Communicative versus Non-Communicative Language Practice in the Teaching of Beginning College French

Recent developments in psycholinguistics & foreign lang education suggest that languages are most effectively learned when used for communication. Furthermore, there is widespread, although not total, agreement that true verbal communication occurs only when a message, ie, new information, is transmitted from one human being to another. Lang that conveys no information may have meaning, but it must be characterized as noncommunicative. This experimental study was undertaken to determine the relative effectiveness of communicative & noncommunicative oral practice in beginning Coll Fr. While oral communication was the major concern, an attempt was also made to determine the effects of the two treatments on all lang skill areas & on attitude. The sample (N = 54) was composed chiefly of freshmen who had previously studied Fr, assigned to beginning Fr because of low placement scores. The six experimental classes were taught by three instructors, each of whom taught one class from each treatment. Practice for the communicative group involved question-&-answer practice & consistent transmission & reception of messages. Noncommunicative practice included various pattern drills, directed dialogue, cued question-&-answer practice, & free question-&-answer practice with no real information exchange. Pretests were the long form of the Modern Language Aptitude Test & Verbal Form B of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Tests of listening, reading, writing, speaking accuracy, & communicative proficiency were administered at semester's end. Students also completed attitude scales. Analysis of variance was used as the main statistical tool. Perhaps because of the sample's size & nature, few significant differences were found. Measures of language skills & attitude revealed no difference in the treatments' effectiveness; however, students placed in the communicative treatment significantly (p < .05) outperformed those whose practice was noncommunicative on the test of communicative proficiency. Significant interactions with creativity were obtained on the speaking & reading criteria. Results support the inclusion of communicative practice in overall instructional strategy if communicative proficiency is a course goal. Also, the significant interactions with creativity indicate that this may be a relevant factor in second language acquisition. The findings of this experiment can be safely generalized only to students in beginning Coll Fr classes who have had previous e