Oposicin al cuerpo de maestros 2009

UNIT 1.

La lengua como comunicacin: lenguaje oral y lenguaje escrito.

Factores que definen una situacin comunicativa: emisor, receptor,
funcionalidad y contexto.

Learning a foreign language is not only a grammar and lexical process but also a social
one. Traditional Foreign Language Teaching concentrated on getting our students to
learn items of language in isolation. So the focus was not a communication.
More recently, the Communicative Approach placed more emphasis in the use of the
foreign language for communicative purposes. We all agree nowadays on the
importance of letting our pupils use English for real communication because it gives
them the opportunity to experiment on their own and allows them to check how much
they know about that foreign language.

In order to deal with this topic, we will study first the concept of language and its
functions to see that communication is one of them. Secondly, we will pay attention on
the communicative competence a concept develops by two linguists. Thirdly, we will
analyse the differences between writing and speech. And finally we will define the key
factors use in a communicative situation. We will finish the unit with a brief conclusion
and point out the bibliography.

After this introduction we proceed now to deal with the first part of the topic, that is,
language and its functions.

There are several definitions of language; we are going to focus our attention on three
main authors: Sapirs (20s), Tragers (40s) and Halls (60s):
- Sapir said that language is a human and non-instinctive method of
communicating our ideas, emotions and desires.
- Trager came to say that a language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols which
the members of a society use to interact.
- Hall defined language as the institution whereby humans communicate and
interact with each other by the use of oral-auditory symbols.

After defining the concept of language, our next step is pointing out the language
functions:
- Referential function. We use language to communicate our ideas.
- Expressive or Emotional function. We use language as a means of getting rid of
our nervous energy when we are under stress, angry, happy, etc.
- Phatic function. According to the author Malinowski this is the social function
of the language. We use language to maintain social relationship between
people.
- Phonetic function. We use this function to take delight in language, for
instance, rhythm, song, gap, poems, chants, etc.
- Performative function. It is when we use language at the same time we perform
the action, such as a priest baptizes a child.

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The British linguist Halliway grouped all this functions into three metafunctions:
- Ideational function. This function is to organize the speakers or writers
experiences of the real or imaginary world.
- Interpersonal function. This function is to indicate, establish or maintain social
relationships between people.
- Textual function. This function serves to create written or spoken texts.

If we analyze all these functions we can say that the aim of the language is to develop
communication in our English classroom.
Now it is time to deal with the second part of the topic: language as communication.
The Communicative Approach in Foreign Language Teaching starts from a theory of
language as communication, so the aim of our Educational System is our pupils to
improve the Communicative competence. This concept was developed by two
linguistics: Chomsky and Hymes.
The linguistic Chomsky said that the natives speakers knowledge have a subconscious
knowledge of the grammar rules of their own language that allows them to use
sentences in that language. It was called Competence. But the author Hymes came to
said that Chomsky Competence is not enough to explain the native speaker knowledge
because they have to know where, when and to whom use the utterances. So he
developed the concept Communicative Competence.
There are four aspects of the competence:
- Systematic Potential: means that the native speakers process a system which has
a potential to create a lot of language.
- Appropriacy: means that the native speakers know what language is
appropriated in a communicative situation. A utterance will be correct in relation
to a context.
- Occurrence: means that the native speakers know how often a utterance is
correct in a conversation.
- Feasibility: means that the native speakers know if a grammar structure is
possible in a language.

One of the most helpful discussions of competence is to be found in Canale and Swains
article. According to this author (Canale 1983), communicative competence refers to the
underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication The four
components of communicative competence can be summarized as following:
- Discourse Competence.
- Sociolinguistic Competence.
- Strategies Competence.
- Socio-cultural Competence.

There are tasks and exercises that the students carry out for real communication. These
activities focus more on the message than on the linguistic features of the language.
The Communicative Approach believes that the practice of all these activities produces
the unconscious learning of the language.
Following to the linguistic Harmer a communicative activity must be interactive (two or
more people), unpredictable (desire to communicate), within a context (linguistic or
situational context) and authentic (use language similar to an English speaking person).
According to this author some oral communicative activities are:

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- Information-gap activities
- Role-play
- Problem-solving
- Following some instructions
- Describing personal experiences
- Communicative games
Examples of written communicative activities are:
- Written instruction
- Written short messages
- Written short letters
- Written to pen friends
- Written questionnaires
- Filling in forms
- Communicative games
- Project work

Following the introduction the next step is analyse the oral and written language and
the differences between them.
Spoken language. The most obvious aspect of language is speech. It is the universal
material of human language. Man has almost certainly been a speaking animal from
early in the emergence of homo sapiens. As far as spoken language is concerned, the
science that deals with the study and classification of speech sound is Phonetics. Sounds
may be identified with reference to their production, their transmission and their
reception. These three activities occur at physiological level, which implies the action of
nerves and muscles. The movement of the tongue, lips, vocal folds, etc., constitute the
articulatory phonetics. In the process of transmission of the sound waves corresponds to
acoustic phonetics and in the process of their reception is the dominances of auditory
phonetics.
On the other hand, the science that deals with the study and selection of sound in order
to express meaning is Phonology.

Writen language. As regards the written language, we can classify written systems into
two types: non-phonological and phonological systems. Here are the differences.
- Non-phonological systems: do not show a clear relationship between the
symbols and the sound of the language, for instance, pictography, ideography
and egyptian hieroglyphic.
- Phonologycal systems: show a clear relationship between the symbols and the
sound of the language. We can distinguish between Syllabic and Alphabetic
systems. In the syllabic system each grapheme corresponds to a spoken syllable.
The Alphabetic system establishes a direct correspondence between graphemes
and phonemes.

The most important differences between oral and written language are:
- Speech uses phonic substances and writing uses graphic substances.
- Written language was consider superior and more culture for many years.
- Speech is spontaneous and rapid. It has not a permanence on the paper. So is
more difficult to be understand by the listener.

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- Spoken language takes place in the presence of the speakers, written language
implies a longer human time gap between the transmission and reception.
- Spoken discourse is full of repetitions, pauses, interjections, gestures, etc.
- Spoken language is universal, written language is not.
- A speaker has little time to think, therefore language is more accurate and
written language is more planned, the expression of ideas is more precise and
concise.
- Spoken language is temporal, written language is spatial.
- Spoken language has a essential characteristic, that is the feedback.

In the last part of the unit we are going to pay attention on communication. First of all
it can be interesting to make a definition of communication, and analyse the different
factors which define a communicative situation:

In 1928 the English literary critic and author Ivor Armtrong Richards offered one of the
first definitions of communication: communication takes place when one mind acts
upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an
experience occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and it is caused in part
by that experience.

- Emissor: the person who elaborates and sends the message.

- Receptor: the person who receives the message.
- Purpose: the intention of the message.
- Topic: the matter about which the interaction develops.
- Medium: the means by which a message is transmitted. (speech, writing, etc.).
- Channel: the technical means of transmission (TV, phone, paper, etc).
- Code: the communication system shared by the emissor and receptor.
- Register: the style of the language (casual, formal, etc.).

In the process of transmission we can find several elements that can help the
receptor to understand the message, that is, negative entropy, redundancy and
feedback. Other elements can do more difficult the understanding of the message
such as entropy and noise.

We will analyze the key factors and the effects of our communicative interactions
that is speech acts, a concept develop by the linguists Austin (1962) and the
environment in which they are exchanged, that is the content.

The speech acts theory have a dimension of meaning and a particular force. It is
divided into:
- Locutionary act. The structure of a utterance and the grammatical aspect of a
language is correct. (close the door, please), it is grammatically correct
- Illocutionary act. The words of a utterance are situated in a particular context
and them they acquire meaning for the listening. (silence, please) someone says
in the library.
- Perlocutionary act. It is referred to the effects the utterance has on the
listening.(can you pick up the book, please), and someone perform the action.

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According to the linguist Searle (1969) there are five basic, primitive illocutionary
points:
- Directives: including requesting, ordering and questioning utterances.
- Assertive: including asserting, concluding, informing, predicting and reporting
utterances.
- Commissives: including warning, promising, threatening and guaranteeing
utterances.
- Declaratives: it is referred to institutional states, including declaring war or
performing a marriage.
- Expressive: including thanking, complaining, greeting and apologizing
utterances.

All the elements that appear in a communicative situation are presented in a context.
A context is all the linguistic structures that surround a specific linguistic form and
in a particular moment of communication.
We can distinguish two types of context:
- Linguistic context: it is the part of the text that goes before and after the word
whose meaning we are consider.
- Situational context: the extra linguistic elements in which the message is
developed.

As conclusion to mention that, we as teacher, must take in account the importance of

the communicative characteristics of language and tech children to deal with them. We,
not only must pay attention to the language itself, but also to the way it is used in order
to become communicative and meaningful. We must not forget the importance of the
age and level of the students and their motivation and interests in order to develop a
proper English Language class.

Bibliography.