Article #3

I believe that Paul Overland is able to explain clearly the benefits and strategies of communicative learning.  As Overland points out knowledge of grammatical rules is not sufficient to become an effective communicator.  In order to obtain communicative competence students must be able to manipulate a language to express their own ideas or opinions.  An immersion environment is a significant asset to achieve communicative competence.  In order to help student's retention of the language, instructional songs should be used.  Finally, as a teacher, I must have in mind that Overland's theory does not eliminate the need for explicit training in grammatical structures.  Grammatical structure should be taught with the purpose of getting students to communicate effectively.