Tema 2

- LA COMUNICACIÓN EN CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL

Y NO VERBAL.

- ESTRATEGIAS EXTRALINGUÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN

DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS.

Every act that we perform has a communicative purpose. Language is the most complex

system of signs, but it is not the only one: facial expressions, gestures or intonation also

communicate something.

Traditional Foreign Language Teaching focused on teaching items of language in isolation

and its main aim was to read texts. It could be said that people learnt about the language

(learning) but could not use it in a real context, since the focus was not on communication, but

on a piece of language. However, in the last decades, the movement towards a Communicative

Approach has been a remarkable tendency in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language. This

Approach is based on providing the student with enough communicative activities to develop the

oral and written skills needed to use the language with accuracy and appropriateness. This view

focuses on communicative proficiency rather than on the mastery of structures and vocabulary.

Due to the influence of this Approach, our current education system has incorporated this

functional and communicative potential of language in its objectives and methodology, the

ultimate goal being the development of the students´ communicative competence, which at the

same time, is one of the general objectives for Primary Education established by The Organic

Law of Improvement on Education 8/2013 passed on December 9th and in The Royal Decree

126/2014.

Based on this view, the present essay aims to study communication in an EFL classroom and

more precisely, to develop the concept of verbal and non-verbal communication. For this

purpose, I will divide the topic into three main sections. In the first part, I will deal with the

concept of communication. In order to do so, I will briefly provide a definition of

communication. Then, I will address the types and the nature of communication. In the second

part, I will deal with communication in the classroom by developing the concepts of

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Communicative Approach and verbal and non-verbal communication. In the third part, I will

explain the Total Physical Response Method developed by James Asher, which puts the

emphasis on the role of movement in connection with learning.

We deal with an essential topic since communication is the basis of understanding among

human beings. In addition to that, the Foreign Language Curriculum for Primary Education

emphasizes the significance of this topic by including in its objectives, blocks of contents and

assessment criteria the development of oral and written communication, including strategies to

support listening, speaking, reading and writing.

FIRST

To develop the topic, I will deal with the communication theory. For this purpose, I will firstly

present the definition of communication. Second, I will discuss the main types of

communication.

Finally, I will attempt to identify the nature of communication.

Traditionally, communication has been defined as the exchange of meanings between

individuals through a common system of symbols . Communication refers to the transmission of

information (a message) between a sender and a receiver, using a signalling system.

After having discussed the definition of communication, let us deal with the different types

of communication.

Communication can be either verbal or non-verbal. On the one hand, verbal communication is

carried out through symbols known as words and it can be either oral or written. On the other

hand, non-verbal communication is in Geoffrey Finch´s words “communication that takes place

other than through words”.

As we can see, there are many forms of communication and language is just one of these

forms. All these are the subject matter of semiotics which is the general theory of signs and

symbolism. In this light, Crystal developed the following aspects of semiotics which are related

to language according to its nature:

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  Firstly, Auditory-vocal: speech, musical effects and voice qualities.

 Secondly, Visual: sign languages, writing codes and Kinesics.

 Thirdly, Tactile: deaf and blind languages, secret codes and Proxemics.

 Lastly, Olfactory and gustatory: Communication through smell and the symbolism of food

and taste.

As Crystal argued, some of these aspects have a linguistic nature, such as speech, deaf and

blind sign languages, and written languages. The communicative use of the visual and tactile

modes in their non-linguistic aspects is referred to as non-verbal communication or body

language.

Now that the types of communication have been established, I will go on to address the

nature of communication. Communication between humans is a very complex phenomenon which

involves many variables, such as the participants, the context and the purpose. Whenever

communication takes place, there is a speaker (or writer) and a listener (or reader) and they

both have a communicative purpose which can be having a conversation or greeting each other.

Scholars have found certain characteristics which seem to apply in every situation. In

addition, if we want our teaching to be really communicative, these characteristics must be

followed. On the one hand, I assume with Jeremy Harmer that when one person speaks:

1. He wants to speak (he wants to say something)

2. He has a communicative purpose (he says certain things because he wants something to

happen as a result of what he says)

3. He selects from his language stores (he has an infinite capacity to create new

sentences, because as Noam Chomsky advocated in his Generative Grammar, “with a finite

set of elements, a speaker can create an infinite number of utterances ”)

On the other hand, I also assume that when a person listens:

1. He wants to listen to something.

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 2. He is interested in the purpose of what is being said.

3. He processes a variety of language.

Thus, when organizing communicative activities in the classroom, teachers must ensure that

the activities that the students are involved in share the process I have just described, that

means that the students should have a desire to communicate, have a communicative purpose

and deal with a variety of language, either receptively or productively.

To finish off this section, notice that these factors were not traditionally taken into account

when designing language learning activities. It is only with the advent of the Communicative

Approach to language teaching that real communication enters to classroom.

SECOND

Now that the concept of communication has been developed, I will go on to develop the second

part of the topic, that is, communication in the classroom, where both verbal and non-verbal

communication take place. First, I will deal with the evolution of the Communicative Approach

and how the Communicative Competence is central in nowadays education. Then, I will deal with

the verbal communication: in order to do so, I will explain the Communicative Language Teaching

method, and the activities used in the classroom as well as the teacher and learner´s roles.

Then, I will highlight the importance of the non-verbal communication and I will illustrate the

Total Physical Response method.

First, I will present the origins of the Communicative Approach that changed language

teaching methods. This approach is one of the principles on which foreign language methodology

is based on at the moment. In the 1970s, humanistic psychology theories started to be

introduced for educative purposes. This changed the main aim of the education: from “teaching”

to “learning” and from “teacher” to “learner”. As a result of this, the Communicative Approach

came up, and its first representation was the Communicative Language Teaching. The worldwide

importance of this approach was due to the increasing interest of the Council of Europe in the

communicative competence and the necessity to develop procedures aimed to teach the four

language skills.

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 Apart from the already mentioned humanistic theories, Linguistics studies suffered a

revolution. Some scholars, the best known of them is Dell Hymes, set up the concept of

Communicative Competence, which is the ability to use a language in an appropriate way. This

concept was deliberately contrary to Chomsky´s Linguistic Competence, who tried to explain

how a child learns a language. 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. According to him, a speaker does

not only need the ability to use grammatical structures, but also to learn how to use those

structures in a community (appropriateness). In other words, Hymes stated that in order to

learn a language, a native speaker does not only need to utter grammatically correct forms (as

Chomsky thought), he also has to know the rules of use, that is, where and when to use a

sentence, and to whom. Thus, Hymes replaced Chomsky´s notion of Competence with his own

concept of Communicative Competence, and distinguished four aspects, all of which refer to

native speakers:

 Systematic potential: A native speaker possesses a potential for creating language.

 Appropriacy: A native speaker knows what language is appropriate in a given situation, in a

particular context.

 Occurrence: A native speaker knows how often something is said in the language and act

accordingly.

 Feasibility: A native speaker knows whether something is possible in the language, although

some structures are grammatically correct, they are not possible in the language.

These four categories have been adopted for teaching purposes.

Later on, linguists Canale and Swain expanded the previous description of Hymes, establishing

five subcompetences of the Communicative Competence. As a result of this, Communicative

Competence for Foreign Language Learners comprises five subcompetences:

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  Grammar competence: It refers to the ability to put into practice the linguistic units

according to the rules of use established in the linguistic system, for instance, the mastery

of grammatical structures and vocabulary.

 Discoursive competence: The ability to us different types of discourse and organise them

according to the communicative situation and the speakers involved in it, using cohesion and

coherence.

 Sociolinguistic competence: The ability to adequate the utterances to the specific context

according to the accepted usage of a particular linguistic community.

 Strategic competence: The ability to define or make adjustments in the course of the

communicative situation, and the capacity to use verbal and non-verbal strategies in order

to make communication effective.

 Sociocultural competence: A certain knowledge of the social and cultural context in which

the Foreign Language is used.

The concept of Communicative Competence is also present in our education system. The

Organic Law of Improvement on Education 8/2013 passed on December 9 th highlights the

importance of developing both oral and written skills in the three different cycles of Primary

Education. More precisely, The Royal Decree 126/2014 passed on February 28h divides the

contents into four blocks which are listening, speaking and conversing; reading and writing;

knowledge of the language; and sociocultural aspects and intercultural awareness. All these

contents aim to help Primary students become communicative competent in the FL.

After having analysed the foundations of the Communicative Approach, I will focus my

attention on the concept of verbal communication and the Communicative Language Teaching

Approach.

Verbal communication is carried out through symbols known as “words”. It is the process of

sending and receiving messages with words, including oral, writing and sign language. It is

intended to develop the ability of a language-user to produce not only a linguistically correct

speech utterance but also a communicative appropriate utterance as well.

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 In this light, it is important to know the Communicative Language Teaching approach

developed by Wilkins. This approach has been the major teaching approach since the early 80´s

and it organizes the contents to teach around notions (that are concepts the learner needs in

order to communicate) and functions (speech acts of the communicative functions).

According to Hadley, the main characteristics of the Communicative Language Teaching are:

 Meaning and contextualisation are basic principles.

 Learners are encouraged to communicate from the beginning of the instruction.

 Activities and strategies for learning are varied according to learner´s preferences and

needs

 Communicative Competence is the goal of the instruction.

As regards to the activities within this approach, also applicable to the rest of communicative

methods, according to Harmer, they should have the following characterisitics: they should

raise the desire to communicate; have a communicative purpose; be based on content, not form;

use a variety of language; have no teacher intervention and no material´s control.

Next, I will focus my attention on the teacher and learner´s roles in the Communicative

Language Teaching.

o On the one hand, the teacher should modify the curriculum content in order to adequate

it to his/her students´ level, keep the motivation of his/her students, attend the

individual differences of the learners and organise the learning experience carefully and

in advanced. Moreover, in the Communicative Approach, the teacher´s roles contrast with

the authoritarian roles of traditional teaching. In this sense, the teacher is an informant,

a facilitator, a participant and a monitor in the classroom.

o On the other hand, due to the learner-centred teaching, the student´s role has changed

within the last years. In this sense, students do not learn in an individualistic way, but in

an interdependent way. The emphasis is therefore on the process of communication and

not on the mastery of language forms: successful communication can only be achieved

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 through group interaction. Moreover, in the Communicative Approach, the learner´s roles

also differ from traditional language teaching. Learners were seen as stimulus-response

mechanisms whose learning depended upon repetitive practice. Today, this passive role

has become an active one, in the sense that the learner is more involved in his/her own

learning process and that his opinion, feelings and motivation are taking into account.

Now that we know a little bit more about verbal communication and the Communicative

Language Teaching, it is important to note that communication is not purely verbal.

Communication uses a whole set of paralinguistic devices such as gestures, body

movements, paralanguage, proxemics, etc. We could say that, while linguistic abilities may

operate on a verbal layer, communicative abilities operate on both the verbal and the non-

verbal layers. For this reason, I´m going to present the notion of non-verbal communication,

which Geoffrey Finch defined as “communication which takes place other than through

words”.

For years, non-verbal communication has been neglected in the teaching of languages.

However, nowadays its importance is recognized, because:

 It helps to express and to understand messages, when the Communicative Competence is

not very high.

 It favours sociolinguistic competence.

 It is highly attractive and motivating for children.

In the English class, we can use the following non-verbal language:

 Gestures and body language: It is also called non vocal because the human voice is not

involved. It includes facial expression, posture, eye and hand movement…for instance

point to objects or use fingers to count numbers.

 Physical movements: There is a theory in the teaching of languages called Total Physical

Response by James Asher, based on the theory that a child acquires language by listening

and executing command from adults, such as “stand up” or “sit down”.

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 Accent and intonation: It is also called vocal because they are aspects of the language

which accompany the words we pronounce.

 Visual aids: Visual aids have two functions: to shorten the gap between the real world

and the classroom and to help the students to understand the message. As the saying

goes “One image is worth a thousand words”.

 Auditory aids: Such as sounds or noises, have great communicative power, just like visual

aids.

THIRD

In recent times, certain attempts have been made to use extralinguistic responses to

linguistic messages in the language classroom. The best known is the Total Physical Response

method. I will focus on its main features, how a T.P.R. based curriculum works and, finally,

the teacher and learner´s role in this method, in which the non-verbal communication is

predominant.

The Total Physical Response method, developed by James Asher, is related with the

educational and psychological development, language teaching and humanistic pedagogy. Its

main aim is to teach oral proficiency through physical activity at a beginner´s level.

The main features of T.P.R. method are:

 Comprehension precedes production in learning a language.

 The teaching of speaking should b delayed until comprehension skills are established.

 Teaching should emphasise on meaning rather than on form.

 Teaching should minimise learner stress.

The general objective of the TPR is to teach oral proficiency through physical activity at a

beginner´s level. A few examples of command students respond to in a relatively early

training will serve to illustrate this methodology:

 Listening Training: students sit in a semicircle around the teacher. The teacher asks

them to be silent, listen to a command in English, and then, do exactly what he does.

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  Production: After about ten hours of training in listening, students are invited but not

pressured to reverse roles with the instructor and give their own commands in English.

 Reading or writing: At the end of each class, students copy the expressions in their

notebooks.

Regarding the role of the teacher and the learner, according to Asher, the teacher is the

director of a play and the students are the actors. In this sense, the teacher will have to

use gestures and mime actions in order to enable the students to fully understand what we

want them to do. As it is also stated by Stephen Krashen in the Input Hypothesis taken from

his Monitor Model, one of our main objectives is to provide children with as much

comprehensible input as we can while they are doing an enjoyable activity. Students have the

primary roles of listeners and performers.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to remark that, as I have proven in this topic, communication

plays a vital role in almost every aspect of our lives. People communicate with others almost

all the time either verbally or non-verbally.

We as teachers should be aware of the importance of both verbal and non-verbal

communication in the classroom and how we can maximize verbal and non-verbal items to

encourage children to infer meaning and use all sorts of extralinguistic strategies to

improve communication.

By means of meaningful, motivating activities which use aspects such as body movement,

gestures, objects, the five senses and so on, we can motivate students to believe that

communicating in the foreign language is within their reach.

In this topic, I have presented the concept of communication and its main types. Then, I

have developed the Communicative Approach and how it has influenced our current education

system. After that, I have focused on verbal communication and the Communicative Language

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Teaching Approach developed by Wilkins. Finally, I have highlighted the importance of non-

verbal communication and I have illustrated the TPR method developed by James Asher.

In order to develop this topic, the following bibliography has been used:

 Crystal, D. “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language” Cambridge University Press

1997.

 Dell Hymes “On Communicative Competence in Sociolinguistics” Penguin, London,

1972.

 Harmer, J. “The Practice of English Language Teaching” Longman, London 1983.

 Asher, J. “ Learning another language through actions: The Complete teacher´s

guide book” Los Gatos, Cal. Sky Oaks Production 1982.

 BREWSTER, J. et al. (2003): The Primary English Teacher‘s Guide. Penguin English.

HARMER, J. (2003): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.

LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. (2003): Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching.

Oxford University Press.

 VARELA, R. et al. (2003): All About Teaching English. Centro de Estudios Ramón

Areces.

 Organic Law of Improvement on Education 8/2013 (LOMCE) passed on December

9th
 Royal Decree 126/2014 passed on February 28h which establishes the minimum
requirements of Primary Education nationwide.
 Decree 2016 passed on July 21th which establishes the curriculum in Primary
Education and the evaluation in The Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon.
 Decree EDU/593/2018 passed on May 31th which establishes the
attention to diversity in The Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon.
 Decree EDU / 1330/2009 passed on June 19th, which established the teaching
of the second foreign language in the third cycle of primary education, in schools
supported by public funds in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León.

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