
relevance of what they are doing and learning. In