Research Paper on:
Total Physical Response and Communicative Approaches to ESL Instruction

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
instruction" (1993). Teachers felt that their students were not learning realistic language skills, they did not know how to communicate in another language using the appropriate expressions, gestures or social  language (Galloway, 1993). It was in the 1970s that communicative approaches began to become popular with students engaging in real communication interactions (Galloway, 1993). As this style of teaching other  languages was used more, it was adapted for different levels and for different situations and was given a number of different labels, such as teaching for proficiency, proficiency-based instruction, notional-functional  and communicative language teaching (Galloway, 1993). The communicative approach is defined in this way: "A set of principles about teaching including recommendations about method and syllabus where the focus  is on meaningful communication not structure, use not usage" (George Mason University, nd). The focus of the communicative approach is to have students involved in real-life conversations rather than memorizing  and repeating vocabulary and grammar rules (George Mason University, nd). Students are then involved in authentic conversations as they learn the language and focus on getting their message across rather  than focusing on the rules of grammar in written or verbal communication (George Mason University, nd). Errors may or may not be immediately corrected depending upon the teachers  philosophy and interpretation of the communicative approach. If errors are not corrected right away, it is possible for students to leave the class lacking an understanding for different rules of  expression (Collins, 1999). In the early days of the communicative approach, grammar instruction was downplayed, resulting in the situation just described. By the 1990s, however, it became apparent that grammar  instruction needs to be included (Ministry of Education, Quebec, 2001). The prevailing premise became that contexualized grammar and vocabulary activities would enable the student to accomplish more complex communication activities