OPOSICIONES DE PRIMARIA. INGLÉS. CURSO 2006/2007.
FERNANDO YARZA GUMIEL
TEMA 1
La lengua como comunicación: lenguaje oral y lenguaje escrito. Factores que definen una situación comunicativa: emisor, receptor, funcionalidad y contexto
0. Introduction 1. What is communication? 2. Language and communication 2.1 Language as a linguistic system 2.2 Language as doing things: The functional perspective 2.3 Language as self-expression 2.4 Language as culture and ideology 3. Spoken and written language 3.1 Communicative language processes 3.1.1
Planning
3.1.2
Execution
3.2. Differences between written and spoken discourse 4. Conclusions
0. Introduction Current pedagogic approaches to modern foreign languages (MFL) teaching focus on communicative competence, which simply means to equip the learner with the knowledge, skills and interpersonal strategies they need effectively to be able to communicate with speakers of the language in question. Many different perspectives on the nature of language, a ‘complex phenomenon’ as Cunningsworth (1995) comments, can be found both in the theoretical literature and in the coursebooks and materials we use. These perspectives may in certain cases be stated explicitly, while in others they may remain implicit. In either case, however, they are present and influence how the language is presented to students and which aspects of it are selected for study. On the other hand, ‘communication’ has become a buzz word and un umbrella term which is applied to almost any approach to MFL teaching and learning nowadays. That is why it is important to be clear about its concept and implications.
1. What is communication? Canale (1983) understands communication to have the following characteristics: it •
is a form of social interaction, and is therefore normally acquired and used in social interaction;
•
involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message;
•
takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate language use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances;
•
is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints, fatigue and distractions;
•
always has a purpose (for example, to establish social relations, to persuade, or to promise);
•
involves authentic, as opposed to textbook-contrived language; and
•
is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes. (For example, communication could be judged successful in the case of a non-native English speaker who was trying to find the train station in Toronto, uttered 2
‘How to go train’ to a passer-by, and was given directions to the train station). He goes on to say that communication involves the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, oral and written / visual modes, and production and comprehension processes. Information is assumed to consist of conceptual, socio-cultural, affective and other content. Furthermore, such information is never permanently worked out nor fixed but it is constantly changing and qualified by such factors as further information, context of communication, choice of language forms, and non-verbal behaviour. In Hall’s opinion (2001), for real communication to take place, there are three conditions •
We must have something that we want to communicate.
•
We must have someone to communicate with.
•
We must have some interest in the outcome of the communication
2. Language and communication “There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless”, wrote the sociolinguist D. Hymes in 1972. This marks a before and an after in language teaching1 . Up to then, language had been seen as made up of phonology, grammar and vocabulary, analysed
as separate entities, without much attention being paid to the
‘appropriate’ use of the language in real everyday situations. That is one of the reasons why the methods used produced grammatically competent students but only too often ‘communicatively incompetent’ ones. The growth of the communicative approach in the 1970s emphasised that language is a tool for achieving communicative goals, and not simply a linguistic system in its own right. At the same time, language is a system, and mastering this system (or parts of it at least) is a meaningful form of communication. A coherent approach to language teaching therefore calls for choices to be made about all these aspects. That is why this section centres around four main visions of the nature of language as proposed by Tudor (2001), all of them having to do with language as communication2 :
1 2
•
language as a linguistic system;
•
language from a functional perspective:
Vid Topic 13 Vid Topic 6
3
•
language as self-expression; and
•
language as culture and ideology
Other perspectives exist, and this section does not claim to provide a comprehensive overview of all theories of language, but simply to examine some of the more frequent ways of seeing language which teachers are likely to encounter in the daily practice of teaching.
2.1
Language as a linguistic system
The language system comprises three main elements: phonology, vocabulary and grammar. They are part of linguistic competences, which is one of the components of communicative language competence. Following the ‘Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, published by the Council of Europe in 2001, they include lexical, phonological, syntactical knowledge and skills and other dimensions of language as system, independently of the sociolinguistic value of its variations and the pragmatic function of its realisations. This component relates not only to the range and quality of knowledge (e.g. in terms of phonetic distinctions made or the extent and precision of vocabulary) but also to cognitive organisation and the way this knowledge is stored (e.g. the various associative networks in which the speaker places a lexical item) and to its accessibility (activation, recall and availability). Knowledge may be conscious and readily expressible or may not (e.g. once again in relation to mastery of a phonetic system). Its organisation and accessibility will vary from one individual to another and vary also within the same individual (e.g. for a plurilingual person depending on the varieties inherent in his or her plurilingual competence). It can also be held that the cognitive organisation of vocabulary and the storing of expressions, etc. depend, amongst other things, on the cultural features of the community or communities in which the individual has been socialised and where his or her learning has occurred.
2.2
Language as doing things: The functional perspective
The question ‘Why do we use language?’ seems hardly to require an answer. But, as is often the way with linguistic questions, our everyday familiarity with speech and writing can make it difficult to appreciate the complexity of the skills we have learned. This is particularly so when we try to define the range of functions to which 4
language can be put. Language scholars have identified many functions (‘macrofunctions’) to which language can be put. Thus
1. Bühler (1934) distinguishes between (a)
the symptom function, i.e. information pertaining to the speaker;
(b)
the symbol function, i.e. information pertaining to the world;
(c)
the signal function, i.e. information pertaining to the hearer.
2. Jakobson (1960) emphasizes different aspects of the speech event: ASPECT:
FUNCTION:
addresser
emotive, expressive, affective
addressee
conative
context
referential, cognitive, denotative
message
poetic
contact
phatic, interaction management
code
metalinguistic
He filled out this model as follows: The ‘addresser’ sends a ‘message’ to the ‘addressee’. To be operative the message requires a ‘context’ referred to, seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a ‘code’ fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication.
3. Habermas (1976) in turn conceives of the
(a)
representative function as connected with “the” world;
(b)
expressive function as connected with the “own” world of the speaker;
(c)
interactive
function
connected
with
the
“shared”
world
of
the
communicants.
4. Halliday (1978) stresses three semantic functions:
(a)
the ideational function concerned with the expression of experience; to transmit information between members of societies 5
(b)
the interpersonal function concerned with the regulation of social relations; to establish, maintain and specify relations between members of societies
(c)
the textual function concerned with structuring the act of speech; to provide texture, the organization of discourse as relevant to the situation
The definition of the functions of language is elaborated at various points in Halliday’s writings. Thus, in a study of a child learning his mother tongue, he used a framework of seven initial functions:
(a)
Instrumental (‘I want’): satisfying material needs
(b)
Regulatory (‘do as I tell you’): controlling the behaviour of others
(c)
Interactional (‘me and you’): getting along with other people
(d)
Personal (‘here I come’): identifying and expressing the self
(e)
Heuristic (‘tell me why’): exploring the world around and inside one
(f)
Imaginative (‘let’s pretend’): creating a world of one’s own
(g)
Informative (‘I’ve got something to tell you’): communicating new information.
These are arranged in the order in which they appeared from 9 months onwards, before the child had a recognizable linguistic system. Halliday speaks of there being several meanings in each function. Learning the mother tongue is interpreted as progressive mastery of a number of basic functions of language and the building up of a ‘meaning potential’ in respect of each.
5. Hymes (1962), following Jakobson, 1960) proposes seven ‘broad types’ of functions which language in use serves:
(a)
expressive / emotive
(b)
directive / conative / persuasive
(c)
poetic
(d)
contact (physical or psychological)
(e)
metalinguistic (focusing on meaning)
(f)
referential 6
(g)
contextual / situational
He argues that these seven functions correspond, in general terms, to various factors to which speakers attend in speech situations. Appropriate language may depend on different combinations of:
(a)
sender
(b)
receiver
(c)
message form
(d)
channel (e.g. speech versus writing)
(e)
code (e.g. dialect, language or jargon)
(f)
topic
(g)
setting or situation
Generalising over speech events, he abstracts the roles of addressor (sender) and addressee (receiver). The addressor is the speaker or writer who produces the utterance. The addressee is the hearer or reader who is the recipient of the utterance. Knowledge of the addressor in a given communicative event makes it possible for the analyst to imagine what that particular person is going to say. Knowledge of his addressee constrains the analyst’s expectations even further. Thus, if you know that the speaker is the prime minister or the departmental secretary or your family doctor or your mother, and you know that the speaker is speaking to a colleague or his bank manager or a small child, you will have different expectations of the sort of language which will be produced, both with respect to form and to content. If you know, further, what is being talked about, Hymes’ category of topic, your expectations will be further constrained. If then you have information about the setting, both in terms of where the event is situated in place and time, and in terms of the physical relations of the interactants with respect to posture and gesture and facial expression, your expectations will be still further limited. The remaining features of context which Hymes discusses (in 1964) include large-scale features like channel (how is contact between the participants in the event being maintained – by speech, writing, signing), code (what language, or dialect, or style of language is being used), message-form (what form is intended – chat, debate, sermon, fairy-tale, etc.) and event (the nature of the communicative event within which 7
a genre may be embedded – thus a sermon or prayer may be part of the larger event, a church service). In later recensions Hymes adds other features, for example key (which involves evaluation – was it a good sermon, a pathetic explanation, etc.), and purpose (what did the participants intend should come about as a result of the communicative event. Hymes’ theory of communicative competence (1972) played an important role in introducing a new perspective on language into reflection on language teaching. Hymes situates language in its social context as the medium by which members of a speech community express concepts, perceptions, and values which have significance to them as members of this community. Language, then, can only be understood within the framework of the meaning structures of the relevant speech community, and the study of language therefore needs to operate within a sociological and sociocultural framework. This implies that the teaching of language needs to accommodate this dimension of meaning and enable learners to operate effectively within the relevant speech community. According to Hymes the rules of appropriacy linking forms to contextual features were not simply to be grafted on to grammatical competence, but were to be acquired simultaneously with it. This perspective on language underpinned work on notional / functional syllabuses (Wilkins, 1976; Finocchiaro and Brumfit, 1983) and the communicative approach to language teaching (Widdowson, 1978). As a result of this line of reflection, language came to be seen as social action and the social or functional uses which learners were to make of the language became the starting point for the development of learning programmes. Communicative language teaching (CLT) arose out of this perspective on language and, on this basis, set out to develop an approach to teaching whose goal was to enable students to use the language in one or more socially defined contexts. In this view, language learners are social actors whose learning goals are defined by the contexts in which they will be required to use the language and the messages they will wish to convey in these contexts. Wilkins (1976) proposed a notional or semantic approach which would reflect the behavioural needs of learners, would take the communicative facts of language into account from the beginning, without losing sight of grammatical and situational factors, and would attempt to set out what the learner might want to do and to say through language.
8
In order to set out what people might want to do and to say through language, Wilkins drew upon Austin’s (1962) speech act theory. This suggested that in addition to conceptual meaning all utterances have an illocutionary value which embodies the speaker’s intention. Sometimes we express our intention directly, (for example, ‘I congratulate you’), but more often, as Searle (1975) pointed out, we tend to do this indirectly, for example, when we use a question about someone’s ability (‘Can you speak a little louder’) to serve as a request for action. This highlights the fact that we do not use an interrogative form, for example, uniquely to ask for information, or a declarative form simply for giving information. There is no simple one-to-one relationship between particular forms and the illocutionary values that should be attached to them. Values must be interpreted in the light of the context in which the forms occur. ‘Pragmatic competences’, another component of communicative competence, refer to this knowledge and skills. As defined by the Council of Europe (2001), they are concerned with the functional use of linguistic resources (production of language functions, speech acts), drawing on scenarios or scripts of interactional exchanges. It also concerns the mastery of discourse, cohesion and coherence, the identification of text types and forms, irony, and parody. For this component even more than the linguistic component, it is hardly necessary to stress the major impact of interactions and cultural environments in which such abilities are constructed.
2.3
Language as self-expression
The functional perspective on language discussed in the last section emphasises the role of language as a means of achieving pragmatic goals, e.g. reading specialised material in the target language, performing professional or academic tasks, settling in to another country, and so on. Language is not, however, used for only this purpose. It is also the medium by which we build up personal relationships, express our emotions and aspirations, end explore our interests. In other words, language is not simply a tool for achieving specific transactional goals, it is also a means of self-expression. A functional perspective on language portrays the learner primarily as a social actor and language as a form of social action, which is certainly a valid perspective. Language learners are also, however, individuals in the personal and affective sense of
9
the term, which means that language is also a means of personal and affective expression. This casts a different light on language and also, on the nature and goals of language teaching. A view of language as a linguistic system says that the goal of language teaching is to help students learn this system. A functional view of language says that the goals of language teaching are defined by what the learner has to do in the language. When language is viewed as self-expression, learning goals are defined by what the learner wishes to express, and this means that each learner has his or her own unique and personal learning agenda. As a consequence, this perspective on language sets objectives which are internal to learners as individuals and relates to the concerns and aspirations of learners as thinking and affective beings. Language in this framework of ideas is a means of personal expression and a tool for personal fulfilment. Selfexpression is a fundamental component of language use and the ‘opening up’ of a course to at least some degree of self-expression can help learners find a sense of personal meaningfulness in their language study. Or, to express this negatively, the absence of any scope for self-expression can make students perceive a course as being something ‘out there’ and indifferent to them and to their individual concerns, and thus make it difficult for them to relate to it in a personally meaningful manner. Moon (2000) summarises some of the important abilities which our pupils are able to make use of in learning a foreign language and which indicate the active nature of their learning: using language creatively, going for meaning, using ‘chunks’ of language, having fun, joining in the action, talking their heads off, feeling at home. Children will only be able to make use of these abilities if we create the right kind of learning environment in which they can draw on them. This means we need to consider how to: •
create a real need and desire to use English
•
provide sufficient time for English
•
provide exposure to varied and meaningful input with a focus on communication
•
provide opportunities for children to experiment with their new language
•
provide plenty of opportunities to practise and use the language in different contexts
•
create a friendly atmosphere in which children can take risks and enjoy their learning
10
2.4
•
provide feedback on learning
•
help children notice the underlying pattern in language
Language as culture and ideology
The concept of a speech community reminds us that a language is not simply a linguistic system, but the means of expression and communication used by a community of human beings. For this reason, a language will embody and express aspects of the culture and world view of its speakers. Full communicative competence in a language therefore entails an understanding of and ability to interact with the culture and world view of the speakers of this language. This is to what ‘sociolinguistic competences’ refer to. Mentioning again the definition given by the Council of Europe, they refer to the sociocultural conditions of language use. Through its sensitivity to social conventions (rules of politeness, norms governing relations between generations, sexes, classes and social groups, linguistic codification of certain fundamental rituals in the functioning
of
a
community),
the
sociolinguistic
component
of
communicative
competence strictly affects all language communication between representatives of different cultures, even though participants may often be unaware of its influence. There are aspects of language use which have a sociocultural dimension and which play an important role in being able to function effectively in the language. In the daily practice of teaching, this affects goal-setting and evaluation criteria, as well as the selection of study material and topic. Learning to see the world through the eyes of a different culture may be one of the most broadly educational advantages of learning another language: it is a very practical means of exploring ‘otherness’ in terms of ‘the other’. We can say that learning a language involves learning a new culture, too. The cultural aspect of language manifests itself on many levels. In part, it relates to the representation of external realities. This includes the way in which a language handles time relations, for example; this is generally referred to as the tense system. It also involves the organisation of entities and phenomena in lexis, e.g. the same entities may be organised differently in two languages, or one language may have terms for phenomena which another does not seem to recognise. In addition, of course, the cultural aspect of language manifests itself with respect to the way in which social relations are encoded and expressed: in this respect, the language reflects aspects of
11
interpersonal interaction which are often deeply rooted in the sociocultural traditions of the target language (TL) community. No society is a single seamless entity made up of ‘standard’ members. We therefore have to question whether the image of the TL society we present to students is a real, living one or something shallow and stereotypical. We also need to question whether we are presenting a balanced view of this society or rather a selective and value-loaded vision of the way in which one group may wish to see it. These questions are generally dealt with in curricula and published materials on two levels. One is by the choice of a given variety of English, often on the basis of traditional regional preferences for British, American, Australian English, etc. The other is by means of the selection of topics and of exemplificatory material which is more or less closely linked to the culture of the relevant variety of English. None of these choices, however, is unmarked, and they can have a significant influence on classroom dynamics. A sanitised and decultured presentation of the language, for example, can make it appear so lifeless that learners may experience difficulty in relating to it as a living medium of communication, even perhaps within the framework of practice activities. On the other hand, a culturally biased presentation of the language can give rise to negative affective reactions. In other words, the way in which the cultural content of teaching materials is perceived by learners is likely to be context-specific. A given vision of the TL or the TL community will thus interact dynamically with the attitudes and aspirations of the learners concerned, and possibly those of the broader community to which they belong.
3. Spoken and Written Language
3.1
Communicative language processes
To act as a speaker, writer, listener or reader, the learner must be able to carry out a sequence of skilled actions.
To speak, the learner must be able to:
12
•
plan and organise a message (cognitive skills);
•
formulate a linguistic utterance (linguistic skills);
•
articulate the utterance (phonetic skills).
To write, the learner must be able to: •
organise and formulate the message (cognitive and linguistic skills);
•
hand-write or type the text (manual skills) or otherwise transfer the text to writing.
To listen, the learner must be able to: •
perceive the utterance (auditory phonetic skills);
•
identify the linguistic message (linguistic skills);
•
understand the message (semantic skills);
•
interpret the message (cognitive skills).
To read, the reader must be able to: •
perceive the written text (visual skills);
•
recognise the script (orthographic skills);
•
identify the message (linguistic skills);
•
understand the message (semantic skills);
•
interpret the message (cognitive skills).
The observable stages of these processes are well understood. Others – events in the central nervous system – are not. The following analysis is intended only to identify some parts of the process relevant to the development of language proficiency.
13
3.1.1 Planning
The
selection,
interrelation
and
co-ordination
of
components
of
general
and
communicative language competences to be brought to bear on the communicative event in order to accomplish the user / learner’s communicative intentions.
3.1.2
Execution
A
Production
The production process involves two components:
The formulation component takes the output from the planning component and assembles it into linguistic form. This involves lexical, grammatical, phonological (and in the case of writing, orthographic) processes which are distinguishable and appear to have some degree of independence but whose exact interrelation is not fully understood.
The articulation component organises the motor innervation of the vocal apparatus to convert the output of the phonological processes into co-ordinated movements of the speech organs to produce a train of speech waves constituting the spoken utterance, or alternatively the motor innervation of the musculature of the hand to produce handwritten or typewritten text.
B
Reception
The receptive process involves four steps which, while they take place in linear sequence (bottom-up), are constantly updated and reinterpreted (top-down) in the light of real world knowledge, schematic expectations and new textual understanding in a subconscious interactive process. •
the perception of speech and writing: sound / character and word recognition;
•
the identification of the text, complete or partial as relevant;
•
the semantic and cognitive understanding of the text as a linguistic entity;
•
the interpretation of the message in context.
14
The skills involved include: •
perceptual skills;
•
memory;
•
decoding skills;
•
inferencing;
•
predicting;
•
imagination;
•
rapid scanning;
•
referring back and forth.
Comprehension, especially of written texts, can be assisted by the proper use of aids, including reference materials such as: •
dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual);
•
thesauruses;
•
pronunciation dictionaries;
•
electronic dictionaries, grammars, spell-checkers and other aids;
•
reference grammars.
C
Interaction
The processes involved in spoken interaction differ from a simple succession of speaking and listening activities in a number of ways: •
productive and receptive processes overlap. Whilst the interlocutor’s utterance, still incomplete, is being processed, the planning of the user’s response is initiated – on the basis of hypothesis as to its nature, meaning and interpretation.
•
discourse is cumulative. As an interaction proceeds, the participants converge in their readings of a situation, develop expectations and focus on relevant issues. These processes are reflected in the form of the utterances produced.
15
In written interaction (e.g. a correspondence by letter, fax, e-mail, etc.) the processes of reception and production remain distinct (though electronic interaction, e.g. via the Internet, is becoming ever closer to ‘real time’ interaction). The effects of cumulative discourse are similar to those of spoken interaction.
3.2. Differences between written and spoken discourse
The two types of discourse differ in some basic characteristics. Ur (1996) mentions the following: •
Permanence. Written discourse is fixed and stable so the reading can be done at whatever time, speed and level of thoroughness the individual reader wishes. Spoken text in contrast is fleeting, and moves on in real time. The listener – though he or she may occasionally interrupt to request clarification – must in general follow what is said at the speed set by the speaker.
•
Explicitness. The written text is explicit; it has to make clear the context and all references. In speech, however, the real-time situation and knowledge shared between speaker and listener means that some information can be assumed and need not be made explicit.
•
Density. The content is presented much more densely in writing. In speech, the information is ‘diluted’ and conveyed through many more words: there are a lot of repetitions, glosses, ‘fillers’, producing a text that is noticeably longer and with more redundant passages.
•
Detachment .The writing of a text is detached in time and space from its reading; the writer normally works alone, and may not be acquainted with his or her readers. Speaking usually takes place in immediate interaction with known listeners, with the availability of immediate feedback.
•
Organization. A written text is usually organized and carefully formulated, since its composer has time and opportunity to edit it before making it available for reading. A speaker is improvising as he or she speaks: ongoing alterations, in the shape of glosses, self-corrections and so on produce an apparently disorganized 'stream of-consciousness' kind of discourse. Thus a written text conforms more to conventional rules of grammar, and its vocabulary is more precise and formal.
16
•
Slowness of production, speed of reception. Writing is much slower than speaking. On the other hand, we can usually read a piece of text and understand it much faster than we can take in the same text if we listen while someone reads it aloud to us.
•
Standard language. Writing normally uses a generally acceptable standard variety of the language, whereas speech may sometimes be in a regional or other limited-context dialect. In some languages (Chinese, for example), the various spoken dialects may even be mutually incomprehensible, while the written language is universally understood.
•
A learnt skill. Most people acquire the spoken language (at least of their own mother tongue) intuitively, whereas the written form is in most cases deliberately taught and learned.
•
Sheer amount and importance Spoken texts are far longer, normally (in the sense that they contain more words), than a representation of the same information in writing; this is largely because of the phenomenon called 'redundancy'. It is also true to say that most people speak far more than they write. Associated with this point is a third: that speech is more important for survival and effective functioning in society than writing is.
She then lists some interesting features of spoken language: •
Brevity of ‘chunks’. It is usually broken into short chunks. In a conversation, for example, people take turns to speak, usually in short turns of a few seconds each.
•
Pronunciation. The pronunciation of words is often slurred, and noticeably different from the phonological representation given in a dictionary. There are obvious examples such as ‘can’t’, in English for ‘cannot’, which have made their way even into the written language. Less obvious examples include such changes as ‘orright’ for ‘all right’ or ‘Sh’we go?’ for ‘Shall we go?’
•
Vocabulary. The vocabulary is often colloquial; in English you might, for example, use ‘guy’ where in writing you would use ‘man’, or ‘kid’ for ‘child’.
17
•
Grammar. Informal speech tends to be somewhat ungrammatical: utterances do not usually divide neatly into sentences; a grammatical structure may change in mid-utterance; unfinished clauses are common.
•
‘Noise’. There will be a certain amount of ‘noise’: bits of the discourse that are unintelligible to the hearer, and therefore as far as he or she is concerned are meaningless ‘noise’. This may be because the words are not said clearly, or not known to the hearer, or because the hearer is not attending – any number of reasons. We usually comprehend somewhat less than 100 per cent of what is said to us, making up for the deficit by guessing the missing items or simply ignoring them and gathering what we can from the rest.
•
Redundancy. The speaker normally says a good deal more than is strictly necessary for the conveying of the message. Redundancy includes such things as repetition, paraphrase, glossing with utterances in parenthesis, selfcorrection, the use of ‘fillers’ such as ‘I mean, well, er’. This to some extent compensates for the gaps created by ‘noise’.
•
Non-repetition. The discourse will not be repeated verbatim; normally it is heard only once, though this may be compensated for by the redundancy of the discourse, and by the possibility of requesting repetition or explanation.
4. Conclusions Following Sharpe’s ideas (2001), because in the early and middle years of schooling children are still in the process of learning about their world, and learning the language through which that world can be described and talked about, all good MFL lessons at the primary stage of education need to provide the pupil with clear and appropriate language through which what is being learned can be expressed. It has long been a sine qua none of primary teaching that it is better for the teacher to structure lessons in such a way that children use the written and spoken language for real purposes rather than simply to meet the limited demands of arid, decontextualized exercises. At the same time it is also recognized that children need opportunities to practise skills such as handwriting, careful pronunciation and so forth, and getting the balance right is a professional judgement with which good primary teachers are very familiar.
18
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, G. and G. Yule. 1983. Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Canale, M. 1983. ‘From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy’. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (eds.) Language and Communication. London: Longman
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. 2001. Council of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Crystal, D. 1997. the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cunningsworth, A. 1995. Choosing your Coursebook. Oxford: Heinemann
Hall, D. R. 2001. ‘Materials production: theory and practice’. In D. R. Hall and A. Hewings (eds.) Innovation in English Language Teaching. London: Routledge
Halliday, M. a. K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Arnold
Hymes, D. H. 1972. ‘On Communicative Competence’. In J. B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds.) Sociolinguistics. London: Penguin
Kreckel, M. 1981. Communicative acts and shared knowledge in natural discourse. London: Academic Press
Moon, J. 2000. Children Learning English. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann
Sharpe, K. 2001. Modern Foreign Languages in the Primary School. London: Kogan Page
Stubbs, M. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell 19
Tudor, I. 2001. The Dynamics of the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ur, P. 1996. A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
20
