7 Oral Skill

TOPIC: 45 LISTENING, SPEAKING AND CONVERSING IN ENGLISH. THE COMPLEXITY OF GLOBAL COMPREHENSION IN ORAL INTERACTION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING. LISTENING . FROM IMITATIVE TO AUTONOMOUS PRODUCTION. METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES TO FAVOUR ORAL PRODUCTION. 0. OUTLINE: 1. INTRODUCTION. 2. LISTENING, SPEAKING AND CONVERSING IN ENGLISH. 3. THE COMPLEXITY OF GLOBAL COMPREHENSION IN ORAL INTERACTION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING. 4. FROM IMITATIVE TO AUTONOMOUS PRODUCTION. 5. METHODOLOGICAL METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES TO FAVOUR ORAL PRODUCTION. P RODUCTION. 6. CONCLUSION. 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

CUERPO DE MAESTROS. ESPECIALIDAD: LENGUA EXTRANJERA. INGLÉS.

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1. INTRODUCTION. Our modern European society shows an increasing concern for population to have access to an effective acquisition of foreign languages enabling people to satisfy their communicative needs. In this sense, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages   (CEF) intends to overcome the barriers of languages, providing a valuable framework through methodological guidelines and a common basis for the description of objectives and content. We must also consider that our State legislation, LOE 2/2006 and RD 1513/2006 7 th  December  establishing the minimum teaching requirements for Primary Education, include the knowledge of a foreign language and the development of a basic communicative competence as one of the objectives to be achieved along this stage. The term “communicative competence” refers to enabling the learner to communicate through oral and written means, using the foreign language in real and meaningful contexts. Considering the language as an instrument of communication implies using it to express and exchange meanings in contextualized situations, getting the students to apply different strategies to get their meaning across; instead of learning an abstract set of grammatical rules. In this topic, we shall focus on the relevance of oral language, analyzing listening (receptive skills) and speaking (productive skill) as two interrelated skills in which understanding and interaction are key factors in the Primary Foreign language education. The process of communication in the FL classroom must be embedded in meaningful activities in which these two skills appear intermingled. This requires that the teacher must carefully design an appropriate proposal for a specific group of learners, considering their needs and interests. Out of this gradual process of interaction, the students will progressively advance at their own pace in listening to others to move on to negotiating meanings with their peers through verbal and nonverbal means. As a consequence, the exchange of messages in purposeful tasks will eventually enable them to establish simple real-life communication. When children begin learning a FL at school, there must be an emphasis on the development of listening and speaking. As teachers now, from the understanding and use of single words and formulaic language (simple words or chunks of language applied to familiar actions, routines and the like), children will gradually develop the ability to produce and interact. Thus, a weighty principle is that, as in the L1 acquisition process, reception precedes production, since if children do not understand the spoken language, they will not be able to learn it. However, let us start by analyzing the teaching of speaking and conversing.

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2. LISTENING, SPEAKING AND CONVERSING IN ENGLISH. In the teaching of FLs, oral skills have not always been the central aspects considered by theory and FL teachers. Notwithstanding, with the theory of communicative competence (Hymes 1972) and the practice of communicative language teaching, listening and speaking has become the focus in many approaches and methods. As we have already said, the curriculum Act RD 1513/06 7 th  December emphasizes the use of the FL to understand, speak and converse, and dead and write. In this sense, FL objectives number 1 and 2 for Primary Education state: Listening and understanding messages in varied verbal interactions, using the transmitted information for the accomplishment of specific tasks related to their experience. To express and orally interact in simple daily situations with a known content and development, using verbal and non-verbal procedures and adopting a respectful and cooperative attitude. Similarly , in content block number 1: “Listening, speaking and conversing” , RD 1513 stresses the importance of these abilities in this stage; and notes that due to the usually limited presence of the FL in the students´ social context, the linguistic model provided by schools is the main source of knowledge and learning of the FL. In addition, the capacity to use linguistic elements to accomplish communicative tasks implies that the FL is both vehicle and object of learning. Finally, block 1 refers to the use of audiovisual means and information and communication technologies (ICTs) to provide a wide range of linguistic models in communicative situations. According to Newton, J. (2009), a well-balanced FL approach should contain four strands: Learning through meaning-focused input; that is, learning through listening and reading (receptive skills) focusing the learners´ attention on the messages conveyed by the language. Learning through meaning-focused output; focusing the productive skills on conveying messages to another person. Learning through deliberate attention to language items and language features. Developing fluent use of known language over the different skills. Perhaps, the first implication of these principles is that within a communicative approach, the different skills, particularly listening and speaking, tend to appear interconnected, as social interaction involves both of them. Newton also refers to the “MINUS” framework as an acronym that refers to a set of relevant principles, especially interesting for the teaching of FLs at early stages. These principles can be resumed as follows: •

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Meaning: The main focus should be on language that learners can quickly use for their purposes. Meaning-focused listening and speaking may be directed towards classroom management, recalling or retelling stories or finding out about our learners´ preferences. Interest: Considering the age of the learners in Primary education and their limited attention span, activities should be short and varied. New language: An overload in the presentation of new language and functions prevents students from gaining control over that language Understanding: Before using the words in guided speaking, students need to be provided with plenty of comprehensible input through activities that require showing understanding. In this sense, the use of non-verbal language or visual aids offers a valuable contextual support. Stress-free: It is widely accepted amongst researchers and FL teachers that anxiety influences students´ willingness to take active part in communicative activities. Thus, the creation of a safe and friendly cooperative classroom atmosphere is particularly important at early ages. The MINUS framework is aimed at creating the optimal conditions for learning  the FL. In this same light, Carol Read  (1998) suggests the implementation of the elements in the “C-Wheel” framework: Context: It must be understandable, real, and relevant and allow for construction and active learning. Connections: Between FLL and the learners´ previous knowledge and their real life experiences. Coherence: Through comprehensible input (using Krashen´ term) and comprehensible output. Challenge: Presenting the adequate level of challenge, considering the Vygotskyan concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Curiosity: To make the act of learning interesting and desirable. Care: Lowering the affective filter and thus fostering a stress-free environment. Community: Create a sense of community to promote social interaction. Creativity: Taking advantage of the students´ natural fantasy and imagination in the design of listen and speak tasks. Nonetheless, before approaching the teaching of oral abilities, Fl teachers should understand THE NATURE OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING. According to Lynne Cameron  (2001), speaking and listening are both active uses of language, but differ in the mental activity involved and demands that they make on learners of language in terms of finding and sharing meaning. Listening   can be seen as the active use of the language to access to other people´s meanings, whereas speaking 

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is the active use of language to express meanings so that other people can make sense of them. Undoubtedly, the students´ construction of understanding requires relying on their previous knowledge and experiences regarding language use. The mental demands in active listening   are clearly meaning-focused instead of language-focused, since they are related to making sense of a message, a song or a story. In the case of understanding a simple story in the FL, children shall construct the general idea of the story (GIST) in their mind without using the FL and would probably be able to resume the plot in their L1. However, it is very likely that these students would not be able to retell that same story in the FL afterwards, as their attention was directed towards meaning, not concrete words or grammatical constructions. Cameron also notes that speaking   in the FL to exchange information with other people requires focusing the attention on the language, because the speaker shall need to use appropriate words and grammar to convey meaning and organize the speech to be understood. In other words, when students listen, the nuances of grammar and discourse can be substituted by other clues (non-verbal language or visual aids); notwithstanding, speaking is more demanding since they cannot avoid those elements. In this sense, speaking is far more demanding that listening. A remarkable role of the teacher to promote listening and speaking is that of ensuring understanding through effective support , so that students can make sense of the FL they deal with, thus facilitating their way to meaning. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) suggests that communicative competence is activated through the performance of language activities involving reception, production and interaction . In interaction  at least two individuals participate in an oral exchange in which production and reception alternate. The development of conversational discourse through negotiation of meaning requires that learners act alternately as listeners and speakers In this light, promoting the learners´ classroom interaction seems the most appropriate way to combine these two skills to parallel real-life situations; however, moving from theory to practice in this issue implies analyzing some features of interaction in the Primary FL classroom. Sabrina Peck (2001) highlights that children need to listen and speak about something that interests them (children centred). Many authors advise the holistic perspective focusing on the child and point out some hints about the matter: Focus on meaning, not correctness. Focus on the value of the activity, not the value of the language. Focus on collaboration and social development. Provide a rich context, including movement, the senses, objects and pictures, and a variety of activities. Treat the learners appropriately in light of their age and interests. • • • •

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Treat language as a tool for children to use for their own social and academic ends. Use language for authentic communication, not as an object of analysis. It is worth noting that   Littlewood  (1981) refers to an additional value of social interaction activities in relation to functional ones, a clearly defined context. In this sense, learners must pay greater attention to the social, as well as the functional meanings that language conveys. It also implies that the activities devised to promote interaction should be closer to the type of communication outside the classroom, where language is also a form of social behaviour. In social interaction activities, the learner is expected to deal with the language according to social and functional considerations; and accordingly, the language produced must also be evaluated in terms of social acceptability as well as functional effectiveness. An example of social interaction activity can be a guided role play in which students try to find the shortest route to a specific point in a town, simulating the social roles involved in the interaction. There is a great deal of classroom social interaction activities as we shall see in subsequent points; however, in considering which ones are more adequate for our students, Littlewood suggests considering the following factors: The linguistic demands of the activity must match the linguistic capabilities of the learners. As they increase their competence, the complexity will be greater. Communication skills can be developed in a specific context and later be transferred to other context of language use. Providing sufficient amount of situations ensures that their communicative needs and most aspects of the FL shall be covered. The situations must be capable of stimulating learners to a high degree of communicative involvement. In this sense, learners are more likely to feel involved in situations where they can see the relevance of what they are doing and learning. Particularly young learners do not have a clear conception of FL needs; therefore, they find greater stimulation in “immediate” situations which appear more familiar to them (i.e. family, friends, school), rather than less familiar ones (i.e. booking a hotel). •

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Nevertheless, understanding a FL is a complex process that starts at the beginning of the second language learning with hearing of FL sounds and develops until comprehension for different purposes is attained, as we are now going to see in the next point.

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3. THE COMPLEXITY OF GLOBAL COMPREHENSION IN ORAL INTERACTION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING. Hearing is different from listening. Hearing refers to the actual perception and processing of sounds; if a student hears the teacher´s instructions in the FL but does not understand, listening has not taken place. According to Michael Rost (2005), listening refers to a complex cognitive process that allows a person to understand spoken language and encompasses receptive, constructive and interpretative aspects of cognition. In the development of a second language, listening represents the channel through which language is processed in real time. Listening can be considered as a complex and active process which involves a combination of sub-processes. Hearing: the auditory perception of acoustic signals, in which the learner hears noises and silences. Categorisation of sounds: categorising incoming sounds according to sound categories of the language.  Word recognition: isolating sounds into linguistic units and extracting their meaning from memory. Comprehension: integrating the meaning of words in a longer sequence (phrase and sentence). Munby  (1978) also considers two sub-skills involved in oral interaction understanding: “Ear-training” skills. The listener has to discriminate sounds and stress patterns within words, recognize variation in stress in connected speech, and understand the intonation patterns (use of tone). These skills are related to getting used to the sounds of the FL, including the information inferred from prosodic features (i.e. when students are asked to follow the plot of a simple story). “Comprehension” skills. Munby distinguishes distinguish between those skills involved in the global, general understanding of oral messages, and those involved in the comprehension of specific information. The application of these skills is put into practice when learners listen for the gist (main idea or communicative value in the oral text) or scan for specific information (i.e. the colour of the clothes that the main character is wearing). There is a frequent distinction between top-down   and bottom-up strategies to face listening. Bottom-down refers to “building a house from individual bricks”, that is, construct the meaning starting from small sound units. In Nunan´s  words (2002), the bottom up processing assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units to complete texts. On the other •

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hand, top-down strategies  refer to getting an overview and perceiving the overall picture of the oral text. This view suggests that the listener actively construct the original meaning of the speaker using sounds as clues. In this process, prior knowledge of the context helps making sense. Both bottom-up and top-down are recognized to be necessary, since it is important to teach the ability to discriminate sounds, but also FL teachers should help learners use what they know to understand oral speech. A relevant theory about the importance of input to improve listening understanding is the “Input Hypothesis” by Krashen (1982). According to this theory, the learners naturally develop their understanding of the language by the comprehension of input that is slightly above their current language proficiency level (i+1). Michael Long´s interaction hypothesis  recognizes the importance of comprehensible input, but claims that it is more effective when it is modifies through the negotiation of meaning, since learners often receive negative evidence   (the interlocutors indicate when they do not understand and can model the FL forms). Although this theory had its critics who considered that this receptive activity alone is not enough for language learning, today it is widely assumed that FLL should contain sufficient amount of listening. More recent views of listening suggest more active and interpretative processes in which the understanding of the message is created by students within specific contexts. However, we need to think of how to plan listening in the primary classroom . Taking theory to more practical terms, FL teachers need to consider some aspects to plan the development of the listening skill in the classroom:  What to be learnt; we have to decide the listening skills to be developed. How to teach; the procedure to follow.  What material to use; we have to make a choice regarding materials according to the linguistic difficulty of the listening text (within the students´ linguistic competence) and the learners´ motivation (enhance a desire for listening).  What activities will be done; they should also be motivating and relevant to the students needs (games, stories, etc.). As we have seen, listening is a complex process, especially demanding for young children. At early stages listening monopolizes much of the time of learners´ tasks, since they have not fully developed written abilities and they may be immersed in the so called “silent period”. The use of formulaic language (routines, greetings, etc.) is essential to help young students feel confident and develop a sense of achievement. An important point for teachers to bear in mind is that children concentrate and listen with understanding more effectively if they are motivated  and engaged in meaningful and enjoyable activities while listening. It is important, therefore, to remember that listening is not a passive activity. Children will be involved in the active process of listening if they see the purpose  of the task. We can do this by using • • •

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activities which actively support learners’ understanding and guide their attention to specific parts of the spoken text. Listening   in the FL class may entail different PURPOSES . Brewster , Ellis  and Girard (2002) describe the following: To physically settle pupils: to calm them down when they are too boisterous. To stir pupils: to stimulate them when they seem bored. To improve general listening attitude:   listen for enjoyment, improve concentration span or develop their memory. To develop aspects of the language:  listening to improve pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, as well as familiarity with new words and structures. To reinforce conceptual development:  some spoken texts, such as stories, can be useful to reinforce concepts (i.e. numbers, cause and effect, etc.) covered in other areas. To interact with others: activities which encourage children to work with others to negotiate meaning. To provide support for literacy: to make connections between spoken and written language.

LISTENING STRATEGIES can help learners improve their ability to understand; therefore, it is essential for the FL teacher to promote these strategies which, in turn, shall lead to a more autonomous type of learning, favouring learning to learn competence . In this sense, intelligent guessing is usually applied by FL teachers who want their students to reflect on the listening task. Some important intelligent guessing strategies are: predicting, by using prompts and clues to encourage them to guess what they think it is going to happen; and inferring meaning from the context, which is much more memorable for learners than receiving an explicit translation. Oxford (1990) refers to direct and indirect learning strategies. DIRECT STRATEGIES  can be divided into: •

Memory strategies: Creating mental linkages: Grouping into meaningful units; associating new language to previous concepts; and placing new words into a context (i.e. a story). Applying images and sounds: Relating new language to previous concepts by means of visuals; using keywords and remembering new information through sound-based association. Employing actions: Physically acting out a new expression, as in Total Physical Response (TPR) (i.e. opening the window).

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Cognitive strategies: All cognitive strategies have in common the manipulation of the target language by the learner. Practising: Repeating, predicting sounds and recognizing patterns. Receiving and sending messages: Using skimming   to distinguish the main idea and scanning for specific information. Analyzing and reasoning: Deductive reasoning (from general to specific); analyzing expression to understand the meaning out of key words; and translating. Compensation strategies: They allow the understanding of new language through inference of meaning despite limitations in knowledge. Guessing: Using linguistic and non-linguistic clues to guess the meaning in the target language. Overcoming limitations: Using mime or gesture, avoiding partial understanding or asking for clarification.

INDIRECT STRATEGIES support FL learning without involving the use of the target language. The most outstanding ones in relation to listening are: Affective strategies, which intend to lower the students´ anxiety through positive feedback and reward, and developing a sense of achievement and acceptance. Social strategies, in which students ask for clarification and cooperate with others. •

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When ORGANISING A LISTENING TASK , it is useful to consider three main stages: A pre-listening   stage in which students can predict or some language is elicited by the teacher. This stage is particularly useful to engage them in the activity and create an interest towards the FL. A while-listening stage that requires active listening, as they should show understanding through specific actions like drawing, doing physical actions, using gestures, completing words, etc. A post-listening stage will finally evidence learning by transferring what has been covered to a different context.

LISTENING

ACTIVITIES:

Littlewood

(1981)

suggests

the

following

classification of listening activities: Performing physical tasks : The learner here must look for specific meanings related to a task which he or she must perform. This encourages selective listening, extracting only relevant information. This is essential to instil the idea that the criterion for success in listening Autor: Mariano Muñoz Pérez

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is not the understanding of every single word, but the construction of meaning to accomplish the communicative purpose of the activity. Possible activities  include:  Identification and Selection  (e.g. bingo, hold a picture then listen to 3 descriptions and choose the corresponding one, etc.); another possible activity is that of Sequencing   (identify successive pictures being described and place them in the correct sequence);  Locating   (to place items not into a sequence, but into their appropriate location, e.g. on a plan of a house or town); Drawing and Constructing   (draw a scene that one listens, or construct a model or pattern using blocks or pieces provided, etc.);  Listening and acting out   (to perform or mime actions as instructed or described, as in ‘Simon says’, etc.) Transferring information : In this kind of activities learners are required to look for specific types of meaning. The learners should extract relevant information from a text  to transfer it to some other form, such as a table, a chart or diagram. Moreover, the information obtained by learners in these activities provides a background for further language activity. For example, after listening to descriptions, learners may be asked to compose written portraits of the people described, or after listening to interviews, they may be asked to interview each other to obtain similar information. At the same time, of course, the prospect of taking part in communicative interaction will also provide students with a strong purpose for listening. Reformulating and evaluating information: The teacher may now decide to give learners a more global task, orientated towards an oral text as a whole. For example, a natural development of the information-transfer activities discussed above is that learners should be asked to reformulate the important content in their own words, in the form of notes or a summary. Apart from the pedagogical factors influencing understanding, like nonlinguistic information or the amount of language that learners must process; Littlewood also points out that to gradually increase the range of understanding, the teacher can consider a series of factors including: Linguistic factors such as complexity and degree of formality. Performance factors such as accent, speed, fluency, and clarity. Situational factors such as background noise and acoustic conditions. The type of text, e.g. dialogues, reports, descriptions, instructions, etc. • • • •

Listening is a complex and active process which precedes speaking and interacts with oral production, as we shall see in the next point.

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4. FROM IMITATIVE TO AUTONOMOUS PRODUCTION. Speaking is a productive skill which involves cognitive processes in which listening is essential. In the act of oral communication, an encoder sends a message to a decoder through the oral channel, using the verbal code within a specific context. This broad definition of the communicative act refers to communication as a social interaction process where mutual cooperation is necessary. The concept of negotiation of meaning, which refers to mutual understanding between the speakers, is thus essential to approach an adequate speaking methodology in the FL classroom. Speaking a foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills due to the natural constraints in oral language; however, it is very likely that social interaction is the most challenging task for FL learners. The theory of communicative competence  (Hymes 1972) and Communicative Language Teaching  (CLT) turned oral communication skills into the focal point in FLT, thus changing prior approaches focused on the development of grammatical competence. In this light, today FL teachers are expected to establish a balance between accuracy and fluency; and students are also encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, developing awareness of their own learning and learning to learn strategies.  Jeremy Harmer (2001) identifies several elements for spoken production: Connected speech: producing individual phonemes in the FL is not enough for effective communication, since the FL learner needs to distinguish modification of sounds such as contractions, elisions or stress patterns. Expressive devices: conveying meaning requires understanding some prosodic features (stress, rhythm and intonation) and non-verbal language devices. Lexis and grammar: the inference of lexical structures through language functions such as expressing agreement, surprise or approval, contribute to facilitate effective communication. Negotiation language: for students it is crucial to be able to ask for clarification and show the structure of what they want to say if they want to be understood. Similarly, Harmer states that the productive ability entails rapid processing skills like language processing (retrieval of words and phrases from memory and their assembly into syntactically appropriate sequences); interacting with others (being able to understand how the interlocutor feels, turn taking, listening and guessing, etc); and information process (rapid processing of the received information). In short, successful oral production   in a communicative context involves developing: The ability to articulate phonological features of the language comprehensibly. Mastery of stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns. •

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An acceptable degree of fluency. Knowledge of basic communicative components (functions, grammatical rules, etc.) Skills in management of interaction. Skills in negotiating meaning. Therefore, oral production involves a lot of active processes and mechanisms on the part of the learner, together with the mastery of oral comprehension. As we have already seen through Krashen´s input hypothesis and Long´s interaction hypothesis, both input and interaction are essential for students to produce oral messages. Moreover, the output hypothesis by Swain (1995) claims that the act of producing language constitutes part of the process of second language learning. Swain outlined three functions of output: the noticing/triggering function  (students become aware of their gaps and problems); the hypothesis-testing function (students reflect and analyse these problems) and the metalinguistic function  (students experiment with new structures and forms). In the way from imitation to autonomous production, the classification of activities established by Littlewood  (2004) is especially relevant. In the language learning process, children go through a series of developmental stages from simple imitation to more complex demands which require developing the macroskill of speaking to bridge the gap between linguistic and communicative competence. Accordingly, Littlewood identifies a set of five types of activities ranging from formfocused to meaning-focused, as follows: Non-communicative learning activities focusing learners on understanding and mastering the formation of meaning and structures. Pre-communicative language practice activities engaging learners in the practice of language with some attention to meaning, but not communicating new messages to others, such as in question-answer practice. Communicative language practice activities, which deal with the pre-taught language in a context where students communicate new information, as in the information gap activities. Structures communication activities in which learners use the FL to communicate in situations which elicit pre-learnt language but with some unpredictability, such as simple problem solving activities or guided role plays. Authentic communication activities in which learners use the FL to communicate in situations where the meanings are out of prediction, such as creative role plays complex problem solving and discussions. The usefulness of this distinction relies on the different contributions to language learning and the fact that they follow the natural route of L1 acquisition, starting from the learning of words to authentic communication in the FL. However, as FL teachers • •

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know, free production is in most of the cases out of reach for children learning a FL in Primary Education, thus the greater amount of activities in this stage shall range from non-communicative ones to structures communication tasks. In general, communicative activities provide learners with the opportunity to communicate meaning for specific purposes. According to Littlewood, there are several contributions of this type of activities to FLL: They provide ‘whole-task practice’. They do not involve separate practice of individual aspects (part- skills), but rather whole-task practice by means of various kinds of communicative activities, structured in order to suit the learners’ level of ability. They improve motivation. The learners’ ultimate objective is to take part in communication with others, thus they will be more motivated if the classroom learning is related to this objective. They allow natural learning. Many aspects of language learning can take place only through natural processes, which operate when a person is involved in using the language for communication. They can create a context that supports learning. Communicative activities provide opportunities for positive personal relationships, which can help to humanize the classroom and to create a positive environment. In these communicative activities, the teacher creates the context and sets the activity into motion, but the learners will be in charge of implementing the interaction. Obviously, this may entail the students working in pairs without constant teacher´s supervision. In other words, as activities advance in their way to autonomous production, students gradually need to develop autonomous work dynamics. Regardless the classification we follow, as Brumfit  (1984) pointed out, FLL should have two main focuses: developing accuracy and promoting fluency, understanding the later as the ability in students to manage the language autonomously and in a meaningful way. In his view, these two focuses were important enough as to receive different pedagogical treatment. Nevertheless, some other authors like Long  (1985) or VanPatten (1996) suggest that some attention should always be paid to meaning, even in activities focused on form. In their view, the children´s holistic type of learning at this stage requires linking pre-communicative activities to meaning, so that students can develop the capacity to use the FL meaningfully. As we have seen, researchers grade the stages from imitative production to the autonomous use of the FL; notwithstanding, this process entails the implementation of different strategies, which is the focus of the next point. •

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5. METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES TO FAVOUR ORAL PRODUCTION. However, how do teachers take these theoretical aspects to practice at early stages? Initially, children benefit from activities requiring repetition since they can memorize vocabulary and chunks of language easily, and acquire pronunciation in a natural way. Naturally this process of oral production emerges after the so-called ‘silent period’, which should be respected until children are ready to orally produce in the FL. In this sense, it is important to give them time to listen and get used to the sounds of the FL before participating. Creating a sense of achievement is particularly relevant at early ages; for this reason it is advisable to begin with simple and familiar concepts that provide them with “take away English”. As we know, when children first meet the FL they tend to measure their advances in terms of the number of words they know. As FL teachers know, we should not design ambitious goals or expect spontaneous use of the language; rather, we must foster the use of formulaic language, language produced as whole chunks and that will be quickly learnt and used with minimum linguistic competence. The repetition of this language will get students to learn it quickly and have the impression that they can speak a lot. According to Brewster , Ellis and Girard , such language consists of: Simple greetings: Hello / How are you? / etc. Routines: What’s the date? / What’s the weather like today? / etc. Classroom language: Listen / Repeat / Sit down / Be quiet / Very good / etc. Asking permission: Can I go to the toilet? / Can I borrow your …? / etc. Communication strategies: Can you repeat that, please? By hearing this language over and over again, children learn to use it and soon realize that certain questions and requests can be made in English. This process will take place at first through imitation of linguistic models provided in the classroom moving towards the autonomous production of English language by the learners. It is also important to find out about our pupils’ previous language learning experience and attitudes  to English. Thus, many language programmes begin with a lesson to help pupils understand why they are learning English. For example, they may be asked to think of famous people who speak English; where English is spoken in the world; they may also be asked to think of any English words they know, such as ‘hamburger, sandwich, tennis, football, jeans, hotel, television, etc. ’. Their attention can be focused on how these words are pronounced in comparison to their own language. • • •

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Following with Littlewood´s  terminology, there are different types of PRECOMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES : •

Structural Practice. It refers to activities that focus entirely on the performance of structural operations, very useful to focus attention on relevant features of the structural system.

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Relating structure to communicative function. These activities refer to the same structural facts, but in more communicatively authentic language. It is therefore possible to distinguish communicative functions and the structure of linguistic forms. P: Does Mary like adventure films? R: yes, she does. Here there is a reply, not only a declarative structure.

Relating language to specific meanings.

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Here the learner adapts his or her language so that it reflects some aspect of non-linguistic reality, such as the concrete situation, a picture, or personal knowledge. P: Shall we play football? R: No, I don´t feel like playing now. Obviously, the realism of this language sustains students´ motivation and seems more appropriate to their communicative needs. •

Relating language to social context

Students must also learn to relate language to the implicit social meanings and to use it as a vehicle for social interaction, and here is when animation and expression techniques play a crucial role as they clearly stress the social component of language learning. In this type, the learner becomes more independent from the teacher and begins to interact in real-life guided situations. With regard to COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES , Littlewood distinguishes between functional communication activities and social interaction activities. FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES imply that the teacher creates a situation for students to overcome an information gap or to solve a problem. We can identify different strategies: Sharing information with restricted cooperation. This type produces simple level of interaction through a gap of information. Some examples can be: Identification of similar pictures with slight differences. Games in which students need to guess the card on their back (“pin on backs”). Discovering sequences or locations, like placing rooms or people doing actions in the plan of a house (in an interactive white board). •

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Discovering missing information or secrets through yes/no questions. Sharing information with unrestricted cooperation. This is the next step towards a more autonomous use of the FL, which offers more realistic patterns of interaction. Some examples are: Communicating patterns and pictures. Discovering differences. Following directions. Sharing and processing information. Here, the goal is to share information and solve a problem. Some examples may be: Reconstructing a story sequence. Sharing information to solve a problem (i.e. which bus do we need to take if we go to a specific place?). Processing information. In this type, students have all the needed information and the focus is on discussion in pairs or small groups. A typical example is the production of an itinerary in London, selecting places to go, times to eat, and the like.

There is a wide range of activities focused on the students using the FL to communicate with a real purpose . To end up this point, we shall briefly refer to some of them: Communication games: They are usually based on the information gap principle and have the advantage of the fun element. In the Flash-Hats game, students in pairs wear a hat with a flashcard on top, so that they cannot see what their card depicts. The procedure consists of making questions alternatively to discover the card. Collective speaking: In this type of activities, students collaborate towards a common goal, as for example in the Sentence round activity , in which students in a circle choose a sentence starter and have to complete the sentence. Simulation and role-play: In these activities students simulate real-life situations and are encouraged to develop oral fluency. Classroom market is an example of roleplay in which the classroom is transformed into set of stalls and students interact assuming the roles of customers and shop keepers. Discussions: Being implemented at a basic level due to the age of our learners, discussions provide a valid framework for students to express their preferences and opinions. Acting out: In these activities, students can be guided to speak in a free anxious atmosphere, as for example in a classroom fashion show , in which dress up using borrowed clothes previously taken to class and others describe what their classmates are wearing according to a script. Surveys: Here, students use the FL to make questions and complete charts and can be done on many topics, like food preferences, pets at home, etc.

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6. CONCLUSION. Throughout this presentation, we have dealt with the complex mechanisms involved in oral skills: Listening and Speaking. We have also seen that it is a long continuum that originates in the hearing of sounds and develops to comprehension and production by means of input, exposure and practice. Similarly, we have seen that the development of oral skills requires following some essential principles, like matching the linguistic capabilities of the students, creating appealing situations to simulate real-life contexts and following a logical sequence from simple to more complex tasks. In general, listening and speaking must be guided towards the goal of the development of the students´ communicative competence, and this requires listening comprehension and contextual speaking. In this sense, we must prepare our students from the very beginning to social interaction activities where they try to say something to another person, to communicate, in a gradually freer way. Hence the importance of Primary Education in getting students accustomed to seeing language as a tool of communication. It is useful for teachers to reflect on the characteristics that communicative activities should have to promote willingness to communicate. In this sense, we shall highlight some weighty principles: motivation, purpose of the task, linguistic preparation before the accomplishment of the task, learning support, personalization and adequate timing. Similarly, the adaptation of teaching techniques to our students´ age, cognitive and emotional development shall ensure success in the process. As it is stated in the curriculum Act RD 1513/06, communicative activities require the use of oral language and a series of strategies which, well implemented, shall lead to the attainment of an autonomous use of the foreign language.

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7. BIBLIOGRAPHY - BREWSTER, J., ELLIS, G. And GIRARD, D. “The Primary English Teacher’s Guide”. 1992. London: Penguin English. New edition 2002. - BRUMFIT, C.J. “Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching” Cambridge University Press. 1984. - CAMERON L. “Teaching Languages to Young Learners” Cambridge University Press. 2001. - COUNCIL OF EUROPE. “Common European Framework of Reference for Languages”. 2001. - ELLIS, R. “Second Language Acquisition”. Oxford, 0.U.P. 1997. - HARMER, J. “The practice of English Language Teaching” Longman. 2001. - LITTLEWOOD, W. “Communicative Language Teaching. An Introduction” Cambridge University Press. 1981. - MUNBY, J. “Communicative Syllabus Design”. Cambridge University Press. 1978. - NEWTON, J. and NATION I.S.P. “Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking”. Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group. 2009. - NUNAN, D. “Listening in Language Learning” in “Methodology in Language Teaching”. Cambridge University Press. 2002. - NUNAN, D. “Methodology in language teaching. A textbook for teachers”. Prentice Hall International English Language Teaching. 1991. - OXFORD, R. “Language learning strategies. What every teacher should know” Newbury house. 1990. - PECK, S. “Developing Children´s Listening and Speaking in ESL” in “Developing English as a Second or Foreign Language” Third Edition. Celce-Murcia. Heinle and Heinle. 2001. - READ, C. “Towards whole learning” in “Creating a Positive and Practical Learning Environment”. Gika ans Superfine, IATEFL. 1998. - ROST, M. “Handbook of Research in Second and Language Teaching and Learning” LEA PUBLISHERS. 2005. - T. LINSE, C. “Practical English Language Teaching: Young Learners”. Macgraw-Hill ESL/ELT. 2005.

LAWFUL REFERENCES. - Ley Orgánica 2/2006, de 3 de mayo, de Educación (LOE). - RD 1513/2006, de 7 de diciembre, por el que se establecen las enseñanzas mínimas de la Educación primaria.

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