Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen in Chinese Classroom:

Activities, Activities, Activities

Dongdong Chen

Seton Hall University

As a teacher of Chinese, one tends to assume that the more students practice in the classroom, the more they would learn, and, as a result, they would be able to function when needed. However, this kind of magic does not usually occur as we hope. What we often find is that students are at a loss when facing a real-life communication. So here comes the question that is worth exploring: how to make communicative language teaching happen so that students are trained to learn “when and how to speak what to whom” before being thrown into a communication world? This presentation will attempt to tackle this question from the task-based learning approach. I will examine different types of activities involved in language instruction, with a focus on how to design and develop tasks that will engage and enhance student communication in a Chinese language classroom.