Tema 7

LA

LENGUA

EXTRANJERA

ORAL.

LA

COMPLEJIDAD

DE

LA

COMPRENSIN DEL SENTIDO GLOBAL EN LA INTERACCIN ORAL:

DE LA AUDICIN A LA ESCUCHA ACTIVA Y SELECTIVA. LA TOMA
DE

PALABRA:

DE

LA

REPRODUCCIN

IMITATIVA

LA

PRODUCCIN AUTNOMA.

SPOKEN

LANGUAGE.

LISTENING

COMPREHENSION:

FROM

HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING. SPEAKING:

FROM IMITATION TO FREE PRODUCTION.

The present essay aims to study the spoken language. For

this purpose, I will first present the notion of spoken language and
the main principles that should guide our teaching practice. Second, I
will develop the listening skill topic. In order to do so, I will discuss
separately the main strategies and the stages involved. Finally, the
third part of the essay is devoted to speaking skill. For this purpose,
I will deal with the main strategies for developing speaking skills and
activities recommended for a balanced approach, providing varied
examples. Finally, I will compile the main conclusions and the
bibliography used to develop this topic.
Learning a new language means developing skills that allow
us to process what other people say in another language and to
communicate what we want to say. In order to use language
effectively, we need to combine different skills.
We can identify four major skills: listening, speaking, reading
and writing. These major skills can be classified in relation to the
medium of transmission: speaking and listening are expressed
through the aural medium whereas reading and writing are expressed
through the visual medium. Next, I will analyse in depth the skills that
are expressed through the aural medium and thus, are part of the
spoken language.

Tema 7
But first, let me present the notion of SPOKEN LANGUAGE. It
is the greatest use of language and is the basis of communication; in
fact, oral language plays a vital role in the personal and social
development.
Language consists on words uttered through the vocal organs
and perceived via hearing organs. Speech is time-bound, dynamic
and temporary. It is part of an interaction in which both participants
are usually present, and the speaker has a particular addressee in
mind. Also, part of the message can be conveyed by prosody.
But teaching spoken language in school, especially related to
foreign language areas, does not mean teaching children to speak
using correct forms so much as providing then with the skills and
opportunities to communicate more effectively. To achieve this goal,
we have to bear in mind the following principles when planning
spoken activities, both comprehensive or listening and productive or
speaking ones:
a) Give clear instructions: speak loudly, slowly and clearly;
demonstrate the task.
b) Have define goals, aimed to the improvement of one or more
specific listening/speaking skill.
c) Careful planning, step-by-step.
d) Contextualized tasks, specially related to situations near to reallife situations.
e) Adequate level of difficulty, from easy to less easy topics and
structures.
Following factors help to judge the relative ease or difficult of
any activity: clear organization of the text, familiarity with the
topic, visual support to aid in the interpretation, redundancies of
the text, existence of multiple individuals and objects.

Tema 7
f) Active pupil participation and varied classroom interaction
modes.
g) Handle errors sensitively and affectively: correct errors in
language areas that you recently taught or in structures that
need to be used frequently by the student.
h) Monitor students activity continuously.

After having contextualized the topic, I will now deal with

LISTENING COMPREHENSION.
Listening is the ability to understand and respond to spoken
language. But far from passively receiving information, listening
activities actively involve the listeners in the interpretation of what
they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic
knowledge relevant to the information contained in the aural text.
Listening does not only enable learners to interact in spoken
communication, this is an essential skill that provides the aural input
that serves as the basis for language acquisition.
Apart from these principles, listening strategies are another
key element when dealing with listening skill. Listening strategies can
be classified by how the listener processes the input: top-down
strategies and bottom-up strategies.
a) In the top-down strategies: the listener recovers information
form his/her background knowledge, and this helps the listener
to interpret what is heard. This is an essential skill given that, in
real-life listening situations, foreign language learners are likely
to come across unknown vocabulary or structures. By using
their knowledge. They should either be able to guess the
meaning of the unknown word or understand the general idea.

Tema 7
To practice top-down listening strategies in the classroom, we
can get pupils to predict the content of a listening beforehand
by providing some key words or sentences; we can order a
series of pictures or events in order, listening to conversations
and identifying where they take place, how many participants
there are, etc.; or we can read information about a topic and the
listening to find whether or not the same points are mentioned.
b) In the bottom-up strategies: the listener relies on the language
contained in the message. This strategy helps learners to
understand enough linguistic elements of what they hear to
then be able use their top-down skills to fill in the gaps.
To practice bottom-up listening strategies in the classroom, we
can get pupils to pick out details; discriminate between
phonemes or word boundaries; recognize words; find the
stressed syllable; or use features of stress; intonation and
prominence to help identify important information.
In addition to this, if we want our pupils to be efficient listeners
we must give them enough practice in both intensive and
extensive listening.
-

In intensive listening, students are asked to listen to a passage

with the aim of collecting and organising the information it
contains.

The

passages

used

usually

contain

concrete

information and often its not so easy for the students to

understand on first hearing. Passages should be short and
played several times. This is the most widely used form of
listening practice in classrooms.
-

In extensive listening, the language level is within the students

capacity and they listen for pleasure and interest. It can be used
for two different purposes.

Tema 7
o To present already known material in a new environment;
o To practice vocabulary items and structures which are
familiar to them.
We as teacher must bear in mind the aforementioned principles
and strategies when using listening activities in the classroom, but it
is also important to know when to use them, that is, in which stages
the activity best fit. The listening activities can be classified as
follows: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening.

Pre-listening activities prepare students for what they are going

to hear and create expectation. This can be achieved through
prediction, vocabulary and grammar exercises.
These activities may include: looking at pictures, maps,
diagrams; reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures; and
going over the directions for the activity.

While-listening activities related directly with the aural text and

students do them during or immediately after the time they are
listening. They must be matched with the aim of the exercise
and the students proficiency level.
These activities may include:
o Listening with visual, for example, listening to physical
descriptions and matching with the appropriate famous
character picture.
o Filling in graphs and charts with relevant and preciously
known data.
o Following a route on a map.
o Picture dictation.
o Checking off items in a list.
o Searching for specific clues to solve a mystery.

Tema 7

Post-listening activities are used to check comprehension and

assess. A post-listening activity may expand on the topic of the
listening text: or may transfer what has been learned to
reading, speaking or writing activities.
Following on the listening passage, a lot of activities are
possible: extending lists, summarising, matching with a reading
text, answering multiple-choice or true/false questions, problem
solving activities, ordering and completing a conversation,
writing texts as a follow-up to listening activities, speaking in a
form of debates, interviews, discussions, role-plays, simulations,
dramatisation, etc.
After having dealt with the training and development of

listening activities, I will do on to address the SPEAKING SKILLS.

Speaking is the ability to communicate in speech, which has to
be appropriate to specific contexts. Language learners need to
recognise that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:
-

Mechanics or the uses or the right words in the right order with
the correct pronunciation.

Functions or the knowledge about the different uses of

language.

Social and cultural rules and norms or the importance of the

context.
Apart from these key aspects, students of a foreign language

should be taught effective speaking strategies that they can use to

help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and, mainly,
their confidence in using it. Following speaking strategies are
essential:

Tema 7

Using minimal responses: in order to encourage learners to

participate, it is recommendable to help them build up a stock
of minimal responses that they can use in different types of
exchanges.

Recognising familiar situations: students have to learn to

recognise different communicative situations which are relevant
to their nearest environment, such as greetings, apologies,
invitation, etc.

Using language to talk about language: learners have to learn

to overcome the misunderstandings in any communicative
interaction.
In order to help students develop communicative efficiency in

speaking, teachers may follow different stages in a balanced

approach that combines language input, structured output and
communicative output activities. It can be:
-

Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening

activities, reading passages, etc. it gives learners the material
they need to begin producing language themselves.
o Content oriented, which focused on the information; or
o Form oriented, which focused on the structures of
language.

Structured output activities focus on correct form and make

learners comfortable producing specific language. In these
types of activities, students may have options or models to
complete.
Two commonly used structured output activities to practice
speaking are information gap and jigsaw activities. In both
types,

students

complete

task

by

obtaining

missing

information:

Tema 7
o Information gap: one student knows something that
another student doesnt. the gap should be bridged by
means of negotiation and interaction techniques. These
activities may be organised to practise more than just
grammatical and lexical features.
o Jigsaw activities: each partner has one or a few pieces of
the communicative puzzle and the partners must
cooperate to fit all the pieces into a whole communicative
interaction. This communicative activity may be based on
graphical aids, such as comics, photos, stories, etc.
-

Communicative output activities allow students to practice

using all the language they know in situations that are similar to
real life. In these activities, students must work together to
develop a plan, solve a problem or complete a task. The most
common types of communicative output activities are:
o Role plays: students are assigned roles and put into
situations that they may eventually encounter outside the
classroom. They have to use appropriate language
according to the situation. Students often benefit from
role-plays, as they lessen their inhibitions taking on
another identify.
To prepare successful role-plays, we have to bear in mind
these guidelines:

Provide clear instructions.

Take students personalities into account when

selecting role-plays to do.

Pre-teach or check students know the language and

vocabulary needed to carry out the dramatisation. If
its

complicated

role-play,

consider

giving

Tema 7
students

prompt

sheets

with

key

vocabulary/questions for their characters.

Allow them a few minutes to study the role cards

and work out come key sentences. Give help where
needed.

Each role play should be performed at least twice

with the students changing roles.

Avoid making corrections until the role play is

finished.

Recording role plays can be a very useful tool for

giving feedback.

o Discussions: they can be a powerful means of enabling

students to engage actively with the topic and develop
their own views based on critical thinking. But, in order to
achieve these goals, classroom discussions have to be
purposeful and require careful preparation. Having a good
class discussion depends on four basic factors:

As

The discussion must have a purpose.

Students must have something to say.

Students must feel comfortable participating.

Meaningful questions must be asked.

CONCLUSION,

would

like

to

highlight

that

communication is the main purpose or any language, and it is a key

word for us as English teachers. In this light, spoken language has a
key role at this stage of education and should be given priority over
the written language.
By increasing students awareness of listening and speaking as
skills that require active participation, and by teaching listening and

Tema 7
speaking strategies, we can help students to develop both the ability
and the confidence to handle communicative situations. In this way,
we give students the foundation for communicative competence in a
new language.

LA

LENGUA

EXTRANJERA

ORAL.

LA

COMPLEJIDAD

DE

LA

COMPRENSIN DEL SENTIDO GLOBAL EN LA INTERACCIN ORAL:

DE LA AUDICIN A LA ESCUCHA ACTIVA Y SELECTIVA. LA TOMA
DE

PALABRA:

DE

LA

REPRODUCCIN

IMITATIVA

LA

PRODUCCIN AUTNOMA.

AIM

To study the spoken language: listening and speaking skills

0. INTRODUCTION
-

Learning a new language means developing skills

To use language, we need to combine different skills

1. SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Definition

Features (spontaneous, irrevocable, transient, both participants

present, intention clues)

Teaching principles

2. LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Definition + active involvement

Strategies:

10

Tema 7

Top-down strategies, bottom-up strategies

Extensive listening, intensive listening

Stages:
o

Pre-listening

While-listening

Post-listening

3. SPEAKING

Definition + areas of language (mechanics, functions, social and

cultural rules)

Strategies:
o

Using minimal responses

Recognising familiar situation

Using language to talk about language

Stages following a balanced activities approach

o

Language input (content oriented or form oriented)

Structures output activities (information gap, jigsaw activities)

Communicative output activities (role plays, discussions)

CONCLUSION
-

Main aim: students develop both the ability and the confidence to
handle communication situations (communicative competence).

11