TOPIC 3 Maestros Inglés Primaria

 

 

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DEVELOPMENT OF THE BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS: LISTENING, SPEAKING, LREADING AND WRITING. THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLSIH.

Good morning, morning, my names is… and the topic I’ve chosen to develop for this exposition is topic number one according to the following index: 1.  Introduction 2.  Oral skills 3.  Written skills 4.  The communicative competence in English 5.  Conclusion 6.  Bibliography and websites 7.  Legislation

1.  INTRODUCTION

Let me start with the introduction… Language is an essential part of being human. We spend an immense amount of time speaking, listening, reading and writing. According to the LOMCE 8/2013, December 9th, and more specifically the Decree 108/2014, July 4 th, the main aim of English Language Teaching is developing students’ communicative competence, which not only refers to the ability to use the language, but also to aspects related to the communicative context. According to the communicative approach, learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. Moreover, learning English make our students able to perceive the diversity of our society, to accept differences as an enriching factor and to develop understanding and tolerance to other cultural identities. Along this topic, we are going to analyse the oral and written skills and how to develop them in the English class, as well well as the communicative competen competence. ce. The intrinsic difficulty

 

of the written medium, along the differences between the oral and written language, means that written understanding and production are introduced later than oral skills, so at basic levels, teachers should keep this sequence: listening-speaking listening-speaking-reading-writin -reading-writing. g.  

2.  ORAL SKILLS The most obvious difference between oral and written language is the physical form: speech uses the form of air-pressure movements and the written language uses graphs that are marks on a surface, and as a consequence, listening is different from reading. Speech is immediate, dynamic, transitory and interactive. Writing is static and permanent, it has unique graphic features, the grammatical structure is more correct and the ideas should be clear. Knowing the differences between speech and writing will allow the teacher to design activities according to the difficulty of the skills that must be developed. Speaking and listening are oral skills; reading and writing are written skills. The intrinsic difficulty of the written medium, along the differences between the oral and written language, means that written understanding and production are introduced later than oral skills, so at basic levels, teachers should keep this sequence: listening-speakingreading-writing. According to Lidfords, oral language is language is a complex system that relates sound to meaning, and is made up of three components: the phonological component, the semantic component and the syntactic component. component involves the rules for combining sounds.   The phonological component involves

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component is made of morphemes, the smallest units of meaning   The semantic component is

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that may be combined to make up words. component consist of the rules that enable people to combine   And the syntactic component consist

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morphemes into sentences. Let’s see the main characteristics characteristics of  of the oral language. First, we could say that the oral language provides expressive possibilities: possibilities: when speaking we can vary the tone, the accent, the speed to underline the most important word of our speech or to show an attitude, our interest, irony or scorn, like when we say great! or grate! or grate!

 

Oral language also let us use gestures and body language, language , which are an important reinforcement of the message. Besides, the spontaneity spontaneity of  of oral language make a person build simple constructions and regarding the degree of speaker’s understanding, we can use pause, repetitions or rephrasing.. rephrasing Finally, oral language includes many incomplete sentences, sentences, with more frequent active forms and forms  and less subordination. Knowing the characteristics of oral language allows the English teachers to design programmes which will develop oral ability in an appropriate way. Besides, the foreign language teacher mustn’t lose sight of the fact that oral communication communication is a two way process between the speaker and the listener. In a conversation, speaker and listener are constantly changing roles. This particular kind of interaction, listen-respond-  listen , is not easy for our young students, so it’s necessary to ensure that the two skills are taught in an integrated way. In order to analyse the oral skills, we will deal first with the listening skills. Listening is Listening  is not a passive hearing of sounds, it is a complex receptive process. Following the natural order model, most pedagogical experts as Stephen Krasen, believe that listening should precede speaking. Clearly, we cannot expect our pupils to produce a sound which does not exist in their mother tongue or using the intonation of a native speaker without first providing them with a model of the form they have to produce. The logical step, then, is to help our students achieve oral fluency by first developing their ability to listening. In general, a listening lesson follows these three stages: the pre-listening stage, the whilelistening stage and the post-listening stage. The pre-listening The  pre-listening stage consist on a preparatory phase where students will be motivated, contextualize and prepared for the listening task. In this stage, we can develop activities such as

  Predicting content from a title.

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  Commenting on pictures of the story.

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While-listening stage is is   when students perform tasks designed to develop listening strategies. These tasks can be extensive or intensive listenings. Extensive listenings are activities for global understanding suc such h as

  Matching pictures.

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  Sequencing a story.

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  Answering true or false or multiple choice questions. o  Following instructions.

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Intensive listenings require a specific search of sounds, words or facts within a context. Some examples of activities would be

  Ear-training activities, to distinguish sounds, stress and intonation patterns.

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  Finding differences between two versions of a story.

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  Labelling.

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  Extracting specific information.

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  Dictations.

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  Completion-type activities where students have to complete a song or a dialogue.

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  Identifying numbers, letters, mistakes, sounds…  sounds… 

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  Game-like activities such as bingo.

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In the post-listening stage, stage, students performs tasks connecting what they have listened to with their experience. For instance, teachers can use some activities such as

  Talking about what they have heard.

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  Role-play.

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  Practising pronunciation.

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  Making a summary.

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  Deducing opinions and attitudes.

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  Deducing meanings from context.

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  Dictation of a part of the texts.

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  Practicing vocabulary and structures from the text.

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Post-listening activities are usually integrated with other skills.

 

Regarding to the speaking skill, it consist of an active process that implies several subcompetences:

  Producing sounds.

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  Expressing elementary grammatical structures.

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  Using language in an appropriate way.

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  Using extralinguistic strategies to help transmit the message.

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In order to achieve this objective, students should go through the next three stages: stages: imitation, practice and free production. After the students have been exposed to a comprehensible input, the first step is the imitation  of a model. In this stage the teacher monitors the imitation t he students’ oral work employing several imitation techniques like choral work, individual work and drills. Donn Byrne suggests the following procedures for choral work :

  Provide a clear model.

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  Select the material for choral repetition.

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  Control the choral responses and the rhyme to follow.

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  Listen out for mistakes.

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  And correct mistakes.

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The steps for following individual repetition are repetition are the same as for choral repetition, but the teacher has more opportunity to pay attention to individual pronunciation problems, intonation patterns or structural mistakes. The use of drills drills in  in the imitation i mitation stage is very useful, since the need to build up confidence while using a new language and practicing intonation and sounds. We can differentiate three types of drills:

  Mechanical drills are drills are the simplest type. ( T: T : I like playing tennis . S: I like playing

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tennis ).

  Substitution drills: drills: the teachers provides the basic pattern and a word for the

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student to use ( T: T : I like apples. Grapes. S: I like grapes  ).  ).

  Tranformation drills are drills are used for practicing changes: from affirmative to negative

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or interrogative, from singular to plural… ( T: He likes cheese . S: cheese ).

He doesn’t like

 

  Meaningful drills consist drills consist on introduce an element of fun in the drill exercise like

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guessing, to motivate them. For instance, in pairs a student have to guess the favourite colour of his classmate: S1: Is it blue? , S2: No , S1: Is  it  red? . After this initial level takes place the practice stage to stage to achieve the correct learning of a structure though activities activities under teacher’s control. Pair work is a very good method to practice in a lively way what has already been learnt. During this stage it is necessary to correct the pronunciation, intonation and grammar structure mistakes. Some of the activities teachers can use in this stage can be:

  Guided dialogues, dialogues, where students practice a model dialogue where some variations

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are possible.

  Making questions, which which  is a simple way of giving the students meaningful