TOPIC 7:

SPOKEN LANGUAGE. LISTENING COMPREHENSION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING. SPEAKING: FROM IMITATION TO FREE PRODUCTION.

I.- INTRODUCTION

II.- SPOKEN LANGUAGE

1.- Characteristics

" The need for accuracy
" Addressee in mind
" Same situational context
" Spontaneity and the speed
" Linguistic features
" Grammar and vocabulary

III.- LISTENING

1.- Definition of the process

2.- Stages of the process

" Identify the phonic and syntactic patterning
" Identify and select them without retention
" Identification and guided selection with short term retention
" Identification and selection with long term retention

3.- Planning a listening lesson

" What to be learnt
" How to teach
" What material to use
" What activities will be done

4.- Guidelines to develop the listening skill

5.- Listening subskills

" Listening to confirm expectations
" Listening to extract specific information
" Listening for general understanding
" Inferring the speaker's attitude

6.- Listening materials

" Songs
" Video recordings
" Tapes
" The teacher

7.- Listening activities

Pre-listening activities

" Prediction exercises
" Vocabulary exercises
" Grammar exercises

While-listening activities

" Ear training activities
" Global-listening exercises
- Completing diagrams
- Problem solving
" Selective-listening activities
- Answering display questions
- Following instructions
- Completion-type activities
- Identifying mistakes or contradictions

Post-listening activities

IV.- SPEAKING

1.- Definition of the process
2.- Planning a speaking lesson
3.- Speaking activities

Activities based on repetition and imitation

" Repetition drills
" Substitution drills
" Transformation drills
" Guessing drills

Controlled activities

" Question and answer
" Right / wrong statements and corrections
" Stating consequences
" Model dialogue and key words
" Gapped dialogues
" Cuewords
" Picture cards
" Language games
" Decision-making activities
" Questionnaires

Autonomous interaction

" Functional communication
" Social interaction

V.- SUMMARY

VI.- REFERENCES

I.- INTRODUCTION

In this topic, we'll start from the idea that the Foreign Language Area Curriculum mentions a sequence which must be followed when teaching the different skills: the oral skills (listening and speaking) are stressed over written skills (reading and writing). That's because learning to speak and to understand means learning the language, whereas reading and writing implies that the language is already known and that we are using its graphic representation.

Although it's better to teach a FL following this sequence, teachers have to take into account that every skill should be reinforced by the rest and none of them can be taught in isolation.

In this topic we'll concentrate on the oral language, analysing in the first part the main characteristics of it and the differences with the written language.

In the second part of the topic, we'll go into detail about both types of oral language, listening and speaking skills, examining some of the activities we can do in order to improve them. We'll take into account that listening is a receptive skill, while speaking is a productive skill.

II.- SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Let us concentrate on the spoken language. We'll explain its characteristics analysing, at the same time, its differences with the written language.

1.- Characteristics

" Perhaps, the most important difference between writing and speaking is related to the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make mistakes
when they are speaking: they change the subject in the middle of a sentence, hesitate an say the same thing in different ways,� These mistakes, except in extremely formal situations, are considered as normal. However, it's expected that writing should be "correct".
" Another characteristic is that speech is time-bound, dynamic and transient. It's a part of an interaction in which both participants are present, and the speaker has a specific addressee in mind. Meanwhile, in most of the cases, the writer doesn't know who the addressee is, so that there is a little expectation of a reply.
" In this regard, participants are in a face-to-face interaction and share the same situational context; as a result, they can rely on non-verbal devices, as body language, facial expression and gesture, as well as rely on the context, in order to help make clear what they mean. This does not happen in speech.

" Another characteristic is that speakers do at least three things at once: planning what to say next, saying what they have planned, and monitoring
what they are saying in order to check that it is what they meant to say. On the other hand, in the speech prevails the spontaneity and the speed, so it's more difficult to engage in complex advanced planning. Whereas, writers can be more precise and organised about what they have to say, and also because they have more time for planning and revision.
" Talking about the linguistic features, a speaker has a great range of expressive possibilities, since he can vary his intonation and stress. The writing system cannot directly represent the prosodic features of speech. Only a very few graphic conventions relate to prosody, such as question marks.
" As grammar and vocabulary regards, the syntax of speech is much simpler than the syntax of writing. The lexicon of speech is also often vague, using words which refer directly to the situation (deictic expressions, such as that one, in here, right now). In written language these expressions are very unusual.

III.- LISTENING

1.- Definition of the process

Let us concentrate on the listening skill. It is a receptive skill and it wasn't until the development of the Communicative Approach in the 70's when the listening skill took importance in the language acquisition. Some previous methods, such as the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual Method, put emphasis in the oral comprehension, but listening was concentrated on the lower levels.

The Communicative Approach postulated the use of realistic and authentic language and learners were trained to match what they heard into a context; the context helped them to understand the meaning.

Nowadays it is accepted that listening plays an important role in Foreign Language Teaching because it provides a great input for the learner, it allows introducing new language and it can provide enjoyment.

2.- Stages of the process

The process of writing goes on through different stages, which we'll analyse as follows.

" Firstly, the pupils have to identify the phonic and syntactic patterning, that is, to recognise the familiar elements in the mass of speech without being able to recognise the interrelationships within the whole system.
" Then, the pupils must identify and select them without retention, that is, listening for pleasure with no questions to be answered.
" After that, SS must do an identification and guided selection with short term retention, that is, they are giver a prior indication of what they are going to listen. They demonstrate their comprehension immediately in some sort of exercise.
" An the last stage is the identification and selection with long term retention, that is, SS demonstrate their comprehension developing activities which require the use of the material previously learnt.

3.- Planning a listening lesson

In order to achieve a successful development of the listening skill, it is essential to plan it very carefully. A listening lesson involves considering five aspects:

" What to be learnt; we have to decide the listening skills to be developed. In the early stages we should concentrate on listening at the level of recognition.
" How to teach; the procedure to follow.
" What material to use; we have to make a choice regarding materials, and it has to be made according to two criteria:
- The linguistic difficulty of the listening text; the text should be within the students language proficiency range.
- The learners' motivation; the materials used should be motivating for the students.
We should remember that the teacher can also be a source of spoken language, he / she can also provide input.
" What activities will be done; they should also be motivating and relevant to the students needs.

4.- Guidelines to develop the listening skill

There are some guidelines that may be useful when planning how to develop pupils' listening skill, which we'll mention as follows:

" Firstly, we must try to give children the confidence; the SS should be told that they cannot always be expected to understand every word.
" Secondly, we must help the SS to develop the strategies for listening; the most important strategy is the use of "intelligent guesswork", that is, they can use their background knowledge to work out the meaning of a word. They can also use other strategies such as predicting, working out the meaning from the context,� The SS should be encouraged to notice the body language or the way the speaker use his/her voice.
" Finally, we must explain them why they have to listen; this means spelling out which part of the message they need to focus on and what they are going to do before listening, while they listening or after listening.

We will now focus on two of the aspects when planning a lesson, the listening subskills and the listening materials.

5.- Listening subskills

The listening subskills are: listening to confirm expectations, listening to extract specific information, listening for general understanding and inferring the speaker's attitude.

" Listening to confirm expectations. We can ask students to predict what they are going to listen and then, listen to it to confirm their expectations. In this way, the students' interest is aroused and they have a definite purpose for listening.
" Listening to extract specific information. Extracting specific information when listening is a major subskill since a great deal of what is said in conversation in redundant and unnecessary.
" Listening for general understanding. Students listen to conversations in order to get a general idea of what the main points are. The students' task is fairly simple but it is a vital skill (because they listen to authentic spoken language) that they must develop.
" Inferring the speaker's attitude. An awareness of stress, intonation or any body language, such as facial expression or gestures, will help the children to work out meaning.

6.- Listening materials

Talking about the listening materials, the most useful ones are the songs, the video recordings, the tapes and the teacher.

" Songs are an important source of motivation. They may be used to change the pace of the lesson or to introduce cultural aspects. They reinforce the learning process since they are very useful to review and learn vocabulary, pronunciation, grammatical structures and patterns.
" Video recordings: When using the video it is essential to choose the right technique depending on the purpose: recognition, production or a combination of both. There are several reasons for using video to develop listening skills:

- It is a motivating type of material.
- The pupils' imagination is fostered.
- This sort of communication has an image context.
- Paralinguistic features help comprehension.

" Tapes: We can use tapes adjusting the level to the pupils' needs.
" The teacher: as a matter of fact, can also provide input. The pupils listen to the teacher most of the time, so he / she must have a good pronunciation.
7.- Listening activities

The listening activities can be divided into pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities. Let us see each one separately.

Pre-listening activities

These activities aim to warm SS up and prepare them to achieve the most from the passage and to arouse their interest. We can distinguish three types of pre-listening activities: prediction activities, vocabulary exercises and grammar exercises.

Prediction exercises encourage the SS to draw inferences and increase the amount of language recognised at first hearing, for instance:

" The SS are told the topic of the listening passage and are asked to guess some of the words or phrases they think they might hear.
" The teacher plays the first few sentences of the recording and challenges the SS to work out what is going on. The SS call out their ideas, which are discussed.

Vocabulary exercises, for example:

" The SS are given a list of words that might occur in the listening text and are asked to listen for which ones occur and which do not.
" The pupils do a picture and word matching exercise. This has two advantages. Firstly you can bring certain words into the forefront of the SS' minds, and secondly, you can ensure that they know the meaning of new words. It is not necessary that all the words which appear in the exercise should appear on the tape.

Grammar exercises, such as gap-filling exercises, involving grammatical structures. The sentences will be taken from the listening passage. The SS will check the answers from the tape.

While-listening activities

While-listening activities aim to guide the pupils to handle the information in the passage. Three types of exercises are to be distinguished:

Ear training activities help SS in distinguishing between key sounds, stress and intonation patterns. They are most suitable in the early stages.

Global-listening exercises are aimed at helping SS to construct an overall sense of a text and they include:

" Completing diagrams
" Problem solving activities in which SS match or recognise information in a text, for example:
- The SS compare what they hear with the information given to them in a picture. They listen to see how far the information the speaker provides agrees with, or contradicts, the information they were originally given.
- Another problem-solving activity is storyline pictures sets: the SS listen to a story or set of instructions referring to a number of pictures and are asked to recognise the pictures described and to put them in the correct order according to the passage.

Selective-listening activities are designed to help SS derive specific information from a text, for instance:

" Answering display questions; questions testing understanding of detail. The questions can be answered individually or in groups and may take various forms: open-ended questions, multiple choice questions, true/false statements. The questions should be read and understood in the pre-listening stage.
" Following instructions, that is, listen-and-do exercises in which they must listen to what someone says, understand it and complete a task. They include picture dictation, where SS have to draw a picture which the teacher or another S talks about without showing it; completing a map or picture; tracing a route on a map in order to arrive at a particular place. These activities involve careful listening without requiring a verbal response.
" In completion-type activities SS have to complete a version of a story, a description or a song while they listen.
" Another kind of while-listening activity is Identifying mistakes or contradictions: SS hear two versions of a story or two accounts of an event and have to identify the points of difference.

Many games depend for their success on SS listening carefully to each other, e.g. Simon says, in which a S in front of the class gives commands, some preceded by the words Simon says and others not. The class obeys the former only.

Post-listening activities

In post-listening activities SS take the information they have gained from the listening passage and use it for another purpose (composition, discussion).
Some extension work can also be done based on the content of the passage.

IV.- SPEAKING

1.- Definition of the process

As follows, we'll concentrate on the speaking skill. During the first half of this century, this skill was neglected, since in the FL teaching, the emphasis was on the written skills. Moreover, speaking has received more attention in the last twenty years.

Although in the Direct and the Audio-Lingual method the emphasis was on oral communication, students could not do free activities until they have mastered the new language in controlled exercises, in drills. Now it is accepted that some sort of dynamic and meaningful exercises should be included in speaking lessons from the beginning.

When SS are learning a FL, they want prompt results and speaking is the aim when they come to class. They want to speak and that's the most important thing to them. When listening, the input received can be in a higher lever than expected; in contrast, when speaking, the speaker choose the language according to his/her level and that's an easy aspect in comparison with listening.

Although the speaker can choose the level, speaking is one of the most problematical skills since successful oral communication involves many things:

" To know some grammar and vocabulary.
" Ability to make the foreign sounds correctly.
" To master the suprasegmental features.
" Fluency.
" Some listening skills.

When a child is learning a FL, he usually makes mistakes. A solution would be to guide oral practice to avoid the SS' mistakes, or at least to try that they make as few as possible. Then, the psychological aspect is important, because when children realise that they can speak without mistakes, they'll be motivated to go on speaking properly.

The main goal of speaking will be fluency, which can be defined as the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too much hesitation.

2.- Planning a speaking lesson

When planning a speaking lesson, we must bear in mind that speaking activities should fulfill certain requirements:

" Activities must provide opportunities for language practice.
" They must be interesting.
" As regard to the subject matter, it must be within the students' experience; it must be close to their lives.

3.- Speaking activities

Speaking activities fall into the following three categories: activities based on repetition and imitation, controlled activities and autonomous interaction.

Activities based on repetition and imitation

Littlewood's structural and quasi-communicative activities belong to this group. They are preparatory activities, intended to prepare learners for communicative activities. The former focus on the grammatical system and on ways in which items can be combined. The latter consist of two or more conversational exchanges.

Drills are an example of this type of structure-orientated exercises. They help to assimilate facts about new language and enable the student to produce the new language for the first time by helping him master the basic structural patterns of the language. They are usually very controlled and have a fairly limited potential. They shouldn't be used either too frequently or for too long.

The teacher will insist on accuracy, correcting where SS make mistakes. In addition, the SS' talking time can be notably increased in large groups. There are different kinds of drills:

" Repetition drills; SS have to repeat the sample pattern accurately and quickly; e.g. "I went to the market and I bought�"
" Substitution drills; SS are required to replace a word or phrase of the model sentence by the cue word/phrase provided by the teacher.
" Transformation drills; e.g. putting affirmative sentences in the negative or active sentences in the passive.
" Guessing drills; they get SS to try to find out through guessing. They are thus based on the information gap principle. Some examples are:
- SS think of something they did the previous weekend and then they take turns to find out what it is by asking.
- SS imagine that they have been ill and they take turns to find out each other's illness by asking.

Controlled activities

Controlled activities help SS develop confidence and the ability to participate in simple conversations. Texts (dialogues and prose passages) can be exploited for oral practice. The advantage of the activities based on them over the drills we have looked at is that they offer a well-defined context for practice.

" Question and answer practice is one of the commonest ways of giving language practice in the classroom.
" Other techniques are right / wrong statements and corrections. SS are asked to say whether a statement is right or wrong within the context of the text and, if it is wrong, they give the correct version; or they are asked to correct statements.
" A third technique can be stating consequences, in which the SS have to say what happened as a result of an event or action described.

T: Columbus discovered America.
S1: Other people followed him.
S2: It changes the story of the world.

Pairwork activities provide SS with a greater amount of meaningful practice. There are various types of pairwork activities: model dialogue and key words, gapped dialogues, cue words, picture cards, language games, decision-making activities and questionnaires. Let us outline each one of them:

" Model dialogue and key words: SS work with a set of 4-5 dialogues related to the same theme together with a list of key words which they can use to produce different dialogues.
" In gapped dialogues one of the speakers has to supply the missing utterances. The speaker's missing words may also be cued by indicating what functions he has to express, e.g.

A.- .......... (invite somebody to go out with you).
B.- Sorry, I'm busy.
A.- .......... (suggest another day).
B.- Yes, that would be fine.
A.- .......... ( suggest a time).
B.- All right. See you then.

" Cuewords: SS are given cards with a number of cuewords on them, around which a dialogue can be modelled, and a model dialogue to work with.
" Picture cards can be used for a range of activities:
- Finding uses; SS have to find uses for an object within a particular environment, to compare the uses for an object in two environments, or to find two uses for an object, one normal use, the other absurd.
- Association activities; SS have to link two objects e.g. in terms of use, material, etc.
" Language games also help to improve speaking skills, e.g. Hide and seek, where SS "hide" and object somewhere in a picture. They then take turns to find out where the object has been hidden by asking questions like Is it on the bookcase? Is it under the TV?
" Decision-making activities require SS to make certain decisions. They employ the information gap principle, that is, SS have to try to find out what each has decided. For instance, they are given a set of numbered places and they write the numbers on a street plan to indicate their positions, which their partners have to guess.
Non-pictorial aids such as maps, menus, radio and TV programmes are another way of getting SS to interact using fairly controlled language. For example, with maps SS can practise giving directions. With menus they can decide what they are going to eat and drink. With TV and radio programmes they can discuss what they are going to watch or listen.
" Questionnaires with mixed structures are effective ways of getting SS to draw on all their linguistic resources. They involve identifying somebody who corresponds to a requirement of the questionnaire. For example, the questionnaire may read:

Find someone who: NAME
- is wearing black socks
- likes flying
- can't swim
- has never been abroad
- would like to go to the moon

Autonomous interaction

The last type of speaking activities is related to the autonomous interaction, that aims to get from the students a free production of language.

Communicative activities provide the learners opportunities to use the language for themselves. The opportunity to say something has to be given to them, so that they can see for themselves the value and use of what they are learning. The activities must be geared to the learners' needs and the teacher should formulate the tasks in terms that SS can understand and ensure that the instructions are clear. If the task is very complex, it is advisable to set up a rehearsal before asking SS to start. Moreover, the teacher should:
" make sure that everybody speaks English and that everything runs smoothly.
" set up mixed ability pairs/groups because SS learn from one another.
" elicit or pre-teach the language SS will need during the activity.
" monitor the task discreetly. H / S should intervene only if he/she is quite certain that learners cannot manage on their own.
" should not keep correcting and demand too high a standard of accuracy.
Littlewood distinguishes two types of communicative activities: functional communication and social interaction.

a) Functional communication activities involve the communication of information. They have to overcome an information gap or solve a problem. By 'information gap' Littlewood means a type of activity in which one or more of the SS has to get information from someone else. Some examples of these activities are the following:

" Discovering identical pairs: one S has to find which of four other has the same picture as his.
" Discovering missing information: two SS each have an incomplete table and each has to get missing information from other.
" Discovering secrets (guessing games). These games are accuracy-focussed games chose purpose is to reinforce what has already been taught. For example "Twenty questions" (one player thinks of a famous person or place and the others try to find out what by asking no more than twenty questions).

b) Social interaction activities involve simulation and role-play. In a simulation SS act as themselves (giving directions to a passer-by outside the school), while in a role-play they act as someone else. For role play the class is usually divided into small groups who are given situations and roles to act out.

They are different ways of providing a framework for role-play practice:

" Open-ended dialogues, e.g. dialogues which leave the learners free to decide how to develop them.
" Mapped dialogues: SS are given functional cues on separate cards. We may define the relationship between the two speakers, e.g. they are friends.
1 Invite B to go out with you 1 Decline
2 Suggest another possibility 2 Accept
3 Confirm arrangements 3 Agree
" Role instructions describe the situation and tell the participants how they should interact. Example: you go into a bookshop to buy a book (describe author and title). Ask the bookseller is he has the book. If the book is not available, decide whether to order it.

Other activities are discussions and fluency-focussed games, i.e. games in which SS use language rather than simply practise it, for example in a debate to choose the SS that will controll the class library.

V.- SUMMARY

To summarise, in this topic we have dealt with the oral skills (listening and speaking), which, in the Foreign Language Area curriculum, are stressed over the written skills (reading and writing). We've given some guidelines in order to make a proper planning and we've suggest some of the activities we can do when teaching both skills.

VI.- REFERENCES

" The techniques of Language Teaching by Billows, F.L.
" Teaching Language as communication by Widdowson, H.G. Oxford University Press.
" Teaching Oral English by Byrne, D. Published in 1986.
" Getting Students to Talk by Golewiowska, A. Published in 1990.

TOPIC 7. FOREIGN LANGUAGE SPEECH. THE COMPLEXITY OF GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING IN ORAL INTERACTION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE LISTENING. SPEECH IPRODUCTION: IMITATIVE REPRODUCTION AND AUTONOMOUS REPRODUCTION.

INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION
2. D.A. WILKINS AND J.A. VAN EK
3. SPECIFYING THE DISCRETE LINGUISTIC-CULTURAL ITEMS
4. AUDIOLINGUALISM AND NEO-FIRTHIANISM
5. THE INTERPERSONAL SPEECH ACT
6. AUTONOMOUS INTERACTION
7. LISTENING AND SPEAKING

1. INTRODUCTION

Speech, or spoken language, is the most obvious aspect of language, it is the universal material of human language. For many hundreds of thousands of years human language was transmitted and developed entirely as spoken means of communication.

Using a foreign language eefectively requires having a number of different abilities. Linguistists have identified four major abilities, which are called linguistic skills. They are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. (about their classification and their integration, see topic 3).

In this unit we are going to study the listening and speaking skills, first how our pupils evolve from hearing to active listening, and second, from imitative speaking to autonomous talking.

2. LISTENING COMPREHENSION: FROM HEARING TO ACTIVE LISTENING

Listening in a foreign language is hard work. It is a principle that listening should precede speaking. Clearly, it is impossible to expect our pupils to produce a sound which does not exist in their mother tongue or a natural sentence using the stress, rhythm and intonation of a native speaker of the foreign language without first of all providing them with a model of the form they are to produce. It is not possible to produce satisfactorily what one has not heard. The logical step, then, is attempting to achieve oral fluency or accuracy is to consider our pupils´ ability to listen.

At first sight it appears that listening is a passive skill, and speaking is an active one. This is not really true, since the deconding of the message calls for active participation in the communication between the participants. A receptive skill is involved in understanding the message. Understanding is usually signalled in a face-to-face conversation by the nods, glances, bbody-movements and often phatic noises of the listener. This visual and verbal signalling confirms to the speaker that listening and understanding has taken place so, while hearing can be thought of a passive condition, listening is always an active process.

Studies of classroom interaction show that children spend a large part of their time listening - listening to the teacher, to each otther or to pre-recorded material. Problems are likely to arise if teachers do not teach children how to listen, so that they can cope effectively with these demands. Besides, our work as teachers of young learners is much easier if the children are motivated and enjoy what they are doing. It is up to us to ensure that the activities they are engaged in are interesting and/or fun. We also have to be clear that our students cannot understand everything they hear. We should provide purposeful activities where learners are asked to focus on specific points. We must ensure that the children´s learning is supported wherever necessary. Learners will also of course listen just for fun, without having to do anything with what they hear.

FROM HEARING TO UNDERSTANDING

The first stage in the listening skill learning process is ear-training, if we cannot hear we will not understand. Later on we must help our pupils develop their aural understanding abilities.

If we want our pupils to be efficient listeners in English we must give them enough practice in both intensive and extensive listening. Intensive listening is closer to ear-training. If we feel that our pupils are not producing satisfactorily a certain sound or they have not encountered it yet, we can get them to listen carefully for the sound in a given passage, as a first step towards imitation, then production of the sound. This is called intensive listening.

Onn the other hand, we may be aware that our pupils cannot understand ordinatry English of the type that is used in our coursebook tape. In this case a more general familiaritty with the lexis and grammar of the listening texts is required so we must prepare aural lessons which will not focus on a sound or two but on general features of the style of sicourse materials. This is called extensive listening.

EFFECTIVE LISTENING

Language comprehension is generally seen as part of an interactive process arising from the complex interplay of the three main dimensions of interaction: the social, the cognitive and the linguistic. Studies of young learners´comprehension skills show that many aspects of listening are mastered at an early age, particularly in supportive, conversational contexts where social skills are highlighted. However, when the listening focus involves more demanding cognitive skills, such as processing information or monitoring the adequacy of a message, children frequently encounter problems.

Many authors currently take the view that there are several parallels between the processes involved in L1 acquisition and L2 learning. It is felt that children have the ability to transfer some of the skills and strategies in their L1 acquisition to second language learning. The kinds of information source used in comprehension can be summarised under two main headings:
a. knowledge about the content of the spoken message
- general knowledge to do with facts and information
- sociocultural knowledge to do with topics, settings and participants in interaction
- procedural knowledge about how language is used, for example, knowing that questions generally demand responses
b. knowledge about the language used in the spoken message
- recognition of items of vocabulary and sentence patterns
- understanding of phonological features such as stress, intonation and sounds

The role of the teacher is to encourage children to draw upon different information sources, skills and strategies in order to learn how to help themselves understand. Once the teachers are aware of these processes, they will be able to include in their planning interactive or specific listening tasks focusing on one or more of these strategies. Six types of strategy are given below, described in the context of listening to a story:

1. Getting the general picture: this strategy is used when children are being encouraged to listen to a story simply for pleasure. In this case the learners do not attempt to focus their attention in or remember details but to listen for gist to get a general idea of what the story is about
2. Predicting: this strategy is useful when children are trying to follow the sequence of events in a story. If the children are motivated and have some support for their understanding, they can be encouraged first to predict and then to check whether what they hear matches their expectation. This is an example of a learning context where knowledge of the language system and general knoowledge based on previous experience of L1 stories work together to facilitate comprehension
3. Extracting specific information: the focus here is on recognising specific components of the language system, such as selecting relevant adjectives to describe particular characters in a story to fill in a tick-chart or recognising specific verbs and nouns when matching pictures with events in a story. If the aim of the activity is listening comprehension rather than memory testing, for this strategy to work the learners need to know what kind of information to listen out for. The support materials (pictures and charts) help the learner distinguish relevant from irrelevant parts of the message.
4. Inferring opinion or attitude: an awareness of stress and intonation, combined with knowledge of lexical items and grammatical patterns, enables the learner to determine whether a character is happy, angry or sad and therefore to work our some of the context of the story
5. Working out meaning from context: it must be made clear to children learning English that they will not be able or expected to understand every word in a story. Thus the teacher needs to develop their confidence in facing texts with new vocabulary. Key words may be glossed beforehand while visual support or written framewords (charts, for instance) will help the learners understand detail. Some learners might be able to draw upon their knowledge of the langauge system.
6. Recognising discourse patterns and markers: every story will have certain story-tellinng conventions, for example an introduction beginning, "Many years ago there was a wicked witch�" The recognition of discourse markers used in logical relationships, as well as the use of appropriate intonation, will help learners to work out some of the storyline.

THE LISTENING CLASS

It is important to make a distinction between the teaching and testing of listening. The practice of asking the childrren to listen to something with no support other than questions to answer after listeniing has many drawbacks. It concentrates too much on the testing of comprehension or memory rather than encouraging children to develop strategies to coping with the spoken message. This kind of methodology tends to overload the child´s capacity for porcessing and retaining information. Thus the emphasis is placed on assessing what the children have understood rather than in supporting their understanding so that they can show that they have understood.

It is only when teachers direct the children´s attention to the pupose of the listening task beforehand and procde a suitable framework for providing acees to the spoken message that they can be said to be teaching listening. Possible frameworks to be used can take the form of pictures, charts or questions which aim to create interest and supply motivation and support for the successful completion of the task. This kind of methodology reflects the view that the listening process is a form of interaction between the listener and the text. The meanings which learners construct in this interactive process depend on the one hand on their "set" to the text and on the other hand on the content and the language contained in the ttext. The "set" can be described in terms of what the learner brings to the text, that is, the schematic knowledte described earlier such as background knowledge and feelings, attitudes or interest. The content of the text will of course draw upon linguistic items such as vocabulary and grammar as well as discourse geatures such as refference, lexical relations, logical connectors and intonation. The linguistic content may serve to refer to events, people, animals, places, objects, feelings, attributes, concpets and so forth. With the help of the teacher, who creates a context and a purpose for liistening, the focus of the comprehension activity can be on any of these aspects.

The teaching of comprehension is said to have three phases: pre-, while- and post- listening activities. The first stage is an introduction or orientation to the text during which the teacher might elicit what the children already know about a topic by asking them questions, or create interest by relating aspects of the content to the children´s own experiences.

The second stage involves an explanation of the pupose of the listening task so that the children are quite clear what their role is and whether they need to focus on specific aspects of the text. The purpose mau be simply to listen and enjoy a story, song or rhyme in which case they can participate if the teacher wishes. If the listening purpose is to extract specific information it is at this point that the teacher will explain the task and refer to any visual or written support he/she has planned. The learners will then listen to the text, which may be pre-recorded or spoken by the teahcer or another child, and complete the activity.

The stage after this is then concerned with checking information by asking questions (oral or written) or by asking for feedback on any other outcomes the learners may have produced, such as completing a game, finding the correct sequence of events or drawing and labelling a picture.

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

It requires patience, imagination and skill to create an interesting environment for young learners to develop confidence in listening. The teacher´s role is this respect is fourfold:
1. Planning for listening
2. choosing appropriate texts and tasks:
3. Providing support
4. varying the learning context

3. LISTENIING AND SPEAKING

Listening and speaking tasks should always be properly introduced: the context of the text and the task involved needs to be clear to the students before they start an exrecise. Teachers should beware of setting artificially high standards of correctness. Experienced teachers accept different degreees of variation from the "perfect" model. Additioanlly, there are teachers who use "teacher talk" at certain moments of the lesson. "Teacher talk" is using a very simplified version of the target language so that the students can understand better. There is no harm in doing this, as long as studnets also receive natural language input as well. A teacher might use "teacher talk" when presenting a langauge item; an unnaturally slow pronunciation would help the students to identify the sounds better. However, during the development session, oral drills practice should be done using natural speech patterns.

As for fluency and accuracy, the listening and speaking skills should be approached from both of these perspectives: there are moments in the lesson when accuracy is imperative. For example, when a language item is presented, accuracy is of the utmost importance; it is equally important during oral drills sessions. However, during productiooon, especially during free pair work and groups work activities, practice for fluency is preferable. The teacheer can monitor the production of the studnets, noting language weakness which need to be dealt with in subsequent class sessions.

Listening entails the following aspects: guessing the meaning of unknownn vocabulary; folowing the main ideas of something spoken using natural speeach; summarizing a speaker´s intention; recognizing style and register differences; identifying the structures of a spoken statement; making inferences; formulating a personaly opiniionn about a text; formulating an intellectual attitude and an emotional attitude towards a text; taking notes while listening to a speech; identifying the amin phonological aspects of the English language (vowels, dipthongs, tripthongs, consonants, rhythm, stress, intonaation, word junction); comparing pre-kowledege with what is being said; the speaker´s intention; the speaker´s attitude; phonological aspects.

Speaking entails the following aspects: formal and informal manner; preparing and giving oral reports; asking and answering questions (interviews); telling a story and expanding narratives; connecting sentences; dividing speech into paragraphs and main ideas; constrciting dialogues; making correclty formed declarative and interrogative statements; interpreting a picture story; summarizing a peech hard using notes taken; paraphrase what another person has ssaid; tell a story (invented or retold).

UNIT 8: LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE. READING COMPREHENSION: EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE READING. WRITING: FROM INTERPRETATION TO PRODUCTION.

1. WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Speech uses phatic substance and writing, graphic substance. Speech is considered to be part of an interaction which both participants are present and the speaker has a specific address in mind. On the other hand, in written language the producer is distant from the receiver and sometimes even do not know who the receiver is. While speech is time-bound and dynamic, writing is space-bound and static.
So writing allows repeated reading and close analysis. It needs careful organisation and structured expression. Some words must be avoided when the meaning relies on the situation.
Ambiguity must also be minimised in writing, as there is no possibility of asking for immediate explanation.
Some constructions might be fond only in writing (formal) and others, in speech (slang, swear words, �)

2. LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE IN THE FIRST LANGUAGE
There are many different methods to teach reading:
" Phonic approaches try to identify the regular sound/letter relationship. Permitted vocabulary is restricted.
" Global approaches try to recognise individual words as wholes without breaking them into constituent letters or sounds. It is based on meaning.
Nowadays there are some mixed schemes, integrating the strength of each.
Fluent reading needs some strategies:
" Rapid and selective techniques (scanning)
" Silent techniques (skimming)
For writing is necessary to acquire the motor skill of sequencing letters, using different shapes and sizes, word spaces, spaces between lines, margins, etc. But writing is more than that automatic exercise, it is the ability to use the structures of the language in an appropriate and mature way.
There are different stages of writing acquisition:
a. Basic motor skill and principles of spelling system are developed.
b. Using the writing system to express what they can already say in speech.
c. Writing and speech split up, and writing develop its own pattern and organisation.
d. Writers can make stylistic choices and develop a personal way of expressing.
3. LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE
Reading is to distinguish the meaning of a chain of words in a text, quite quickly.
English spelling is different from sounds, so words and structures must be worked first in an oral way.
Before reading, children must know most of vocabulary structures and have some knowledge about the topic, culture and situation.
Reading techniques
Children need some techniques in order to get the maximum information from a text with the minimum of misunderstanding:
" Extensive reading: getting a global picture, a clear idea of the overall meaning of the text (skimming)
" Intensive reading: paying attention to the details, getting particular points (scanning)
" Having an interpretation of the text based on reader's own experience.
" Guessing many unknown words by simply studying the context.
" Predicting what they are going to read next, recognising discourse linkers (although, but,�)
" Inferring opinion and attitude, based on the recognition of linguistic style and appropriate purposes.
After reading comprehension learners must interpret the text:
" Picking the author's intention
" Distinguishing facts and opinions
" Finding relations with personal experience.
Reading activities (three stages)
" Pre-reading tasks: to familiarise with the topic. Looking at previous knowledge. It is necessary to create expectations in order to increase their interest. They will read to confirm expectations and that is motivating. (describing photographs or covers of the text, informal dialogues about the topic, prediction of the content, giving a tittle, �)
" While-reading tasks:
" Skimming: reading a text to get the gist of it (suggesting the tittle of the passage, matching text tittles with series of short texts,�)
" Scanning: extracting specific information from the text (underlining information required, completing an information form, classifying under different headings, tick in a list of objects already read, �)
" Combining both, skimming and scanning (answering questions, describing main characters physical and emotionally, completing a drawing, anticipate actions,�)
" Making inferences: recognising opinion and attitudes (questions of possible interpretations)
" Post-reading tasks: the main aim of these activities is to internalise the language of the text (crossword, drawing comics, role play, carry out a survey, summarise, change the end, continuing the story, preparing a similar text, boarding games,�)

4. WRITING: FROM CONTROLLED PRACTICE TO FREE PRODUCTION
Traditional methods used writing to fix linguistic forms in memory. There was no intention to teach the learner to express anything of himself through the new language.
Nowadays we need to identify the needs of communication of our pupils. Our pupils will spend most time completing tightly controlled written exercises. Sometimes they might be encouraging to produce free writing.
Writing needs some abilities:
" Graphical or visual skills: includes spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and format.
" Grammatical skills: to use successfully a variety of sentence patterns.
" Stylistic or expressive skills: to express precise meanings in a variety of styles and registers.
" Rhetorical skills: cohesion and links of parts of the text into logical sequence.
" Organisational skills: sequencing the ideas, summarising relevant points and rejecting irrelevant information.
Writing activities might be these ones:
" For practice:
" Making lists, personal vocabulary
" Completing crosswords
" Matching labels to pictures
" Classifying words under headings
" Writing speech bubbles for cartoons
" Explaining surveys or questionnaires
" Correcting mistakes
" Copying sentences that have been matched
" Answering questions
" For communication:
" Writing games (descriptions of famous people)
" Exchanging letters (playing a role)
" Story construction (small pieces of paper)
" Writing reports and advertisements)
Correction of written work can be done by both, teacher and pupil. The teacher must show positive aspects, showing the pupil where the work was effective and where it was not.
The teacher can underline the error and write in the margin the type of error it is: concordance, wrong word order, unclear meaning, �

THE WRITTEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE. APPROXIMATION, MATURATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE READER-WRITER PROCESS.
THE READING COMPREHENSION: TECHNIQUES FOR GLOBAL AND SPECIFIC COMPREHENSION OF TEXTS.
THE WRITTEN EXPRESSION: FROM THE INTERPRETATION TO THE PRODUCTION OF TEXTS.

INTRODUCTION.

In this unit, I am going to explain the reading-writing process.
In first place, I will explain some aspects of this process in general, the relationship that exists between both of them and how can be develop this process in order to acquire the English language.
In the last part of the unit, I will explain both skills, reading and writing. In addition, all its features like the importance of the authentic or non-authentic material which is used to do the exercises.
Another important aspect that I am going to be in mind in the last part is the techniques and activities, which can be carry out in class to improve both skills.

THE READING-WRITING PROCESS.

In the first part of the unit, I am going to explain the relationship that exists between the reading and writing skills. Both terms are narrowing linked because these skills are present from the first stages in the approach of the foreign language. The language is firstly heard and then it is read.
Reading, is an important skill, which can contribute to the accomplishment of a language in posterior stages. This skill can be useful in order to achieve vocabulary, or it can be a motive to read for pleasure. The additional lecture, which is read in a voluntary way, offers the opportunity to learn in an unconscious way aspects like culture from the foreign language. The main advantage of the reading for the students is that it improves their general English level. We have as teachers to encourage the complementary readings, which has to be chose by the students.
We have to realise that, when we are going to teach a language in the first stages, our students do not have knowledge about grammar or syntax. Due to that, the teacher will be the guide in the learning. Teachers will have to use some strategies like the comment of the illustrations, the chose of easy situations� In the first stages, it would be advisable direct to our students with patters, which has the same structure.

In order to improve the reading-writing process, we can use a great variety of activities and techniques. It is obvious that we have to start from easy to texts that are more complex.
We will try to offer to the students short tales with familiar situations related to their daily life, alternating with fantastic stories like adventures with monsters.
In class we have to exploit the illustrations, because they are very important in order to understand the context of the situation. In a great variety of activities, the introduction of the teacher will help the students to understand the aim of the activity.
Then, the teacher can ask some questions to check if they have understood what is pretend in the activity. After that, we can do the reading. In the first curses, the texts are read aloud to continue to silent reading, and later, to the summaries. Then, we can do the comprehension exercise:
- questions made by the teacher, from open to more close answers,
- judgements made by the teacher, which can be true or false and
- summaries of texts using synonymous and paraphrases of a text.
It is advisable that, whenever possible, the teacher relates the current situations that is carry out to more familiar situations.

In more advanced levels we can use:
- charts,
- questionnaires and surveys where the object is to interview a classmate, for example according to their likes, dislikes, preferences,
- role-plays: these activities are connected with dialogues and performances. The students are appointed a certain role and they must ask according to it.
In these advanced levels, it would be advisable:
- the use of the dictionary and
- the preparation of their own vocabulary in personal dictionaries.
In the last cycle is advisable that the students try to infer the meaning from the context.

THE READING COMPREHENSION.

Now, it is time to discuss the reading comprehension. Reading in the foreign language must start from the first year when the language is studied.
We have to interact with the text in order to understand the message, even where the text contains language which the students are not able to produce.
One aspect of reading that concerns many teachers, is the difference between authentic and non-authentic texts.
The authentic texts are designed for native speakers, not for language students. This kind of material can be newspapers, advertisements or radio-programmes.
A non-authentic text in language teaching terms is one that has been written especially for language students. Such texts sometimes concentrate on the language they wish to teach. In these texts appear some particular grammatical structures, vocabulary or some particular tenses.
When teachers choose the right kind of material and the students are successful, then the benefits are obvious. What we need, therefore, are texts where the students can understand the general meaning of, whether they are truly authentic or not.
The job of the teacher is to train the students in a number of skills which they will need for the understanding of reading and listening texts. These skills can be divide into two groups.

a) Type one skills, are those operations that students perform on a text when they tackle (enfrentar) it for the first time. The first thing the students are asked to do with a text concerns it treatment as a whole.
Thus, students may be asked to look at a text and extract specific information. They might read or listen to perform a task to confirm or check expectations they have about a text. Type 1 skills are:
- Predictive skills: efficient readers or listeners predict what they are going to read and hear.
- Extracting specific information: students have to focus on the specific information they are searching for. This skill, when is applied to reading is called "scanning".
- Getting the general idea: we often read or listen to things because we want to "get the general idea". When applied to reading this skill is often called "skimming".

b) Type 2 skills are those that are subsequently used when studying reading or listening material and they involved detailed comprehension of the text.
They are practised after type 1 skills have been worked on. They are:
- Extracting detailed information like: what does the writer mean? What precisely is the speaker trying to say? How many�?
- Recognising functions and discourse pattern. To recognise some discourse markers are an important part of understanding how a text is constructed. We need to make students aware of these features in order to help them to become more efficient.
- Deducing meaning from context.
It is convenient that in class, the student gets used to extensive and intensive reading.
For the intensive readings, the students will work with short texts, from which they understand basically all the words.
In the extensive reading, students make the effort to understand the message using all kind the strategies. These are some ideas of reading activities:

- PRE QUESTION: A question is given before reading, to find out a piece of central information.
- DO IT YOURSELF QUESTIONS: Students compose and answer their own question.
- PROVIDE A TITTLE: Students can suggest an alternative tittle.
- SUMMARISE: Students summarise the content in two or three sentences.
- CONTINUE THE TEXT: Learners suggest what might happen next in a text.
- PREFACE: Learners suggest what might happen before.
- GAPPED TEXTS: Gaps are left which can only be filled in if the texts have been understood.
- MISTAKES IN THE TEXTS: Towards the end of a text, there can be some mistakes. Students have to know in advance how many mistakes there are in the text.
- COMPARISON: There are two texts on similar topics, students note points of similarity or difference.
- RESPONDING: The text is a letter or a provocative article and the students discuss how to respond to the letter or write an answer to the article.
- RE-PRESENTATION OF CONTENT: The text gives information and students represent its content through different graphics mediums.

WRITTEN EXPRESSION.

In the last part of the unit, I am going to explain the written expression. Frequently, writing is relegated to the status of homework. This is a pity since writing, especially communicative writing, can play a valuable part in the class.
Reading has a notable influence in the writing expression, the more we read the better we write. It can be said that, there is a better level in the written expression in those students who use a more variety of written texts in their daily life.
When we are going to planning the written activities, we have to consider the following aspects:
a) Contextualization: when we write a message in real life, we always do it within a context or situation, because who writes presupposes certain aspects determined by the situation. We have to be in mind aspects like the type of the register.
b) Aim: writing has always a purpose, according to this, there will be determined the expressions, vocabulary, etc. The purpose has to have a meaning for the student. Due to that, the students need to know different kind of writings and practise them in order to connect with the possible reader.
c) Creativity: it seems convenient to provide the student with occasions where they can create their own texts and feel that it is the product of their will and personal effort.
d) Motivation: the essential objective in language production is to provide the student with motivation to learn. If the activities are motivating, the students will feel an inner satisfaction to learn, to communicate with others and carry a task they like.
e) Integration: in a communicative approach of writing, it is necessary the integration with other skills which contributes to several purposes:
- allows the practise of the some linguistic or functional contexts in the same skills,
- develop two or more linguistic skills within the same context and
- approximates the use of the language to the real world.
A receptive or an oral activity can precede the writing activity.

The types of writings can be divided in two groups:
- Personal texts:
¨ for personal use: shopping lists, dates, recipes
¨ direct to other people: messages, letters, invitations�
- Institutional writings: commercial letters, information request, magazines�

Another kind of division can be:
a) Activities where it is only necessary to copy a written text.
b) Activities designed to encourage student's creativity.
To practice handwriting, spelling and new vocabulary at word level we can:
a) Make lists.
b) Make personal dictionaries.
c) Completing crosswords.
d) Classifying words under headings.

In addition, under the sentence level students can:
a) Write tittles for pictures.
b) Write speech bubbles for cartoons.
c) Matching halves of sentences and copying.
d) Sequencing sentences and copying.
e) Correcting mistakes in written sentences.
f) Answering questions.

There are a lot of techniques to help students to develop their writing expression, from the very controlled expression to the free writing. Some techniques are:
- Writing guides with model and visual stimulus (description of a person). We can use photographs, drawings, magazines�
- Writing guides from a stimulus. Transferring information from the oral to the written language, (the elaboration of questionnaires can be an example).
- Writing guided by the establishment of a situation and give instructions to write a text. Leaving or taking messages can be an example.
- Free writing, in order to develop the student's imagination (creation of novels, short tales, stories, diaries about the English class�).
- Diaries can be interesting for the teacher. Thus, the teacher can obtain interesting data about the student's attitude.

UNIT 8- LENGUA EXTRANJERA ESCRITA. APROXIMACIÓN, MADURACIÓN Y PERFECCIONAMIENTO DEL PROCESO LECTOESCRITOR. LA COMPRENSIÓN LECTORA : TÉCNICAS DE COMPRENSIÓN GLOBAL Y ESPECÍFICA DE TEXTOS. LA EXPRESIÓN ESCRITA : DE LA INTERPRETACIÓN A LA PRODUCCIÓN DE TEXTOS.

" Introduction

" The written foreign language: aproximation, maturation, and improvement

" The reading comprehension

" The written expression

" Conclusion

As a way of introduction is worth considering that the efectiveness in the use of a language requires we have different skills, which are, called "linguistic skills".
We can find two kind of skills. On one hand, the skills which are acquired by means of oral interaction, listening and speaking, and on the other hand, the skills acquired by means of visual interaction, reading and writing.
If we want to achieve a communicative competence among our students, we must work simustaneously the four skills.
In relation to the written foreign language we have to bear in mind we can find three different styles according to writing purpose; the expresive style focuses on the expression of the writer´s personal feelings; the trasactional style focuses on logical statements and the poetic style which expresses imaginative experiences. In the same way, we can find a serie of stages in writing. They´ll be the preparatory stage where principles of the spelling system are acquired; the consolidation stage in which children begin to use the writing system to express what they can say in speech; the differenciation stage where the students diverge from speech and develop their own and finally, the integration stage where they have a good command of language and they can vary their stylistic choices.
Along the Primary Education we pretend students get basical necessities of written language. Moreover, they must be able to answer in usual situations of written language, they must express communicative intentions and recognize the characteristics in each situation.
As for the approach to reading-writing it is convenient to begin to develop the reading-writing capacity of the foreign language through simple and superfluous texts, descriptions and brief narrations, class instructions, children and popular songs, tales encouraging the pleasure to interpret the written texts and enjoy with the reading.
The reading allows the gradual addition of vocabulary and the motivation for second language learning.
Some methods present a book for additional lecture. If the student reads texts spontaneously and in a voluntary way, the success will be complete, as the readings will also give him the opportunity to know and assimilate easily the culture from the foreign country.
At the beginning, the contexts of the new lessons must be easy; in this stage, the reading will be confined, most of the time, to repeat words and structures seen in the lesson (in class), offering new combinations, visual help as pictures, etc. The teacher will read aloud several times and he´ll ask them questions in order to answer yes or no.
As for maturing of the reading-writing process we have to take into account as the course advances, the reading-writing exercises will be, logically, more complex. They´ll serve to assimilate the structures we have just seen and review the previous ones.
The procedure to follow could be based on an introduction of the teacher where the students observe a picture, the teacher asks them some questions and then he relates the text to other situations. The next step will be listening and reading the text and finally we´ll present a comprehension exercise using questions which can be open, that is, the answer expected can change, or close where the expected answer is yes or no.

Teacher: Where did mummy put the cake?
Student: On the cupboard.
Teacher: Is the cupboard small?
Student: No, it´s big.

Reaching this point, the student is able to interpret a complementary text. We'll try to offer the student short tales with familiar situations, related to their daily lives, alternating with fantastic stories in order to get the success and arise the student´s interest.
We can work out different types of activities: in class, the teacher will comment superficially the plot and then he will read the text; the first texts are read aloud, to continue gradually to silent reading and later to the summaries or brief written commentaries.
After the reading, the teacher suggests a series of judgements that will have to be determined as true or false.
We can propose different endings or return to writing the text but under another point of view, composition of a text whose sentences appear disarranged, etc.
We are going to continue with the improvement of the reading-writing process. We have to consider the texts will present a greater difficulty, they may be more long extended and, in some occasions, without pictures.
When finishing these readings, a simple comment will help understand and place the text. We´ll elaborate in class a summary, we can divide the text in parts with subtitles, the students can answer questions and they can explain their personal opinions about the central idea.
On the other hand, we can use complementary readings. The additional text will consist on a reading already chosen by the student, although we can provide him with comics, series of cartoons, magazines, etc.
The traditional tales and the easy poems are a good source of reading materials.
Now that the possibilities of the students reading-writing are better, it is advisable the use of the dictionary, the preparation of their own vocabulary and the elaboration of his own notebook where he can register in alphabetical order.
In relation to reading comprehension we have to bear in mind that the reading capacity of the students from Primary Education, starts to acquire a more systematic characteristic. It´s convenient the student gets used to extensive and intensive reading.
For the intensive reading, the student will work with short texts, from which he will understand basically all the words (labels, advertisements, letters from friends, etc.).
In the extensive reading, the student will make the effort to understand the messages although he may not known the meaning of some words. In this case, he can ask for the teacher´s help, other classmates, basic bilingual dictionaries and other communication strategies (inference by the context, similarity with the mother tongue...).
In the foreuign language class we can practise activities of different kind focused on global or specific comprehension.
At first, the short of games proposed will be in relation with with what the student already knows in his mother tongue so he can infer from his previous experience the sense of formal or referntial elements (headings, presentation...) which allow him to formulate hypothesis about the content.
We can work out a great number of clues which help the comprehension as photographs, charts, pictures, presentation of the text, the headings, words in the text which are repeated, familiar words, ask the students questions: Who? When? How?
The age to start reading must start from the first year when the language is studied (from the beginning).
The techniques will be suitable to the student´s level, the complexity will vary as he is acquiring more knowledge and promoting to new courses. Firstly, they'll read short sentences and later they´ll achieve the interpretation of a brief and simple text.
We can find a serie of advantages in reading, which consists, have learn other cultures, review structures and vocabulary and a better-written expression.
In the same way, we must distinguish three types of pupils. Those who find difficult to get a global idea, those who don´t pay attention to details (quick reading) and those who are imaginative readers because they interpret the text as they like.
As result, we have to be careful with the texts we choose. We have to adapt the readings to the group and the individuals.
In relation to the techniques for the global comprehension, skimming, we have to consider that it can be achieved using the following strategies or techniques:
- The student relies on the clues previously mentioned who writes? When? Where? Why?
- The text will be adpated to the student´s level.
- Comprehension of the main idea in the text being neccessary to make student understand that is perfectly possible to understand the main idea without knowing all the words completely. Nouns and verbs have more important meaning than other words.
- Deduce the neaning of unknown words from the context.
- Register the vocabulary in a notebook.
- Look up words in the dictionary.
- Identify relations between sentences by connectors.
- Recognise discourse patterns (conjuctions, etc.)

As examples we can include reading based on the inference system, reading carried out by the teacher in aloud voice, reading made by the students in class, reading aloud and normal reading.
As for the techniques for specific text comprehension, scanning, we´ll take into account reading performs by the teacher in aloud voice where the students have the text and repeat it. Also, they can infer, deduce a specific information by means of clues, questions, etc.
The students reading in class aloud would be another strategie provided them with narrative or descriptive passages or short poems; reading at home as an enjoyable activity, not as a school task. Advertising will be interesting at the time of finding specific information. The teacher could bring a written example, preferably original and with drawings or colour photos.
The scanning is a technique related to the speed in reading and involves the attainment of information by means of searching words or key propositions. It´s a very productive exercises where the student answers questions reading the text very quickly.
Finally, it is important to point out that although there are different techniqes for the global and for the specific comprehension of texts, both will have to be always together or integrate in order to achieve a better acquisition of the foreign language.
We are going to continue with the written expression. Firstly we are going to expone a serie of writing skills visual or graphical as spelling, punctuation and capitalization; grammatical as sentence pattern and constructions; expresive using different styles; rethorical in order to link parts of the text into logical related sentences; organisational rejecting irrelevant information or summarizing relevant points and finally the fact of knowing formal structures.
Also it´s important to emphasize that the more we read the better we write.
Krashem develops the hypothesis that the written skill is acquired in the same way as the speaking skill. The student would request a given language, comprehensive input, in a quantity enough to develop his capacity. This input should be accomplished for pleasure and interest, so his attention would be focused on the message or content and not on the form how the message is expressed.
We have to follow a serie of criteria for planning activities of written expression, which consists of contextualization, because when we write a message in real life, we always do it within a context or situation. The place where the written activity is generated may be as well a determinant element of it. If this takes place in a relaxed atmosphere, the result will be very different that the outcome obtained in an examination atmosphere.
An another criterion is the aim, that is, writing has always a purpose which determine the expressions, vocabulary, etc.
The type of register is also important according to descriptions, informal or formal letters, etc.
The creativity since when we write we elaborate ideas trying to express the contents by means of words or sentences. It´s important to provide the student with occasions where he can create his own language and feel that it is the product of his effort. We suggest the importance of programming activities, where the student writes spontaneously short messages or informal notes in the target language, we´ll select subjects about which the students have read or had a personal experience and therefore are interesting for him.
It´s interesting the reasoning of the writers and the integration with other skills in order to aproximate the use of the language to the real world, develop two or more linguistic skills within the same context so the students aware of the written text, the resources to achieve, the conventions of personal or institutional writings, headings, address, greetings,etc.
The last criteria we are going to comment is to provide the student with a motivation to learn.
We can develop two kind of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. If the activities are motivating, the student will feel satisfaction to learn, to communicate with others and carry out a task he likes.
In relation to the step from interpretation to text production we are going to consider some activities or preparatory techniques as well as techniques of written expression.
Firstly we have to bear in mind we can find two main kind of writings. On one hand the personal writings for personal use which appear reflected in shopping lists, telephones and adresses, dates, reading books, recipes, etc. Or directed to other people (messages, invitations, letters, postcards, etc.)
On the other hand, the institutional or public writings that are found in daily life: commercial letters, biographies, posters, songs, puzzles, crosswords, games, compositions, etc.
The preparatory techniques are related to the development of reading comprehension. We may emphasize the inference technique of the meaning of a word in the context, or the ones guessing the meaning of unknown words and the meanings implicit in the text, and the techniques of predicting the content of a text from the knowledge of one of its parts.
In the first place, the students are provided with a text where there are a key word missing. We ask them to pay attention to the context surrounding this word (vocabulary, structures, idioms, etc.) to infer the meaning. In pairs or small group, the students try to guess which word it is.
Other technique is the "linguistic reflection", which help the student to perceive specific aspects from the text.
Later, the students can write letters to the students from another class or formal letter to travel agencies. The next activity is based on "braimstorming" and helps the student to remember and learn the vocabulary necessary to develop a subject.
The students are asked to say the words they can think about a topic and later they will write a composition using the vocabulary noted down.
After the preparatory techniques, we suggest techniques to help students to develop their written expression, so the task they carry out will be attractive and easy. These will vary from the very controlled to the free writing. In most of the activities the student is encouraged to write his own communicative text with his experiences, interests, feelings, etc to a possible reader.
We can work out activities following a model where we can present an illustrative drawing as orientation and stimulus, transferring information activities as elaboration of questionaires, activities from a situation and given instructions to write a text, activities without specific support (creation of tales, short novels, writing diaries, etc.).
As conclusion of the topic we consider very important students feel the interest and curiosity towards the written text as well as the capacity to elaborate them.
The bibliography used has been:

- Bello y otros. Didáctica de las segundas lenguas. Aula XXI Ed. Santillana. Madrid. 1990
- Harmer. The practice of English Language Teaching. Longman. Burnt Mill. 1983
- Byrne. Teaching writing skills. Longman. Burnt Mill. 1988
- White, R. Process Writing. Longman. London. 1991
- Cajas Rojas

TEMARIO A: TEMA 9
Sistema fonológico de la lengua inglesa II: Acento, ritmo y entonación. Comparación con el sistema fonológico de la lengua o lenguas oficiales de la Comunidad Autónoma correspondiente.
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1. Phonetics and Phonology
2. Phonemes and Speech Sounds
3. Stress/Rhythm and Intonation
2. STRESS
1. Degrees of Stress
2. Position of Stress
3. Stress in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
3. RHYTHM
1. Weak and Strong Forms
2. Regularity of Rhythm
3. Rhythm in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
4. INTONATION
1. Falling Tone
2. Rising Tone
3. Fall-rise Tone
4. Rise-fall Tone
5. Level Tone
6. Fall+rise Tone
5. TEACHING IMPLICATIONS














1. INTRODUCTION
The most noticeable feature of a foreign language is often intonation and rhythm. Some languages are described as sounding "like music", other languages as being "flat and without melody". If the pronunciation of individual sounds can be compared with the individual notes in a piece of music, the intonation can be compared with the melody or tune.
When studying the pronunciation system of a language we differentiate two categories:
" Segmental elements: Vowel and consonant sounds.
" Prosodic elements: rhythm, stress and intonation.
1. Phonetics and Phonology
PHONETICS: is the science that studies the language sounds; how sounds are produced in general.
PHONOLOGY: is the study of the sound system in a particular language. It includes intonation, rhythm, sounds patterns, etc.
2. Phonemes and Speech Sounds
PHONEME: is the smallest unit of speech that can change the meaning of a word.
SPEECH SOUND: is any unit of sound produced by the speech organs. They are the muscles and parts of the mouth, which we use to speak.
The Phoneme is also defined as "only in terms of its differences from the other phonemes in the same language".
Ex: Ship sheep
Minimal pairs: Such pairs, which differ only in one phoneme.
3. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation
When dealing with the concepts of Stress, Rhythm and Intonation, we should start by referring to the concept of prominence
" Prominence: is the characteristic in common with all stressed syllables. Four different factors are important:
a. Loudness
b. Length
c. Pitch: is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords.
d. A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighbouring vowels.
" Stress concerns the relative prominence with which one part of a word or a longer utterance is distinguished from other parts.
" Rhythm concerns the relative prominence, or pattern of the stresses being perceived as peaks of prominence, occurring at somewhat regular intervals of time. English is a language with a tendency for a stress-timed rhythm.
" Intonation is the association of the relative prominence with pitch, the aspect of the sound which we perceive in terms of "high" or "low".
Other prosodic systems include factors such as tempo and the relative speed of utterance. Perception of the rhythm base may involve observing variations of loudness, pitch and speed.
1. STRESS
We can study stress from the point of view of production and of perception. The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables. Many different sound characteristics are important in making a syllable recognisably stressed.
In English, stressed syllables are longer then unstressed ones, the vowels are more voiced within them. Stress is not marked in the spelling system, but it can be transcribed phonetically.
The importance of stress should be noted, given that incorrect stress on syllables is an obstacle to communication, because it may lead the speaker to understand a different word, that follows a different stress pattern.
1. Degrees of Stress
We can distinguish between the primary and secondary stress. The first one is also called tonic strong stress, while the second one is also called non-tonic strong stress.
Ex: 'presup,ose
There are other authors who consider that there exist three stresses.
Ex: 'many 'lovely ''girls
2. Position of Stress
Normally stresses are in a fixed position in a word.
" First syllable: 'precept
" Second syllable: to'night
" Third syllable: engi'neer
" Fourth syllable: misunder'stood
" Fifth syllable: palatali'zation
Exceptions:
a. Native words and early French loans
Ex: 'kingly 'kingliness un'kingliness
b. All abstract nouns ending in -ion
Ex: 'mission
c. Nouns ending in -ity
Ex: 'vacuous va'cuity
d. Nouns and adjectives ending in -ian
Ex: 'liberty liber'tarian
e. Adjectives ending in -ic
Ex: 'phoneme pho'nemic
f. Words with more than one function
A wide selection of words that can operate equally well as nouns/adjectives or verbs, are differentiated by their stress in the two functions:
Ex: 'present (Noun or adjective) pre'sent (verb)
g. Compound nouns
They are generally stressed on the first element with a secondary stress on the second element in contrast to the normal noun phrase stress pattern:
Ex: 'black ,bird (compound nouns) a ,black 'bird (noun phrase)

h. Stress in phrases
When we come to stress in phrases and other syntactic units, we provide different underlying relations between juxtaposed items.
Ex: An 'English ,teacher (someone who teaches English)
An ,English 'teacher (a teacher who is English)
1. Stress in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
a. Lexical and secondary stress
The Canarian speakers should keep in mind the different importance given to the secondary accent in Spanish as compared with English. The pronunciation of isolated words rarely occurs in Spanish, it only happens in Adverbs ending in "-mente", and in a few compound adverbs.
Ex: símpleménte óptico-acústico
b. Contrastive secondary stress
The secondary stress occurs in the Canarian dialect as well, but it is not prominent:
Ex: las cuestiones tanto 'interiores como 'exteriores
Although English compounds generally turn into a secondary stress the one which was the primary in the root, and this secondary stress still keeps a considerable strength; Spanish moves the stress to the suffixes:
Ex: 'central / ,centra'lize centrál / centralizár
A secondary stress does not appear except in the cases where the general rules of Spanish regulate it.
c. Stress position and Effect
In two-syllable words both languages have a preference for stressing the syllable before the last; English tends to stress the antepenultimate syllable in three or more syllables words whereas Spanish keeps the penult position for stress.
English vowels are deeply affected by their stress, whether primary or secondary. Stressed vowels have a precise and clear pronunciation, whereas unstressed vowels have a tendency to become indistinct.
Finally , in Spanish the stress is represented in the spelling, what makes it easier to be remembered and pronounced , whereas in English it's not represented.
1. RHYTHM
Rhythm may be defined as the regular succession of strong and weak stresses in utterances. The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of time. The theory that English has stress- timed rhythm implies that stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not.
Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of rhythm, the foot is used. Some theories of rhythm go further, and point to the fact that some feet are stronger than others, producing strong-weak patterns.


1. Weak and Strong forms
The weak form, in which the vowel is pronounced with the schwa vowel, is more common than the other.
The strong form in which the vowel is pronounced as it is written.
Obviously the use of one or another form may affect the meaning of the utterance.
Ex: 'Jane and her 'mother ''are 'stupid = it is not true that they are not stupid
'Jane ''and her 'mother are 'stupid = not just one, but both are stupid
Weak forms are a manifestation of stress and rhythm in English, and must not be avoided in teaching, or the learner will sound unnatural in connected speech.
2. Regularity of Rhythm
The natural rhythm of English provides roughly equal intervals of time between the stressed items.
The prevailing tendency in unstressed syllables and words is to reduce the vowels to the obscure / /, thus we have / / in a great many syllables:
Ex: a kilo of potato / 'ki:l v p ' te t z/
Regularity of rhythm is used for specific pourposes:
a. Counting:
Ex: 'one, 'two, 'three,..., seventy 'four, seventy 'five
b. Inventory or lists
c. Emphasis:
Ex: you should 'always 'look be'fore you 'cross the ''road

1. Rhythm in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
It is essential in English to have a sentence rhythm, which does not exist in Spanish.
In an English sentence certain words which are too close to the initial rhythmic beat lose their lexical stress in spite of having lexical stress. This does not happen in Spanish.
Ex: Mary's younger brother wanted fifty chocolate peanuts
In this example we can see the difference with the Spanish stress, in Spanish all the words will be stressed; however, in English only the syllables in bold type are really stressed, thus favouring rhythm.
The behaviour of prepositions and conjunctions differs in both languages: they are usually stressed in English; in Spanish only the preposition "según" is stressed.
Stress also varies in English depending on whether it is used on strong or weak forms of the same words. There is nothing in Spanish, which resembles the English strong and weak forms so this will prove difficult for Spanish students.
1. INTONATION
Intonation is the tune within the sentence that may alter the meaning. Here the pitch of the voice plays the most important part. We describe pitch in terms of high and low. There is another necessary condition and that is that a pitch difference must be perceptible.
Intonation is generally found in sequences of stressed and unstressed syllables, though it can be a single word. We call it the tone unit, within which there is the nucleus (capital letters). The first stressed syllable in a tone unit is a onset ('), the end will be ('')
The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called its intonation contour. English has a number of intonation patterns which add conventionalized meanings to the utterance: question, statement, surprise, disbelief, sarcasm, teasing. An important feature of English intonation is the use of an intonational accent (and extra stress) to mark the focus of a sentence. Normally this focus accent goes on the last major word of the sentence, but it can come earlier in order to
emphasize one of the earlier words or to contrast it with something else.
Ex: She 'told SOMeone''
She 'bought it for a PARty''
" "
onset nucleus
Tone unit
1. Falling Tone
This is the commonest tone in English affirmative sentences, wh-word question, one word answers to questions, and on words, names, numbers and letters said in isolation.
Ex: 'What's the TÍME''
'LÓNDON''
'TWÓ''
'´R''
2. Rising Tone
It is used to suggest that what is said is not final.
Ex: Counting: 'ÓNE'' 'TWÓ''...
Or because a response is needed (though not in wh-word question):
Ex: Are you 'HÁPpy''
Or when two clauses are joined together:
Ex: When I 'GÉT there'' I'll HÍT him''
A question will use a rising tone while the question tag uses the falling tone.
The fall and rise are by far and away the most common of the nuclear tones.
3. Fall-rise Intonation
It often occurs in the nucleus of a doubtful condition, but it is particularly common with the initial adverb:
Ex: I'll' see him if he CÓMES''
4. Rise-fall Intonation
It expresses as it does both genuine and assumed warmth, as well as feelings of shock or surprise.
Ex: 'That's GRÉAT''
5. Level Tone
It sometimes used to the exact predictability of what is to follow:
Ex: he DRÁNK'' he WÓManised he 'DÍED
6. Fall-rise Intonation
It is common in everyday usage:
Ex: She looks FÍNE to MÉ''
It is often used with marked focus, the fall coming on the focus item and the rise on the last lexical item in the tone unit:
Ex: It's his 'MÁNners that I can't STÁND'' = 'What I don't LÍKE '' are his ?Mánners''
2. TEACHING IMPLICATIONS
All languages have their own intonation patterns. Why is intonation important? Intonation conveys both meaning and attitude, so when a non-native speaker gets the intonation wrong, s/he can be misunderstood or sometimes misinterpreted as sounding rude or demanding when this is not intended. If a non-native speaker is almost fluent in the English language, intonation is often the only way in which one can tell that s/he is foreign. Moreover, if a foreign speaker is advanced in terms of grammar, vocabulary, etc., native speakers will make fewer allowances for intonation problems than they would with speakers who are obviously at a more elementary level. For example, if an advanced level speaker unintentionally sounds rude or demanding, the listeners will assume that s/he means it.
What can be done to improve intonation? First of all students should be aware of the differences between their intonation and the English one:
" Spanish intonation is much more measured, so we have to teach the students how to intonate the different English elements.
" Intonation in Spoken Spanish does not rise and fall as much as English. Students should try and keep the voice as levelled as possible.
Some useful techniques may be :
" Listen to as much spoken English as possible (on cassette if you are unable to listen to native speakers) and be aware of where the voice rises and falls. When you listen, try to consider the attitude and feelings being conveyed. One word, for example, can be said in several different ways, depending on the meaning you wish to convey.
" Stories motivate children to listen and learn, and help them to become aware of the sound and feel of English. A selection of ready-to-tell stories is included although the activities can be used with any story.
" Creating Drama with poetry is an exciting language learning experience. The use of poetry as drama in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom enables the students to explore the linguistic and conceptual aspects of the written text without concentrating on the mechanics of language. Through this technique, apart from several other aspects the teacher can model student's pronunciation, intonation, stress, rhythm, and oral expression;
We as teachers have to take into account all the differences existing between L1 and L2 patterns of stress, rhythm and intonation, and try our students to differentiate them. So English people can understand their speaking.

TEMA 9: DESCRIPCIÓN DEL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA. MODELOS Y TÉCNICAS DE APRENDIZAJE. PERCEPCIÓN, DISCRIMINACIÓN Y EMISIÓN DE SONIDOS, ENTONACIONES, RITMOS Y ACENTOS. LA CORRECCIÓN FONÉTICA.

1.- DESCRIPCIÓN DEL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA.

1.1.- ¿Por qué es importante la fonética?

1.2.- ¿Qué inglés? ¿Acentos?

1.3.- ¿Cómo representar los "sonidos"?

1.4.- La voz: cuerdas vocales, articulación y fonación. Órganos auxiliares.

1.4.1.- ¿Cómo se produce la voz?
1.4.2.- Fonación.
1.4.3.- Articulación.

2.- MODELOS Y TÉCNICAS DE APRENDIZAJE.

2.1.- Papel del profesor.

2.2.- Técnicas de comunicación.

2.3.- Técnicas de producción.

3.- PERCEPCIÓN DISCRIMINACIÓN Y EMISIÓN DE SONIDOS, ENTONACIONES, RITMOS Y ACENTOS.

3.1.- Introducción.

3.2.- Vocales y diptongos.

3.3.- Consonantes.

3.4.- Semivocales.

3.5.- Entonación, acento y ritmo.

4.- LA CORRECCIÓN FONÉTICA.

1.- DESCRIPCIÓN DEL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA.

1.1.- ¿Por qué es importante la fonética?

Después de muchos años de estudiar y enseñar el inglés a hispanohablantes, he llegado a la conclusión de que la mayoría de los alumnos persiguen un mismo objetivo: adquirir una fluidez de comunicación oral. Esto no es nada fácil de conseguir, teniendo en cuenta que la lengua inglesa pertenece a un grupo no romance -como es el caso del español--, que el aparato fonético del hablante se "anquilosa" con la edad -siendo por ello menos capaces de emitir mayor variedad de sonidos--, y que por norma general los alumnos no están en contacto con el "ambiente" anglófono necesario.

Para alguien que estudie una lengua fuera del país de origen, se hace absolutamente necesario el establecimiento de unos códigos que permitan la explicación de los sonidos de dicha lengua. El hablante no nativo sólo tiene como recurso la IMITACION de dichos sonidos. Esta "imitación", llevará a un mejor o peor grado de "exactitud" dependiendo de muchos factores. Entre ellos, a mi modo de ver, el principal es la comprensión exacta de todos los sonidos de la lengua que se estudia.

Y para una buena comprensión de los sonidos, es necesaria una BUENA DESCRIPCION de los mismos: el oído tiene tendencia a "asimilar" fonemas -que a veces distan bastante de los de la lengua materna--. Esto significa que escuchamos lo que estamos acostumbrados a escuchar. De forma muy simplista, un español sólo es capaz de distinguir una "a", y todo lo que se parezca a ella lo "escuchará" como una "a".

1.2.- ¿Qué inglés? ¿Acentos?

Lo primero que uno descubre cuando quiere comenzar a hablar inglés, es la gran diferencia de "formas" del idioma que existen(tanto habladas como escritas). La riqueza de acentos del inglés es realmente sorprendente, por lo que, teniendo en cuenta que hemos de IMITAR a un angloparlante, ¿a quién elegimos como modelo?

Esta es realmente una difícil pregunta, a la que solo puedo responder: elija el modelo que más le guste, que más se adapte a sus necesidades y a sus posibilidades. Pero, sobre todo, el que le sea más accesible y le permita un mayor número de horas de audición. Por ejemplo, si usted puede sintonizar con la BBC, utilícela como modelo. ¡Sería absurdo pretender imitar un acento escocés sin haberlo oído nunca !

Aquí, se muestran las explicaciones que corresponden al denominado RSP: Pronunciación Recibida Standard (Receiv