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3. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS:

LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING.
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH.

1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS

1.1. INTEGRATED SKILLS

2. LISTENING

2.1. LISTENING STRATEGIES

2.2. METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

3. SPEAKING

3.1. METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

4. READING

4.1. READING STRATEGIES

2.2. METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

5. WRITING

5.1. WRITING SKILLS

5.2. METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

6. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

6.1. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

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In order to master a language, we need to understand its native speakers and also to
make ourselves understood. It involves being able to encode oral and written messages
(speaking and writing) and to decode oral and written messages (listening and reading).
In order to communicate effectively, communicative competence is essential.

Since the 1970’s, the belief that language is a means of communication has inspired a
new approach in English teaching: the Communicative Approach. Due to its influence,
nowadays language is taught and learnt in a very practical way in the classroom. Our
pupils will practise the four basic skills from a communicative point of view.

Based on this view, we will concentrate on analysing the development of the four
linguistic skills, considering the strategies or sub-skills that our pupils need in order to
master them, and to the most appropriate methodology and activities to use in the
classroom. Afterwards we will continue explaining the theoretical framework of
communicative competence.

We deal with an essential topic since successful communication, which is the basis of
understanding among human beings, depends on communicative competence and the
mastery of the four linguistic skills. The Foreign Language Curriculum for Primary
Education emphasizes the significance of this topic by including in its objectives, blocks
of contents and assessment criteria the development of listening, speaking, reading and
writing, as well as paying attention to the components of communicative competence:
the use of strategies, linguistic and socio-cultural aspects, etc.

1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS

Learning a language in Primary Education has a practical objective: to be able to

communicate. Therefore, the four linguistic skills must be taught from a communicative
point of view: students must have a motive for listening, speaking, reading or writing.

Listening and reading are receptive skills. In the past, they were considered passive
skills; however, a whole mental process takes place to properly decode messages. The
main difference between listening and reading is the time available to decode the
message. Speaking and writing are productive skills. They are more complex because
they demand creativity. When we speak there isn’t too much time to create, so the
process is mechanic. When we write there is more time to create but there is no
interaction. Consequently, clarity is fundamental.

In order to achieve a proper learning, it is convenient to take into account some

principles, so that children learn in a natural way: not speaking before listening, not
reading before speaking and not writing before reading. To reason to follow this
sequence is that the mother tongue is learnt in this way.

According to the Communicative Approach, the four skills must be worked on at the
same time, but not to the same extent. Reading and writing are abstract activities, and
children are not mature enough to deal with abstract concepts. Therefore, they must be
reached at the end of Primary Education. The current educational law has kept this in
mind and establishes that oral language is of prime importance in Primary Education.

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INTEGRATED SKILLS

In everyday life skills are not used in an isolated way, they are combined. In the English
class, we have to do the same. The integrated-skill approach involves the teaching of the
language skills in conjunction to each other, and exposes learners to authentic language.
Integrating the language skills promotes the learning of real content and is highly
motivating to students.

In order to integrate the language skills in the classroom, teachers must learn more
about the various ways to do so, and reflect on their current approach to evaluate the
extent to which the skills are integrated. According to Byrne, it is essential to use varied
groupings when designing integrated activities because they offer many opportunities
for listening, speaking, reading and writing. Some activities in which skills are
integrated are project work, role-play or dictations.

2. LISTENING

Listening is the receptive skill in the oral mode. It involves both listening and
understanding what we hear.

Speaking skills cannot be developed unless listening skills are also developed: to have a
successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them. To develop this
ability, students need plenty of practice in listening to spoken English. In the early
stages, pupils spend much of their time listening to the teacher, singing songs, saying
rhymes or listening to stories and simple instructions.

The auditory material used in class must be varied, comprehensible, graduated in

difficulty and within a context. In Primary Education this material can be, for example:
stories, instructions, recipes, descriptions, conversations, discussions, songs, poems,
rhymes, videotapes or films adapted to the children’s level.

LISTENING STRATEGIES

Listening is not a passive hearing of sounds; it is a complex and active process. Foreign
language learners at lower levels of proficiency need to rely on listening strategies to
assist them in understanding the message. Teachers must train students in:
1. Identifying the topic.
2. Predicting and guessing information using their prior knowledge.
3. Working out the meaning from context.
4. Listening for global understanding (listening for gist).
5. Listening for specific information.
6. Listening for detailed information.

METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITES

The Communicative Approach emphasizes the active role of the learner. Therefore,
lessons must be planned in a way that ensures children’s involvement in classroom
activities. A listening lesson follows three stages. Each stage requires pupils’ active
participation.

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PRE-LISTENING STAGE

This is a preparatory stage. The teacher sets the topic, teaches key words, finds out the
students’ expectations... Activities: predicting content from a title, commenting on
pictures or photographs, giving students’ opinion on the topic, pre-teaching vocabulary.

WHILE-LISTENING STAGE

Children carry out activities while they are listening to an oral text to remain active and
to develop listening strategies. In some of these activities, global understanding is
encouraged (extensive listening), for example: matching pictures, sequencing a story,
answering questions, following instructions (listen and colour, listen and do...). These
activities are appropriate for the first levels.

There are other tasks that also require a specific search of sounds, words or facts within
a context (intensive listening), such as distinguishing stress and intonation patterns,
finding differences between two versions of a story, labelling, extracting specific
information, dictations, gap-filling activities...

POST-LISTENING STAGE

Students perform tasks related to what they have listened to. These are not listening
exercises as such. Children can invent dialogues, perform role-plays, write out
summaries, practise pronunciation, vocabulary and structures from the text... Pot-
listening activities are usually integrated with other skills.

3. SPEAKING

To speak a foreign language is to be understood by its native speakers. The main aim of
oral production is to speak fluently; it involves expressing ideas with clarity,
considerable correction and without hesitating too much. We need to consider several
aspects to speak properly:
1. Phonetic aspect: Students need to know how to articulate the sounds of the
foreign language. Stress, rhythm and intonation are also important.
2. Morphosyntactic aspect: It involves speaking in a clear way, using fluently the
basic structures of the language.
3. Lexical/semantical aspect: It enables the students to use rich expressions.
4. Social aspect: It refers to the acquisition of some rules of behaviour that will
facilitate communication.

Mistakes are normal when we are learning a foreign language. The teacher must correct
them when needed without undermining the student’s confidence, considering what
errors are worth the interruption. Rhythm is very important in speaking activities.

The topics students speak about must be varied and related to their interests. In the early
stages, much of the English learnt will be formulaic language which will enable children
to communicate: simple greetings, social English, routines, classroom language, asking
for permission or communicative strategies. As their competence develops, the
expressions to be learnt get more complicated: asking for directions, giving instructions,
inviting, offering, expressing likes and dislikes...
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METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

IMITATION

After students have been exposed to comprehensible input, the first step is the imitation
of the model, either from the teacher or recorded material. Oral drills provide basic
practice and repetition. To be successful, they need to be fun, lively and varied.

PRACTICE

After imitating the model, the teacher organises the students in pairs to practise the
structure that has been presented. There are two levels within this stage:

CONTROLLED PRACTICE
The teacher establishes a pattern and students use it in pairs. In these activities there is
very little chance that pupils can make a mistake. The purpose is to train pupils to use
correct and simple language within a situation or context. Some examples of activities
are telling the time looking at a clock, or asking questions about pictures.

GUIDED PRACTICE
It follows on directly from controlled practice and will often be done either in pairs or
small groups. It usually gives the pupils some sort of choice, but this choice is limited.
They can practice a model dialogue with possible variations, make surveys...

PRODUCTION

Students produce naturally the language that has been presented to them and that they
have practised in more or less controlled situations. Teacher control is minimal during
the activity, but he/she must be sure that the pupils have enough language to do the task.
S/he must take notes of errors and comment on them after the activity.

At this stage communicative activities take place. They must have a purpose, be
interactive and appropriate to the students’ level. They focus attention on the message
and not on the language; therefore fluency is more important than accuracy and
acquisition is fostered. The range of activities is endless: playing card games, giving
mini-talks, role-play, problem-solving, drama... Most of them are based on the
information gap principle.

4. READING

Reading is a receptive skill, so it has similar features to listening. Reading

comprehension is a complex active process that involves the recognition of graphemes
to identify the lexemes they correspond to.

There are three levels in the process of reading. The first one is mechanical reading,
which involves the identification of words. Understanding meaning refers to the
comprehension of the global message of the text. The last stage is interpretative reading.
At this stage the reader thinks about the text and adopts a critical attitude towards it.

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In real life, people read something because they have a desire to do so and a purpose to
achieve. We usually read letters, lists, messages, stories, maps, announcements... In the
English class, we must use similar texts (adapted to the students’ age and level). In
addition to that, we must decide whether to use authentic texts (designed for native
speakers) or non-authentic texts (materials that have been adapted so that students can
understand better and recycle the vocabulary or structures they have been learning).

READING STRATEGIES

The strategies used in reading comprehension are similar to those used in listening
comprehension. Teachers must train students in:
1. Identifying the topic.
2. Predicting and guessing information, using their prior knowledge.
3. Working out the meaning from context.
4. Reading for general understanding (skimming) without worrying too much
about words that are not understood.
5. Reading for specific information (scanning).
6. Reading for detailed information.

METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

Reading must be taught from a communicative point of view: children must be

interested in what they are going to read and have a purpose to do so. For example,
reading advertisements for flats to find one that meets a particular set of requirements.
A reading comprehension lesson follows the next stages:

PRE-READING STAGE

At this level the teacher tries to motivate the students by relating the topic to their
personal experiences or prior knowledge. The aim is to create a desire to read in the
students. Some of the activities that can be done in this stage are:
1. Introducing the theme of the text.
2. Predicting possible information.
3. Presenting new vocabulary (only the words that would make it very difficult to
understand the text).
4. Giving one or two guiding questions for students to think about as they read.

WHILE-READING STAGE

Students carry out a task while they are reading the text: understanding the general idea
of the text, looking for specific information... These tasks are classified into:
- Intensive listening: Children search for detailed or specific information:
recognising key words in a written text, matching a word with its definition,
looking for specific information in invitations or graphs, listening and reading at
the same time...
- Extensive listening: Students deal with longer passages without worrying about
understanding every unknown word or structure. Extensive reading activities:
getting the general idea of the text (the gist), suggesting a title for the text,
matching titles with short texts, giving an opinion about a text, completing
sentences, guessing unknown words from context...
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POST-READING STAGE

Students perform tasks related to what they have read, usually integrated with other
skills. The main objective at this stage is to provide practise of the language. Examples:
answering comprehension questions, checking that the while-reading activities are
correct, looking up words in the dictionary, summarizing, discussing the topic of the
text, making a crossword based on key words of the text, drawing a picture related to
the text, writing a similar text, preparing role-play exercises related to the topic...

5. WRITING

Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. When we write, we use graphic
symbols, which relate to the sounds that we make when we speak. These symbols have
to be arranged according to certain conventions to form words, and words to form
sentences. These sentences then have to be ordered and linked together in certain ways,
forming a coherent whole called text.

It is a difficult activity, even in our mother tongue. In a foreign language the difficulties
increase because sometimes the writer doesn’t know the word s/he has to write, if the
grammar is correct, if the spelling is right or if a word is appropriate in a certain context.

Five skill areas are important for written expression:

1. Mechanics: It refers to a writer’s ability to form letters, words, numbers and
sentences that are legible (the writer’s handwriting).
2. Production: Number of words, sentences and paragraphs that a writer is able to
generate. It is important to convey our ideas clearly and to produce a message of
a good quality.
3. Conventions: Rules for capitalization, punctuation and spelling. If a writer has
problems with these rules the written product might be difficult to understand.
4. Linguistics: It consists in the ability to use varied vocabulary and correct
grammar and syntax.
5. Cognition: It refers to the organizational aspect. It has to do with cohesion,
coherence and logic.

METHODOLOGY AND ACTIVITIES

In the first stages of foreign language learning, students are learning to write. Pupils are
involved in guided copying with focus on handwriting, spelling, punctuation and using
the correct words and grammar. Activities tend to focus on word or sentence level.

When they are able to write properly, they write to learn: It is creative, and includes
choosing the right vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, spelling and layout; having
ideas and joining them. These activities have a communicative purpose and a target
audience. Keeping in mind the students’ age and interests, we could make the following
classification:
- Personal writing: diaries, shopping lists, recipes, notes…
- Social writing: e-mails, postcards, letters, invitations...
- Study writing: summaries, exams…
- Creative writing: poetry, riddles, stories, songs…

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Four stages must be followed when teaching to write:

COPYING

It improves handwriting, reinforces spelling and sentence structure and helps students to
retain words. Copying can be meaningful if thinking is involved in the copying process.
Examples of meaningful copying activities:
1. Listing words, for example objects that can be found in a house.
2. Putting lists of words in alphabetical order.
3. Classifying words into categories: food, clothes, animals...
4. Spelling activities, like crosswords.
5. Games such as Bingo.

CONTROLLED PRACTICE

The teacher gives the students very strict and precise guidelines to write. This writing
doesn’t have necessarily a communicative value, because the aim is to use language
correctly. Some examples of controlled activities are:
1. Blank-filling.
2. Spelling games.
3. Alphabet games.
4. Sentence transformation.
5. Cued short dialogues.
6. Matching sentence halves and copying.
7. Putting words in the correct order.

GUIDED PRACTICE

Students begin to produce sentences and short texts with help from the teacher. Guided
activities include:
1. Parallel writing: Students are given a model text and write a similar one.
2. Creating sentences from a tickchart.
3. Answering comprehension questions about a text.
4. Writing speech bubbles or dialogues.

FREE PRODUCTION

It is more expressive and creative. In Primary Education is still guided. Examples of

free writing activities:
1. Communicative activities: Writing instructions, short messages and short letters,
writing to pen friends, writing questionnaires, quizzes and imaginary diaries,
describing pictures...
2. Summarizing the ideas of a text that students have read or listened to.
3. Filling in forms by giving their personal data.
4. Writing for fun: Clues for crosswords, instructions for a game, songs...
5. Writing compositions: Students write down their ideas, make a draft, correct it
and write the final text.
6. Project work.

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6. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

Once the four linguistic skills are mastered, learners are able to communicate. Chomsky
used the term linguistic competence to explain the ability to create grammatically
correct sentences. However, being able to communicate requires more than linguistic
competence; it requires communicative competence. It is the ability to use and interpret
language appropriately in a variety of situations. The social dimension of language is
taken into consideration, because “language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and
has a clear relationship with society” (Firth, 1984).

The term communicative competence was coined by Hymes in the 1960s. According to
him, it includes four aspects:
1. Systematic potential: The speaker possesses a system that has a potential to
create a lot of language.
2. Appropriacy: S/he knows what language is appropriate in a given situation,
according to the participants, purpose, channel, topic...
3. Occurrence: S/he knows how often something is said in the language and acts
accordingly.
4. Feasibility: S/he knows whether something is possible in the language or not.

According to Canale and Swain, communicative competence includes four areas:

1. Grammatical competence: It is concerned with mastery of the language code. It
includes knowledge of the lexical items, syntax, semantics, morphology and
phonology.
2. Sociolinguistic competence: It is concerned with the appropriateness of
communication depending on the context including the participants, purposes of
the interaction...
3. Discourse competence: It is concerned with the coherence and cohesion of
utterances in a discourse.
4. Strategic competence: It is concerned with the mastery of verbal and non-verbal
strategies that are put into practice to compensate for breakdowns in
communication or when communication fails. For example: asking questions,
taking turns, using gestures...

These four sub-competences are complemented by socio-cultural competence, which

implies the knowledge of certain socio-cultural factors, which help to understand the
messages in detail.

A distinction must be made between communicative competence and communicative

performance. Communicative performance (or actual communication) is the formal
realization of communicative competence in actual speech and real situations, under
limiting psychological and environmental conditions (memory, fatigue, nervousness,
distractions, background noises...). Widdowson refers to two aspects of communicative
performance: usage is the ability to produce correct sentences, while use is the ability to
use the knowledge of the rules for effective communication.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

As teachers, we need to facilitate our students’ acquisition of communicative

competence. To do so, some principles need to be considered:
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1. The communicative purpose must be encouraged from the beginning, through

verbal and non-verbal language.
2. The development of the four linguistic skills is necessary for students to become
communicatively competent.
3. The development of communicative competence is facilitated by interaction.
More exposure to the language is not sufficient for children to acquire
communicative competence.
4. Interaction requires content: something must be occurring between the
interactors about which they are communicating.
5. Communicative competence is facilitated when children understand that others’
responses to them depend on their own responses.

7. CONCLUSION

In this topic, we have focused on analysing the development of the four linguistic skills
in the English classroom, taking into account the strategies or sub-skills that our pupils
need in order to master them and the methodology and activities that must be used. We
have also explained the theoretical framework of communicative competence.

8. BILBIOGRAPHY

BREWSTER, J. et al. (2003): The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English.
HARMER, J. (2003): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.
LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. (2003): Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching.
Oxford University Press.
VARELA, R. et al. (2003): All About Teaching English. Centro de Estudios Ramón
Areces.

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