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Public examination – Secondary Education Teachers English as a Foreign Language Theory Unit 3 Table of contents 1.INTRODUCTION 2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS 3. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS 4. LANGUAGE IN USE. 5. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING 6. CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS 7. CONCLUSION 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. INTRODUCTION From the first stages of human history the study of languages has been of great importance as language is the distinctive feature to human beings; it is also the means of communication among the people of different cultures and for that reason the study of the different languages has been remarkably significant. In the long search for most suitable methodology in teaching a foreign language, a substantial number of different approaches or methods have been devised, each one with a particular view of language learning and, thus recommending a specific set of techniques and materials. Ambitious claims are often made for a new teaching method, but none has yet been shown to be intrinsically superior. The contemporary attitude is flexible and utilitarian: there are many ways of reaching the goal of foreign language competence, and teachers need to have a wide range of methods, in order to find the most appropriate according to the learner’s needs and circumstances, and to the objectives of the course. When we use language to affect others or to relay information, we make use of a set of sociolinguistic rules related to language use within the communicative context (pragmatics); thus, pragmatics is concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than with the way it is structured. Traditionally, linguists have viewed the five aspects of language –syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics- of equal importance; however, theoreticians are increasingly giving a more important role to pragmatics, reasoning that language is heavily influenced by context and that a need to communicate exists prior to the selection of content and form; these theoreticians (called functionalist) see pragmatics as the overall organizing principle of language. As specifically stated in the Foreign Language section of Decree 1105/2014, which regulates CSE, we should mention that one of the types of competence that should be stressed in our Didactic Course Plans is the Pragmatic and Discursive Competence, since, in order to communicate successfully in a target language, it must be reasonably well developed. However, adopting pragmatic competence as a single goal for L2 learning is a wrong step in our methodology, given that a substantial balance with the other four types of competence, namely linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategic and sociocultural, must be reached. 2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS 2.1. Types of communication The term "communication" can imply two different, and sometimes conflicting, concepts. On the one hand, it means having a thoughtful exchange of views (dialogue) with a small number of people, perhaps only one. But it can also involve broadly disseminating a simple message (compare broadcasting), without deep thought or appeals for feedback. INTERPERSONAL The most basic forms of communication are primarily those which involve communicating with people immediately present, such as one-on-one and group conversations. TELECOMMUNICATION

Telecommunication is communication over spatial distances. The term is most often used in describing electronic means of communication, but can also include methods such as smoke signals and semaphore. ANIMAL Humans are not the only creatures who communicate since animals also share information with each other in a variety of ways. 2.2. The nature of communication: characteristics Following Breen and Candlin, Morrow and Widdowson, communication is understood to have the following characteristics. It a) is a form of social interaction, and is therefore normally acquired and used in social interaction; b) involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message; c) takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate language use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances; d) is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints, fatigue and distractions; e) always has a purpose (for example, to establish social relations, to persuade, or to promise); f)

involves authentic, as opposed to textbook-contrived language; and

g) is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes. (For example, communication could be deemed successful in the case of a non-native English speaker who was trying to find the train station in Toronto, uttered ‘How to go train’ to a passer-by, and was given directions to the train station.) 2.3. Elements of the communication process According to Shannon and Weaver, in any communicative act we find two actors: emitter or addresser and recipient or addressee; both need to share a code, made up of a series of signs; these signs are made of something material associated to a meaning. The relationship between the meaning and the material sign is conventional, one meaning being assigned to such a sign because that is part of a convention shared by the participants in the process of communication: the emitter codes a message (for a linguistic message we will say encode a message) when s/he chooses a element of the code and emits it; and the recipient decodes the message, when s/he understands it and responds accordingly. The context is the situation where the communicative act is produced, and it is known by both the emitter and the recipient. Finally, the channel is the medium through which the message is transmitted. Another concept which is present in the process of communication is that of noise; we call noise any disturbance that may appear in the channel of communication. Its presence is the reason for the quantity of redundancy we find in messages. 2.4.The stages of the communication process Those stages are the following: 1.-The emitter selects the content s/he wants to transmit.

2.-The message is encoded; that is, the right units and structures are selected in order to express the content. 3.-The message is transmitted through the appropriate channel. 4.-The recipient decodes the message. 5.-Apprehension of the transmitted content( part of the context that the emitter wants to share with the recipient) on the part of the recipient. 3. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS The culmination of language learning is not simply the mastery of the forms of language but the mastery of forms in order to accomplish the communicative functions of language. While forms are the manifestation of language, functions are the realization of those for the pragmatic (practical) purpose. Communication is a series of communicative acts or speech acts which are used systematically to accomplish particular purposes. There have been many attempts to classify the purposes why people use language, considering the functions of language from different points of view according to the concepts they are based on. According to Malinowski (1923) the functions of language were two: pragmatic and magical. To Bühler they were three: the expressive, the conative, and the representational functions. 3.1. Jakobson’s classification: he added three more functions: assertive, poetic, and metalinguistic. We are going to present in detail the functions Jakobson analyses in language as a system of communication: 1. Representational function: This function defines the relationship between the message and the idea or object it refers to. 2. Emotive function: It defines the relationship between the emitter or addresser and the message, his/her attitude towards the object of communication. 3. Conative function: It defines the relationship between the message and the recipient or addressee. 4. Poetic function: It defines the relationship of the message with itself. 5. Assertive function: Its purpose is to consolidate, finish or keep the communication going on-a typical example would be the constant use of pet expressions or tags by the speakers. 6. Metalinguistic function: It is useful to set the sign in the code where it gets its communicative value. All these functions appear simultaneously, mixed in different proportion and, depending on the type of communication, one or some will predominate over the others. 3.2. Pragmatic classification: We can divide the functions of language into two broad pragmatic functions: 3.2.1. Intrapersonal or transactional function (also called ideational by Halliday) is found in the internal language used for memory, problem solving, and concept development. Language serves to express the speaker’s experience of the real world

3.2.2. Interpersonal or interactional function. It is used to communicate, to establish and maintain social relations. Through this function social groups are delimited, and the individual is identified and reinforced. These two basic functions of language are also reflected in Bernstein’s studies about educational failure, and thus it is very interesting to EFL teachers; his works suggest that in order to succeed in the educational system, a child must know how to use language as a means of learning, and how to use it in interpersonal interaction. According to Halliday, there is a third function of language: the textual function, which enables the speaker or writer to construct the texts, or connected passages of discourse that is situationally relevant, and enables the listener or reader to distinguish a text from a random set of sentences. One aspect of the textual function is the establishment of cohesive relations from one sentence to another in a discourse. 4. LANGUAGE IN USE 4.1.Speech act Each sentence, taken as a whole, is designed to serve a specific function. According to Austin and Searle, every time speakers utter a sentence, they are attempting to accomplish something with the words; speakers are performing a speech act or, as Austin called it, an illocutionary act. In other words, a speech act is a unit of linguistic communication, which is expressed according to grammatical and pragmatic rules, and which functions to convey a speaker’s conceptual representations and intentions; in speech act theory the minimal unit of communication is not a word or a sentence but the performance of an act such as asking a question, giving a command, thanking and so on. The speech act is a larger conceptual unit than the syntactic and semantic units. The concept of speech act was first introduced by John Austin (1962). He theorized that discourse is composed not of words or sentences but of speech acts. Searle (1965) strengthened this point by stating that “it is the (...) performance of the speech of act that constitutes the basic unit of linguistic communication”. According to Austin, each speech of act can be analyzed into three parts: locutions or propositions, illocutions or intentions and perlocutions or the listener’s interpretations. Searle further clarified Austin work and he proposed the following speech act categories: 1) Representatives: Statements that convey a belief of disbelief in some proposition, such as assertion, and can be judged for true value. 2) Directives: Attempts to influence the listener to do something, such as a demand or command (“Can we get ready in time? Hurry up!”, “I need you to do something”, etc) 3) Commissives: Commitments of self to some future course of action, such as a vow, promise or swear. 4) Expressives: Expressions of a psychological state, such as thanking, apologizing, complimenting, expressions of joy, like or dislike, disappointment, or deploring. Typical of poetic language. 5) Declaratives: Statements of facts that presume to alter a state of affairs (“I declare you man and wife/innocent”, “abracadabra, now you are a frog”) The speaker’s attitude towards the proposition is found in the speaker’s intentions, that is in the illocutionary force, rather than his/her actual words; thus an utterance with fixed

form and semantic content can fulfil several intentions. The reverse is also possible: several different forms or propositions can fulfil a single intention or function (for example, you can ask for the salt using many different forms). This leads to the notion of indirect speech acts, for example although in English the standard way to command someone to do something is to use the imperative form (direct command “Pass the salt”), that is not the only way (indirect command “Can you pass the salt?”,” May I have the salt, please?). Obviously, the particular form of the speech act depends on the communicative context. Speakers expect listeners to recognise the functions of the sentences they speak, because otherwise it is considered a misunderstanding even though they must have taken in everything else about the utterance. Speech act theorists attempt to go beyond the literal meaning of the words and sentences by classifying utterances according to their implicit, rather than their explicit functions. 4.2. Different dimensions of language use Language use is a class of human activity in which language is but one ingredient; language use is more than language structures in motion. The essence of these activities can be organized around four dimensions; which allow us to represent the main factors that go into a speaker’s choice of what to utter, and a listener’s understanding of what the speaker meant. 4.2.1 The bipersonal dimension: It refers to the purposive relation between a speaker and listener. When two people engage in a social process in which the actions of one depend, in part, on the actions of the other, they must choose their actions based on their common ground. The relation between speaker and listener is defined by two notions: the speaker’s meaning and the listener’s understanding or recognition of that meaning; this would be impossible without reference to their common ground. 4.2.2 The audience dimension: Different listeners may be assigned different roles at any point in a conversation: the speaker listens to his/her utterances to correct poor phrasing and outright errors, assuming the role of self-monitor; other listeners are divide into those truly participating in the conversation at the moment (participants) and those who are not (overhearers) the latter falling in two main kinds: bystanders, openly present at the conversation though they do not take part in it, and eavesdroppers who listen without the speaker’s awareness. In designing his/her utterances, the speaker must pay special attention to the distinction between two types of participants: addressees, those the utterance is addressed to and side participants, those the utterance is not addressed to. This dimension lets us know how the speakers tailor his/her utterances for different types of listeners and why distinct listeners make different interpretations of the same utterance. 4.2.3 The layered dimension: Language is also used in settings where there is layer upon layer of participants and communication. With layering we can make sense of a diversity of language uses: conversation, personal letters, even works of fiction (Hamlet requires three layers: the layer with the characters, the layers with the actors, and the layer of Shakespeare creating a fiction for a contemporary audience). 4.2.4 The temporal dimension: Human activities take place in time, and language use is no exception. Speech is evanescent, thus the speaker and listener must synchronize their listening with their speaking, or communication will fail. This synchrony

requirement has diverse consequences: turn taking, sentential structure, and discourse structure. Although much language use occurs when speaker and listener are at a distance in place, time or both, the synchrony requirement is still present but in altered form; think of letters, newspapers reports, essays, telephone calls, and so on. 4.2.5 Coordination of action: At first it appears that these four dimensions have little in common, as the features they cover are too diverse. But a closer look reveals a common core which is central to language use: coordination of action, since each dimension specifies a set of elements that must be coordinated by the participants in the communication; coordination is on the bipersonal dimension, but it is also required on the audience dimension, the speaker may design utterances depending on what s/he wants the overhearers to understand, so it is only when the participants worry about the audience dimension too that the they see what the speaker really means. Coordination on the layered dimension is usually achieved by the setting, given that the settings create the right layers for the words to be understood (in the theatre we expect the players on stage to act out parts, not to converse as themselves). Coordination on the temporal dimension takes the form of synchrony. These four dimensions, then, define elements that the participants in a communication need to coordinate. The fundamental problem is for the speaker and the listener to coordinate what s/he means and s/he understands; but to do so they must regard all four dimensions at once. 5. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING In planning what to say speakers implicitly have a problem to solve, namely, what linguistic devices should be selected to affect the listener in the way that the speaker intends to; in order to find a solution to this problem we have to considerate the following aspects: 1) Knowledge of the listener: depending on what speakers think listeners know they will refer to a third as she, my next door neighbour, the woman over there, etc. 2) The cooperative principle: speakers expect listeners to assume that they are trying to be cooperative, that they are trying to tell the truth, be informative, be relevant, and be clear. 3) The reality principle: speakers expect to assume they will talk about comprehensible events, states, and facts. 4) The social context: different social contexts lead to different vocabulary; for example, depending on the formality of the situation they will refer to police as policemen or cops. 5)The linguistic devices available: many things speakers want to talk about have no ready linguistic expression; for example, to refer to an odd-looking house, one may use a circumlocution like ranch-style cottage with California Gothic trim, simply because there is no better single expression available. The term problem-solving may suggest that people are consciously weighing alternatives and making explicit choices. However, in the planning of what to say the problem solving is usually accomplished so quickly and easily that people are not aware of what they are doing, but as any planning it is a process with choices, heuristics-that is, the use of experience and practical efforts to find answers to questions-, and a goal to be

accomplished, in that sense the planning of what to say is viewed as a kind of problem solving. Discourse has certain important features: it is connected, it has a purpose, and it is a cooperative effort; these features give rise to a general principle of communication, the cooperative principle, which participants are expected to observe: “Make your conversational contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, and by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice, 1975). One of the most important notions which have emerged in text studies in recent years is that of implicature, that is, the question of how we come to understand more than it is actually said; Grice uses the term implicature to refer to what the speaker means or implies rather than what s/he really says: for example, the following exchange: A: Shall we go for a walk? B: It’s raining How does A or anyone observing the scene know how to relate the utterance It’s raining – a mere comment on the weather- to the question of going for a walk, why do we assume that It’s raining is an answer to the above question? Implied meaning, which is not signalled with textual resources, derives from the cooperative principle and the following maxims associated with it: 1) Quantity: make your contribution as informative as it is required, do not do make your contribution more informative than required. 2) Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically do not say what you believe to be false and do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3) Relevance: make your contributions relevant to the current exchange 4) Manner: be clear, avoiding obscurity of expression and ambiguity, be brief and orderly. The principles outlined above provide points of orientation rather than strict rules, we can do refuse to adhere to the maxims in some situations, for example, in order to avoid a topic or question. 6. CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS The National Act for the Improvement of Quality in Education, published in 2013 (LOMCE in Spanish) indicates that, among the general objectives of Secondary Education is the acquisition of a basic communicative competence in a foreign language, this entailing that students will thus have to be able to understand and convey messages in a variety of daily-life communicative situations (both written and spoken). This said, one of the innovative aspects of the National Act for the Improvement of Quality in Education is that it defines the curriculum as the regulation of the elements determining the teaching and learning process for each educational stage, being integrated by: (a) Aims: References relating to outcomes that students should achieve at the end of the educational process, as a result of planned teaching/learning experiences to this end.

(b) Key Competences: Capacities to apply, in an integrated manner, the contents of each teaching process and educational stage, in order to implement activities properly and resolve complex problems efficiently. (c) Contents: All knowledge, abilities, skills, and attitudes that contribute to the achievement of the aims of the teaching process, educational stage and the development of competences. (d) Teaching methodology: comprising the description of teaching practices strategies and the organization of teachers' work . (e) Measurable learning standards and outcomes: Specifications of evaluation criteria that allow defining learning outcomes and establishing what students should know, understand, and know how in each subject; they must be observable, measurable and assessable and allow grading performance or achievement reached. Course plans should contribute and facilitate the design of standardized and comparable evidence. (f) Evaluation criteria: They are the specific reference to assess the learning of students and describe what students must achieve, both in knowledge and skills. In addition, National Decree 1105/ 2014 establishes the following blocks of contents for the area of foreign language in Secondary Education: - block 1: comprehension of oral texts - block 2: production of oral texts: expression and interaction - block 3: comprehension of written texts - block 4: production of written texts: expression and interaction Therefore, all the previous sections of this theory unit point in the direction that we should pursue a holistic approach to the teaching and learning of foreign languages, since all curricular elements and blocks of contents will be directly affected by the approach implemented 7. CONCLUSION The different phenomena discussed in this topic are of primary importance in foreign language teaching; firstly, because it reveals the real nature of communication by means of language, and also it gives direct guidance as to what to teach and how to do it. The shift towards communicative teaching was possible once the process of communication was clearly defined. On the other hand, defining functions of language helps syllabus builder to find a principle according to which the rest of linguistic material is presented. Finally, we should focus on the direct and practical classroom implications of the teaching of language as a communicative tool, among which we can mention the following: 

Interactive group work in the classroom is essential.

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Language should be taught from a communicative approach, and therefore it should be fluency-focused.

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Students should be provided with as many opportunities for genuine practice as possible.

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Students should acquire communicative competence, in order to be able to grasp the meaning of a sentence, even if the different functions of language make it difficult.

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Strategies and techniques should be provided to students in order that they can overcome their communicative problems.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY Breen, M. P. 2001. ‘Syllabus design’. In Carter, R. and D. Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: C.U.P. Celce-Murcia M and L. McIntosh (eds.), (2012) Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 302-307). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Ellis, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press Hill, David A. “The visual elements in EFL coursebooks.” Developing materials for language teaching (2013): 157-166. Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. Sociolinguistics. Penguin. Harmondsworth., pp. 269 – 293 Krashen, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. Krashen, S. D. (1985). The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. London. Longman. Lynch, T. (1996). Communication in the Language Classroom. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Nunan, D. 1988. Syllabus Design. Oxford University Press. Willis, J. 1988. Teaching English through English. Longman Group Limited. Woodward, T. (2001) Planning lessons and courses: Designing sequences of work for the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.