TOPIC 2: COMMUNICATION IN THE FL CLASS: VERBAL AND NON-

VERBAL COMMUNICATION. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-

VERBAL REACTIONS TO MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. COMMUNICATION IN THE FL CLASSROOM: VERBAL AND NON-

VERBAL COMMUNICATION

3. VERBAL COMUNICATION

3.1. COMMUNICATION AS THE ESSENTIAL PART OF THE FL CLASS

3.2. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAIR OR GROUP INTERNAL

COHESION IN THE COMMUNICATION

4. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-VERBAL REACTIONS TO

MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

5. CONCLUSION

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1. INTRODUCTION

The main function of language is communication. We, as human beings, need

to understand others and to make ourselves to be understood. For that reason,
as FL teachers, we must teach our students to communicate and provide them
the necessary tools to become communicatively competent. Concretely, English
is the most important lingua franca, which means that we can use that bridge
language to communicate with people from different cultures all over the world.

As LOMCE states, in the RD 126/2014, 28th of February, oral expression and

comprehension will be PRIORITY in learning a FL. For that reason, we should
encourage the language in diverse, true and motivating communicative
situations, close to our students’ needs and interests. We will see how
cooperative work in teams contributes not only to develop the linguistic
competence in an amusing way, but also help students to socialise.

Moreover, the COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH stresses the importance of

learning through the USE of language and giving the learners the opportunities
to INTERACT with each other in NATURAL situations.

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2. COMMUNICATION IN THE FL CLASSROOM: VERBAL AND NON-
VERBAL COMMUNICATION

First of all, we should ask ourselves: What is communication? Traditionally, it

has been said that communication is the process in which an addressor
transmits a message to an addressee. So, we can consider Communication as
any act of exchange of information, ideas or feelings. It can take place through
diverse forms:
- Linguistic or Verbal (writing, speech)
- Non-verbal (body movements, gestures…)

Now, I’m going to explain the main characteristics of VERBAL

COMMUNICATION.

3. VERBAL COMUNICATION

According to Sapir: ‘A language is a purely human method of communicating

ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntary symbols’ Language is a
SYSTEM of CONVENTIONAL spoken and written symbols known by human
beings as members of a community.

According to Hocket, the main properties of human language are:

- Vocal auditory channel, generated via the vocal organs and perceived by
the ear.
- Cultural transmission: language is passed from generation to generation
- Reciprocity: any speaker-sender can be also a listener-receiver.

3.1. COMMUNICATION AS THE ESSENTIAL PART OF THE FL CLASS

If communication is our main objective, a communicative atmosphere in the

language class must be created. Let’s analyse now some important variables to
take into account:

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 a) The role of the student:

The idea of communicating with his/her classmates in the FL raises and keeps
alive his/her interest in learning such language.

The attitude of the student should be RECEPTIVE towards the new language,
with an affective character. According to S. KRASHEN (1987), this concept is
called LOW AFFECTIVE FILTER and it is considered essential to create a
situation of optimum approach.

The student must be ACTIVE, opened to participate in INTERACTIONS in

pairs, groups or the whole classroom.

If we consider the age of students at 2nd or 3rd year of PE, these aspects should
be emphasized:

- Students look for PROMP RESULTS, so tasks should be short lasting

and with a little higher grade of difficulty.
- Concentration lasts a short period of time, so it’s advisable to change
frequently the activity during the lesson.
- The Language Acquisition device is really connected with the affective
variables and it helps the student to assimilate unconsciously the
grammar structures; pronunciation and intonation.
- They need to move themselves around the classroom, so it’s
recommendable to present activities that require some kind of physical
exercise like clapping, mimic, dancing, …

b) The role of the teacher:

- PLANNER /ORGANISER: the teacher should present activities that suit

in a planning of conceptual, processual and attitudinal contents adapted
to the real cognitive child’s development. If we deal with mix-ability
classes, we need to provide tasks with different grades of difficulty,
encouraging the cooperative work.

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 - MONITOR/CHECKER: we need to check constantly the RHYTHM of
assimilation of new contents, change strategies if needed.
- FEEDBACK: look over mistakes. It’s important to analyse the feedback
of the teaching learning process.
- COMMUNICATOR (INTERACTIONS CREATOR): Littlewood (1981)
defines the teacher as ‘the most efficient communicator in a FL is not
always the person who is best at manipulating structures. It is often the
person who is most skilled at processing the complete situation, involving
himself and his hearer, taking into account what knowledge is shared
between them and selecting items which will communicate his message
effectively’

c) Communicative activities: Our students should have the NEED to learn

a language, so we have to prepare different activities to PRACTICE and
discover that REAL need.

First, the precommunicative activities, whose function is to practice the

grammatical structures with their functional and social use, so that the student
may get the communicative skills.

Second, the communicative activities, according to LITTLEWOOD (1981) are

divided into 2 categories:
- FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES are based on the use of
the exponents of function, obtained by the students without paying any
attention. We can mention some examples:
o Sharing information with restricted cooperation, information is
obtained by means of YES/NO QUESTIONS. Match sounds with
pictures, or the game Who is Who.
o Sharing information with unrestricted cooperation, the one who
has the information, transmits it describing objects and people. Ex:
one student makes a physical description of a classmate and the
others have to guess who is.
o Sharing and processing information: each student has information
elements that he/she must check, share and connect to arrive at

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 the resolution of the problem. Ex: jumble pics of a comic to order,
some paragraphs from a text to order. Here, students should
activate the following exponents of function: agreement,
disagreement, discussion, suggestion, negotiation…
o The processing information: there is no restriction of the
information supplied, so students have total autonomy to choose
the solution they consider as the right one. Ex: choosing objects to
go on a picnic, select 3 books to carry to a dessert island, look for
an ending to a given story… Here, students should use the
following exponents of function: agreement, disagreement,
discussion, suggestion, negotiation…

- SOCIAL INTERACTION ACTIVITIES. Here the contextual setting plays

a relevant role. We can focus on 2 registers, used mainly in a school
setting: informal and neutral. We can propose some activities like:
o Perform memorised dialogues.
o Contextualised DRILLS: they have to work on substitution, making
grammatical or lexical changes. The girl in in the park, in the
school, …
o Role Playing: about our students’ closest world.
o Improvisation: the students’ level of autonomy here is almost total.

3.2. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAIR OR GROUP INTERNAL COHESION

IN THE COMMUNICATION

With the purpose of creating a good communicative atmosphere, we suggest:

Dynamic group activities enhance the cohesion, the comprehension,

expression and interaction among their members. Pupils not only practice
grammatical structures or vocabulary, but also they listen to their classmates’
opinions, open their attitudes towards other cultures,, promote the knowledge of
the group members. We can suggest the following activities:

- In a circle, they make questions about personal information.

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 - Guess who lives where.
- ‘What kind of person are you?’ through disjunctive questions like ‘Are you
a jungle or a city person?’, ‘Black or white?’, ‘Minions or Toy Story?’
- Find someone who… has a white t-shirt.

Every group can identify with a name and it’s advisable to change the
groups often in order to avoid boredom, conflicts or behaviour problems, and
also because children can create new affinities if we make up new groups.
Here, the intervention of the teacher is very relevant.

4. EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES: NON-VERBAL REACTIONS TO

MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

To start with this point, it is really necessary to define what the extralinguistic
strategies are. They can be defined as the non verbal resources used by a
person to communicate something to another person. There are different types,
but next we will highlight the most important ones:

4.1. TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

It is a language method built around the coordination of SPEECH and ACTION.

It attempts to teach language through physical activity.

It was developed by J. Asher (1977) and consists of obeying commands, given

by the teacher, that involves physical responses. For example, the game Simon
says.. Clap your hands.

Asher claims that children respond physically before they are able to produce
verbal responses. Moreover, he sees that 1st and 2nd Languages acquisition are
parallel processes.

This method was also known as COMPREHENSION APPROACH because the

person who wants to learn a language (mother or foreign) has to create a

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COGNITIVE MAP of such language through hearing comprehension activities
connected with physical movements. Once listening comprehension is
established, speech evolves naturally.

The advantage of TPR is that ensures the active participation of students and
helps the teacher knowing when the utterances are understood.

4.2. TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ GESTURES AND FACIAL

EXPRESSIONS

They help to transmit meanings.

They can also be used to organise the class. Normally, every teacher has a
particular repertoire of gestures that students recognise.
They help to clarify instructions, to indicate when an activity begins or finishes.

Students should get used to these devices when telling a story or participating
in a dialogue, because the gestures and facial expressions help them to
transmit the meaning they want to express, facilitating the comprehension to the
rest of the class.

4.3. SOME ACTIVITIES THAT USE EXTRALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES

Now, I’m going to move on explaining some activities of non-verbal

communication:
- ACTION SONGS: use non-verbal reactions to messages in different
contexts. We can include in this category: jumping, dipping or counting
rhymes. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo … usually used when deciding who is
going to be the key person for a game.
- FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS:
o Drawing a picture
o Colouring in
o Following an itinerary

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 Every teacher uses lots of prefabricated expressions for routines. We
can make a checklist of this useful words to help our pupils: Follow me,
Open the book at page x, try again, stop working…
- MIME:
- USE OF VISUAL STIMULI MATERIALS: consists of changing from a
verbal code to a non-verbal code or vice versa. For example, the teacher
tells a tale and the kids have to listen and put the pictures they have in
order, match the voices with the correct picture, etc.
- USE OF ICT’S: support our oral language and facilitate our students to
follow our explanations.

5. CONCLUSION

To conclude and finis with this topic, let me point out that when learning a
language is essential to obtain a communicative competence. To reach this
goal, and taking THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH as a reference, we must
create a COMMUNICATIVE ATMOSPHERE, in which our students feel
confortable, keeping them interested and motivated.

As we have seen, we cannot forget that in the language acquisition process, the
RECEPTIVE and COMPREHENSION stage comes first, and the we move on to
the PRODUCTIVE stage. Therefore, communicative activities play a relevant
role in the classroom as they help children to socialise and how to get
information to solve a problem in a cooperative way. Furthermore, the TPR
APPROACH and the use of NONVERAL resources are very necessary in our
English lessons.

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6. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK

- BLUNDELL, HIGGINGS and MIDDLEMEIS (1982): ‘Function in English’

OUP
- HADFIELD (1992): ‘Classroom Dynamics’ OUP
- LITTLEWOOD (1981): ‘COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING’
CUP
- RICHARDS and RODGERS (1986): ‘Approaches and methods in
Language Teaching’. CUP.

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