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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, among the
capacities to develop in our pupils is to understand and produce easy messages in
a foreign language.
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.
READING BY EAR: we cant read without the phonic element,
thats 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.
We can also talk about READING ACTIVITIES, and are commonly divided
into THREE TYPES: PRE- READING, WHILE READING and POSTREADING 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.
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 wont 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 precommunicative activities to reach out the free composition of
short texts. We have for instance, INFORMATION TRANSFER
However, DELL HYMES thought that Chomsky had forgotten some very
important information about the rules of use, because when a native speaks, he
doesnt only utter grammatically corrects, he also knows WHERE, WHEN, and
to WHOM to use these.
He said that competence by itself is not enough to explain a speakers
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 14th 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.