Communication is Vital

Abstract

Communicating effectively is an important life skill that can influence career and personal life, but communicating using a language that is not one’s mother tongue can be complicated, especially for a learner. Since practice makes perfect, one of the best ways to improve communication is through communication itself. This chapter explores the importance of communication in language acquisition by looking at the developments in learning approaches and why communicative language teaching is now so popular. In addition, the relevant theories which support the role of communication or interaction in language learning are discussed, including Krashen’s input hypothesis, affective filter hypothesis, Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis and Long’s interaction hypothesis. The changes and development brought about by technology in communication and language learning are also explored and linked to the Malaysian context. The chapter ends by highlighting the potential of discussion activity as a communicative task in a second-language classroom.