Unit 7. Oral Foreign Language.

The complexity of global comprehension in oral

interaction: from hearing to active and selective listening. Speaking: from imitative to
autonomous production
1. Introduction
2. Oral Foreign Language
3. The complexity of global comprehension in oral interaction: from hearing to active and selective listening
3.1. Listening activities and stage classification
4. Speaking: from imitative to autonomous production
4.1. Speaking activities and stage classification
5. Mediation and interaction skills
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
7.1. Legislation
7.2. Authors
7.3. Further reading

1. Introduction
People can more easily come into contact with other cultures and languages through travel,
communication or new technologies. This refers to globalization of the world which tends to use English as a
world language. This is why it is important to introduce English language learning at a young age.
Furthermore, in the last decades, the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has
experienced drastic changes triggered by the implementation of the Communicative Approach whose final
goal is the development of Communicative Competence (Hymes, 1972).
Our modern European society shows an increasing concern for population to have access to an effective
acquisition of foreign languages enabling people to satisfy their communicative needs. In this sense, the
Common European Framework of Reference for languages (Council of Europe, 2020) provides a valuable
framework with methodological guidelines and a common basis for the description of objectives and content.
We must also consider that our State legislation, Organic Law 3/2020, 29th December, which modifies
Organic Law 2/2006, 3rd May, on Education and the Royal Decree 157/2022, 1st March, which establishes
the basic curriculum for Primary Education nationwide, together with the Decree 209/2022, 17th November,
which establishes the curriculum for our region, include transversal elements, active methodologies,
Universal Design for Learning and communicative approaches as the axis on the new programming.
On the other hand, LOE with LOMLOE (LOMLOE from now on) along with Agenda 2030 and
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) point out gender equality, sustainability, diversity awareness,
children's rights and digital knowledge as the pillars on which education must be based.
Considering the topic of this unit it is important to mention that developing communicative competence
enables learners to communicate effectively. This requires knowledge not only of the linguistic forms of a
language but also of when, how and with whom it is appropriate to use these forms. This is achieved by
learning receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and writing) language skills, as well as
mediation and interaction skills. Now we are going to analyse listening and speaking.

2. Oral Foreign Language

Linguistic production relies on previous message reception for which it is necessary to be exposed to
diverse messages in various contexts. Building receptive and productive skills concurrently is crucial.
According to Cameron (2001), speaking and listening are active language uses, differing in mental activity
and learner demands. Listening involves accessing others' meanings, while speaking entails expressing
meanings for others to comprehend. That is, speaking demands attention to language details for effective
communication, making it more challenging than listening.
 In the early stages of learning and teaching English, our students will generally write very little, as our
curriculum emphasizes the importance of receptive skills over productive ones and oral skills over the written
medium.
The foreign language curriculum for Primary Education is built around the structure of the Common
European Framework of Reference for Languages: comprehension and expression of written and oral texts,
interaction and mediation. For this reason, basic knowledge has been grouped around three interrelated
blocks which combine knowledge, skills and attitudes for the acquisition of the specific competencies of the
area. These are:
- The Communication Block. It encompasses the knowledge for developing communicative activities
of understanding, production, interaction and mediation.
- The Multilingualism Block. It includes knowledge directly related to the knowledge and integration of
different languages in daily life, allowing the acquisition of a linguistic repertoire and communication
strategies.
- The Intercultural Block. It is based on the sociocultural dimension of language, grouping knowledge
that allows the use of language as a tool of cultural discovery and rapprochement between different
cultures, favouring an attitude of respect.
Students are expected to be able to use all this basic knowledge in communicative situations in different
areas: personal, social and educational, considering topics of relevance to students and based on Sustainable
Development Goals and the challenges of the 21st century.

3. The complexity of global comprehension in oral interaction: from hearing to active

and selective listening
Listening is a receptive and interpretative skill necessary to understand spoken language. But hearing is
different from listening. Hearing refers to the actual perception and processing of sounds. That is if a student
hears the teacher's instructions in the FL but does not understand, listening has not taken place.
This process goes therefore through different stages. Firstly, the auditory perception of acoustic signals
happened. Students recognise the familiar elements in the speech without being able to know the
interrelationships within the whole system. Then, they identify and select them without retention, which
means, listening for pleasure. After that, they do an identification and guided selection with short-term
retention. Finally, pupils should be able to understand most of the information and retain it in long-term
memory.
Teachers are key language models, but students also benefit from exposure to other voices through
recorded and live materials which enhance language usage and support effective pronunciation teaching for
developing communicative competence.
It is crucial to bear in mind that students will be actively involved in listening activities if they understand
the purpose of the task and they will be motivated if teachers use authentic and meaningful listening activities
(Harmer, 2022).
It is imperative to build our students' confidence in listening learning situations. To do this, we must teach
them listening strategies. The most important are:
- Predicting what they think might come next is useful to understand better the text.
- Extracting specific information and getting a general understanding. Sometimes, understanding the
gist is sufficient for communication, other others, specific details are crucial.
- Inferring opinion and attitude analysing stress, intonation and body language.
- Deducing meaning from context by using their previous knowledge and the surrounding context.
- Recognizing discourse patterns and markers gives us clues about what is coming next.

3.1. Listening activities and stage classification

 Language acquisition relies on rich language exposure so teachers must provide enough practice in
both intensive and extensive listening to develop efficient English listeners. Intensive listening focuses on
sound recognition and imitation, while extensive listening emphasizes general familiarity with language
features.
According to Rost (2015), a listening lesson comprises three stages:
- Pre-listening: the aim is to prepare the students for the task arousing their interest and curiosity
which creates expectations and a definite purpose for listening.
- While-listening: it involves identifying information while actively listening to a given oral text,
demonstrated through specific actions.
- Post-listening: it refers to the activities we give our students once they have listened to transfer
what has been covered to a different context.
The teacher's role is to create learning situations which help our pupils to be as involved as possible.
Some examples are:
- Listen and repeat with digital tools or the teacher.
- Listen and perform actions/follow instructions.
- Listen and guess, match or classify.
- Listen and extract information.
Dos Santos (2020) emphasizes the key steps for integrating listening activities in language teaching:
- Choose an appropriate listening text.
- Check that related activities are suitable.
- Adapt the difficulty based on students' characteristics.
- Determine the duration as well as when and how.
- Use visual aids (digital or paper) for better understanding.
- Determine the listening session objectives.
- Establish a favourable learning environment.

4. Speaking: from imitative to autonomous production

Speaking is a productive oral skill in which listening must be built simultaneously. In the early stages of
language learning, children start speaking by imitating single words and then combine the learned words
creatively in the production of telegraphic speech. Parents and teachers often complete these utterances and
children imitate them.
In addition, they learn formulaic language (simple greetings, routines, classroom language…), that is, they
produce language at sentence level. Very close to formulaic would be the repetitive language presented in
songs, rhymes, stories and games. Finally, children develop the ability to incorporate new elements and
follow the rules of the language to produce spoken language autonomously (Brewster, Ellis and Girard,
2002).

4.1. Speaking activities and stage classification

The usual way to deal with oral production is often divided into three stages: presentation, practice and
production stage.
The presentation stage has the aim of introducing the new language in such a way that our pupils can
realise its relevance and usefulness. To do so teachers must establish a meaningful context and activate
previous knowledge.
Then, students need to practice these items for themselves. In large classes, group or pair work is
essential. Some suggestions on how we could carry it out with our pupils are:
- Guided oral practice. We must build up our pupils’ confidence by ensuring that they have
something to say.
 - Meaningful oral practice. Drills must not always be mechanical.
- Extensive oral practice. The more our pupils practice, the better they speak. Here we can introduce
extra words related to the topic.
At the production stage, students freely use the language to assess their learning. We will generally not
interfere with our pupils’ productions, so they must have clear instructions for purposeful tasks. The most
common activities include games, videoconferences, role plays or discussions.
Although the procedures above follow a logical order, they may overlap or be used more than once
during a learning situation.
Teachers must always recognise the diversity in their classrooms. When teaching speaking skills to
students with language impairments, it is crucial to create a supportive environment, use visual aids for
comprehension, simplify language, provide proper speech modelling and encourage regular practice.

4. Mediation and interaction skills

The methodological guidelines in Decree 209/2022 emphasise the importance of linguistic mediation and
interaction in English teaching alongside the oral skills discussed above and the written skills. These aspects
have gained attention in language learning due to significant updates in the CEFRL which now categorises
skills into four modes reflecting real-life communication: reception, production, interaction and mediation.
Harmer (2022) explains that mediation is the skill that the student develops when trying to explain a
concept to someone else which often results in new meanings and ways of communicating them. Interaction,
on the other hand, refers to the exchange of information between speakers in a social situation.

5. Conclusion
We know how important developing communicative competence is in our classroom and this is the main
objective in Foreign Language Teaching as Decree 209/2022 states. That is communicate using the target
language efficiently to exchange information and meanings with other people. Being able to communicate
implies proportional practice in the four skills according to the five competences. To do so, teachers must
create as many motivating situations as possible to develop these skills and thus successfully teach the
foreign language.
On the other hand, technology has been helping in the acquisition of language learning in the classroom
providing students authentic materials and access to endless resources. A large number of digital applications
can be successfully used in the classroom creating a good and motivating atmosphere.
Throughout this unit, we have focused on complex mechanisms involved in oral skills: listening and
speaking. This process goes through the hearing of sounds and develops to comprehension and production
using input, exposure and practice.
To end up with the topic we would like to mention a famous quote by Nelson Mandela that says,
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

6. Bibliography
6.1. Legislation
Organic Law 3/2020, of 29 December, which modifies Organic Law 2/2006, of 3 May, on Education.
Royal Decree 157/2022, of 1 March, which establishes the basic Curriculum for Primary Education.
Decree 209/2022, 17th November, which establishes the curriculum for Primary Education in the Region
of Murcia.
Evaluation:
Order 14th May 2018, which modifies Order 5th May 2016, which regulates the organisation and
procedure of the final evaluation.
Order 24th July 2019, which modifies Order 20th November 2014, which regulates the organization and
evaluation of Primary Education.
Resolution 15th December 2021 which regulates evaluation and promotion in Primary Education.
Diversity:
Decree 359/2009, 30th October, which establishes and regulates educational answer diversity of students
in the Region of Murcia.
Order 4th June 2010 which regulates the Diversity Attention Plan in the Region of Murcia.
Resolution 13th December 2022 which establishes the protocol for the early detection and intervention of
students’ educational needs and the inclusion measures.
Resolution November 20th 2023, which establishes the instructions to elaborate Personalised Action
Plans for students with Specific Educational Support Needs.

6.2. Authors
Brewster, J., Ellis, G. and Girard, D. (2002). The Primary English Teacher’s Guide (new edition).
Penguin.
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge University Press.
Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,
teaching, assessment. Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing.
Dos Santos, L. M. (2020). The Discussion of Communicative Language Teaching Approach in Language
Classrooms. Journal of Education and e-Learning Research, 7(2), 104-109.
Harmer, J. (2022). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson Longman
Hymes, D. H. (1972). On Communicative Competence in J. B. Pride and J. Holmes (Eds.),
Sociolinguistics. Selected Readings (pp. 269-293). Penguin.
Rost, M. (2015). Teaching and Researching Listening. Routledge.

6.3. Further reading

www.cnice.mecd.es
www.educarm.es