LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO

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

DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

2. COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: VERBAL &

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES:
NONVERBAL REACTION TO MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
0. INTRODUCTION
1. VERBAL COMMUNICATION
1.1. CONCEPT OF VERBAL COMMUNICATION
1.2. VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM
2.NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
2.1. CONCEPT OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
2.2. NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
3. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NONVERBAL REACTION TO MESSAGES IN
DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
3.1. THE TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE
4. CONCLUSION
-BIBLIOGRAPHY-
 LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO
VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA- LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN
DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

0. INTRODUCTION
The main function of language is communication. The main aim of all speakers in usual
situations is to understand others and to make themselves understood. Thus, as we said before,
our main objective as FLT must be t teach students to communicate in that foreign language.
This means providing them with c.c.. The concept of language and linguistic competence had
already been formulated by Chomsky, but Hymes criticised that something was missing:
speakers need more than grammatical rules to communicate. We are able to use non-linguistic
strategies to make ourselves understood.
If speakers need more than a linguistic competence to communicate, a more
comprehensive concept had to be indroduced. Hymes deeply theorised about c.c. in his book
On Communicative Competence (1971). There, he distinguished four aspects of his competence:
1. Systematic Potential: that means that a native speaker possesses a
system that has a potential for creating a lot of language;
2. Appropriacy: the native speaker knows what language is
appropriate in a given situation, according to setting, participants,
purposes, channel and topic;
3. Occurrence: the native speaker knows how often something is said
in the language and acts accordingly;
4. Feasibility: the native speaker knows whether something is possible
in the language.
As we can see, language competence alone (grammar, vocabulary, phonetics) is not
enough to achieve the speaker’s or receiver’s communicative aim. The Decree (…) by the
Canary Government explains in tis introduction what aspects must be taken into account when
considering c.c.. It constitutes a different way of explaining Hymes’ subcompetences:
GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE: which implies the knowledge of
how language is organised as discourse and allows one to adapt the discourse to
the specific situation;
SOCIO-LINGUISTIC C.: makes it possible to adapt linguistic
performance to the situation according to the social rules and habits, in order to
produce suitable statements in any context;
STRATEGIC C.: includes the knowledge of how to access and use
extra linguistic resources to achieve the communicative objective;
SOCIO-CULTURAL C.: allows one to interpret the elements of the
social and cultural reality, transmitted or referred to by language.
In other words, c.c. implies a certain mastery of a language system and, moreover, the
capability to use and interpret non-linguistic communicative resources.
1. VERBAL COMMUNICATION
1.1. CONCEPT OF VERBAL COMMUNICATION
The verbal aspects of communication depend on the way in which communication
takes place. Linguistic messages can be transmitted either by oral or written means.
Independently of the means, producing a message implies that someone is receiving it:
in a communication process, when someone is speaking, ne is listening; someone
writes, and someone reads what is written.
LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO
VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA- LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN
DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

As we can see there are 4 basic skills involved in the whole language spectrum:
speaking, listening, writing & reading. They can be classified according to 2
parametres:
-The channel used in the transmission;
-The activity that the interlocutors carry out;
The LOMCE, in its contents of the curricular design, reflects the importance of
proficiency in this skills.
1.2. VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM
Knowing a language does not consist just in being able to understand or produce
oral or written sentences. It also means to use them properly in order to get the desired
communicative effect. One of the main problems we can finds in our classrooms is that
some students can be reluctant to participate in communicative activities.
In most cases the problem, as far as the activities are appropriately designed, lays
on the sts’ tendency to focus on accuracy: they do not want to ‘make mistakes’, they
only want to speak when they know the ‘correct’ sentence, etc.
In order to solve this problem, the teacher has to emphasize, from the first day, the
communicative function and value of language, how language is a tool for
communicating with other people; how the aim is not to speak with no mistakes but to
understand and make ourselves understood.
The teacher’s attitude and behaviour are important to create the suitable atmosphere
that stimulates sts to participate in oral activities in the classroom. If the teacher
continually interrupts sts while they are developing a communicative activity, in order
to correct linguistic mistakes, there will be an incongruity between the teacher’s attitude
and his or her explicit words explaining that mistakes are not important.
Other basic aspect to be taken into account to favour the sts’ participation is that the
language required must be adequate for the sts’ level or competence. They can choose
how to say things, but they must know, at least, some way of saying those things. It is
the teacher’s task to foresee the linguistic difficulties of any activity and provide sts
with the necessary vocabulary and other linguistic knowledge they might need to apply
in it. And this implies that, on most occasions, some previous activities will have been
carried out to introduce and practise in a controlled way the language items being learnt.
It is in these early phases of learning when linguistic accuracy must be demanded of the
students, as otherwise they will not learn what is planned.
2. NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
2.1. CONCEPT OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
Nonverbal resources are usually associated with oral language, but as a matter of
fact, written language makes uses oof them too (i.e. graphics, schemes, maps, diagrams,
etc).
Language is not the only way to transmit information. We have already seen how
non-linguistic information can prevail over the linguistic message. But which are the
mediums used to communicate nonverbally? According to Knapp, the nonverbal
aspects are:
LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO
VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA- LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN
DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

a) PARALANGUAGE: refers to how something is said. It has to do with the

range of nonverbal vocal signs surrounding speech (rhythm, vocalisation, intensity…);
b) BODY MOVEMENTS: include gestures, movements of the body, facial
expressions, eye behaviour and also posture;
c) PROXEMICS: it is the study of the use & perception of social and personal
space, and it refers to the manner in which humans use space as a specific cultural
product;
d) TACTIL CONDUCT: it refers to the use of the interlocutor’s very close
space: people do not touch each other in the same degree and form in all cultures
(currently, even less);
e) PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: it includes physical appearance, general
allure, hair, body scents…;
f) ARTEFACTS: include the manipulation of objects that can act as nonverbal
stimuli. These artefacts include perfume, clothing, make-up and other objects;
g) SURROUNDIG FACTORS: include those elements that interfere in human
relations but which are not a direct part of it: furniture, interior decoration and other
elements within which interaction takes place.
2.2. NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
We will see more deeply in theme 22 how it has been shown that the use of space
in the classroom can have a negative/positive effect on the learners and influence their
reactions. Space managements is an influential variable in the atmosphere within the
classroom.
One of the aims of teaching a foreign language as communication is the
participation of sts in class, which, as has been proved, depends partly on how the
chairs & desks are arranged (i.e. those sts that are seated having better eye contact wit
the teacher participate more in class) Seating arrangement affects communication
between individuals.
The position of the teacher during the class has also to be taken into account: if
the teacher does not move from his/her place, it shows a teacher distant from the sts,
with all the consequences that carries.
On the other hand we can find a class where all the sts are sitting in a circle,
with the teacher among the sts, or the sts working in groups while the teacher solves
problems demanded by them and checking that the activity is developing successfully.
In these cases, the roles played by the teacher are quite different, as is the atmosphere
within the classroom.
As we can see, the question of the use of space in foreign language classroom
involves many others variables that must be taken into account by a competent teacher.
3. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NONVERBAL REACTIONS TO MESSAGES
IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
Generally, when a child starts learning a language, they cannot use it to communicate
but can, in its default, resort to gestures, the occasional word or movement to show
comprehension and so on.
LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO
VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA- LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN
DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

Therefore, gestural language is important from the first states of learning. The use of the
knowledge sts have about nonverbal aspects of communication is a good strategy to base
teaching on from the first stages, as most of these aspects are common to the mother tongue
and the foreign language.
In order to make use of the sts’ previous experience, the teaching/learning process must
be based on the creation of communicative situations within the classroom, as it is in these
cases where people unconsciously use non-linguistic strategies in order to achieve their
communicative aim.
3.1. TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE
In the 1960s, James Asher began experimenting with a method he called Total
Physical Response. The method owes a lot to some basic principles of language
acquisition in young learners, most notably that the process involves a substantial
amount of listening and comprehension in combination with various ‘physical
responses’(smiling, reaching, grabbing, looking…) well before learners begin to use the
language orally.
According to Frost, in the classroom the teacher plays the same role as if he were
the parent when the parent maintains ‘gesture dialogues’ with their children when they
are babies. Teacher starts by saying a word (jump) or a phrase (look at the window) and
demonstrating an action. The teacher then says the command and the sts all do the
action. After repeating a few times it is possible to extend this by asking the sts to
repeat the word as they do the action When they feel confident with the word or phrase
you can then ask the sts to direct each other or the whole class. It is more effective if the
sts are standing in a circle around the teacher and you can even encourage them to walk
around as they do the action.
TPR can be used to teach:
Vocabulary connected with actions( smile, chop, headache, wriggle);
Tenses (every morning I clean my teeth, make my bed, I eat breakfast);
Classroom language (Open your books);
Imperatives/Instructions (Stand up, close your eyes);
Story -telling.
Teachers should use TPR in the classroom because:
It is a lot of fun;
It is very memorable;
It is good for kinaesthetic learners who need to be active;
It works well with mixed-ability classes;
It doesn’t require a lot of preparation;
It is very effective with young learners;
It involves both left and right-brained learners.
 LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA CLASE DE LENGUA EXTRANJERA: COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL Y NO
VERBAL. ESTRATEGIAS EXTRA- LINGÜÍSTICAS: REACCIONES NO VERBALES A MENSAJES EN
DIFERENTES CONTEXTOS

4. CONCLUSION
The main aim of learning any foreign language and especially English must be the
ability to use it for communication. This fact is not only underlined by the LOMCE in its
curriculum and in the FCE but also by the key competence ‘linguistic communication’. That
is why this topic is of great importance for the future teacher. The older the pupils are the
better they will communicate verbally. Nevertheless, at the beginning of their studies they
will depend on nonverbal communication.

-BIBLIOGRAPHY-
ASHER, JAMES (1982) ‘Learning Another Language Trough Actions: The Complete
Teacher’s Guidebook’ Los Gatos. Sky Oaks Production
ABRUMFIC, C.J. & JOHNSON, K (1979) ‘The Communicative Approach to Language
Learning’ Oxford. OUP
BYRNE, D (1989) ‘Teaching Oral English’ London. Longman
CHOMSKY, N (1965) ‘Current Issues in Linguistic Theory’. Cambridge. Mass
HALLYDAY (1978) ‘Language as Social Semiotic’. London. Arnold
HYMES, D (1972) ‘On Communicative Competence’. Penguin
KNAPP, ML (1992) ‘La Comunicación no Verbal. El Cuerpo y el Entorno’. Barcelona. Paidós
COLLINS dictionary