What is the communicative approach-The Direct Approach-

What is the communicative approach?

The communicative approach (CA) was developed by Robert Langs MD, In the early 1970's. It is a new theory or paradigm of emotional life and psychoanalysis that is centered on human adaptations to emotionally-charged events--with full appreciation that such adaptations take place both within awareness (consciously) and outside of awareness (unconsciously). The approach gives full credence to the unconscious side of emotional life and has rendered it highly sensible and incontrovertible by discovering a new, validated, and deeply meaningful way of decoding unconscious messages. This procedure-called trigger decoding--has brought forth new and highly illuminating revisions of our understanding of both emotional life and psychotherapy, and it calls for significant changes in presently accepted psychoanalytic thinking and practice.

The CA has exposed and offered correctives for much of what's wrong with our current picture of the emotional mind and today's psychotherapies-critical errors in thinking and practice that have cause untold suffering throughout the world. In essence, the approach has shown that emotional problems do not arise first and foremost from disturbing inner memories and fantasies or daydreams; nor do they arise primarily from consciously known thoughts and patterns of behavior. Instead, emotional disturbances arise primarily from failed efforts at coping with current emotionally-charged traumas. The present-day focus by mainstream psychoanalysts (MP) on the past and on inner fantasies and memories has been replaced in this CA with a focus on the present, as experienced and reacted to consciously and unconsciously-in brief, the primacy afforded by MP to fantasy and imagination has been replaced by the primacy afforded by the CA to reality, trauma, and perception (especially unconscious perception).
In general, we tell stories about another time, place and person (displaced tales) in order to convey in disguise our unconscious experience of an immediate situation with someone who is upsetting us. Direct readings of images and symbolic interpretations cannot uncover these critical disguised messages-they are revealed solely through trigger decoding

All in all, MP and CA have very different conceptions of the unconscious domain. The CA sees the interventions of therapists as the key triggers for patients' unconscious experiences in therapy, while MP ignores most of the implications of what therapists actually do and say in sessions, especially their unconscious meanings. Furthermore, the CA has discovered that patients' unconscious experiences in therapy are focused almost entirely on the therapist's management of the setting and ground rules of therapy, while MP has a naïve and uninformed understanding of the unconscious ramifications of the frame-related and other activities (interventions) of therapists.

أسهمت طرق التدريس التقليدية المتبعة في مدارسنا في تحقيق نتائج غير مرضية في تعليم اللغة الإنجليزية، وخصوصاً طريقتي السماع (Audio-Lingual Method) والترجمة (Grammar Translation Method) في الطريقة التقليدية الأولى - أي الطريقة السمعية - تعطى الفرصة للمتعلم للاستماع إلى اللغة - التي تقدم له غالباً على شكل حوار - أولاً، ثم تمكينه من الرد الشفوي. وتدريس اللغة بناءً على هذه الطريقة يتم عن طريق المحاكاة، والاستظهار، والتدريب على الأنماط اللغوية بشكل متواصل كي يتمكن المتعلم منها تمكناً تاماً، ويتم تطبيقها بصورة آلية دون التفكير في الأجزاء المكونة لها.
وفي طريقة القواعد والترجمة - وهي أقدم طرق تعلم اللغة الأجنبية أو الثانية - ينصب التركيز على التحليل اللغوي أو الإسهاب في شرح القاعدة اللغوية التي سيتم تدريسها، وحفظ النصوص، ويتم حفظ القاعدة اللغوية، وتدريس الكلمات ضمن قوائم وليس في جمل وظيفية كالتي يستخدمها المتعلم في حياته اليومية وإنما في جمل كتبت خصيصاً لتوضيح القاعدة أو الصيغة اللغوية.
وبسبب اتباع هاتين الطريقتين يتم التركيز في التدريس على تدريس قواعد اللغة الإنجليزية على حساب المهارات الأخرى مثل المحادثة، والقراءة، والكتابة، والاستماع، فالطالب لا يدرس مثلاً طرق فهم المخاطب، والطرق المعينة على فهم النص المقروء، ولا يدرس الطالب كيفية استعمال اللغة في مواقف لغوية واجتماعية متعددة، وكذلك لا يعلم الطالب ماذا يمكنه عمله حتى يضمن استمرارية الحوار أو الحديث.
ولذا يمكن القول إن الطريقة المتبناة يتم التركيز فيها على تعليم أمور متعلقة باللغة الإنجليزية أو بالأحرى الجانب اللغوي وليس على كيفية استخدامها.



Total Physical Response
James J. Asher, Learning Another Language Through Actions. San Jose, California: AccuPrint, 1979.
James J. Asher defines the Total Physical Response (TPR) method as one that combines information and skills through the use of the kinesthetic sensory system. This combination of skills allows the student to assimilate information and skills at a rapid rate. As a result, this success leads to a high degree of motivation. The basic tenets are:
Understanding the spoken language before developing the skills of speaking. Imperatives are the main structures to transfer or communicate information. The student is not forced to speak, but is allowed an individual readiness period and allowed to spontaneously begin to speak when the student feels comfortable and confident in understanding and producing the utterances.
TECHNIQUE
Step I The teacher says the commands as he himself performs the action.
Step 2 The teacher says the command as both the teacher and the students then perform the action.
Step 3 The teacher says the command but only students perform the action
Step 4 The teacher tells one student at a time to do commands
Step 5 The roles of teacher and student are reversed. Students give commands to teacher and to other students.
Step 6 The teacher and student allow for command expansion or produces new sentences.



The Direct Approach
This approach was developed initially as a reaction to the grammar-translation approach in an attempt to integrate more use of the target language in instruction.
Lessons begin with a dialogue using a modern conversational style in the target language. Material is first presented orally with actions or pictures. The mother tongue is NEVER, NEVER used. There is no translation. The preferred type of exercise is a series of questions in the target language based on the dialogue or an anecdotal narrative. Questions are answered in the target language. Grammar is taught inductively--rules are generalized from the practice and experience with the target language. Verbs are used first and systematically conjugated only much later after some oral mastery of the target language. Advanced students read literature for comprehension and pleasure. Literary texts are not analyzed grammatically. The culture associated with the target language is also taught inductively. Culture is considered an important aspect of learning the language