Real Reality Revisited: An Experimental Communicative Course in ESL

This article describes an experimental oral communication course (OCC) offered at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, and reports the results of a pilot study to evaluate its initial success. The OCC was designed around weekly, structured field trips to sites where students typically need to communicate in English. Each field trip unit consisted of three related classes. In the class prior to a trip, students listened to tapes, practiced functional language, and decided on what information they wanted to obtain. The trip consisted of a tour of the site, followed by a discussion with a resource person. In the subsequent class, students evaluated the trip and reviewed the new language used and the information gained. Students taking the OCC were also enrolled in a required, grammar-based ESL course. They were compared with a control group taking only the required course. In general, the area of greatest improvement of the OCC group, as compared with the control group, was grammatical accuracy. In addition, a significantly larger number of OCC students passed the component ESL course. Learners evaluated the OCC experience favorably. The primary objective of a communication-oriented second language program must be to provide the learners with the information, practice, and much of the experience needed to meet their communication needs in the second language. (Canale 1983:19) Advances in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics have caused us to expand our view of the rule-governed nature of language. We now realize more fully that discourse takes place according to sociolinguistic conventions (Richards 1980) and