TOPIC 3

DEVELOPMENT OF THE LINGUISTIC SKILLS: ORAL COMPREHENSION

AND EXPRESSION, WRITTEN COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION.
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. JUSTIFICATION
1.2. LEGAL FRAMEWORK

2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE LINGUISTIC SKILLS: ORAL COMPREHENSION AND

EXPRESSION, WRITTEN COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION

2.1. LINGUISTIC SKILL DEVELOPMENT

2.2. ORAL COMPREHENSION: LISTENING

2.3. ORAL EXPRESSION: SPEAKING AND INTERACTION

2.4. WRITTEN COMPREHENSION: READING

2.5. WRITTEN EXPRESSION: WRITING

3. THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

3.1. COMPONENTS

4. CLASSROOM CONTEXT

4.1. METHODOLOGY

4.2. KEY COMPETENCES

5. CONCLUSION

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. JUSTIFICATION

According to the current Educational Law, LOMLOE/2020, the main aim of the foreign language (FL)
area is the acquisition of communicative competence.

Communication is the foundation of all human relations. The appropriate use of language as
communication is the basis to success in life as it helps us to better understand a person or situation, socialize,
solve differences, and build trust and respect.

To achieve it, it is essential to develop the four linguistic skills in an integrated way: listening,
speaking, reading and writing.

1.2. LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The didactic application of this topic is based on the current Spanish and Andalusian Educational
Law, LOE/2006 and LEA/2007, and its state and regional documents:

STATE REGULATIONS

- ROYAL DECREE 126/2014 which establishes curriculum of Primary Education

- ORDER ECD 65/2015 which describes the relationship between competences, content and
evaluation criteria

- ROYAL DECREE 984/2021 which regulates evaluation and promotion.

REGIONAL REGULATIONS

- DECREE 97/2015, which establishes the Andalusian PE curriculum

- DECREE 181/2020, which modifies Decree 97 in terms of autonomy, organization and attention to
diversity.

- Order of January 15th/2021, which develops the FL curriculum

- Instructions of March 8th/2017, which updates the protocol of detection and action for students with
educational attention needs.
2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE LINGUISTIC SKILLS: ORAL COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION,
WRITTEN COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION

Skill, according to Canale, refers to how well one can perform his/her knowledge about the language use in
real communication.

There are four skills integrated in the development of communicative competence: listening, speaking,
reading, writing and the interaction between them.

Based on the learners´s activity, these skills can be:

- RECEPTIVE: They imply the understanding and decoding of a message. Listening and reading.
- PRODUCTIVE: They imply the creation and expression of the message. Speaking and writing.

2.1. LINGUISTIC SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Skill development is a slow and dynamic process divided in three stages:

- Cognitive
Characterized by an intensive attention to the new language, what explains the silent periods
at the beginning.

- Associative
Characterized by errors, which are gradually detected and eliminated, and the creation of
connections among the different elements of the skill.

- Autonomous
Characterized by the ability to process new information while using the language
unconsciously.
2.2. ORAL COMPREHENSION: Listening
Listening is a receptive skill in which listeners are active subjects who use cognitive mechanisms
and strategies to decode the message, cope with extralinguistic features like noises and interpret
paralinguistic elements like intonation.
According to the O. January 15, the area objective 1 focuses on the development of the pupil´s
ability to listen and understand messages in different verbal interactions.

A) PROCESSES
According to Gibson, two complex processes are involved in oral comprehension although in
real-world listening they generally occur together:
- BOTTOM-UP PROCESS
Using the incoming input as the basis for understanding the message .
- TOP-DOWN PROCESS
Using background knowledge to understand the global message.

B) STRATEGIES
Ellis defines strategies as those tools and plans that facilitate learning and communication
processes. They enable students to become independent learners. Following the CEFRL, they are
organized in cognitive, metacognitive, socioaffective and communicative strategies.
In listening, the main strategies involved are:
- Cognitive: to facilitate the understanding and storing of input by, as Willis states, predicting,
inferring, identifying and selecting relevant information.
- Metacognitive: to plan, monitor and evaluate the listening task. E.g. creating mind maps while
listening.

C) FUNCTIONS
Listening has four main reasons, although they can be mixed:
- Intensive listening: Focused on the comprehension of the oral text by selecting specific
information, developing autonomy and attention.
- Extensive listening: Focused on the message, normally for pleasure or interest, to develop
listening habit.
- Assessment listening: Focused on the development of critical thinking by valuing the message.
- Empathy listening: Focused on the development of attentive and responsive attitudes to others’
interventions.

D) LESSON PLAN
Listening activities must be varied, comprehensible and closed to the student’s reality and
interests. They should link bottom-up and top-down processes in three stages:
- Pre-listening. To introduce the situational context, activate previous knowledge and
prepares ,pstudents for listening. E.g.: Guessing game.

- While-listening. To help students to focus on comprehension through exercises to get global or

specific information, building knowledge from the simplest to the most complex according to
Bloom´s taxonomy. E.g.: Gap filling

- Post-listening. To put into practice what they have learnt in listening for the development of
other skills. E.g.: Role play
2.3 ORAL EXPRESSION: speaking and interaction

Speaking is a productive skill in which learners process, build and share meaning through the use of
verbal and non-verbal symbols in a variety of contexts.

As the O. March 17 states, the area objective 2 focuses on the development of the pupil´s ability to
express and interact orally in simple daily situations.

A) PROCESSES

According to Gass, three processes are involved in oral expression

- Input: The learner is exposed to a high amount of language data to process and internalized it.
- Interaction: Moments in which the conversation is interrupted to understand an utterance.
- Output: The learner produces language autonomously.

B) STRATEGIES

In speaking, the main strategies implied are:

- metacognitive: to plan and organize what is going to be said, monitor and evaluate the speaking
task.
- socio-affective: to control emotions, ask for help, cooperate and empathize with others.
- communicative: to control the turn taking or decide the topic of the interaction.

C) FUNCTIONS

Speaking has three main functions:

- Performance: focused on transmitting an information in front of an audience. E.g.: lecture.

- Transaction: focused on what is said or done E.g.: interview.
- Interaction: focused on socialisation. E,g,: conversation.

D) LESSON PLAN

Speaking activities should be sequenced from the most controlled tasks, based on
repetition and imitation, to the freer ones in which the student uses the language autonomously.

The EFL teacher must pay attention to pronunciation but always promoting fluency over
accuracy, respecting the silent periods and correcting errors in a positive way.

- Introduction. To create a communicative context, activate previous knowledge and set the tone
for the lesson with fun and interesting activities. E.g.: memory game.

- Controlled and semi-controlled activities. To monitor, correct and assess the students´
interventions. E.g. drills.

- Free Production. To encourage students to use the language the way they want. Error
correction is avoided to promote fluency. E.g.: role-plays
2.4 WRITTEN COMPREHENSION: reading
Reading is a receptive skill in which readers are active subjects who interpret a text to construct
new meaning from the printed words, what helps to develop cognitive capacities and thinking.
According to the Order of March 17th, the objective 4 focuses on the development of the pupil´s
ability to read and understand different types of texts.

A) PROCESSES
Two different processes take place in written comprehension:
- Reading for detail
Focused on the language, to get specific and detailed information from the text.
- Reading for the gist
Focused on the message, to get a general idea of what the text is about.

B) STRATEGIES
In reading the main strategies implied are:

- Metacognitive: to plan, monitor and evaluate the reading task. E.g. taking notes or using graphic
organizers

- Cognitive: to facilitate comprehension. The most important are:

Skimming: Ability to read a text quickly, without stopping at the difficulties, getting the general
meaning, e.g., glancing at the newspaper.
Scanning: Ability to localize specific information in a text, identifying key words and disregarding
irrelevant parts, e.g., looking at a timetable

C) FUNCTIONS
Reading has two main functions:
- Reading for comprehension
To understand the text word for word, with specific learning aims and tasks. E.g. answering
true/false questions.
- Reading for pleasure
To get a global knowledge from the text for pleasure or interest and to develop reading habit.
E.g. ranking the book.

D) LESSON PLAN
Reading activities should be sequenced into pre, while and post activities, going from the
simplest to the most complex, following Blooms´ taxonomy.
- Pre-reading activities.
To activate previous knowledge, anticipate lexis and content and filter linguistic difficulties
using supports like oral questions and images. E.g.: introducing and practicing vocabulary
through a guessing game with flashcards.
- While - Reading activities
To help learners to get global or specific information and to keep concentration. E.g. asking
questions while reading together.
- Post-reading activities
To involve productive skills to give opinion, summarize the main ideas, invent an alternative
end…
 2.5 WRITTEN EXPRESSION: writing

Writing is a productive skill in which learners express and organize their feelings, ideas and knowledge
through a well constructed text using written symbols.

As the O. March 17 states, the objective 3 focuses on the development of the pupil´s ability to write
varied texts with different purposes based on models.

A) PROCESSES
Three different processes are involved in written expression:
- Input
Students receive and store information from text models.
- Analyse
The information is processed, learned and internalised.
- Output
The acquired knowledge is used to create new language.

B) STRATEGIES
In writing, the main strategies implied are:

- Cognitive: to cope with difficulties when processing, transforming and creating. E.g. paraprahsing
or using the dictionary

- metacognitive: to plan, draft and revise the text. E.g.: taking notes or summarizing ideas.

C) FUNCTIONS

Writing has two main functions:

- Intrapersonal
The writer and reader are the same person: a diary.
- Interpersonal
The writer and reader are different and writing becomes a social instrument for different purposes:
Communicative, to transmit information in a formal or informal register. E.g. a letter.
Artistic, to create beauty, irony, entertainment or humor. E.g. poems.
Certifying, to make evident a fact or information. E.g. contracts.

D) LESSON PLAN
Three different stages are involved when writing a text:
- Prewriting
To select ideas from and take decisions about the structure and content.

- Composing
To transform the ideas into real linguistic forms

- Revision
To evaluate and compare the text to the original purpose, correcting mistakes to generate the
final product.
3. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH
The concept of competence appeared first in the 60s when Chomsky defined it as the intuitive
knowledge of the rules of a language.

Hymes rejected this concept because it underestimates the importance of the sociocultural aspects of
the language, and suggested the notion of communicative competence as the relationship between the
knowledge of all the features of the language and its appropriate use in concrete everyday situations.

Learning a FL implies not only the manipulation of the formal aspects: vocabulary, grammar,
phonetics… but also learning how to communicate effectively and appropriately.

3.1. COMPONENTS

Canale and Swain broke the concept of communicative competence down into four sub-
competences:

- Linguistic competence
Knowledge of the lexis and grammar of the language to understand and express messages
accurately.

- Sociolinguistic competence
Knowledge of the rules to use the language appropriately according to the cultural conditions
of the context.

- Discourse competence
Knowledge of patterns to construct and organize coherent utterances.

- Strategic competence
Knowledge of strategies to recognize and repair communication breakdowns.

Van Ek, in the Threshold Level, introduced a fifth component, which he called:
- Sociocultural competence
It refers to the knowledge of cultural and linguistic forms, routines, social conventions and
non-verbal behaviours in a foreign language.

4. CLASSROOM CONTEXT

4.1. METHODOLOGY

Following the orientations in the Order of January 15th, the methodology used in the EFL classroom
should be governed by the Principle of Attention to Diversity in order to respond to the different learning
styles, paces and backgrounds in the classroom and give them a personalized and individualized attention
to guarantee the maximum development of their talents. .

It will be based on the communicative approach to generate communicative situations in which

students will use the L2 to carry out meaningful tasks on scaffold, according to Bloom´s taxonomy, and
build up their own projects by working in groups to investigate, using ICT´s.
 It is essential to create a positive and anxiety-free environment, according to Krashen, in which the
learner receives a lot of comprehensible input by using English as the vehicular language.

Students will be encouraged to take control over their own learning, following a learner-centered
approach, and games will be included to foster motivation and a desire for lifelong learning.

4.2. KEY COMPETENCES

The EFL area contributes to the development of the seven key competences, set in the O.ECD65, in
several ways.
- LINGUISTIC: Using the language for oral and written communication
- LEARNING TO LEARN: Organizing one's own learning, individually or in groups
- SOCIAL AND CIVIC: working in group, understanding and respecting others
- SENSE OF INITIATIVE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: planning and managing projects.
- MATHEMATICAL: Applying critical thinking to solve everyday problems
- DIGITAL: Using ICT´s in a confident and critical way
- CULTURAL AWARENESS: Appreciating and valuing other cultures

5. CONCLUSION

As it has been explained through the topic, the development of the four linguistic skills is essential to
guarantee the acquisition of communicative competence.

Through the use of different learning strategies and an appropriate methodology focused on
communication, the learning process will be much more effective and meaningful for students, and the
development of the four linguistic skills and, consequently the communicative competence, will be
maximized.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Legislation: Displayed in the section 1.2. of this topic.

- KRASHEN, S (2009) “Principles and Practice of Second Language Acquisition” Pergamon
- HARMER, J (2015) “The Practice of English Language Teaching”. Pearson Education
- BROWN, H. D. (2015). “Teaching by Principles: An interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy”. Pearson Education
- BREWSTER, J; ELLIS, G (2002) “The Primary English Teachers´ Guide”. Pearson Education.
- SELINKER, L; GASS, S.M. (2014) “Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course” Routledge

- www.juntadeandalucia.es/educacion
- www.adideandalucia.es
- www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglishkids
- www.starfall.com