Pre-communicative Practice

The saying 'learn to walk before you run' applies here perfectly. The pre-communicative practice in learning a language is like learning to walk as a baby. How many times did you fall when you started to walk? MANY times, indeed. But you didn't give up! Your mum was there to pick you up every time and you didn't even think about it. Learning a language needs this repetitive stage until you become confident in using your words and moving your tongue in your mouth to pronounce your words fluently and correctly. I advise you to do it with anything you wish to learn in English.

In this section we practice the elements of the language system without communicating any actual messages. We practice the steps of the dance separately, before we join our partner to do the actual dance. For now we only want to become proficient in doing the steps mechanically, without thinking too much about what comes next.

You need to master the simple rules of word order and structure: the adjective comes before the noun, the way an adjective becomes an adverb by adding '-ly' at the end, the way we double some letters when we add '-ing' for the progressive etc.

Simply concentrating on these and doing a lot of exercises (we call these drills) even in the hundreds will help you a lot in becoming fluent. You will come to a stage when you don't need to remind yourself the rules in your head before writing or saying the expressions - you don't need the helping wheels on your bike anymore, you've got the confidence to use your skill.

Without further ado... let's practise!

So let's look at the concepts of communicative grammar we have dealt with in our e-zine lessons and I shall build some exercises for you to practice on. 

Some of these concepts we have examined in our English Corner E-zine are:

• Expressing likes and dislikes;
• Expressing frequency of certain activities; 
• Expressing cause and effect; degree;
  
• Linking sentences; linking to express time; linking to express causality; linking to express conditions; linking to express addition; 
  
• Linking signals (in general); for making a new start or transition; for changing the subject of a communication; for listing and adding to a communication; for reinforcing a point; for summary and generalisation; for explanation; for reformulation;  
• Using relative clauses when linking two sentences together;
• Comparison; comparison of adverbs; special cases of comparison;
• Intensifying Modifiers and Adverbs
• Intensification Strategies for Questions and Negatives
• Other Emphatic Expressions (‘so’ and ‘such’)
  
• Expressing preference; hope; moods; ambiguity; addition; exception; restriction;   
  
• Describing emotions; 
• Conditional 0; Conditional I; Conditional II; Conditional III;
• Conditional Grammar Quiz
  
• Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Meaning
• Phrasal Verbs; Separable or inseparable phrasal verbs
• Cross-Reference and Omission
• Presenting and Focusing Information;
• Pieces of Information;  Dividing Messages into Tone Units;
  

How do we do it?

Pre-communicative practice is designed for 2 levels:
The first level is when students work in pairs repeating over and over dialogues based on a picture or pre-set situation. Here are some examples and more explanatory notes.

The second level of the pre-communicative practice, where the relationship between the language structures used and their meanings are reinforced by situations that can occur in real life. Find a few examples here and notes on how to use this practice.