UNIT 1.

LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE E LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN

VERBAL Y NO VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA-LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO
VERBALES A MENSAJES EN DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS.

LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION: ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE. FACTORS

THAT DEFINE A COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION: TRANSMITTER, RECEIVER,
FUNCTIONS AND CONTEXTS
TOPIC OUTLINE

0. INTRODUCTION

1. THE ORIGIN OF COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

2. FROM COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

3. COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION

4. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

5. ORAL LANGUAGE VERSUS WRITTEN LANGUAGE

6. CONCLUSION

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 0. INTRODUCTION
Language is a set of arbitrary symbols, which allows us to establish relationships with people. In other
words, language allows communication and communication is the way which makes people, as
members of a society, interact. In this essay I am going to talk about the notion of language as
communication. For this purpose, I am dividing the topic into six main sections: the origin of
communication and language, Communicative Competence, communicative situation, functions of
language, oral language versus written language, communicative activities and a final conclusion.

1. THE ORIGIN OF COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

Communication is supposed to have existed since the beginning of time in different ways. Not
just human beings, but also plants and animals communicate with the world using different codes. For
example, animals are able to use sounds and several movements to communicate different things, such
as hunger, sexual attraction… However, there is a big difference between the hoot of an owl, the
grunt of a pig and a man standing before an audience saying “to be or not to be”.
Consequently, we can say that there are a lot of ways to communicate. These ways have
changed a lot during years. For instance, a lot of years ago, people communicated with each other by
making sounds with different objects (drums for example), using smoke signals… Then writing
appeared in Egypt, first just using pictures and little by little a graphic system appeared, for example,
the Scandinavian runnes.
This has gone on improving until the modern times where we communicate with each other,
among other ways, using the Internet and mobile phones. Now our modern smoke signals are the
missed phone calls which we make to our friends or to any member of our family.

2. FROM COMMUNICAVE APPROACH TO COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Noam Chomsky said that human beings have a subconscious knowledge to make sentences
grammatically correct, in other words, to use the grammatical rules of this language in a proper way.
This was a first communicative approach.
Little by little this term went on developing and Hymes replaced Chomsky’s notion of
Competence with his own concept of Communicative Competence. He argued that Communicative
Competence not only involved the construction of sentences but also the rules of use. When a speaker
speaks, he does not only apply grammatical rules, but also he forms correct utterances and knows how
to use these utterances appropriately.
To reach communicative competence we must work on the following sub-competences:

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 - Grammatical competence: the child produces correct sentences, from the grammatical point
of view.
- Socioliguistic competence: the child produces correct messages according to the context,
speakers, the aim of communication.
- Discursive competence: the child interprets a message according to the context or situation.
- Strategic competence: the child is able to use communication strategies, verbal or non-
verbal, to compensate for gaps or interruptions.
- Socio-cultural competence: the child is able to familiarise with the socio-cultural context
where the language is spoken.

3. COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION
According to Jackobson these are the main elements in a communicative situation:
- Sender: the person who sends the message.
- Receiver is who receives the message.
The relation between the participants is essential in this way. When we talk about them we
have to mention two main axes: Power and Solidarity. Solidarity is when a communicative
relationship is reciprocal, for example, when we are talking to friends; while Power reigns when an
interaction is not reciprocal, such as when you are talking with a University’s teacher.
- Message is the content of the information.
- Channel is the mean through which the message travels: radio, phone, paper. ..
- Code is the set of signs, which are combined using rules that the sender and the receiver are
familiarized with. Code: language. Other codes: facial expressions, body language.
- Context is the situation of the message.
Other important items are:
- Purpose: the main objectives of communication.
- Topic: what we are talking about.

4. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children, which we, as
teachers, must know. The first four functions help children to satisfy physical, emotional and social
needs. These are:

- Instrumental: this is when the child uses language to express his needs: “I’m thirsty”.

- Regulatory: this is where language is used to tell others what to do: “Go away”.

- Interactional: here the language is used to make contact with others and to form
relationships: “I love you, mummy.”

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 - Personal: this is the use of language to express feelings, opinions and individual identify:
“My lovely teddy”.
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative and representational, all helping the child to
connect with his environment.
- Heuristic: this is when language is used to get knowledge from the environment: “Why has
daddy gone?”.
- Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories, jokes and to create an imaginary
environment.
- Representational: when language is used in order to convey facts and information.

5. ORAL LANGUAGE VERSUS WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Although both spoken and written are used to communicate, there are many differences
between them. For example, the use of grammar is different. In spoken language, we use grammar in an
opener way than in the written form. In oral language we can use different gestures to get our
communicative goal in a more effective way. While in written language gestures can’t be used. (Except
on the Internet, where we can use “emoticons” which are small pictures of a face expressing: sadness,
happiness… As I have said language and communication have changed a lot)
In addition, written language is different to spoken language in the use of intonation, for
instance, when we are talking we use more interjections, exclamations and questions as we can get an
answer of our listener.
Another difference is the organization, in spoken language we use more conjunctions and our
speech is not so structured because it is more spontaneous than the written one. The ideas in the written
language have a more precise order to get coherence in order to obtain a good communication. When we
are talking we can check the understanding, there is a feedback, while in written there is not.
The spoken language appears first, due to the fact that the writing system of any language is
developed or invented in order to record speech when the need arises. Even today, there are many world
languages which can be spoken but they do not have a standard written form.
Furthermore, the moment in which both of them appear is completely different. Thus, a person
acquires a language by listening to it since birth. Then, speaking appears. These two capacities are
related to oral language. Finally reading and writing skills are not developed naturally but learnt during
the school period.

5.COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

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 A communicative activity must be: unpredictable, interactive, within a context and authentic.
Communicative activities to develop oral skills, that is what we as Infant and Primary teachers have to
do, are:
- Listening to songs and stories, Role plays, fill in the gaps, problem solving, describing
personal experiences and communicative games in general.
Communicative activities to develop written skills are:
- Writing shorts texts, writing instructions, filling in forms, filling in the gaps, writing
questions or answers…

6. CONCLUSION

To sum up, for us, as English teachers, the use of language as communication is very
important, as I have tried to show above. But I want to conclude saying that it is also essential that
teachers create a comfortable environment in which children can communicate.
Because the student has to be the main character in the teaching and learning process to create
significant knowledge as Ausbel said. With our attitude, comments and activities, we have to create a
nice lesson plan in which our pupils can communicate freely always led by us to get the didactic aims
established for their level.
But to make a nice environment also means the usages of different resources and materials to
fulfil communication. Teachers in class have to use different materials so that students can understand us
and achieve their aims through different ways.
We know that our language is a very important instrument to achieve communication; in
contrast, every student does not process information in the same way. Our task is to transmit it using
different devices in order to get communication to be effective.

7. BIBLYOGRAPHY

The bibliography used for the elaboration of this topic is as follow:

- Collins English Dictionary. Collins. Glasgow, 1992.

- Crystal, D.: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. CUP. Cambridge, 1987.

- Encyclopaedia Britannica. Enc. Brit. Inc. Chicago, 1990.

- Halliday, M. A. K. Spoken and written Language. Geelong, Vic. Deakin University Press,
1976.

- Halliday, M. A. K. Language as social semiotics. Arnold. London, 1978.

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- Halliday, M. A. K. Functional grammar. Arnold. London, 1982.

- Halliday, M. A. K and Hasan, R. Cohesion in English. Longman. London, 1976.

- Richards, J. C, Platt, J., and Platt, H. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics. Longman. London, 1992.

- Steinberg, D. D. Psycholinguistics. Longman. London.1982