UNIT 3 DESARROLLO DE LAS DESTREZAS LINGÜÍSTICAS: COMPRENSIÓN Y EXPRESIÓN ORAL, COMPRENSIÓN Y EXPRESIÓN ESCRITA. LA COMPETENCIA COMMUNICATIVA EN INGLÉS. 1. INTRODUCTION 2. DEVELOPMENT OF ORAL SKILL: LISTENING AND SPEAKING. 3. READING AND WRITING. 4. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE 5. INTEGRATED SKILLS 6. LOMCE 7. CONCLUSION 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1
1. INTRODUCTION At the stage of primary education should be taken into account that is part of a basic level of competence so that, in the understanding and production of texts, both the communicative interaction is essential to always refer to family contexts for students, taking advantage of previously acquired knowledge, abilities and experiences. The acquisition of the oral language and vocabulary is as important as the learning of grammar. Primary education is to provide students an education that allows them to enhance their personal development, acquire skills and knowledge relating to the expression and listening comprehension, reading, writing and calculation, as well as develop social skills, work and study habits, artistic sense, creativity and affection. The curriculum developed in the Decree 89/2014, 4th of July for Madrid community and the Organic Law 8/2013, 9 th of December to improve the Educative Quality, offers precise instruments so the teachers get their students integral formation, inculcating in them the moral values and ethical principles that we share: the freedom, the equality of all human beings and respectful attitudes. In this unit I am going to explain the different points which the essay is composed, it is going to be developed under a pedagogic, didactical, technical and legal basement for its application at primary levels in schools of Madrid. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF ORAL SKILL: LISTENING AND SPEAKING. LISTENING SKILL Listening is not a simply passive hearing of sounds: it s a complex active process. If we listen something in our mother tongue, understanding is easy. The reasons are: Our experience in the spoken language is enormous. We are able to predict what is likely to come next. Listening is usually a confirmation of what we have already anticipated. Listening requires an effort to understand and is a cognitive process. Terrell develops an approach called the Natural Approach. There are three main objections to this approach: In the class we can t replicate the long period of listening that young children have when they learn their mother tongue. The classroom is a totally different language environment than the real world in which the first language is acquired. However the classroom sometimes is the only place in which students can learn and practice in a formal and in an academic way with the help of an expert. Listening should come before speaking. It s impossible to expect that our pupils will produce a sentence that they haven t been heard. Students must have a reason to listen, can be getting information about the time, and working instructions, description of a place, entertaining; songs, jokes, stories, greetings, congratulations, apologized ( 4 block of contents). 2
Learners must be exposed to a wide variety of spoken language, as in the mother tongue. This means different varieties of language, standard/regional, formal/informal, British English/American English as well as different types of text, dialogues, stories, news, TV programmes or instructions. A possible list of materials to develop activities in order to give enough input could be; conversations, announcements, instructions, conferences, stories, telephone conversations, news, songs, radio or TV programmes. Besides variety, listening should be broadly comprehensible. This idea was developed by the American linguistic Stephen Krashen, and it establishes that people acquire a language better when it level of understanding is a little more advance than their competence level. In fact, he established a formula: L+1, indicating that the level of understanding should be a stage further. Auditory material should be varied, comprehensible, graduated in difficulty and within a context. To resume these materials in Primary Education can be: stories, descriptions, instructions, simple recipes, and conversations, discussions between two or more people participating, songs, poems, rhymes, videotapes and films adapted to the children s level. When planning a lesson the teacher have to bear in mind these points: Recognizing sounds, phonemes, accent, intonation which are called ear-training skills. Identifying the main idea, global understanding, that is Extensive listening. Extracting specific information from a radio-recorded or CD, that is Intensive listening. Understanding in detail, predicting what is going to listen, storing information in our memory and knowing how to retrieve it later. The mental processes that follow a listening activity are: hearing the sounds, recognizing the meaning of the sounds, relating the input to previous knowledge, storing information in our memory. Tasks, must progress from simple hearing- based activities to more complex understanding- based ones. Tasks must be success-orientated. The auditory materials should be varied, graduated in difficulty and within a context. Activities should have a communicative purpose. In general a listening lesson follows these stages (CLT): Pre-listening stage: This is a preparatory phase. The teacher sets the topic and finds out students expectations about it by having a discussion with them. Activities at this stage include: Predicting content from a title. Pre-viewing language items. Comment several pictures or photographs. Give the opinion as regards clothes, food, classroom materials, family, travels, 3
places, body, transports, animals, numbers, and culture in general. Also use a correct grammar structures with accuracy and fluency is desirable. While listening stage: The student performs tasks to develop listening strategies. These tasks are extensive or intensive listening. Once the tasks are established, the teacher presents the text, a dialogue, a story, a song on tape or reading it out. The teacher can stop the tape where necessary to draw attention to lexical or grammar items, to ask the students to predict what s coming next. Extensive listening are activities for global understanding. Students listen to genuine and contextualized language, some activities can be matching pictures, sequencing a story, answering questions and following instructions. Intensive listening also requires a specific search of sounds, words or facts within a context, some activities can be ear-training activities, finding differences, labelling, game-like activities, extracting information, dictations to consolidate grammatical structures, completion-type activities or filling-gap activities, identifying numbers, letters, mistakes and phonemes. Post-listening: The students perform tasks connecting what they, have listening according to their experience. Here are some examples: talking about the recording, inventing a dialogue, role-play, practicing pronunciation, making a summary, deducing opinions and attitudes, deducing meaning from context, dictation, practicing vocabulary, structures from a text in correct order. These activities are usually integrated with other skills. Listening difficulties and remedial: Listening is difficult because is a complex activity, its difficult because there are unfamiliar sounds, student s tendency to wish they understood every word, they need more than one time to understand, lack of motivation to listen. The solutions to these problem can be: Set the situation, raise student s expectations, pre-teach key words, set the listening task, explaining in detail, design success-based activities, re-play the listening several times, explain difficulties, use contextual support, sounds, gestures and visual aids, use graded materials, according to the students age or interest. SPEAKING SKILL In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the Cooperative Principle describes how people interact with one another. This method was developed by Paul Grice. Though phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation. Listeners and speakers must speak cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. The cooperative principle describes how effective communication in conversation is achieved in common social situations and can be divided into 4
four maxims, Maxim of Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief. Be orderly. Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information. The main aim of oral production is to speak fluently, in other words, the student should be able to express the ideas with accuracy and without hesitation too much. In the first levels, fluency is not as important because the students lack linguistic competence; pronunciation, structures and vocabulary must be learning in a correct way. On the other hand, at advance levels, fluency is what matters because students already have achieved certain grammatical competence, discursive competence is the aim at this stage. Speaking is an active process which is usually difficult to dissociate from listening. In the classroom practice the speaking implies the learning of several speaking skills such as producing sounds, phonemes, intonation, expressing grammatical forms coherently, use the language in an appropriate way and using extra-linguistic strategies to help transmit the message. Speaking lessons can follow the usual pattern of preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, and extension. The teacher can use the preparation step to establish a context for the speaking task (where, when, why, and with whom it will occur) and to initiate awareness of the speaking skill to be targeted (asking for clarification, stressing key words, using reduced forms of words). In presentation, the teacher can provide learners with a preproduction model that furthers learner comprehension and helps them become more attentive observers of language use. Practice/Production step involves learners in reproducing the targeted structure, usually in a controlled or highly supported manner. Evaluation involves directing attention to the skill being examined and asking learners to monitor and assess their own progress. Finally, extension consists of activities that ask learners to use the strategy or skill in a different context or authentic communicative situation, or to integrate use of the new contents and strategies with previously acquired. Speaking materials: The topic students will known and speak about it will depend on the type of material they re exposed to. It must be varied and focus on the learner s interests. Thus, the learning of basic vocabulary and simple structures from the very beginning is vital. Such language consist on: Vocabulary related to numbers, colours, greeting and social conventions, routines, instructions, asking for permission, communicative strategies, dialogues and use realia 5
materials. Asking for directions, giving instructions, inviting, offering, expressing likes and dislikes, asking the price and congratuling. 3. READING AND WRITING SKILLS Learning to read and write is critical to a child s success in school and later in life. It is essential to teach children to read and write competently, enabling them to achieve today s high standards of literacy. Children who are learning English as a second language are more likely to become readers and writers of English when they are already familiar with the vocabulary and concepts in their primary language. A fundamental insight developed in children s early years, through instruction is the alphabetic principle, the understanding that there is a systematic relationship between letters and sounds (Adams 1990). At the same time, children learn about the sounds of language through exposure to linguistic awareness games, nursery rhymes, and rhythmic activities. Children acquire a working knowledge of the alphabetic system not only through reading but also through writing. Some of the most common techniques are copying with English orthography, decoration the classroom with the materials made by the students, dictations of children s stories help develop word awareness, spelling, and the conventions of written language. To provide more intensive and extensive practice, some teachers try to integrate writing in other areas of the curriculum (CLIL methodology). Children must also learn about the relation between oral and written language and the relation between letters, sounds, and words. As young authors struggle to express themselves, they come to grips with different written forms, syntactic patterns, and themes. They use writing for multiple purposes: to write descriptions, lists, and stories to communicate with others. It is important for teachers to expose children to a range of text forms, including stories, reports, and informational texts, and to help children select vocabulary and punctuate simple sentences that meet the demands of audience and purpose. Since handwriting instruction helps children communicate effectively, it should also be part of the writing process. Reading and writing workshops, in which teachers provide small groups and individual instructions, may help children to develop the skills they need for communicating with others. It is also very important be focus on the next features to achieve our aim in reading and writing. Speech Awareness: The awareness of individual parts of speech as they apply to individual written characters is crucial for understanding reading. Phonological awareness, which includes the manipulation of rhymes, syllables, and rimes. 6
Fluency: The ability to read orally with speed, accuracy, and vocal expression. The ability to read fluently is one of several critical factors necessary for reading comprehension. If a reader is not fluent, it may be difficult to remember what has been read and to relate the ideas expressed in the text to his or her background knowledge. Vocabulary: A critical aspect of reading comprehension is vocabulary development. When a reader encounters an unfamiliar word in print and decodes it to derive its spoken pronunciation, the reader understands the word if it is in the reader's spoken vocabulary. Reading comprehension: Reading comprehension is heavily dependent on skilled word recognition and decoding, oral reading fluency, a well-developed vocabulary and active engagement with the text. Orthography describes or defines the set of symbols used in a language, and the rules about how to write these symbols. In general, the reader has to understand elements of the written language including, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. The Learning Centered Approach and CLT are focus on develop techniques in three stages; pre-reading, while-reading and post reading. Pre-reading stage: introduces and explanation about the topic, the vocabulary and grammar structures about the tale, story, legend, limerick or rhymes. Generally a previous reading by the teacher helps to understand and know the sounds and words. While-reading stage: students can read aloud or in silence and make questions after the reading to clarify concepts. Post reading stage: the teacher should introduces some useful activites to work the text in a basic or simple format. This activities can be answering questions, check the correct answer in pairs or alone, looking words in the dictionary, translation tasks, discussing the topic, draw a picture about the reading, write a similar text or includes a new end. The teacher should introduce activities according to the text in each stage. DARTS, directed activities related texts are really successful and including reconstructions and analysis activities. Reading is a complex, multi-faceted activity, involving a combination of both lexical and test progressing skills that are widely recognize as being interactive. Here is a quick overview of the four types of reading techniques used in every language: Skimming - Used to understand the "gist" or main idea. Scanning : used to find a particular piece of information. Extensive reading: used for pleasure and general understanding. 7
Extensive reading is a way of language learning, including foreign language learning, through large amounts of reading. As well as facilitating acquisition and learning of vocabulary, it is believed to increase motivation through positive affective benefits. In language learning, extensive reading is contrasted with intensive reading, accurate reading for detailed understanding, which is slow, careful reading of a small amount of difficult text. Some activities will be; obtaining the general idea from a text, deducing what is in the text, understand instructions, and use realia material. Predicting possible information using learner s previous knowledge and recognizing function and discourse patterns. Writing is a medium of communication that represents language through the inscription of signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Learning to write is important no t only for the information giving in the above points, also is important for these reasons; Because to master a language it is necessary to understand the written skill. Because in real life we need it. It reinforces the learning of oral communication. Writing is a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols, usually in the form of a formal alphabet. The students in Primary Education should be guided in writing activities and the will learn to write words and linguistic forms correctly, appropriately and according to the context, coherence and cohesion will be the main characteristics of their writing works. Writing materials may be; lists, addresses, diaries, recipes and notes. Writing for maintaining social relationships: seasonal greetings, instructions and letters. Writing for entertainment: songs, jokes, riddles, limericks, poetry and games. As regards the stages of writing we will take into account three stages: 1. Copying. Build motor skills needed to eventually write letters and words. Teach your child that we use writing to communicate. Show children that writing and drawing are different. Show your child that writing is useful in everyday life. Make children see themselves as writers. Writing should be fun and meaningful for children. 2. Controlled practice. Students generate ideas for writing: brainstorming; reading literature; creating life maps, webs, and story charts; developing word banks; deciding on form, audience, voice, and purpose as well as through teacher motivation. 3. Production. Rough Draft. Students get their ideas on paper. They write without concern for conventions. Written work does not have to be neat; it is a 'sloppy copy.' Reread. Students proof their own written work by reading aloud and reading for sensibility. More activities to develop the writing skill would be spelling, matching, words in order, summarizing, translation, dictations, 8
drills, compositions, resumes, write short stories in pairs or in an individual work and parallel writing with following a model. 4. INTEGRATED SKILLS According to an eclectic approach, integrated skills is essential to use varied groupings when designing integrated activities, such as pair and group work, because this promotes many opportunities to practice the four skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing.some activities could be; 1. Projects works. It must be based on the students s interest: food, clothes, transports, descriptions, places, countries, buildings, maps and graphs. 2. Role-Play. It can be developed thought imaginary situations (related to the real life) while other students write and listen to them. 3. Dictations. Listening and writing are the main skills involved, but we can also add the skill of reading by reading aloud and at the same time the speaking skill. There are several methodological implications highly important to promote and develop in primary levels. 1. Motivation: Foreign language teachers must create as many ways as possible of encouraging their pupils and boosting their desire to learn. 2. Comprehensible input: In the early grades, oral and listening skills are basic. The level of difficulty must be slightly beyond the learner s competence. The input must be enough and contextualized. 3. Pleasant classroom atmosphere: Stephen Krashen s affective filter hyphotesis demonstrates that learning can t lead to genuine acquisition if the learner s attitude isn t positive. 4. Errors and mistakes: These must be analyzed by the teacher in order to help the learner progress in their Inter-language stages. 5. LOMCE PRECEPTS The competences of the curriculum are as follows: Linguistic communication. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology Digital competence. How to learn. Social and civic skills. 9
Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. Consciousness and cultural expressions. In the area of foreign language we must work all these elements and also in line with teachers from other areas. Primary school teachers should bear in mind all these information to develop the units, activities and tasks to accomplish the law and obtain the best results from their students. 6. CONCLUSION The learning of foreign languages has a special relevance in education, since the ability to communicate is the first requirement that comply with the individual to engage in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual context. All EU governments, which over the years have scheduled different Community actions in the field of education establish as a priority aim enabling every citizen to possess a practical knowledge of at least two languages in addition to their mother tongue. Students who speak more than one language will be better prepared for an international world and can cope with their studies from a point of view that is open to universal culture. 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY LOMCE 8/2103. Decree 89/2014, 24th of July for Madrid Community. CERF basements. www.mec.es www.ite.es 10