TEMA 3

“COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE

CLASSROOM: VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL
COMMUNICATION. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES:
NON VERBAL REACTIONS TO MESSAGES IN
DIFERENT CONTEXTS”.-

INTRODUCTION.-

Communication is a key word for us as English teachers. Not only is it the

essence of human interaction, it is the centre of language learning.

Chomsky was one of the first language investigators to try to explain why a child
learns language; he says that the enfant begins to produce language by a process of
deduction using the input received and with natural resources construct an internal
grammar.

But later, linguists such as Hymes, noted that a child doesn´t know just a set of
rules. He/she learns how and when to use them, and to whom.He says that when a
native person speaks, he or she takes into account factors such as:

1. Systemic potential. Whether something (word, structure...) works grammatically or

not if it fits into the grammatical system.
2. Appropriacy. Whether a word or structure is suitable in the context according factors
such as the relative social class of the speakers, regional variations, age and status
differences, the topic being discussed and so on.
3. Feasability. Knowing whether a construction is possible or not. It may be possible
grammatically but seem ridiculous in real use such as the use of six adverbs together.
4. Occurence. A knowledge of how often something appears in the language (example:
foreign learners of English from latin countries often use more latin-sounding words
than a typical native speakers).

Halliday considers that language is, indeed, learned in a functional context of

use. To summarize all the above, a communicative context governs language use, and
language learning implies an acquisition of these rules of use.

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 Grammar is not enough, as we can be grammatically correct and socioculturally
incorrect or with ill-designed strategies. And so communication breaks down.

Canale and Swain developed the idea of communicative competence, a design

taken on by the M.E.C. as the basis for objectives in the curricular design and as a guide
for teaching methodology.

This communicative competence consists of 5 subcompetences: grammatical,

discourse, sociolinguistic, strategic and sociocultural.

- GRAMMATICAL or the ability to use the rules of the language system.

(example: the position of the adjective in English). systemic potential.
- DISCOURSE or the ability to use different types of speech o writing based on
the situation and to do it coherently and cohesively.
- SOCIOLINGUISTIC or the ability to adapt utterances to a particular social
context (socialclass, regional languages, registers). appropiacy.
- STRATEGIC or the ability to influence the course of the communicative
situation (body movement, intonation). Related to redundancy. The aim is to
mantein the channel of communication open or to improve the reception.
- SOCIOCULTURAL – being familiar with the social and cultural context, the
background where the language is spoken.(example:when we say “milkman”
we understand all the contexts such as: Who is the milkman?, When does the
milkman deliver the milk? and so on).

This communicative competence and its subcompetences seeks to help children

to provide opportunities for gaining real language in real use.

Communication is the activity or process of giving information to other people or

to other living things, usign signals such as speech, body movements or radio signals.

Communication is then the basis of a foreign language class from the basic
curricular design and aims to lesson plans and methodology.

In the 20 th Century worl of international travel, commerce, culture, technology

and news/information, communication needs to be optimun and our pupils will want to,
or need to have the four skills in language on many occasions for communicative
purposes.

We shall now look at what this means in terms of verbal and non verbal
communication.

This is part of their preparation for life in general, and for their development as
people.

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 VERBAL COMMUNICATION:

This consists of two skills, namely listening and speaking.

LISTENING precedes speaking. It consists of the decoding of sound according to

acquired rules.It can be defined as the process of discriminating the sounds of the
English language through a process of hearing and understanding them. Listening is
related to PHONOLOGY This science studies the phonemes, the relationship
between units of sounds and differences in meaning.

We need to remember that there are differences between the Spanish sounds and
the English sounds. We must allow the children to be clear on these differences, using
accent, rhythm and entonation.

All material used in teaching sounds and meaning should be based on its
usefulness in real communicative interaction.
There are many ways of presenting material so that it can be a means of helping
children in oral-comprehension. We may use flash-cards, real objects, pictures from
magazines, gestures, mime, language laboratory, radio, t.v., fims, tape-recorder and so
on.

SPEAKING is the encoding of the acquired sounds, deduced by listening, into

signals.The end of this is to communicate something to someone and is related to
PHONETICS  The study of sounds: how they are produced and how they are
received.

Pupils need a lot of practise in comprehension (listening) in order to hold a

conversation in English. Both skills (listening and speaking) are linked in the learning
process, since the people need to absorb the elements of a message if they are going to
contribute to a conversation.

This encoding and decoding is not only on a grammatical level, as Chomsky

inferred at first, but as Guiraud affirms a process which takes logic from phonology,
semantics, etc, but also subjective experience and social rules.

So, we will begin talking about oral-comprehension techniques. If we want to

develop this ability in our children we shall need to observe the processes used by the
learner in listening comprehension.

At first, the pupil hears a series of noises and he/she can´t tell what the difference
is between them. After some time, he/she begins to note that the sounds are in some sort
of order, with regularity in the pauses and voice pattern.

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 As he/she learns some simple expresions, he or she begins to see that there are
recurring sounds, and he/she associates them with meaning. So, he or she is starting to
recognise familiar elements, but doesn´t see all the relationship. He/she does not really
understand.

As he or she becomes more familiar with the language, he/she recognizes the
different elements, but doesn´t remember what he/she recognized. This is because
he/she is recognizing single elements and not the whole message. The mind is
eliminating information which it can´t take at first; only a certain amount can be taken
into short-term memory.

The receptive system in the brain then takes these selected elements into long-
term storage. But only a small part of the total message will be remembered, this is why
pupils seem to be able to understand very little at first. They have to concentrate very
well to be able to take in not only the sounds, but their meaning, the brain is not able to
do this too fast, and we must remember this.

That´s why we help our pupils by giving them short sequences of sounds so that
they can get the meaning easily and store it automatically. So, REPETITION is essential
for acquiring this process

The LOGSE, in its 9 objectives of the curricular design, reflects the importance
of proficiency in these skills.

No child can ever really communicate in English without some ability to listen
and speak. In traditional “Grammar Translation” these skills were often neglected.

The reason for this neglect was that some people consider speaking and listening
to be primitive skills. They saw that children acquired these abilities naturally and so it
was felt that verbal communication was less sofisticated than the written form of the
language.

So, more importance was given to a study of the written language and for many
years verbal communication was nor considered to be worthy of study.

This is reflected in the approaches to teaching of languages wich followed a

classical methodology imitating latin and greek approaches which by their very nature
center on reading and writing.

In this century however, and thanks to the contributions on social anthropologists

and linguistics we have come to understand that the spoken form of a language is a

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valuable communication tool full of sophisticated rules of use and which is a vehicle for
social interaction.

We can think of Vigotsky studies on ethnic groups where he demonstrates how

complex the verbal communication is within societies which some people consider to
be primitive.

So, speaking and listening are complex skills and even though they are acquired
in an apparently natural way there is a process involved which is intricate.

As an example of this we can look at some of the features which are unique to
verbal communication.

Goffman highlited some of these.

We could mention that in verbal communication there are signals which the
adresser and adressee recognize as open-close signals such as the word “well” or a
cough to open and there are other non-verbal signalssuch as hand movemet to open or
close a conversation. We could also think of the fact that in verbal communication there
is an inmediate and constant response from the adressee which we don´t have in written
communication. This leads to the possibility of the speaker using strategies to ensure
the message is being received.

These strategies include back signals such as the hearer nodding his/her head or
expressions such as “really” or “umhm”.

These demonstrate to the hearer that the message is being received.

If he or she feels that the adressee is having difficulty in receiving the message
because he/she notes a lack of interests,comprehension, etc, he/she may choose to use
strategies such as raising the voice, repetition or gestures to improve attention or
understanding.

We can not do this in written communication because the adressee is not usually
present and we can´t judge the receiver´s response and then react.

Further to this in verbal communication speakers and listeners pay attention to

the norms of what is acceptable in a given context as regards quantity, for example.We
could imagine that a British conversation consists of shorter exchanges than in an
anaerobic context.There are also, of course, complex rules of what is socially and
culturally acceptable in specific contexts depending on the relative age, social class and
regional origin and so on of speaker and hearer. For example, the speaker is aware of

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taboo words or topics and of conventions which are appropiate in a given situation.It
would be inappropiate, for example, to use some swearwords in polite company.

In written communication the writer does not always know who will read the
message and cannot always select suitable exppressions, topics and vocabulary.

Taking the above into account we can affirm that when a child begins to listen
with understanding and to speak with intelligibility he/she is acquiring very useful
social skills for everyday use.

These skills are not primitive instruments but elaborate competences which
society demands and values.

Within verbal communication we recognize that there are non verbal elements.
We will now look at these aspects of spoken communication.

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION.

In all verbal communication we are aware that the message is sent through a code
that is made up of sounds travelling trough the air, having been emitted trough the
articulation of the speaker´s speech organs. But this message is communicated by non
verbal signals too real componets of normal communication.

The following are typical contextual non verbal elements.

Knapp clasifies the non verbal aspects as follows:

1. Body movements: includes gestures, movements of the body, limbs, hands,

head, feet, facial expressions (smiling), eye behaviour such as blinking,
direction of sight and also posture.
2. Physical characteristics: includes physical appearance, general attraction, body
scents, height, hair, skin ton (these characteristics are constant).
3. Paralanguage: refers to how something is said and not what is said. It uses the
non verbal vocal signs surronding speech (tone, qualities of the voice, rythm).
4. Proxemics: is the manner in which man uses space as specific cultural
product, the study of use and perception of social and personal space. The
individual determines his own space base on social and personal rules
(perception and use of personal and social space).
5. Tactile conduct: kissing, hitting, guiding ...
6. Artifacts: include the manipulation of objects, which can act as non-verbal
stimuli, with interacting persons.These artifacts can be: perfume, clothing,
lipstick ...

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 7. Surroundig factors: this category includes those elements that intervine in
human relations which are not a direct part of it: furniture, interio decoration.

The purpose of non verbal communication is to be part of the functional aspect

of communication:
a) to communicate emotions
b) to regulate communication/conventions.
c) To interpret.
d) To identify social status, etc.

The cultural specificness of these elements should highlited (Spanish and English
gestures are different).

Meaningful language includes a knowledge of these aspects for true

communication.

The importance of drama, mime, action songs, role-plays, simulation of real life
situations to include as many non-verbal elements as possible cn not be underestimated.

EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON VERBAL REACTIONS TO

MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.-

In this part of the topic we will see how the use of extralinguistic elements is
linked not only to achieving grammatical and sociocultural competence but to strategic
competence.

This is the ability to plan and adapt communication, so that the desired end is
achieved.

In different contexts different strategies are required.

We should make some points here:

1) Strategies develop and are sought when a need is seen. Children look for
extralinguistic help when they are interested in, or enthusiastic about, or are
seeing the advantage in communicating.
2) We shoul put children in different situations of verbal communication and help
them to develop non verbal aids with games and activities which link non-
verbal elements with the context and communication need.
3) This acquisition of language skills and non-verbal strategies requires an
atmosphere of relaxation, with no tension, ridicule, pressure.

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 4) Children should see how language verbal and non verbal changes in different
context, ruled by situation,climate, social class, age, formality and informality
and so on.

One method which focuses on the aid of non-verbal communication is Total

Physical Response. Every extralinguistic resource its use is developing
communication beginning with the listening skills, where imperatives are inferred by
movements, actions, etc.

Though we may not wish to use a TPR methodology with all its implications, the
contributions it makes to the teaching-learning process as part of our methodological
plan in an eclectic approach can be valuable.

As teachers we will be aware that elements such as furniture, space, decorations

and so on can help or hinder communication. There will be occassions when we will
want to re-arange desks, chairs, decorations, posters or other objects, so that they can
help in a communicative process. For example, if we are perfoming a play we can set
up various objects as scenary so that the children fell contextualized. For instance, in a
play about Goldilock and the three bears we could put a table in the centre of the
classroom with three different-size chairs beside it.This extralinguistic elements help
children, who can use them as aids in communication.

To give an example of a Total Physical Response methodology which uses

extralinguistic strategies we can consider for instance the game of “Simon says” where,
in the context of a game, children learn to understand simple imperatives along with
associated parts of the body. They obey the orders of the teacher only when he or she
speaks on behalf of Simon. To help the children the teacher performs the action, which
the children initate. Eventually they do not need this extralinguistic back-up.

From the very first days of learning a foreign language, children become
accostumed to deducing meaning from the context, which is full of extralinguistic clues.
When we say: - “ close the door, please” pointing to the open door and miming a
closing movement. This is a very simple but effective T.P.R. activity.

Not only do children learn to understand spoken messages in this way. They
begin to try to communicate using non-verbal and stralinguistic strategies at their
disposal, from gestures to mime and with the use of other artifacts.

CONCLUSION.-

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 In this topic we have attempted to demonstrate the nature of verbal
communication.

The spoken language in each productive and receptive forms depends not only on
the understanding of sounds or the creation of these sounds.

The context of this communication includes many elements which are aids in the
process and we should be aware of how we can maximized verbal and non-verbal items
to encouraged children to infer meaning and to use all sorts of extralinguistic strategies
to improve communication.

By means of meaningful, motivating activities which use aspects such as body-

movement, gestures, artifacts, the five senses, we can motivate our young learners of
English to believe that communicating in the English language is within their reach.

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TOPIC 3
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC
SKILLS: LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND
WRITING. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN
ENGLISH

I will start with a short introduction to let you know what this topic is
about

0. INTRODUCTION

In the society where we live, the possibilities of cultural interchanges

studying abroad, watching TV, so on, determines that, communication, at
least one foreign language is a necessity.
- With our educational reform, according the GENERAL
ORGANIC act 1/1990 of 3 of October of Educative System,
its are persuades THREE AIMS:
 A WIDER EDUCATION: compulsory and free education are
extended up to the change of sixteen, which also coincides
with the labour ages.
 A BETTER EDUCATION: the number of teachers and school
resources are increased; the teacher-in-service training courses
are promoted, school resources and vocational guidance
programmes are improved.
 MORE USEFUL EDUCATION: a new model of vocational training
with greater practice knowledge and with a greater relation
with the labour market are proposed, and the necessites of our
present society.

In the General Organic Act 1/90 of 3rd of October of Educative System,

we can find in the 2nd Chapter, article 13-b that, in Primary Education,

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 among the capacities to develop in our pupils is “ to understand and produce
easy messages in a foreign language”.
 We also have in the RD 1344/91 of 6th of September about Teaching
Requirements in the territory managed by the old Ministry of Education
and Culture, in the Art.4 that the objective a) is “understand and produce
oral and written messages in Spanish, language of the community and in a
foreign language “ and continuous “The ability to communicate in a foreign
language and the knowledge of this language give a good help for a better
comprehension and learning the own language”.
So,for these reasons, compulsory education must attend to this
social need and give pupils a communicative competence in a foreign
language.

Within this communicative competence, we as teachers have to develop

the four main skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Thus, in this topic, I will talk about them in the following points:
1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS:
LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING
2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH.
3. CONCLUSION
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS:

LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING

In the RD 1344/ 91 of 6 of September about teaching Requirements in the

territory managed by the old Ministry of Education and Culture, we can
read that” the development of the basic linguistic skills it has to be seen
as a process of integration. In the real life, communicative acts use
different skills, so, it’s not logic, to treat them in an aisle form.”
Now I am going to talk about these skills, and I will start with listening.

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 1. Listening or learning to listen in order to hear and understand
properly.

-First of all, there are several general principles in teaching / learning

listening comprehension, and these principles are:
I. Listening comprehension lessons, it must have definite goals,
carefully stated. These goals should fit into the overall
curriculum.
II. Listening comprehension lessons, it should be constructed, with
a carefully step-by-step planning. This implies that the listening
tasks progress, from simple hearing based activities, to more
complex understanding based ones as our pupils gain in language
competence.
III. Listening comprehension lessons should teach not test
IV. Listening comprehension lessons structure it should demand
active pupil participation. And finally
V. These lessons should stress conscious memory work.
-We can use several STRATEGIES in order to develop listening
comprehension such as: SCANNING, SKIMMING, RECONSTRUCTION OF
ORAL DISCOURSE, PREDICTION, RECOGNIZING INTERNAL
STRUCTURES AND CONNECTORS, GUESSING FORM CONTEXT, and,
EXTENSIVE and INTENSIVE STRATEGIES.
1. SCANNING or looking for specific details. It’s better to say
questions before the listening practice.
2. SKIMMING or to identify the principal ideas. F. instance, we
want that our pupils ask themselves, what is this text about?.
And to guess the type text (poem, folk tale), settings (place,
street), characters (formal, informal, neuter), and key words.
3. RECONSTRUCTION OF ORAL DISCOURSE: after we refer to
the first listening, the teacher can make a conceptual map on
the blackboard, considering a word or sentence as the listening
key.
4. PREDICTION, pupils can predict what will be the next one that
they are going to listen.

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 5. RECOGNIZING INTERNAL STRUCTURES AND CONNECTORS:
this strategy gives us clues about the content. F. example:
 FALL/RISE INTONATION, and the particle BUT indicate
contrast expression
 SO + FALL INTONATION indicate “RESULT”
 FIRST, THEN, FINALLY, help us to identify and arrange
sequences in different parts.
6. GUESSING FORM CONTEXT: is to find out the meaning of
unknown words. We can use gestures, pictures… and, the two
last ones are
7. EXTENSIVE and INTENSIVE LISTENING
 EXTENSIVE LISTENING will be a focused or general
feature of the styles of discourse. The language level in
this kind of listening is, inside the student’s capacity, and
they listen for pleasure and interest. This strategy, can be
used for the representation of already known material in a
new environment and it can also serve the function of
introducing new language.
 INTENSIVE LISTENING is closer to ear training, and it’s
the most widely used for listening practice in classroom.
Students are asked to listen a passage, with the aim of
collecting and organizing the information it contains. This
strategy, can be used for the focus of language items as
part of language teaching programme, and for general
comprehension and understanding.

- And, finally, in this point, I will talk about PLANNING

CONSIDERATIONS. First of all, these are a number of steps that we have
to bear in mind when planning the listening work for our class:
1. choose the listening text.
2. check that the activities are suitable
3. adjust the difficulty level of the activities, if we need to
4. consider, whether the listening work you are planning will fit
the time available or not
5. think about visual aids

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 6. decide whether any special equipment will be needed
7. make up our mind about what procedure you will adopt for
the listening session
8. if you are planning, to present the listening text “live”
practice reading it aloud

-Once we have taken these steps, we must teach our children to

develop skills, and according to Harmer, we can divide these skills into
TWO TYPES: GENERAL UNDERSTANDING and SPECIFIC
UNDERSTANDING:
a. GENERAL UNDERSTANDING is concerned with the treatment of a
text as a whole, and includes the following microskills:
PREDICTION: because it is useful to encourage children to predict what they
think might come next in a spoken message. This means that they then listen to checks
whether their expectation matches the reality of what they hear.
EXTRACTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION and GETTING THE
GENERAL PICTURE of an activity of listening and,
b. SPECIFIC UNDERSTANDING, which involve a detailed comprehension
of the text. They also include the following microskills:
- INFERRING OPINION and ATTITUDE because an awareness of stress,
intonation and body language, such as facial expressions or gestures, will
help the children work out meaning, specially in dialogues or story- telling.
- DEDUCING MEANING FROM CONTEXT because although the teacher
might like to gloss new words before the children listen to something, she
also needs to encourage them to use pictures and their general knowledge
about a topic to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words.
-And RECONGNIZING DISCOURSE PATTERNS and MARKERS: words
such as first, then, finally, or but, so, give important signals about what is
coming next in a spoken text. This is especially important when listening
to a sequence of events, such as in a story or a set of instructions.
-About LISTENING ACTIVITIES,, we make sure the children are
clear about why they are listening. This means spelling out which part of
the message they need to focus on and what they are going to do before
listening, while listening or after listening. So, to develop these skills, are
commonly divided into THREE CATEGORIES: PRE-LISTENING, WHILE
and POST- LISTENING.

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 o PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES have as a main aim to arouse our
pupils’ interest and include MAKING LIST OF IDEAS or LABELLING.
o In WHILE LISTENING ACTIVITIES we have TRUE/FALSE or
SPOTTING MISTAKER and
o POST- LISTENING ACTIVITIES include SUMMARIZING or
DICTATION.
An activity type could be for instance:
-Listen and perform actions/ follow instructions: this kind of activity is
used with action songs, rhymes or games such as “ What’s the time Mr.
Wolf?”
-Purpose: listening for enjoyment and to improve memory and concentration
span.
-Materials: instructions for games.
According the book “The Primary English Teacher’s Guide “ by Brewster,
Ellis and Girard, existing methods and materials for primary school
English contain recorded phrases for use in the initial classes.
However, it is primarily the teacher who, by conducting the class in English,
will provide the opportunity for the pupils continually to improve their
listening ability in as natural a manner as possible.
There are other simple ways of training pupils to listen effectively such as
the teaching of numbers and letters with dictations, or visuals aids, such
as pictures of plants, animals or people, can also be used by the pupils to
respond to dictations involving the names of objects.

2. Speaking, or learning to speak in order to be understood

-First, I will say several GENERAL PRINCIPLES in SPEAKING SKILL:

1. The beginning of oral expression will start when the pupil can
understand the meaning of language’s first elements.
2. Thus, we will use short dialogues and its will attack attention
of them, both the topic and the attractive form to present
it.
3. In relation with the first syntactic structures (which we can
present in first or second cycle), they are principally

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 GESTALTS or PREFABRICATED LANGUAGE, for instance a
greeting like ‘how are you’.
4. Before preparing our activities we have to consider several
aspects as COMPETENCE level, if our pupils ARE GOING TO
USE A BOOK, AGE, CONTENTS.
- An oral lesson is often divided into STAGES commonly known as
PRESENTATION STAGE, PRACTICE STAGE and PRODUCTION STAGE:
 PRESENTATION STAGE has as a main aim to give our
pupils the opportunities to realize the usefulness and relevance of the
new language and their need to learn it.
In the initial stages, first lessons often focus on teaching simple greetings
and introductions, f.ex: “hello”, “What’s your name?”, “My name is”.
In the early stages of learning, not much spontaneous speech can be
expected from pupils.
Such speech (language) consists of:
-Simple greetings: hello, how are you
-Social English: have a nice weekend?
-Routines: what’s the date?
-Classroom language: listen, repeat, sit down, good
-Asking permission: Can I go to the toilet?

We have to bear in mind that once we have chosen a context for the
presentation, we must decide on a procedure, which includes points in this
order:
a) First, build up the situational context by means of pictures and
tapes
b) Elicit the new language.
c) Focus our pupils’ attention on the model sentence, and (to) get the
repetition both chorally or individually.
d) And, check students’ understanding.
The teacher’s main role during this stage is as INFORMANT
 In PRACTICE STAGE our pupils assimilate and memorizes the new

language by means of activities such as repetitions.

The teacher’s role is mainly those as CONDUCTOR and CORRECTOR and

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 In PRODUCTION STAGE, the main aims are to give learners the
opportunities to integrate the new learnt language into previously learnt
language in an unpredictable linguistic context, and to provide both,
teachers and pupils, with feedback about the learning and teaching process.
The teacher’s role is as FACILITATOR.
According to Brewster the main thing is to be understood without the
listener being obliged to go through a series of mental gymnastics in order
to discover what the pupil was most probably trying to say.
From a psychological point of view, it’s a good idea not to force things and
to let each pupil start to contribute when they feel ready.
-Some speaking activities that we can use are REPETITION activities like
“Chinese whispers (the teacher whisper a word a sentence in the pupils’ ear
and this message will be transmitted in the same form to whole class. The
last pupils has to repeat aloud what he has just listened or ASKING AND
GIVING INFORMATION it can consists of the repetition of certain
structures with minimums changes which have been practised previously in
class to complete a questionnaire, posters, etc …
For instance, an activity type could be:
Look, listen and repeat: the teacher shows a picture, says the word and
pupils repeat: look! An elephant. Repeat.
When the teacher is satisfied with her pupil’s pronunciation she can move
another word.
Once several new items have been introduced, the teacher can check by
showing a picture and asking, what’s this? And pupils reply.
Purpose: to introduce new vocabulary or structures.
Materials: picture cards, for example animals. Food, colours, actions

3. Learning to read and write

 Learning to read a foreign language is obviously not a primary aim of

early learning of English. Nevertheless, the two skills of reading and
writing are learning tools, which it would be wrong to ignore, as they
occupy a position of fundamental importance in the objectives of
primary school education and in the activities of the pupils.

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  Learning to read in English will gradually give young beginners an
ability to read autonomously as they acquire both the necessary
ability and the taste for reading. There are publishers specializing in
English as a foreign language that offers illustrated readers for
children. The adventures of the animal and human heroes in these
books excite the interest of the children and encourage them to read
on.
 We have TWO TYPES OF STRATEGIES to develop reading
comprehension: ACCORDING TO THE SENSE USED and
ACCORDING THE ACTIVITIES.
- ACCORDING TO THE SENSE USED we have READING BY EAR
and READING BY EYE
READING BY EAR: we can’t read without the phonic element, that’s to
say, reading is a lineal process and we advance identifying and reproducing
the phonic elements of texts. This strategy is very important in the first
stage of learning a foreign language.
 READING BY EYE: the relation between written word
and signification is direct. Thus, the words are read as units with meaning
without the participation of an intermediate mechanism. This strategy is
used with pupils who have a certain reading fluency and.
- ACCORDING TO THE ACTIVITIES USED we have SCANNING,
SKIMMING, FOLLOW A SEQUENCE, SURVIVAL READING,
PREDICTION, INFORMATION TRANSFER.
1. SCANNING or looking for specific details such as a friends address.
It’s better to say questions before reading.
2. SKIMMING or to identify the principal ideas. F. Instance, we want
that our pupils ask themselves, what is this text about?. And they
can identify type text (poem, folk tale), settings (place, street),
characters (formal, informal, neuter), and key words.
3. FOLLOW A SEQUENCE: it’s useful to understand instructions or
identifying. F. Instance the life phases of famous people.
4. SURVIVALS READING: it’s referred to localization of text, which
help us to find something that we are looking for in an urban
context. F. instance: traffic signals with sort text (ONE WAY), or
informative signals (EXIT, MIND THE GAP)

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 5. PREDICTION, when we can use clues which show. What’s going to
the next f. instance, we say: ‘there was an Englishman, a Frenchman,
and an Irishman.
6. INFORMATION TRANSFER: this strategy permits us to translate
determined facts of a text to different ones. F. Instance: a travel,
or adventure story can be transformed in a comic or map.
 About READING SKILLS: and according to Harmer we can
divide these skills into two types: GENERAL
UNDERSTANDING and SPECIFIC UNDERSTANDING.
-GENERAL UNDERSTANDING are concerned with the treatment of a text
as a whole. They include the following micro skills: PREDICTION,
EXTRACTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION, and GETTING THE GENERAL
PICTURE.
-SPECIFIC UNDERSTANDING are subsequently and involve a detailed
comprehension of the text. They include: INFERRING OPINION AND
ATTITUDE, DEDUCING MEANING FROM CONTEXT, and RECOGNIZING
DISCOURSE PATTERNS AND MARKERS.

 We can also talk about READING ACTIVITIES, and are commonly

divided into THREE TYPES: PRE- READING, WHILE READING and
POST- READING ACTIVITIES.
o PRE- READING ACTIVITIES have as a main aim to arouse our
pupils’ interest in what they are going to read. They may include: PRE-
LIMINARY DISCUSSION, HEADLINESS AND TITLES, and
SEQUENCING PICTURES.
o WHILE READING ACTIVITIES for general and specific
understanding. They may include: SUGGESTING A TITLE,
UNDERLINE THE INFORMATION REQUIRED, and CHART
COMPLETATION.
o POST- READING ACTIVITIES can be thought as a follow up
work. They may include PREPARE A SIMILAR NEXT, PARTICIPATE
IN A ROLE-PLAY BASED ON THE NEXT MAKE A DRAWING.

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  Finally to say that reading in English in the early stages will
usually remain at the word level, where children play simple
games as dominoes, snap or bingo.
 For instance, an activity type could be:
Playing games such as odd- one out or spot the difference. Pupils
identify similarities and differences between letters or words.
Purpose: to develop phonic skills and sight recognition of words.
Material: flashcards or worksheets with words grouped in three or
fours.

And about the last skill, writing, we can say that in the early stages of
learning English, the pupils will generally write very little. It is a good idea
to use copying in a way, which encourages pupils to think, this means using
crosswords, and matching, sequencing or classifying activities.

We also have in this skill several stages:

1. First, FAMILIARIZATION AND CONTROLLED
WRITING: at the beginning, words and expressions won’t
be presented isolated, but with a lot of contextual aids,
wallcharts, flashcards. We can use activities such as
FILLIG CROSSWORDS, PUTTING UNDER PICTURES the
right sentences (with routines expressions)
2. The second stage is GUIDING WRITING and we use pre-
communicative activities to reach out the free composition
of short texts. We have for instance, INFORMATION
TRANSFER STRATEGY: with excursion photographies
which give us material to produce texts (they have to write
about what they see) and
3. The third stage is FREE COMPOSITION that can be
introduced when the previous ones have been filled and
with activities such as FILLING CHRISTMAS or
BITHDAY CARDS
+ According to Matthew, writing skills can be divided on:
1. GRAPHIC SKILLS which include aspects such as
PUNCTUATION or SPELLING

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 2. STYLISTIC SKILLS refer to our pupils’ ability to express
precise meaning in a variety of styles and registers( to
say “hello” sad or happy
3. ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS which involve the sequencing
of ideas (by using connectors such as “first”, “finally”
4. GRAMATICAL SKILLS refer to our pupils’ ability to use
successfully a variety of sentence patterns and
construction and (negatives or affirmative sentences)
5. RHETORICAL SKILLS refer to pupils’ ability to use
cohesion devices in order to link part of a text into
logically related sequences (more or less as organizational)
An activity type could be: Snap:
Materials: 24 playing cards with common words written on them. The words
need to be grouped into families which have two or three letters in
common, for example: at, hat, mat, cat; the, other, mother, another.
Method: the cards are divided equally between two players. Each player
places the card face down in the usual way. When a player says “snap”, she/
he has to say why the two cards are linked. No single letter matching is
allowed. The winner is the first player to collect all the cards.
And with that I finish the first main point in this topic.

Now, I will talk about the other main point.

2. THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

Chomsky defined language as a set of sentences each finite in length and

constructed out of a finite set of elements
He said that a native speaker has a subconscious knowledge of the
grammatical rules of his language, which allows him to make sentences in
that language. This is what Chomsky called COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE.
However, DELL HYMES thought that Chomsky had forgotten some
very important information about the rules of use, because when a native
speaks, he doesn’t only utter grammatically corrects, he also knows WHERE,
WHEN, and to WHOM to use these.

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 He said that competence by itself is not enough to explain a speaker’s
knowledge, and, replace it with the concept of communicative competence.
He distinguished FOUR ASPECTS of his CC: systematic potential,
appropiacy, occurrence and feasibility
 SYSTEMATIC POTENTIAL means that the native speaker
possesses a system that has a potential for creating a lot
of language. This is similar to Chomsky competence.
 APPROPIACY means the native speaker knows what
language is appropriate in a given situation. His choice is
based on the following variables: SETTING,
PARTICIPANT, PURPOSE, CHANNEL and TOPIC
 OCURRENCE means that the native speaker knows how
often something is said in a language and acts accordingly
 FEASIBILITY means the native speaker knows whether
something is possible in a language or not

+ These four categories have been adapted for teaching purposes

+ Thus, the Royal Decree 1006/91 of 14 th of June which establishes the
teaching requirements for Primary Education nationwide sees Communicative
Competence as comprising five subcompetences: GRAMMAR C, DISCOURSE,
SOCIOLINGUISTIC, STRATEGIC AND SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE.
 GRAMMAR C.: the ability to put into practice the linguistic
units according to the rules of use established in the
linguistic system
 DISCOURSE C: the ability to use different types of
discourse and organize them according to the
communicative situation and the speakers involved in it.
 SOCIOLINGUISTIC C: the ability to adequate the
utterances to the specific context, in according with the
accepted usage of the determined linguistic community.
 STRATEGIC C: the ability to define, correct or in general,
make adjustments, in the communicative situation.
 SOCIOCULTURAL C: which has to be understood as a
certain awareness of the social and cultural context in
which the foreign language is used.

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 Finally and 3. CONCLUSION of this topic, to say that the
integrated education of the four main skills, beside to permit us the use of
material for practising different linguistics activities, it answer to natural
phenomenon in our everyday life: sometimes we talk (orally way) not only
what we see, listen, but we also talk about something that we have just
read, or, we write about something that we have heard or read.
Any practice, thus, about a determined linguistic skills, must be
completed and rested on the other ones.
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 The royal decree 1006/91 of 14th of June about teaching
requirements for Primary Education.
 “The Primary English Teacher’s Guide” by Brewster. Ed. Penguin.
English 1992
 “The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language” by Crystal. Ed.
Cambridge. University Press 1987
 “The Practice of English Language Teaching” by Harmer. Ed.
Longman. London. 1983

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