UNIT 3: LINGUISTIC SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: ORAL COMPREHENSION

AND EXPRESSION, WRITTEN COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

INDEX:

1. Introduction

2. Linguistic skills development

2.1 Concept and classification
2.2 Four skills integration
2.3 Oral and written language

3. Receptive skills

4. Productive skills

5. Communicative competence in English

6. Epilogue
6.1 Bibliography
6.2 Webgraphy
6.3 Legal Frame
6.4 Conclusion
2. Linguistic skills development

2.1 Concept and classification

Learning a language in Primary Education is usually delivered in the classroom following an

established belief regarding the order of language acquisition: listening, speaking, reading
and writing. These four skills follow this established order because it means that the child
experiences language before reproducing it and experiences it in the oral form before the
written form. Learning a language is all a slow process.

Our current educational system establishes in Royal Decree 157/2022, 1st March, and in
Decree 106/2022, 5th August, of the Valencian Community, 7 specific competencies, 4 of
which are directly related to linguistic skills. These are:

- Specific competence 2: oral comprehension (listening)

- Specific competence 3: written comprehension (reading)
- Specific competence 4: oral expression (speaking)
- Specific competence 5: written expression (writing)

These can be grouped in different ways. Oral production and comprehension, relating to the
oral medium, and written production and comprehension relating to the visual medium.
Speech and writing involve production on the part of the language user, which is why they
are called productive skills. Listening and reading are receptive skills.

2.2 Four skills integration

The use of English as a communicative process must be done through the four main
linguistic skills. As Harmer states, any one of the four English language skills is rarely
performed in isolation; when people engage in conversation, they are listening as well as
speaking, in order to interact with their interlocutor.

In order to achieve a proper language, we must take into account that children learn in a
natural way. This means that we present the language orally; the child listens, then we ask
the children to produce this language orally; the child speaks, then we present the language
in the written form; the child reads and finally we ask them to reproduce that language in the
written form; the child writes.

Consequently, integrating English language skills in a lesson is a natural process of

skill-mixing that facilitates teachers “to provide maximum learning opportunities for the
different students in classes, it makes sense to integrate different skills” (Harmer, 2007)

So, when we make use of activities that have been specially designed to incorporate several
language skills simultaneously (reading, writing, listening, and writing), as the Common
European of Reference for Language state.They provide their students with situations that
allow for well-rounded development and progress in all areas of language learning.

2.3 Oral and written language

Now, we will move into another important aspect of this unit, which deals with the main
differences between oral and written language. Nowadays both oral and written language
are studied with their own characteristics and uses, as two sides of one coin that is
communication.

Oral language is believed to be one of the vehicles for human evolution, and it’s the most
extended form of language. Nevertheless written language has been widely studied while
spoken language remains behind. Until the 19th century, written language (reading and
writing) was more important and prestigious than oral language (listening and speaking) . It
was in the 20th century when a new approach regarded oral language more important than
writing, because of the age of use, the natural way to be developed and the fact that written
language is a transcription of the sounds of speech.

Apart from that, these days that technology controls everything that we do, it also manages
the process of communication.Technology has introduced new ways of communicating,
such as email, instant messaging, and video conferencing. It has also entered our schools,
contributing to the improvement of the quality of education, like a revolutionary change. To
get so, it is important to take into account a series of characteristics that make oral language
different from the written one.

Some of the characteristics that present it are gestures and body language to reinforce the
transmission of the message. Moreover, oral language is more expressive than written, and
has huge expressive possibilities. Another characteristic is that oral language contains
simple constructions. Apart from that, the use of pauses, repetitions, hesitations and
rephrasing in oral language are different according to the degree of the speaker's
understanding such as the feedback produced.

On the other hand we have written language, which evolved independently at different times
in several parts of the world. In written communication we use graphic symbols that are
completely different in many countries but the main purpose is the same; express ideas and
experiences and exchange meanings between individuals.
Written language is mainly characterized by its precision because the written form takes
more time for its preparation given that it contains more structures expressions and
sentences, clarity because the written language has to be clear enough for the reader to
understand if we want to create feedback, the use of unique graphic features such as
punctuation or spelling and its formal language to provide a standard valued by society.

So, what are the differences between oral and written language? We can state that while
oral language is immediate, interactive, dynamic and transitory, writing is permanent and
static. Besides, oral language uses a phonic substance, typically in the form of air pressure
movements while writing uses a graphic substance, typically in the form of marks on a
surface.

To finish with this part, we must keep in mind that language is a structured system of
symbols that is always undergoing transformations. Therefore, it is a process that must be
acquired with time, patience and quality. As the Chinese proverb says "To learn a language
is to have one more window from which to look at the world".

3. Receptive skills

As we have mentioned,the process of learning English is slow and progressive and it could
be interpreted as a series of challenges to face. This process consists of the development of
certain skills. According to the CEFRL, these are divided into receptive and productive. At
this point we are going to see receptive skills that englobe reading and listening. The
reason? easy, because when we listen and read something we receive the language,
understand and decode the meaning.

On one hand, listening is receiving language through the ears. It involves identifying the
sound of speech processing them into words. Like babies, we learn this skill by listening to
people who already know how to speak the language. For practice, the students can listen
to live or recorded voices and with this work they can become fluent speakers in English,
developing strong listening skills.

On the other hand, reading is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and
getting meaning from them. We use our eyes to receive written symbols like letters,
punctuation marks and spaces and we use our brain to convert them into words, sentences
and paragraphs that communicate something to us. Reading is therefore a highly valuable
skill and activity, and it is recommended that English learners try to read as much as
possible in English.

Therefore, in order to understand an oral or written text, students should develop some
listening and reading strategies:

- Extensive listening/reading: the purpose is to acquire a general comprehension in

the flow of natural language. It is also called skimming. For example, when students
skim a text looking for vocabulary keywords.

- Intensive listening/reading: it consists of short passages with concrete information,

children must recognize information or sounds in a very concrete and controlled way.

- Predicting or guessing: students can guess what is to come next in listening or

reading, using the grammatical, logical and cultural clues that they previous know.
For example, they can predict what is going to be the final of the story by stopping
after each sentence in a passage to make students predict what is likely to come
next.

However, regarding listening, students should be trained in two more strategies:

- Ear-training skill: children must recognize sounds, phonemes, stress and

intonation.
- Storing information: in their memory given that oral language is not permanent but
transitory. When they listen to someone speaking, they have to remember what they
have listened to so that they can answer the question, for instance.

Consequently, a listening or reading comprehension lesson should follow three stages:

1. Pre-listening/reading stage: In this phase we help our students to prepare for what
they are going to hear and give them a good chance of success in any given task.
The aim is to create a desire to read or listen to the content.
2. While-listening/reading stage: in this stage students perform tasks designed by
teachers. Is a series of activities that students do while listening or reading a passage
in order to show their understanding of what was heard or read. The aim is to give
students the purpose to achieve it.
 3. Post-listening/reading stage: this is follow-up work and not listening or reading as
such. The objective of this stage is to provide practice of the target language.It
consists of a task whose main aim is to help students reflect on the listening and
reading experience. These activities have to be carried out after we have done
pre-listening/reading and while-listening/reading.

To conclude this point, it should be noted that this explanation of each stage is only a
glimpse of what it is really all about, and therefore will be discussed in more depth in topics 7
and 8.

4. Productive skills

Now let’s explain the two skills we are missing: speaking and writing. Productive skills are
defined by Jaramillo and Medina (2011) as an important form of expression used to
persuade or convince other people as well as to share ideas and feelings. They are crucial
as they give students the opportunity to practice real-life activities in the classroom.

Teaching speaking is vital and a good command on speaking skills develop a real sense of
progress among learners and boosts their confidence. It involves many components, such
as grammar, strategy, sociolinguistics and discourse; for him speaking is more than simply
making the right sounds, choosing the right words or getting the constructions correct. So
because of this, maybe this is why it is considered the most difficult skill and one of the most
important. So as teachers our job is to motivate them and encourage them to speak up.

In addition, the stages to be followed are also important. In order to reach fluency in oral
expression, they should follow three stages:

1. Imitation stage: students, after being exposed to comprehensible input, imitate and
produce language in repetitive activities as songs and rhymes.

2. Practice stage: is focused on teacher and students working and interacting together
to put the new material into practice. In this stage, activities are controlled by the
teacher so that they can correct pronunciation, intonation and grammar structures
among others.
 3. Free production stage: students have to put into practice autonomously what they
have learned in a creative way. The teacher can observe what the students have
learned and which of them need additional support. At this stage, the language
assistant can play a good paper in terms of helping them to manage the activity. For
example, the teacher may get the students to imagine that they are all on holiday,
and they must say what each of them does.

Moreover, teaching writing is important because written communication is a basic life skill.
Students may need to take notes, fill in forms, and write letters, reports, stories etc. Many
need to fill in detailed questionnaires relating to health, education and employment.
Sufficient ability of writing skill gives one confidence and marks his expertise on a particular
language.
As we know , technology has introduced new ways of communicating, such as email or
instant messaging. So the development of new communication and ICT have an enormous
impact on the development of the language system, including the written discourse.
Moreover, students love writing using new technologies such as Texting Story, an app to
creat chat stories. This type of activity improves the learner’s English writing without even
noticing they are.

In addition, writing requires a lot of practice and it is a slow ability to acquire. In Primary
Education, students learn how to write in a guided way. Hence, the procedure in a written
expression lesson should be the following:

1. Copying stage: first of all the students are learning how to understand and how to
make himself understood through the spoken medium. Due to this, our objectives
must be modest, we must introduce tasks which demonstrate that writing can be
used communicatively. An example of activity can be “Relaying instructions” where
one group of students has information for the performance of a task, and they have
to get another group to perform the same task by giving them written instructions.

2. Practice stage: at this stage it is essential to ensure that our students retain the
feeling of making progress. In order to reach this aim the writing programme should
continue to provide opportunities for reinforcing language learning orally but a greater
range of the resources of the written language should be included. A good example
of activity can be, “Describe and Identify” where students write descriptions of people
and places, the rest of the class has to guess who or what places are.
 3. Production stage: in this stage, students use sentences and text structure to write
short meaningful texts. For example, learners have finished an animal project and
now they have to invite their families to see the great work they have done, so they
write an invitation with basic information like when, where and at what time is the
animal project presentation.

To conclude this point, it is important to take into account that if we want our students to
acquire the four linguistic skills properly, it is necessary to serve students from an inclusive
point of view, applying the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles promoted by the
current law, as stated in Decree 104/2018, 27th July, reinforced by Order 20/2019, 30th
April.

5. Communicative competence in English

The Organic Law 2/2006, 3rd May, of Education (LOE), modified by the Organic Law 3/2020,
29th December (LOMLOE) places Key Competences at the center of the learning curriculum
since they include knowledge, skills, and attitudes that the students need to be able to face
the challenges of the 21st century, such as linguistic and cultural diversity, situation
management, dialogic conflict resolution, and social and personal bonds based on respect
and equality.

Students at the end of the Primary Education stage are expected to know at least one
foreign language, in addition to the familiar ones, in an adequate way for the learning of
communicative competence and multilingual competence which are fundamental for the
stage.

As teachers, how can we promote the acquisition of communicative competence by our

students? Simple, using the Communicative Approach. The Communicative Approach,
further developed in topic 3, emerged in the 1970s as a reaction to the Audiolingual
Method which paid attention to the structure of language rather than to its function.

The American sociolinguist Dell Hymes established a new concept in language theory which
complemented Halliday’s functional view: the communicative competence. This is defined as
what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech
community. Hymes coined this term in contrast to Chomsky’s theory of competence. For
Chomsky, competence simply implied the knowledge of the language system. Hymes
maintained that Chomsky’s theory was incomplete, and that a communicative and cultural
dimension should be incorporated. Hymes stated that a speaker does not only need the
ability to use grammatical structures, but also to learn how to use those structures in a
community. A few years later, the linguists Canale and Swain (1980) expanded the
description of Hymes establishing four dimensions of the communicative competence
(grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic
competence), being added later another one: the sociocultural competence.

So, knowing the importance of communicative competence, teachers must carry out
activities in the classroom based on the learning of the specific competences of the foreign
language area established by Royal Decree 157/2022 and these activities must focus on the
message and not on the linguistic features. All this, in the activities there must be an
interaction on the part of the students, with a motivating theme for them and feel comfortable
and close to it, so that the communication process is carried out efficiently.

As this is the only time of exposure to the language in most of the cases, so we need to
favor a similar context to the mother tongue context learning, always promoting real
communicative interactions.That's why we insist that they use English whenever they can.
Speaking in small groups makes them feel more confident and using games such as
dialogues or picture situations and free production games such as role-plays or students
talking about themselves promote the main objective; oral fluency.

Furthermore, it is natural that to enhance the so called communicative competence, we need

to develop the skills and specific competences in an integrated way. In the case of writing it
is because of the absence of feedback from the receiver, so we have to compensate for the
absence of some linguistic and non-linguistic features. In the case of speaking because of
many factors that can produce comprehension breakdowns, for this reason it is vital to
provide different types of presenting the language and of practicing it through learning
situations.

To sum up with this point, it is important to keep in mind the importance of creating a real
communication atmosphere in our classroom, which allows us to acquire the communicative
competence and develop the intercultural awareness, as the Decree 106/2022 establishes.

6. Epilogue
 6.1 Bibliography

- Willian Littlewood (1981)Communicative language teaching.

- Stern, H.H. Foreign Languages in Primary Education. UNESCO Institute for
Education. 1963.
- Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.
- Aydogan, A. (2014). The Four Basic Language Skills , Whole Language & Integrated
Skill Approach in Mainstream University Classrooms.
- Oxford, R. (2001). Integrated skills in ESL/EFL Classroom. ESL Magazine.

6.2 Webgraphy

- www.://education.ec.europa.eu the importance about key competencies and

communication act in class
- www.schooleducationgateway.eu I extracted ideas about the importance of
communicating in foreign languages.
- www.monografias.com/integrated-skills/ I extracted information about the integrated
skills

6.3 Legal Frame

- Organic Law 3/2020, of 29th December which modifies the Organic Law 2/2006 of
3rd May of Education.
- Royal Decree 157/2022 of 1st March that establishes the basic curriculum for the
stage of Primary Education.
- Decree 106/2022 of 5th August, development of the curriculum of Primary Education
in the Valencian Community.
- Common European Framework of Reference for Languages 2001 which provides a
method of learning, teaching and assessing which applies to all languages in Europe
(Updated by Companion Volume 2020).
- Law 4/2018 February 21st about multilingualism Law of the Valencian Educational
System
- Decree 104/2018 July 27th for the Principles of Equity and Inclusion in the Valencian
Educational System.
- Resolution June 27th 2023, which approves instructions for organization and
operation of schools during 2023-2024 school year.