Final answer:
A method communicates a primitive value back to its caller by using a return statement, which sends the calculated or obtained value back to the caller. The type of the return value must match the method's declared return type.
Step-by-step explanation:
A method can communicate a primitive value back to its caller by returning the value. In programming, the return statement is used within a method to send a value back to the place from where the method was called. This is commonly known as the method's return value.
For example, if you have a method that calculates the sum of two integers, you might have something like this in Java:
public int sum(int a, int b) {
return a + b;
}
Here, the method sum takes two integer parameters, adds them, and uses the return statement to send the result back to the caller. The type of the return value must match the method's declared return type (in this case, int for an integer).