TOPIC 3: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUR BASIC LINGUISTIC SKILLS: LISTENING,

SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH

This essay deals with the acquisition of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing in
English, that is, the development of the necessary skills to be acquire the communicative competence in this
language. This topic is clearly related to our curriculum, set in Decree 89/2014. It says that at the end of
Primary Education,students must have acquired the communication skills defined by the A1 level of the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in oral comprehension (listening) , oral
expression (speaking) , reading comprehension (reading) and written expression (writing) .
These four skills are developed in a natural order, both in our mother language and when we are learning a
foreign language: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
3.1. LISTENING
Listening is the oral receptive skill. It is a receptive skill, not a passive skill, because it involves mental
activity: as we listen, we transform the sounds we hear into meaning. This is called decoding the message.
Listening involves a number of subskills, such as:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)

Phonemic awareness: identifying the different sounds of the language.

Awareness of the stress, rhythm and intonation patterns of the language.
Knowledge of vocabulary.
Awareness of the grammar patterns of the language.
Predicting and guessing (recalling previous knowledge).
Inferring opinion/attitude of the speaker.

Students can improve their listening skills through a combination of extensive and intensive listening
materials and procedures. Extensive listening is listening for general understanding. Intensive listening
means listening for detailed information.
When planning a listening session, we have to take into account that young learners need to be motivated to
listen. This is way we must plan some pre-listening activities, for example, predicting the topic of the
listening. In addition, children will be more involved if you give them a purpose for listening. Plan some
while-listening activities (listen and do activities), such as listen and order some pictures, listen and tick,
listen and circle A listening lesson will be more complete with some post-listening activities, like
summarizing the main ideas, creating a minibook of the text they have listened, etc.
3.2. SPEAKING
Speaking is the oral productive skill. Successful oral production involves many thing, such as:

Knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

Ability to produce the foreign sounds correctly.
Awareness and ability to produce the stress, rhythm and intonation patterns of the language.
Some listening skills.

The speaking skill has two aspects to develop: fluency and accuracy. Fluency can be defined as the ability
to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too much hesitation. Accuracy means
producing correct sentences, using correct grammar and vocabulary. Although our goal must be to develop
both, we have to bear in mind that overcorrection may lead to students lack of confidence. Mistakes must
be seen as an inseparable part of the language learning process.
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Oral activities may follow the Presentation-Practice-Production approach. When planning a speaking
lesson, we must bear in mind that speaking activities should fulfill certain requirements:

Activities must provide opportunities for language practice.

They must be interesting and motivating for children.
As regard to the subject matter, it must be within the students' experience; it must be close to their lives.
The teacher must create a welcoming and stress-free atmosphere where pupils feel confident to speak.

The best way to develop our pupils speaking skills is by using the English language to communicate in the
classroom. It is essential to give them positive reinforcement when they make the effort to speak English.
3.3. READING
Reading is the written receptive skill. There are five reading skills that are essential for young readers:
a) Phonemic awareness: identifying phonemes in spoken words
b) Phonics: connecting letters with sounds
c) Knowledge of vocabulary
d) Skimming: understanding the general idea of a text
e) Scanning: searching for specific information in a text
Regarding reading activities, they are commonly divided into 3 types: pre-reading, while-reading and postreading activities.
- Pre-reading activities have as a main aim to arouse our pupils interest in what they are going to
read. They may include: guessing the topic, predicting the order of events
- While-reading activities may be completing a chart, filling gaps, ordering pictures
- Post-reading activities can be thought as a follow up work, for instance role play, making a minibook, etc.
Reading begins at word and sentence level, but progressively we must present our students with longer texts
based on language they are familiar with orally. Students can read a variety of texts: stories, poems, the
lyrics of songs, graded books, etc.
3.4. WRITING
Writing is the written productive skill. Writing involves a set of subskills such as:
1. GRAPHIC SKILLS, which include aspects such as punctuation or spelling.
2. STYLISTIC SKILLS, which refer to our pupils ability to express precise meaning
in a variety of styles and registers.
3. ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS, which involve the sequencing of ideas.
4. GRAMATICAL SKILLS, which refer to our pupils ability to use successfully a
variety of sentence patterns and construction.
5. RHETORICAL SKILLS, which include pupils ability to use cohesion devices in
order to link part of a text into logically related sequences.
The type of writing activities depends on pupils age. First, students write words and short sentences. Then,
they will be able to write short paragraphs with the support of a model text. Students compositions will
ebcome longer and richer gradually. It is important to know that children who read more write better, with
fewer spelling mistakes. That is why we must foster reading in English.
3.5. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH
This concept was coined by Hymes, who reacted to Chomskys ideas, according to which everyone is born
with an innate language acquisition device. This consists of a Universal Grammar which is activated when
being exposed to language input. This allows us to learn any language as our first language. Chomsky called
this linguistic competence. Hymes thought that native speakers not only master their language but also
know how to use it in different situations. His communicative competence has got 4 aspects:
- Appropriacy: Using the suitable language for each situation.
- Systematic potential: Potential to create new language.
- Feasibility: Physical possibility to send and receive messages.
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- Occurrence: Knowledge of how often something is said in their language.

Later, in 1980s Canale and Swain proposed a model of Communicative Competence that is the one currently
followed by CLT and the CEFRL. According to them, communicative competence has got 4
subcompetences:
1. Grammatical competence, similar to Chomskys linguistic competence.
2. Discourse competence, related to coherence and cohesion.
3. Strategic competence: ability to navigate around communication difficulties.
4. Sociocultural competence: knowledge of the social and cultural aspects of language.
CONCLUSION
To conclude this essay, I would like to stress the fact that using English as the language of communication in
the English class is the best way to develop our students communicative competence, which is the first
basic competence set in our curriculum. Using English as the language for communication in the class helps
students to be confident in their understanding and progressive production of the spoken language. Our
curriculum gives priority to oral comprehension and expression activities. Writing is introduced gradually
since the first year of Primary Education towards a certain degree of reading and writing autonomy at the
end of the Primary Education stage. According to D.89/2014 at the end of Primary Education,students must
have acquired the communication skills defined by the A1 level of the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages in oral comprehension (listening) , oral expression (speaking) , reading
comprehension ( reading) and written expression (writing ) .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BREWSTER, J. AND ELLIS, G. The Primary English Teachers Guide. Penguin English, 200
D. 89/2014 of 24th July for the Community of Madrid
HARMER, J. The Practice of ELT. Longman, 2007.
KRASHEN, S. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (Internet Edition).University of
Southern California, July 2009