Tema 2

- LA COMUNICACIÓN EN CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA:

COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO VERBAL.

2 Communication in the foreign language classroom.

2.1. Concept of communication.
2.2 Communicative and linguistic competence.
2.3 Methodological consequences of the Communicative Approach
3 Verbal Communication
4 Non-verbal communication
4.1 concept of non-verbal communication
4.2 How information is transmitted non-verbally
4.3 what information is transmitted
4.4 non-verbal communication in the foreign language classroom.
5. Extra linguistic strategies: non-verbal reactions to messages in
different contexts.
5.1 non-verbal language from the outset.
5.2 the total Physical Response

1.0 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, learning English as a Foreign Language is essential in order to have
better chances in our society.

Due to the influence of the Communicative Approach, our current educational

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 is one of the
general objectives for Primary Education in the RD 126/2014 28th February
which establishes the teaching requirements for Primary Education nationwide.

Based on this view, I have chosen the topic ... because it is a good example of
how to work the Communicative Approach under different authors’
perspectives and showing, as examples, communicative activities.

2 COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM.

2.1 CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATION

It is important to give a precise definition of these two concepts, both of

which are basic in the development of this theme. We can consider
communication as any act of diffusion or exchange of information.
 But how can we define information?

As Josep Burcet says in his book ‘’Ingeniería de intangibles’’’, written in 1997

and published by Germania, information is ‘’any understandable and new
knowledge that reaches the receiver’’. This means that any piece of
information must have a certain degree of novelty for the receiver, otherwise
they will not learn anything; but some degree of confirmation is also
necessary, so that the receivers can understand the message, relating it to
their previous knowledge (as the constructivist theorists have explained),
which means that the web of concepts we had before the arrival of the new
information will be modified and adapted, in order to receive it. (figure1)

Therefore, as you can see in the figure, communication takes place when the
message transmitted can be located in the medium zone left in the space
between novelty and confirmation.
And according to the Organic Law 8/2013 of 9th December, for the
improvement of the educational quality (LOMCE) Communication is the basis
of understanding among human beings and it can be either verbal or non-
verbal as I will explain later.

2.2 COMMUNICATIVE AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

Once the definition of communication has been presented, it may be

appropriate to develop the concept of Communicative Competence. As Dell
Hymes says in his book ‘’On Communicative Competence’’, written in 1971 and
published by Penguin, in order to learn a language, a native speaker does not
only need to utter grammatically correct forms (as Chomsky thought), he also
havs 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 Linguistic Competence,
with his own concept of Communicative Competence.
Moreover, the D108/2014, 4th July, which establishes the teaching
requirements for primary education in the Valencian Government, bases the
development of the students’ communicative competence in the foreign
language on the Canale and Swain’s classification of the communicative sub-
competences. Then, we can constitute just a different way of explaining
Hyme’s sub-competences that implies:

 Grammar, Discoursive, Sociolinguistic, Strategic and Sociocultural

competence

2.3 METHODOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH.

Today it is well accepted that learning a language means learning to communicate, and
this means that communication must be usual practiced within the classroom.
According to David Ausubel in his book ‘’ The Psychology of meaningful Verbal Learning’’
written in 2000 and published by Springer, we can identify 3 communication principles
that the classroom activities must accomplish to promote meaningful learning:
1. activities should involve real communication.
2. activities should promote the use of language for carrying out meaningful tasks.
3. the language used must be meaningful to learner.
Where the importance is not focused on the accuracy, but on fluency

In my year planning, I organize the session around the 45 minutes taking into
account the RC 7/2014 of 15th of July which establishes the guidelines of the
beginning of the academic year and I work with different activities creating
different contexts with different elements of a linguistic situation. I do it through
different games and in this way the students learn playing.

According to the communicative approach, one of the main roles of the teacher is to
create communicative needs in the students, where communication implies that
something new is transmitted and there must exist a gap of information between what
the interlocutors know. Then, the communication intercourse must help to close it so
that both speakers have the same information. This is called the information gap
principle of communication.
I have adapted some communicative activities from the Carol Read’s book ‘’
500 activities for the Primary Classroom.’’, written in 2007 and published by
Macmillan Education’’ such as: exchanging letters with other schools, especially
if they are in an English speaking country, making questions to the class-mates
in order to find out any piece of information that the students need in order to
carry out some tasks afterwards... all these activities have in common that the
students, if adequately motivated, have the need to write, read, speak or listen
ignoring what comes next, as it occurs in real life communication.
They also can use the ELP which is a project launched in 2001 by the Council of
Europe in an effort to support learner autonomy and plurilingualism, recording
their interactions and including them in the Dossier, which is a collection of
samples of their work where they record their learning achievements.
This is a tool that allows students to create strategies to learn developing the
learning to learn competence Following the Recommendation 2006/962 of the
European Parliament and the Council of 18 th December on key competences for
lifelong learning.

3. VERBAL COMMUNICATION
 After having analysed the methodological consequences of the Communicative
Approach, I will focus my attention on the concept of verbal communication.
Verbal communication is the ‘’communication which takes place through words’’ and it
includes the linguistic aspects of the process, and the way they combine the words
provides an important part of the meaning. Utterance carries more information than
what is defined by the linguistic code. For instance, intonation and all oral productions
(like laughing, stammering, yawning, etc) can communicate new meanings that can even
contradict the linguistic one.

Moreover, the verbal aspects of communication depend on the way in which

communication takes place. In this sense, linguistic messages can be transmitted either
by oral or written means.

o Regarding verbal communication, the teacher should modify the curriculum content in
order to adequate it to the students´ level, keeping their motivation, attending the
individual differences of the learners and organising the learning experience carefully.
Moreover, in the Communicative Approach, the teacher´s role is an informant, a
facilitator, a participant and a monitor in the classroom.

o In addition, due to the learner-centred teaching, 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 through interaction. Moreover, in the
Communicative Approach, the learners are seen as stimulus-response mechanisms whose
learning depends on repetitive practice. Today, the passive role has become an active
one, in this sense, learners are more involved in their own learning process and their
opinion, feelings and motivation are taken into account.

4 NON- VERBAL COMMUNICATION.

4.1 CONCEPT OF NON- VERBAL COMMUNICATION
It is important to note that communication is not purely verbal.
As David Crystal says in his book ‘’ The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language’’ written
in 1987 and published by CUP, non-verbal communication can be defined as
“communication which takes place other than through words”. For instance: gestures,
postures, to point something out, etc
For years, non-verbal communication has been neglected (descuidada) in the teaching
of languages.
However, nowadays its importance is recognized because:
 It helps to express and to understand messages, especially when the Communicative
Competence is not very high.
 It favours sociolinguistic competence.
 It is highly attractive and motivating for children.

4.2 HOW INFORMATION IS TRANSMITTED NON-VERBALLY.

As Mark Knapp says in his book ‘’La comunicación no verbal. El cuerpo y el entorno.’’,
written in 1992 and published by Paidós, in order to communicate through non- verbal
language, we can use, among others:

 The Body movement that includes facial expression, posture, eye and hand movement…
for instance point objects out or to use fingers to count numbers.
 And Paralanguage that refers to how something is said. For instance, the:
- Voice qualities (voice register, rhythm, articulation control, etc.)
- Vocalisation (laughing, crying, yawning, etc.)
- Vocal qualifiers, as voice intensity
- Vocal segregations, as, for example, ‘hum’,’ah’,’uh’
 Moreover, Auditory aids: Such as sounds or noises, have great communicative power,
just like visual aids.
 Tactile conduct is another way of using non verbal language and: it refers to the use of
the interlocutor’s very close space
 And, finally, artefacts: that include the manipulation of objects that can act as non
verbal stimuli like clothing.

4.3 WHAT INFORMATION IS TRANSMITTED.

Some studies have revealed that in a standard interaction, a lot of information comes
from non- verbal communication, like the
Psychological information: such as miming, the use of space denotes if the speaker
is authoritarianism, shy... and their emotional attitude (anger, surprise...)
- Moreover, the Relational information like head movements and gestures
inform about the degree of attention that the hearer is giving to the
discourse.
- In the case of Semantic information: a linguistic statement can be
interpreted in different ways, depending on the context. Then the non-
verbal language is essential to know the meaning.
- Regarding Cultural information, there are several aspects of non-verbal
acts which can be considered universal, many others are culturally
specific: not all body movements or postures, for example, have the same
meaning in all cultures.
4.4 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
As in the topic 22 is explained as well, the relative physical position of students and
teacher, or the seating arrangement, contributes to define the expected kind of
relationships among the students and between the teacher and students.
Seating arrangement affects communication between individuals: sitting in groups or in
pairs favours communication between students and, in this way, is easier to develop the
moral and civic education based on the cross-curricular contents established by the
Order of 20th of December 1994 of Conselleria of education of the Valencian
Government, but if students sit individually, especially if the tables and chairs are fixed
to the floor and cannot be moved, communicative activities will be deterred.
In my class, depending on the needs of each student I sit them with classmates of
special characteristics to promote the cooperative learning and to favour their learning
following the order of 16th July of 2001 by which the education to students with special
need is regulated in Infant and Primary Education.
The position of the teacher during the class must be taken into account. The cases of
teachers who only abandon their table to overview the students’ work, illustrate their
role as controllers and, in this sense, I usually walk through the class so as to keep
students more active and to have a closer relationship.

5. EXTRA-LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON- VERBAL REACTIONS TO

MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.
5.1 NON-VERBAL LANGUAGE FROM THE OUTSET.
Generally, when students start learning a language, they cannot use it to communicate
but they use gestures or movements to show comprehension. Therefore, gestural
language is important from the first states of learning. We have already seen how
students have developed this knowledge with their first language and the fact that it
can be applied to the second language is an important principle (usually known as
transference) that must be taken into account in foreign language teaching.
5.2 THE TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE.
Taking into account the importance of transference and the non-verbal
communication, it is important to develop activities that promote gestural language.
An example of methodology is the Total Physical Response method which is
developed by James Asher in his book ‘’Learning Another Language through
Actions: The Complete Teacher’s Guidebook. Written in 1982 and published by Sky
Oaks Productions’’. It is a language teaching method built around the co-ordination
of speech and action and it follows three principles:
Firstly students only speak when they are ready, secondly the instructor
Use the imperative and, thirdly, it expects that students will show a
readiness to speak.
 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. The teacher
starts giving easy orders to some students, and they have to repeat that with
other students. Later, the commands become more complex as the class
progresses.

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 order to develop this topic, the following bibliography has been used:
 Knapp, M.L (1992): La comunicación no verbal: El cuerpo y el entorno. Paidós.
 Burcet, Josep (1997): Ingeniería de intangibles. Valencia: Germania
 Asher, James.(1982) “ Learning another language through actions: The
Complete teacher´s guide book” Sky Oaks Production
 Ausubel, David (2000): ‘’The Psychology of meaningful verbal learning’’.
Springer.
 Hymes, Dell (1972) “On Communicative Competence in Sociolinguistics”
University of Pennsylvania Press.
 Read, Carol (2007): 500 activities for the Primary Classroom. Macmillan
Education.
 Crystal, David (1997). “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language” CUP

LEGAL FRAMEWORK.
 Organic law 8/2013, 9th December, for the improvement of educational
quality (LOMCE)
 RD 126/2014 of 28th February.
 D 108/2014 of 4th July
 Order of 20th of December of 1994 about Cross Curricular Contents.
 Order 16th July of 2001, about educative attention to the students with
special educative needs
 Recommendation 2006/962 of the European Parliament and the Council of
18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning.
 RC 7/2014 of 15th of July which implies the instructions for the
organization of the schools of Primary Education during the 2014-2015
school year.
 ELP which is a project launched in 2001 by the Council of Europe in an
effort to support learner autonomy and plurilingualism

MAIN CONCEPTS
Communication
Verbal and non verbal communication
Extra linguistic strategies
Non verbal reactions to messages in different contexts
Communicative approach

Other main concepts:

Communicative and linguistic competence

Information gap principle

Transference

Total physical response