What is communicative English after all?

What is communicative English after all?

        Language is meant for communication, be it in a spoken or written form.  The merits of communicative English teaching approach are the emphasis and focuses on teaching and learning topics related to learners’ life, involving learners as much as possible in classroom activities and the shift from teacher-centred to student-centred teaching and learning.

        But can the communicative English teaching approach really help our learners to become more communicative in speaking and writing?  Well, again it is the question of information that a learner possesses and how much grammatical knowledge s/he has to communicate on call.  I see it as speech records / registers in one’s head that decides.

        Limited classroom learning in the input helps learners very little in speaking or writing if s/he has not launched his/er extensive texts reading and listening activities in the environment where English is learnt as a single subject.  S/he must try to use English as much as possible outside the classroom.

        With the limited time in the classroom, I still strongly believe that learning grammar item by item and communicative English in whatever manners should co-exist side by side to help our learners.