FIRST CYCLE

- The most important skill in the first cycle should be

listening.

- We must not force children to speak until they are

ready to do it. Then at the beginning they can show what
they have understood by means of non-verbal actions
such as movements, gestures, drawing, cutting, pointing,
colouring...

- Total Physical Response ( TPR) activities and songs

are a good way to help them link words and actions,
and express themselves in English in a funny and
meaningful way.

- Written language should be avoided, especially in the

first year of the cycle, because they are learning to read
and write in their native language and the complex
English spelling could be confusing for them.

- Contents should be taught by means of didactic units,

organised around meaningful topics as: Family, Friends,
Christmas, Things of the classroom, The house, Food,
Toys, Clothes...

- Children must be already familiar with such topics in

their native language. Then, the co-ordination with the
tutor-teacher is very important to establish the sequence
of the different didactic units along the cycle.

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SECOND CYCLE

- Listening is still the most important skill, and we must

help children to:
Understand the global meaning of simple oral messages
and extract specific information previously required in
contextualised situations.
- The oral messages they have to understand should
present a simple structure and vocabulary and deal with
topics related to children’s interests and needs (such as
school, home, family, games, sports...)

As far as the development of speaking is concerned, pupils

in the 2nd cycle must learn simple linguistic structures,
which can be applied to a great number of communicative
situations. These situations could be:

*Habitual communicative situations in the classroom such

as: greeting, identifying oneself, asking for permission, and
asking for help.

* Situations created by the teacher to promote learning,

such as: Identifying and placing objects, people or places,
expressing quantity, expressing likes and dislikes, giving
simple instructions... In these situations teachers should
promote pupils interest in oral communication by means of
group activities (simulations, games, and role-plays) where
language is used with a communicative aim

In spite of the importance given to oral language, the

Written code is also present.

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As far as Reading is concerned, we should help students to
develop their reading abilities in the foreign language,
working on words, short sentences, class instructions,
simple descriptions and very short stories, supported by
pictures.
Children must start just identifying the written form of
words and sentences that they already know in the oral
form. Then, matching written words and sentences with
pictures is the typical reading activity at the beginning of
the second cycle.

As far as writing is concerned, we must consider that at

this age ( 8 to 10 years old) the communicative needs
related to writing are still very limited, even in their native
language. This implies that written texts in this cycle
should consist of: Very short descriptions; Lists to perform
tasks ( such as the list of things they need for a party, or a
shopping list); Short messages between classmates (for
example short orders in games: go to the door, dance,
stand on your chair, go to the left/right...); Birthday cards,
and invitations, Christmas cards...

Finally, socio-cultural contents in the 2nd cycle should

refer to the daily life of children in the English-speaking
countries, including aspects such as: schedules,
celebrations and festivals, shops, traditional tales and
songs.

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THIRD CYCLE

We must help students to go from comprehension to

production. The development of oral language is still the
main objective. The oral texts they must understand in this
cycle will be more complex and longer than in the previous
one, as children are already familiar with the sounds of the
foreign language, and they are able to use communicative
strategies to understand such as: listening for specific
information or just to get the general meaning of an oral
text, predicting what they think may come next, inferring
opinion and attitude from the intonation of the speakers or
deducing the meaning of new words from context

They are able to participate in oral exchanges to express

their basic communicative needs in the context of the
classroom or in real or simulated contexts related to their
daily life (dealing with topics such as: home, food, animals,
sports, holidays...) correctly enough to be understood.

Regarding WRITTEN COMMUNICATION, in the third

cycle we must consider:

 The development of intensive and extensive reading:

Intensive reading refers to understand every word of short

texts (short descriptions or stories, personal letters,
advertisements or labels). Extensive reading refers to get
the global sense of longer texts, such as: tales, comics or
simple books for children with redundant visual support.
To read this kind of texts children can resort to the help of

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the teacher or the dictionary. The most important thing in
extensive reading is enjoying the texts.

 Writing in this cycle will focus on the production of

short simple texts in response to oral or written stimulus,
aimed at different readers and adapted to the different
communicative situations. These written texts will
include: short personal letters, descriptions and stories.

Finally socio- cultural contents in this cycle will deal with

aspects related to daily life in the English-speaking
countries and also with other socio-cultural aspects of those
countries related to the student´s interests, for instance:
cars, sport, famous people on pop stars, cinema,
environment, cities, famous buildings, sports...