TOPIC 2: COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS: VERBAL AND NON-

VERBAL COMMUNICATION. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-VERBAL REACTIONS

IN DIFFERENT CONTEXT.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS

2.1.1. THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is the understanding which occurs between humans through linguistic

and non-linguistic means like gestures, mimicry and voice. In fact, different factors are
involved in a communicative act, such as participants, context, purpose, and channel,
among others.

Jeremy Harmer (2006) explains the nature of communication having into account
these factors and he makes some generalizations:

Generalizations about speakers (which also can be attained to writers):

a) They want to say (or write) something

b) They have a communicative purpose (e.g. Give information)
c) They select from their language store what they are going to use and how.
Speakers have an infinite capacity to create new sentences, as Noam Chomsky
advocated in his Generative Grammar.

Generalizations about listeners (which also can be attained to readers):

a) They want to listen/read to something.

b) They are interested in the purpose of what is being said.
c) They process a variety of language (structures and words)in order to
understand the message.

According to this, teachers must ensure that in the activities in which students are
involved:

1. The students should have a desire to communicate.

2. They should have a communicative purpose.
3. They should deal with a variety of language, either receptively or
productively.

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2.1. THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN THE ENGLISH TEACHING

The Communicative Approach is one of the principles on which foreign language

methodology is based on at the moment. This approach arose in the 1970´s as a
reaction to the Audio-lingual method of the 60´s, which paid more attention to
structure than to its function.

The functional aspect is important: “One of the characteristic features of

Communicative Teaching is that it pays attention to functional as well as structural
aspects of language “states Littlewood.

The main concept derived from communicative teaching is communicative

competence, which is the ability to use the language in an appropriate way.

The American linguist Dell Hymes coined this term in contrast with Chomsky´s Theory
of competence. For Chomsky, competence simply implied the knowledge of the
language system. Hymes maintained that a communicative and cultural dimension
should be incorporated, as a speaker needs to learn how to use the language in a
speech community (appropriateness).

Later, Canale and Swain expanded Hyme´s description in 1980 by establishing four
dimensions (subcompetences) of the communicative competence:

 Grammatical competence: It refers to grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

 Discourse competence: Coherence when speaking/writing.
 Sociolinguistic competence: the appropriate use of language taking into
account the context, the addressers and social conventions among others.
 Strategic competence: Verbal and non-verbal strategies to communicate more
effectively (learning to learn).
 Socio-cultural: Taking into account social and cultural context in order to
communicate and understand deeply utterances within a community or
speakers

Therefore, it can be concluded that communication is the main objective in the

learning of a foreign language and that communicating in a foreign language means
using that language in a appropriate way, with acceptable correction and fluency.

2.2. IMPORTANT FACTORS IN THE COMMUNICATIVE CLASS

The English class should favour communication at all times. Factors to bear in mind
within the Communicative Approach in class:

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 a) Input

Input is the language to which the student is exposed. At the beginning it should be
oral (teacher´s talk, recordings). The written input will be introduced more gradually
with text, graphs, readings, etc. The more abundant and varied the input is the better
communicative skills the student will develop.

Input must be related to the students´ interests, with a level of complexity only a little
more advanced than the knowledge that they possess and it should have contextual
support to facilitate their understanding (Krashen´s Natural Method).

b) Student groupings

In order to achieve varied interactions in class, as similar as possible to real interaction,

It is necessary to facilitate diverse groups in class:

Whole class: It is the traditional grouping used when introducing or explaining

grammar structures or vocabulary.

Pair work and group work: They are important techniques to improve the student´s
use of English. They involve the whole class working separately, in pairs or small
groups at the same time.

They present some advantages:

 More practice. Students´ spend more time practising.
 They improve student´s personal relationships.
 Similar to real life. Speakers are face to face.
 They increase self-confidence and fluency because students feel more relaxed.
 They encourage cooperative learning.

But pair work and group work also present some difficulties as noisy classrooms, the
difficulty of correcting all couples/groups at the same time and the risk or the students
using their mother tongue. But, all in all their advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

It can be concluded that in order to avoid monotony in class and to bring freshness to
oral interactions in class we can use varied groupings: basic heterogeneous teams,
sporadic teams for specific tasks, teams of experts, pairs, etc.

c) Materials

In the Communicative Approach, materials are considered to promote communicative

language use. There are three types of materials:

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1. Text-based materials: textbooks
2. Task-based materials: Students use them to accomplish a given task. Examples:
activity cards, exercise handbooks, etc.
3. Realia: magazines, songs, chants, videos, object, etc. They contribute to reducing the
distance between the classroom and the real world.

d) Communicative activities

Communicative activities are task and exercises that the student carries out for real
communication. The Communicative Approach believes that their practise will produce
an unconscious learning or the structure of the language.

Characteristics:

 Interactive: Two or more students involved.

 Unpredictable. A student has to seek the information a partner has.
 Within a context: It refers to place, circumstances, time and channel used.
 Authentic: The language used should be similar to an English-speaking person.

e) The teacher and learner roles.

Several roles are assumed by teachers in the Communicative approach:

 Informant: It involves selecting language to be learnt (input) and presenting it

in a clear and memorable way.
 Facilitator: The teacher facilitates communication between students through
communicative activities.
 Participant: Independent participant within the group.
 Monitor. The teacher monitors students´ performances.

Learner roles: Nowadays, active roles.

 The learner has a higher degree of involvement in his/her own learning

process. For example, they are asked for self-evaluation. (Gagnon, 2006)
 Learner´s opinion, feelings and motivation are taken into account.
 Higher autonomy from the teacher. Children are encouraged to work
independently.

According to this, more participation from the learners is necessary to improve their
language ability and competence to use the language. However, we all learn our first
language by active listening (listen + make sense of what we hear) so, it is necessary to
find a balance between teacher´s talking time and student´s talking time.

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3. VERBAL COMMUNICATION

The class is an artificial setting where the teacher tries to recreate the real word
through activities.

3.1. ORAL COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

Oral communication is a two-way process between the speaker and the listener. In the
classroom the teacher should provide students with activities that encourage
authentic communication, and in which listening and speaking skills are integrated.

Sample oral communicative activities:

 Simulations. For instance: Shopping.

o S1. Can I help you?
o S.2. Yes, please. I´d like….
 Questions: There can be: yes no questions (Is this a glass?), Wh-
questions (What´s this?) o alternative questions (Is this a cup or a
glass?).
 Reciting and singing: Songs provide an amusing way to fix “chunks” of
language. Many cultural elements can also be introduced by songs.
 Information-gap activities: There is a gap in the information that the
student must seek by oral interaction.
 Role-play: students pretend they are someone else in a certain
situation. For example: Booking a room in a hotel.
 Problem-solving: Riddles, guessing games and problems are
communicative and motivating as they are a challenge for students.
 Personal experiences: Describing people or familiar situations. For
example, describing a member of their family.
 Communicative games: They allow students to use the language in
motivating contexts. For example, find your partner, Simon says, etc.

3.2. WRITTEN COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

Learning to write a language is important because:

1. To master a language it is necessary to master both, the oral and written form.
2. In real life we need to write.
3. It reinforces the learning or oral communication. Writing words or sentences
help retain them.

Specific reasons for children:

1. Novelty value.
2. They expect to be taught to write.
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 3. Children need a break from oral work (change the activity)
4. They can work at their own pace when writing which is relaxing for them.

Activities for the written communication:

 Writing instructions, short messages, emails or letters, etc.

 Answering questionnaries
 Writing to pen-friends
 Filling in forms (personal data
 Communicative games such as hangman
 Finding mistakes.
 Rewrite sentences.
 Spelling games such as write what you hear, crosswords, word square, etc.
 Project work. Useful activity for integrating skills. It usually involves some
research and discussion about the topic to write, carrying out the project and
explaining it in class (listening and speaking).

2.3. CLASSROOM LANGUAGE

The English teacher should take every opportunity available to use everyday language
in the classroom because it allows students to learn a series of structures and
vocabulary effortlessly in a real context:

 Greetings. They help to create the English classroom atmosphere. (Hello

children! Good morning! How are you today?)
 The date. Saying and writing the date allows frequent review of the days of the
week, months and ordinal numbers.
 Encouraging sentences. Children need approval of the work they are doing to
be motivated (well done! Very good!)
 Correcting. It should be done with encourage and extra effort. For instance;
well, not exactly… try again.
 Farewell sentences. They mark the end of the lesson. For example, It´s time to
finish, good bye, see you next Monday.

4. NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Geoffrey Finch defines non-verbal communication as the one which takes place other
than words. Traditionally it has been neglected in the teaching of languages. However,
nowadays its importance is recognized because:

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  It helps to express and understand messages when the communicative
competence is not very high.
 It favours the learning of social and cultural conventions (sociolinguistic
competence, Canale and Swain, 1980)
 It has an enormous pedagogical potential since the use or expressions,
drawings sound s or movements is attractive and motivating for students. The
more senses involved in the learning process, the more effective it will be
(Wolf. B, 2011)

Non-verbal communication involves:

a) Gestures and body language. Apart from supporting verbal messages, they also
transmit attitudes and emotions. Samples: pointing out, counting using fingers
or clarifying temporary concepts (e.g. to point to the floor “means” today).

b) Physical movements. James Asher´s Total Physical Report theory states that a
child acquires a language by listening to it and executing movements. Asher
sees a parallelism between successful second language learning and first-
language acquisition, in which children respond physically to adults’ commands
before they can produce verbal response.

c) Accent and intonation: Stress, loudness or pitch highlight essential words of the
discourse. This is MY book, not YOUR book.
Intonation is the melody of the sentence that is raised or lowered according to
the question or statement that is uttered.

d) Visual aids. Images are attractive for students and they also foster the
transmission of the contents of language. The teacher can use them when
introducing vocabulary, stories or communicative activities. The pedagogical
effect is unquestionable as images help to retain what is being learnt.

e) Auditory aids. Sounds, melodies and rhythms have a great communicative and
pedagogical power as they: Foster the pronunciation of words and the learning
or structures and vocabulary, they transmit cultural elements and create a
pleasant atmosphere in class.

5. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-VERBAL REACTIONS INDIFFERENT CONTEXTS

Strategic competence can be defined as the student´s capacity to use verbal and non-
verbal strategies in order to communicate.

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5.1. PEDAGOGICAL REASONS TO USE EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEFIES
a) Oral understanding precedes oral production. In fact, according to Asher, when
learning a language the level of understanding should be higher than the
current level of competence.
b) Non-verbal answers reduce anxiety. According to the Total Physical Response
theory if the child does not feel pressure to speak, he/she will feel more
relaxed and thus will concentrate more on the learning.
c) Greater independence in the communicative process. If the student uses
communicative strategies, he/she sill have less limitations when understanding
and being understood.

5.2. NON-VERBAL REACTIONS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.

Communicative situations in which the student will understand the message but
his/her answer will not be verbal.

- Physical responses to commands (based on Total Physical Response theory). For

example: Classroom instructions (open the book).
-Physical response to the lyrics of songs (Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear)
-Responding to instructions with drawings (Listen and draw. E.g. draw a house)
-Responding to instructions to build something. For example: fold, cut, glue…
-Pointing out. Examples: point to the window, point to the floor.
-Miming a story while listening, by using gestures, body language and sounds.
-Sequencing pictures of a story they are listening to.
-Predicting. They can predict what comes next using their previous knowledge.

5.3. COMMUNICATIVE GAMES FOR THE TRANSFER OF CODES, NON-VERBAL INTO

VERBAL LANGUAGE OR VICE-VERSA:

 Simon says: sit down, stand up, go to the door…

 Colour this in….red, blue, green.
 Write the number……6, 32, 29.
 Bingo game.
 Who is who? A pupil uses mimicry to play the role of a certain job, and then
his/her classmates have to guess the job (Policeman, dentist, chef, etc.)

6. CONCLUSION

The main objective of the English class is to communicate. When communicating, we

don´t only use words but also expression, intonation and sounds. I short, we use verbal
and non-verbal communication, which is useful in the English class because it helps
students to develop communicative strategies, in other words, communicative
competence, which is the aim of our current educational law.