Unit 3.

Development of linguistic skills: oral comprehension and expression and written

comprehension and expression. Communicative competence in English
1. Introduction
2. Development of linguistic skills in the Foreign Language Classroom
2.1. Development of oral communication: listening and speaking
2.1.1. Listening
2.1.2. Speaking
2.2. Development of written communication: reading and writing
2.2.1. Reading
2.2.2. Writing
2.3. Mediation and interaction skills
3. Communicative Competence in English
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography
5.1. Legislation
5.2. Authors
5.3. Further reading

1. Introduction
People can more easily come into contact with other cultures and languages through travel,
communication or new technologies. This refers to globalization of the world which tends to use
English as a world language. This is why it is important to introduce English language learning at a
young age. Furthermore, in the last decades, the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language
(TEFL) has experienced drastic changes triggered by the implementation of the Communicative
Approach whose final goal is the development of Communicative Competence (Hymes, 1972).

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 (Council of Europe, 2001)
provides a valuable framework with methodological guidelines and a common basis for the
description of objectives and content.

We must also consider that our State legislation, Organic Law 3/2020, 29 th December, which
modifies Organic Law 2/2006, 3rd May, on Education and the Royal Decree 157/2022, 1 st March,
which establishes the basic curriculum for Primary Education nationwide, together with the Decree
209/2022, 17th November, which establishes the curriculum for our region, include transversal
elements, active methodologies, Universal Design for Learning and communicative approaches as
the axis on the new programming.

On the other hand, LOE with LOMLOE (LOMLOE from now on) along with Agenda 2030 and
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) point out gender equality, sustainability, diversity awareness,
children's rights and digital knowledge as the pillars on which education must be based.

Considering the topic of this unit it is important to mention that developing communicative
competence enables learners to communicate effectively. This requires knowledge not only of the
linguistic forms of a language but also of when, how and with whom it is appropriate to use these
forms. This is achieved by learning receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and
writing) language skills, as well as mediation and interaction skills.

2. Development of linguistic skills in the Foreign Language Classroom

2.1. Development of oral communication: listening and speaking

2.1.1. Listening
Listening is an oral skill which involves receptive, constructive and interpretative aspects to
understand spoken language. Teachers are key language models, but students also need to be
exposed to other voices through recorded and live materials. This exposure facilitates accurate
language usage and supports effective pronunciation teaching aligning with LOMLOE principles
for developing communicative competence.

It is crucial to bear in mind that students will be actively involved in listening activities if
they understand the task's purpose and they will be motivated if teachers use authentic and
meaningful listening activities (Harmer, 2022).

It is imperative to build our students' confidence in listening learning situations. To do this,

we must teach them listening strategies. The most important are:
- Predicting. We should encourage our students to predict what they think might come next
which is useful to understand the text better.
- Extracting specific information and getting a general understanding. In some
situations, understanding the gist of the message will be enough for communication, in
others, they will have to focus on specific details.
- Inferring opinion and attitude. Stress, intonation and body language will help our
students discover meaning.
- Deducing meaning from context. We should encourage our students to use their
knowledge and the surrounding context to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words.
- Recognizing discourse patterns and markers. Words such as “and, but, then“ give us clues
about what is coming next.

The teacher's role is to create learning situations which help our pupils to be as involved as
possible. Some examples are:
- Listen and repeat with digital tools or the teacher.
- Listen and perform actions/follow instructions.
- Listen and guess, match or classify.
- Listen and extract information.

According to Rost (2015), a listening lesson comprises three stages:

- Pre-listening: the aim is to prepare the students for the task arousing their interest and
curiosity. This will create expectations and a definite purpose for listening.
 - While-listening: it is related to the identification of information while the learner is
listening to a given oral text. This requires active listening, as they should show
understanding through specific actions.
- Post-listening: it refers to the activities we give our students once they have listened to
transfer what has been covered to a different context. The type will depend on the
purpose of the listening.

2.1.2. Speaking
Speaking is a productive oral skill in which listening must be built simultaneously. In the early
stages of language learning, children start speaking by imitating single words and then
combine the learned words creatively in the production of telegraphic speech. Parents and
teachers often complete these utterances and children imitate them.

In addition, they learn formulaic language (simple greetings, routines, classroom

language…), that is, they produce language at sentence level. Very close to formulaic would be
the repetitive language presented in songs, rhymes, stories and games. Finally, children develop
the ability to incorporate new elements and follow the rules of the language to produce spoken
language autonomously (Brewster, Ellis and Girard, 2002).

The usual way to deal with oral production is often divided into three stages: presentation,
practice and production stage.

The presentation stage has the aim of introducing the new language in such a way that
our pupils can realise its relevance and usefulness. To do so teachers must establish a clear,
motivating and relevant context and activate previous knowledge.

After the new language has been presented meaningfully, students need to practice these
items for themselves. In large classes, group or pair work is essential. Some suggestions on how we
could carry it out with our pupils are:
- Guided oral practice. We must build up our pupils’ confidence by ensuring that they have
something to say.
- Meaningful oral practice. Drills must not always be mechanical.
- Extensive oral practice. The more our pupils practice, the better they speak. Here we can
introduce extra words related to the topic.

At the production stage, our pupils will use the language in a free and creative way checking
how much they have learned. We will generally not interfere with our pupils’ productions, so they
must have clear instructions for purposeful tasks. The most common activities include:
- Games.
- Meetings of face-to-face.
- Videoconferences (Skype, Zoom, Meet)
- Role plays/Dramatisations.
- Discussions.
 Although the procedures above follow a logical order, they may overlap or be used more than
once during a learning situation, the aim will remain to develop our pupils’ ability to speak in
English.

Teachers must always recognize the diversity in their classrooms. When teaching speaking
skills to students with language impairments, it is crucial to create a supportive environment,
use visual aids for comprehension, simplify language, provide proper speech modelling and
encourage regular practice.

2.2. Development of written communication: reading and writing

2.2.1. Reading

Reading involves deriving meaning from printed words. In the early stages, reading starts
by recognizing individual words through games and familiarization with letter combinations.
Then, they will read words by matching sounds with letters and later, it moves to decoding
meaning in connected texts. Teachers gradually introduce longer texts based on orally known
words, initially simple with graphic support and as students move along, they will introduce more
complex texts.

Pupils often struggle with written texts due to unfamiliar vocabulary and structures. The
teacher's role is to teach them strategies like predicting, scanning, skimming, inferring opinion
and attitude, deducing meaning from context and recognising discourse patterns. These
strategies, applied to listening, form a basic model for teaching both reading and listening,
according to Harmer (2022).

Reading can be carried out through authentic and non-authentic texts. Authentic texts
are designed for native speakers (newspapers, books, comics) and non-authentic texts are
created for language students (adaptations from books).

Traditionally, students completed gap-filling activities or comprehension questions after

reading a text. However, many other activities can enhance reading:
- Hunting: seek specific information for organising.
- Sequencing: arrange letters, words or sentences.
- Matching: pair pictures with words or sentence parts for meaning.
- Using prompt cards for oral expression.
- Checking and correcting written statements.

According to Graham (2017), a reading lesson comprises three stages as stated by Rost
(2015) for listening: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stage.

Teachers, vital in fostering students' reading interests aligned with LOMLOE, integrate
literature into language teaching to foster personal engagement and enrichment. Literary
texts allow students to go beyond the grammar of the target language. To develop reading
interest, teachers must:
- Act as a model reader.
 - Create diverse literacy environments.
- Choose appropriate texts that offer a linguistic challenge and will be attractive to
learners.
- Foster discussion and social interaction for example through book clubs.
- Involve learners in effective practices like guided reading and comfy reading corners.
- Use reflective practices, observation, and varied assessments to differentiate reading
teaching.

2.2.2. Writing
Writing refers to the act of gathering ideas and working with them until they are presented
in a manner that is comprehensible to readers. Learning to write in English is a parallel process
to reading.

Early stages benefit from copying which enhances handwriting, understanding and
confidence. However, children should only write what they can express orally in English. Writing
tasks must be related to real-life situations and students' levels and interests, avoiding
mechanical production.

There are some stages that the student follows in the writing process. They start with
controlled activities focused on vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation at the word and
sentence levels. Controlled activities at the word level involve tasks such as dictations and
crosswords, while those at the sentence level include tasks like completing sentences or
arranging words in the correct order.

Then, they move to guided and free tasks, which enhance discourse competence, focusing on
paragraph construction, cohesion, coherence and personal writing style. Guided activities limit
creativity as students imitate models or follow guidelines, such as completing stories or writing
speech bubbles and free activities allow students to express their meanings in a creative way
such as creating comics or writing personal diaries.

Different strategies will allow students to progress from controlled practice to freer
production. Some of them are:
- Graphical skills include writing graphemes, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and
format.
- Grammatical skills refer to our pupils’ ability to use a variety of sentence patterns and
constructions.
- Rhetorical skills refer to the pupils’ ability to use cohesion devices to link parts of a text
into logically related sequences.
- Organisational skills involve the sequencing of ideas as well as the ability to reject
irrelevant information and summarize relevant points.
- Stylistic skills refer to our pupils’ ability to express precise meanings in a variety of styles
or registers.

Teachers explore ways to boost written communication. We can do this through the following
written activities:
 - Exchanging letters: students write letters or use digital tools like emails or blogs for
interactive communication.
- Writing games: refers to motivational activities such as writing the description of some
partner and the rest of the class has to guess it.
- Fluency writing: encouraging students to write extensively within a set time improves both
quantity and quality.
- Story construction: each student receives partial information and a narrative is
created collaboratively.

2.3. Mediation and interaction skills

The methodological guidelines in Decree 209/2022 emphasise the importance of linguistic

mediation and interaction in English teaching alongside the oral and written skills discussed
above. These aspects have gained attention in language learning due to significant updates in
the CEFRL which now categorises skills into four modes reflecting real-life communication:
reception, production, interaction and mediation.

Harmer (2022) explains that mediation is the skill that the student develops when trying to
explain a concept to someone else which often results in new meanings and ways of
communicating them. Interaction, on the other hand, refers to the exchange of information
between speakers in a social situation.

3. Communicative Competence in English

The main goal in language teaching is to develop Communicative Competence, as defined by
Hymes (1972) as the ability to form sentences that are not only grammatically correct but also
socially appropriate. It is divided into grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic and
sociocultural.

The aim of FLT to enhance students' linguistic communication competence prompts specific
considerations for FL teachers, including:
- Teacher's role: they must broaden their scope to consider both students' linguistic production
and their ability to use strategies, cultural knowledge, appropriateness in various contexts,
etc.
- Error treatment: viewing errors as indicators of learning, teachers should address them when
impeding communication or occurring regularly.
- Communicative situations: activities should create situations for social interaction,
considering students' age and interests, and emphasizing their utility.

4. Conclusion
We know how important developing communicative competence is in our classroom and this is the
main objective in Foreign Language Teaching as Decree 209/2022 states. That is communicate
using the target language efficiently to exchange information and meanings with other people.
Being able to communicate implies proportional practice in the four skills according to the five
competences. To do so, teachers must create as many motivating situations as possible to develop
these skills and thus successfully teach the foreign language.

On the other hand, technology has been helping in the acquisition of language learning in the
classroom providing students authentic materials and access to endless resources. A large number
of digital applications can be successfully used in the classroom creating a good and motivating
atmosphere.

To end up with the topic we would like to mention a famous quote by Nelson Mandela that says,
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world“.

5. Bibliography

5.1. Legislation
Organic Law 3/2020, of 29 December, which modifies Organic Law 2/2006, of 3 May, on Education.

Royal Decree 157/2022, of 1 March, which establishes the basic Curriculum for Primary Education.

Decree 209/2022, 17th November, which establishes the curriculum for Primary Education in the
Autonomous community of the Region of Murcia.

5.2. Authors

Brewster, J., Ellis, G. and Girard, D. (2002). The Primary English Teacher's Guide. Penguin English.

Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,
teaching, assessment. Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing.

Graham, S. (2017). Research into practice: listening strategies in an instructed classroom setting.
Language Teaching, 50(1), 107-119.

Harmer, J. (2022). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson Longman

Hymes, D. H. (1972). On Communicative Competence in J. B. Pride and J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics.

Selected Readings (pp. 269-293). Penguin.

Rost, M. (2015). Teaching and Researching Listening. Routledge.

5.3. Further reading

www.cnice.mecd.es

www.educarm.es