INTRODUCTION

Every act that a human being performs has a communicative purpose. Language is the most complex system
of signs, but it is not the only one that we use. Facial expressions, distance from the speaker, intonations,
silences, alone or accompanied by language, communicate something. Every word that we utter conveys a
feeling or attitude that is not present in words. We should learn how to use and detect these attitudes to be able
to get on well with others. Some non-verbal messages are so important that they must be included in the area
of linguistics.
Since the 1970s, the belief that language is a means of communication has inspired a new approach in English
language teaching: the Communicative Approach, based on providing the students with communicative
activities that will develop their oral and written skills.
Our current Educational System has incorporated this functional and communicative potential of language in
its objectives and methodology. The ultimate goal is the development of the students’ communicative
competence.
In this chapter we will analyze the nature of communication and the ideas and principles of the Communicative
Approach to Foreign Language Teaching. We will also establish the features of verbal and non-verbal
language, and their pedagogical implications in the English class.
1 COMMUNICATION IN THE FL CLASS
As far as the definition of communication is concerned, this concept has been defined as the exchange of
meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols. Savignon (1997) defines language and
further emphasizes the contextual dimension of language use and that one’s success in communicating may
vary from situation to situation: “Communication takes place in an infinite variety of situations, and success
in a particular role depends on one’s understanding of the context and on prior experience of a similar kind.
Success requires making appropriate choices of register and style in terms of the situation and the other
participants”.
In investigating communication, McLuhan (1960) drew the threads of interest in the field of communication
into a view that associated many contemporary psychological and sociological phenomena with the media
employed in modern culture. By the late 20th century, the main focus of interest in communication seemed to
be drifting away from McLuhanism and to be centring upon:
a) The mass communication industries
b) Persuasive communication and the use of technology to influence dispositions
c) Processes of interpersonal communication as mediators of information
d) Dynamics of verbal and non-verbal communication between individuals
e) Perception of different kinds of communication
f) Uses of communication technology for social and artistic purposes, including education
g) Development of relevant criticism for artistic endeavours employing modern communication
technology

1.1 THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is the understanding which occurs between humans through linguistic and non-linguistic
means like gestures, mimicry and voice.
Communication between humans is an extremely complex phenomenon, with many variables –the
participants, context, purpose and channel are some of the factors that are present in a communicative act.
Whenever communication takes place, there is a speaker (or writer) and a listener (or reader) who has a
communicative purpose: having a conversation, giving information…and they will use a medium for doing
so: a letter, face to face, telephone…
If we want our teaching to be communicative we will have to follow these generalizations about the nature of
communication and its relevance for the learning and teaching of languages.
Jeremy Harmer explains the nature of communication thus –first he makes generalizations about speakers:
1. They want to say something.
2. They have some communicative purpose.
3. They select from their language store.
He then makes some generalizations about listeners:
1. They want to listen to something.
2. They are interested in the purpose of what is being said.
3. They process a variety of language.
These generalizations do not just apply to the spoken word, they are applicable to written communication as
well, although the difference is that the writer is not in immediate contact with the reader.
Thus, when organizing communicative activities, teachers must ensure that the activities students are involved
in share the process we have just described: 1) the students should have a desire to communicate; 2) they
should have a communicative purpose, and 3) they should deal with a variety of language, either receptively
or productively.
1.2 THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN ENGLISH TEACHING
The Communicative Approach also called Communicative Language Teaching and Functional Approach is
one of the principles on which foreign language methodology is based on at the moment. This approach
appeared in the 1970s as a reaction to the Audiolingual Method, which paid more attention to structure than
to its function. The changes became a revolution in applied linguistics, that is, the teaching of a language. The
person responsible for these changes was Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky rejected the structuralist approach to language description and the behaviourist ideas on
language learning: “Language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistics behaviour characteristically
involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness
and intricacy”. What struck Chomsky about language was its creativity.
He proposed an alternative theory of language learning to that of behaviourism. Chomsky argued that
sentences are not learned by imitation and repetition but are generated from the learners’ competence.
Learners, then, should be encouraged to use their innate and creative abilities.
The linguists that pleaded for a new approach based their position on the theory that learning a language is not
only the learning of structures, it implies much more. It is also necessary to learn how to use these structures
by keeping in mind the moment, the place, the social conventions and the channel used. The work of these
scholars had a significant impact on the development of a Communicative Approach to language teaching.
The Council of Europe incorporated this communicative view into a set of specifications for a First Level
Communicative Syllabus called Threshold Level English in the 1980s. These specifications have had a strong
influence on the design of methods and textbooks in Europe.
The main concept derived from communicative teaching is communicative competence, which 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. 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).
Canale and Swain (1980) were two linguists who expanded the previous description of Hymes’, establishing
four dimensions of the communicative competence (subcompetences).
 1. Grammatical competence. This refers to the correct use of the linguistic code, i.e. the mastery of
grammatical structures, vocabulary and pronunciation.
2. Discursive competence. The ability to relate and combine grammatical forms, in order to achieve
coherent texts.
3. Sociolinguistic competence. The ability to produce and understand messages relating to social context,
participants and purpose; in other words, the appropriate use of language.
4. Strategic competence. It refers to participants’ verbal and non-verbal strategies: beginning,
maintaining or finishing a chunk of communication, avoiding ruptures in the transmission of the
message. These are the procedures which are necessary for communication to be effective.
These four skills are complemented by socio-cultural competence, which implies the knowledge of certain
cultural facts which are of key importance for us to understand a message completely.
The communicative strand relates to conscious and subconscious learning, and to accuracy as well as to
fluency and appropriateness. Julian Edge describes the students’ tasks as juggling with three clubs: 1)
accuracy, conforming to the language itself, 2) fluency, using the system quickly and easily, and 3)
appropriateness, relating successfully to other people through language.
1.3 IMPORTANT FACTORS IN THE COMMUNICATIVE CLASS
In the previous point we have already seen that the student should achieve communicative competence in the
language. Therefore, the English class should proceed to favour communication at all times. Next, we are
going to analyze factors to bear in mind within the Communicative Approach:
Input
Input is the language to which the student is exposed. This is an important factor, because if the input is
enough, and appropriate, the language the student will acquire will also be adequate.
At the beginning, the input should be oral, because a language is learnt by listening. The written input will be
introduced more gradually, with texts, graphs, readings, etc. the more abundant and varied the input, the better
communicative skills the student will develop.
But the input that we should offer the students must be comprehensible to them. In order to achieve this we
can use any aid that helps with the understanding of the structure that he/she is learning. This is one of the
hypotheses of Krashen’s Natural Method, which has had a great influence on the teaching of languages.
To sum up, this input must have the following features: it should be related to the students’ interests; it should
be applicable to a wide number of situations, with a level of complexity only a little more advanced than the
knowledge that the students possess, and it should have enough contextual support to facilitate their
understanding.
Student groupings
The classroom is not the best place to learn a language. It has space and time limitations that prevent real
communicative situations. In fact, it is outside the classroom where a language is learnt better. Nevertheless,
although in the classroom we lack the ingredients found outside, as teacher, we will try to create an atmosphere
which is as similar as possible to a real situation. This will be possible if we organize activities which include
a great variety of interactions.
In order to achieve varied interactions, it is necessary for space to be organized in a flexible way, to facilitate
diverse groupings:

 Whole class. It is the traditional teaching situation in which all the students are working with the
teacher in the same activity. The author Jeremy Harmer calls this type of grouping lockstep, because
“all the students are ‘locked into’ the same rhythm and pace”. This interaction is typically used when
introducing or explaining a structure, function or vocabulary. But it is also useful for involving the
 teacher in communicative activities. It is useful in the imitation stage, where choral repetition and drills
take place. The advantages of using lockstep in the imitation stage are:
o Everyone hears the same model from the teacher.
o It provides practice in speaking for many students at the same time.
o The teacher can easily monitor the students’ performance.
o Choral repetition and drills are often dynamic activities, providing they go at the right speed,
and they aren’t carried out for too long.
o It encourages the shyest students to speak.
 Pair work. This interaction can be complicated at the beginning, pair work is a very good method to
practice in a lively way what has already been learnt. Pair work is usually used in the practice stage
and in a great number of activities, whether speaking, writing or reading. The main advantages are:
o More practice. If the students practice a linguistic form simultaneously, the time they spend
speaking is longer than if they had to speak one by one.
o It improves personal relationships. Relationships within partners improve with communicative
interaction: they get to know each other better, they can share their knowledge and they have
to opportunity to help each other.
o Similarity with real life. The situation of being face to face with a speaker is more similar to
real life than being asked by the teacher all the time.
o Increased self-confidence. Pair work increases self-confidence in the student because they are
not coerced by the teacher’s figure.
Pair work also presents problems: more noise, loss of time during organization, impossibility of
correcting all couples, risk of them using their mother tongue, etc. –but, all in all, the advantages of
pair work outweigh the disadvantages.

 Group work. In group work there is three participant or more involved in an activity. This is ideal for
activities of freer production. In fact, fluency is developed with this type of grouping. There are many
reasons for using group work in the class:
o It increases the amount of time of student talking time.
o It gives students the sense of using the language communicatively.
o It increases self-confidence in the use of language.
o It is more dynamic than pair work, because there is a greater scope for discussion.
o Group work is potentially more relaxing than pair work, since the latter puts greater demand
on cooperating closely with only one person.
Of course, the problems that apply to pair work can equally be applied to group work. The solutions
depend mainly on the good organization and a confident and positive attitude towards these techniques.
One of the biggest problems with group work is the selection of group members. A teacher can form
groups where weak and strong students are mixed together.
Materials
In the Communicative Approach, materials are considered to promote communicative language use. Three
types of materials are set out within this approach:
1. Text-based materials. Textbooks.
2. Task-based materials. Communicative language teaching is based on task-based learning, which means
the students have to achieve something through the use of language: role-play, simulations, games,
exercise handbooks, activity cards, pair work activities…
3. Realia. Communicative language teaching advocates the use of authentic materials, such as signs,
magazines, songs, chants, videos, stories, advertisements, visual resources. The use of authentic
materials contributes to reducing the distance between the classroom and the real world.
Communicative activities
Communicative activities refer to tasks and exercises that the student carries out for real communication.
These activities focus more on the message than on the linguistic features of language. Children learn how to
speak without knowing anything about verbs, adjectives or verbal tenses.
The Communicative Approach believes that the practice of communicative activities will produce an
unconscious learning of the structures of the language. A communicative activity must be:

 Interactive. Two or more people are involved in the communicative interaction.

 Unpredictable. A student has to seek the information his/her partner has. This will create the necessity
and the desire to communicate.
 Within a context. This refers to the situational context (place, channel) as well as to the linguistic
context (cohesion in linguistic forms and vocabulary).
 Authentic. The language used should be genuine, that is to say, similar to an English-speaking
person’s.
 Developed within a relaxed atmosphere. If the student is under normal emotional conditions, the
learning will be more effective.
Teacher’s and learner’s role
The role of the foreign language teacher is central to the learning process. While teachers of other disciplines
are called upon to inculcate habits, attitudes, knowledge, or skills in a medium already familiar to their
students, the foreign language teacher must bring about changes or modifications in behavior, habits, attitudes,
knowledge, or skills in an unfamiliar medium requiring additional of different psychological activity. The
organs of speech must be taught to move in unprecedented ways; the sounds striking the listener’s ears must
be perceived without distortion from or confusion with the known sounds of the native language. The teacher
has to be a combination of linguist, sociolinguist, anthropologists, and a pedagogue.
The following major dimensions of the teacher’s task can be established:

 The teacher should modify the curriculum content as he ascertains the strengths, weaknesses, and
aspirations of his students.
 He should keep the motivation of his students at a high level.
 The teacher should provide for individual differences.
On the other hand, due to the learner-centered teaching, the students’’ role has changed in the last years. In
this sense, students do not learn in an individualistic way, but rather in an interdependent way. The emphasis
is therefore on the process of communication and not on the mastery of language forms, so or students must
negotiate, within the group and the classroom. Successful communication can only be achieved through group
interaction.
2 VERBAL COMMUNICATION
In the English class, verbal communication is as important as non-verbal communication. It would be very
difficult to teach a language only using verbal communication, and without any extralinguistic support. The
class is an artificial setting where the teacher tries to recreate the real world.
We will first analyze verbal communication which is developed in the English class and, in the next section,
we will do the same with non-verbal communication.
2.1 ORAL COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
Oral communication is a two-way process between the speaker and the listener. The addresser initiates a
conversation; the addressee listens and then responds. Speakers and listeners are constantly changing roles,
following the pattern “speak-listen-respond-listen”. It this particular kind of interaction which is difficult for
foreign language learners.
In the classroom, teachers will need to ensure that the two skills are integrated through situations that allow
and encourage authentic communication. To attain this goal, teachers will have to take the students from the
stage in which they are mainly imitating a model of the language to the point in which the can use language
more freely.
The teacher, therefore, will have to give the students two complementary levels of training in verbal
communication:
1. Practice stage, where students practice the manipulation of the fixed elements of language. During this
practice stage, the teacher can use activities such as:
a. Guided dialogues.
b. Questions.
c. Language games.
d. Reciting and singing.
2. Production stage, where students have opportunities for the expression of personal meaning. The
following activities are designed to provoke spoken communication between students or between the
teacher and the students:
a. Information-gap activities.
b. Role-play.
c. Problem-solving.
d. Personal experiences.
e. Communicative games.

2.2 WRITTEN COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

Learning to write a language is important for three reasons:
1. Because in order to master a language, it is necessary to have a good mastery of both the oral and
written form.
2. Because in real life we need to write.
3. Because it reinforces the learning of oral communications. Writing words or sentences helps retain
them.
Other reasons are specific to children:
1. Children usually like writing. For our younger pupils, writing has novelty value, since they have
started to write in their mother tongue not long ago.
2. Most children expect to be taught to write. This is one thing you have to do when you go to school.
3. Children need to break from oral work. Children need to change activity, and writing provides not
only a change from taking, but also a quiet period in the lesson.
4. Children can work at their own pace when writing, which is relaxing for them.
As we can see, communicative writing plays a valuable part in the English class. The following activities are
designed to provoke written communication:

 Writing instructions.
 Writing short messages.
 Writing short letters.
 Writing to pen friends.
 Writing questionnaires.
 Writing imaginary diaries.
 Filling in forms.
  Communicative games.
 Project work.
2.3 CLASSROOM LANGUAGE
The English teacher should take every opportunity available to use everyday language in the classroom. The
genuine use of language allows the student to learn a series of structures and vocabulary effortlessly in a real
context. The objective should be understanding the input, as well as acquiring some language items.
The use of foreign language is suggested in these situation:

 At the beginning of the class.

 The date.
 Instructions for beginning an activity.
 Encouraging sentences
 Correcting.
 Finishing the class.

3 NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
Non-verbal communication has been neglected in the teaching of languages. However, nowadays its
importance is recognized. This is vital, because:

 It helps to express and to understand messages when the communicative competence is not very
high.
 It favours the learning of social and cultural conventions, that is to say, the sociolinguistic
competence.
 It has an enormous pedagogical potential, since the use of expressions, drawings, sounds or
movements is highly attractive and motivating for children.
Gestures and body language
This form of non-verbal communication is called non-vocal because the human voiced is not involved. It
includes facial expressions, posture, eye and hand movements. In the English class there is abundant use of
expressions and body language. Apart from transmitting verbal messages, they have value in themselves,
since they also transmit attitudes and emotions. They are also important when checking the degree of
understanding of our message.
Facial expression accompanies verbal language and it usually coincides with the emphasis that we are giving
our message.
Hand movements are also a help to what is being said. Communication with hands in an English classroom
is very frequent. With them, the teacher can point out objects, students; use fingers to count numbers or
words; clarify temporary concepts or explain grammatical aspects.
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 through movement –the child learns a language by listening and
executing commands.
Asher sees successful foreign language learning as a parallel process to child first-language acquisition. He
argues that children respond physically to adults’ commands before the produce verbal responses. Therefore,
second language learners should imitate the first-language acquisition process. The principles of this method
are:
 1. Comprehension abilities to precede productive skills. Speaking is delayed until oral comprehension
is established.
2. Teaching should focus on meaning rather than form.
3. Teaching should reduce learner stress. The teacher must create a positive mood in the learner by
delaying oral production and by demanding game-like movements.
Accent and intonation
This type of non-verbal communication s denominated paralanguage, because they are aspects of language
which accompany the words we produce. We can divide them into prosodic features (loudness, pitch and
stress) and into more general features (grunts, sights, giggles and snorts).
Intonation is the melody of the sentence that is raised or lowered according to the question, explanation or
statement that is uttered. Intonation is of special importance in English, since this is a language in which
there are many inflections. The student should learn how to use intonation correctly to sound like a native
person.
Visual aids
Visual aids have two functions in the English class: first, to lessen the gap between the real world and the
classroom, and second, to foster the transmission of the contents of language.
The visual support of pictures, drawings, flashcards, posters, etc., can help understand the message, because
of the communicative power of the image. “One image is worth a thousand words”, as the saying goes.
Children feel especially attracted to them, and the pedagogical effect is unquestionable. A child who is
listening and seeing at the same time learns more than if he/she just listens. Images help to retain what is
being learnt.
Auditory aids
Auditory aids, such as sounds, noises, musical melodies and rhythms, have great communicative and
pedagogical power, just like visual aids. They are communicative because we are surrounded by noises,
sounds and melodies which have meaning. They are of great pedagogic value because help to retain what is
being learnt: if the child is learning means of transport, hearing the noise of the train, car…while listening to
the word is very effective.
Melodies and rhythms have other functions: they foster the pronunciation of words, they foster the learning
of structures and vocabulary, they transmit cultural elements and they create a pleasant atmosphere in class.
4 EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-VERBAL REACTIONS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
Everything we communicate which is not related to the formal aspects of language is extralinguistic. In this
section we will explain several communicative situations in which the reaction of the student to the message
will not be verbal. The student will understand the message, but he/she will not be requested to utter a verbal
answer.
4.1 PEDAGOGICAL REASONS TO USE EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES
There are three pedagogical reasons to use this type of activity in an English class:
1. Oral understanding precedes oral production. The student, especially in the first stages, understands
better than he/she speaks and, in fact, according to James Asher, in order or a person to acquire a
language, the level of understanding should be slightly beyond their current level of competence.
2. Non-verbal answers reduce anxiety. According to James Asher’s theory TPR, a fundamental
requirement for learning is the absence of stress. If the child does not feel pressure to produce an oral
answer, he/she will feel more relaxed and thus will concentrate more on the learning.
 3. Greater independence in the communicative process. If the student uses communicative strategies,
he/she will have less limitations when understanding and being understood in English. Besides,
he/she will not depend on the teacher to be able to communicate.

4.2 NON-VERBAL REACTIONS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

Although there is a vast array of possibilities, we have selected a few non-verbal reactions that can take place
in different situations:

 Physical responses to actions

 Physical responses to the lyrics of songs
 Responding to instructions with drawings
 Responding to instructions in order to build something
 Pointing out
 Miming a story
 Sequencing
 Responding with proper expressions or intonation
 Predicting strategies
CONCLUSION
The main objective of the English class is to communicate. When communicating, we do not only use
words, we also use expressions, drawings, intonation, sounds. In short, we use verbal as well as non-verbal
communication.
Non-verbal communication accompanied or not y verbal communication, has great communicative
potential, which should not be ignored when teaching English.
Non-verbal communication is useful in the English class because it helps the student develop
communicative strategies and, in short, improve communicative competence, which is the aim of our
current.