Universidad de Guadalajara

Maestra en Enseanza del Ingls como Lengua Extranjera

Module II: Linguistic Description For Foreign Language
Teaching

Reflection 7-1 Language and

Communication.

Tutors Name: Dra. Mara Luisa Arias Moreno

Name: Humberto Marino Ramrez

E-mail: humber_marino@hotmail.com

June 23rd, 2014

 Reflection 7.1
Reflection 7.1
Skim through a recently-published English language textbook that promotes communicative
language learning. Look carefully at the stated objectives, the syllabus type and the types of
learning activities. Check for the roles of learners and teachers using this book and the role of
the instructional materials. How far do these reflect the elements of communicative
competence outlined above?

The book I chose is Living English by Margarita Prieto. The objectives are To enable
students to: describe, express certain things in order to accomplish certain functions in
language like: Expressing Preferences, likes and dislikes, Inviting and responding to
invitations. The type of syllabus is probably a combination of Situational Syllabus, Skill-
based syllabus and Notional/Functional Syllabus because all of the activities involve a
purpose: to use English in order to solve a real life situation by practicing the 4 skills:
reading, writing, speaking and listening.

The book has three moments in each lesson: Living English, Work it out and Hands
On. In the first stage students are exposed to a variety of authentic material like
conversations, web pages or encyclopedia entries, these activities are very engaging
because students can relate to them and are interesting. The second moment allows
students to reflect on the input they have received and are guided to notice patters in the
target language, they also answer exercises to practice the grammar in the authentic texts.
Finally students get to put into practice what they learnt in the previous parts: they get to
produce orally and in writing, they use English to communicate with their peers through
chunks of dialogues related to the topic of the unit.

The role of the learner is to pay attention when the input is being provided and try to
understand, to analyze how language is used through answering exercises and to apply
this knowledge to produce conversations with his classmates. The role of the teacher is to
present the input to students, guide them to find patterns and grammatical parts and to
explain the students what theyre going to produce orally; also, they monitor when students
practice the dialogues. The role of the material is central to this kind of syllabus: to present
the authentic language, to provide grammar exercises and to give ideas of how can all this
be applied to a real conversation.

The first element of communicative competence according to Hymes (1972) (to what
degree something is formally possible) is surely attained because the book presents
expressions both in formal and informal situations: the student is told how to address an
adult: How do you do? and his peers: How are you? The second element something
appropriate to a context is also found in the book that I am analyzing because the present
progressive is used by some children who answer a call from his dad, who asks what they
are doing at the moment. What this book is doing is showing the students an appropriate
moment to use the English tenses as opposed to other books where exercises are isolated
from situations where they can be used.

Something actually performed and what its doing entails This is an element not found in
this book: pragmatics. There are no speech acts, entailments, or second interpretations. If
someone wants to open the window thats exactly what he asks, he doesnt say something
like: Its hot in here and expects the other person to understand he wants to open the
window. If someone wants to say that another person is not acting wisely he says it
literally, he never uses entailments like Congratulations genius, expressing irony with his
words.

Halliday (1978) mentions 7 basic functions that children acquire while learning their mother
tongue and in the book I am analyzing I tried to look for them in the activities presented
with the following results: the main function that this book focuses on is the interactional
one: describing, greeting, writing to friends, talking about New Years celebration or
making invitations. Also the book uses the personal function a lot: he expects the students
to talk about their feelings and convey his personal impressions, the activities are for
example: talking about likes and dislikes, making plans, talking about interesting places.
The other functions that Halliday mentions are rarely used.

In this text I have analyzed the syllabus, activities, and roles of learners and teachers of a
book that uses the communicative approach: Living English. I have contrasted the
activities with Hymes characteristics of the communicative competent speaker and found
out that Margarita Prieto covers the formal/informal part when she tells the students
when to speak formally or informally. She also presents chunks of language and the
context where they are appropriate by teaching the present progressive in a situation
where it might occur in real life. What she doesnt use is speech acts and entailment since
theres always the literal meaning being expressed. She often uses Hallidays
interactional function throughout her book but seldom the other stages that this author
mentions.
Bibliografa
Blonde, K. (2014). Revision:Child Language Acquisition - Speaking. United Kingdom:
www.thestudentroom.co.uk.

Mohseni, M. (2011). An overview of syllabuses in English language teaching. En J. Howell, Syllabi in

English Language Teaching. www.slideshare.net.

Prieto, M. (2011). Living English. Mexico D.F.: McMillan.