UNIT 1. LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION: ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE.

FACTORS WHICH DEFINE A COMMUNICACTIVE SITUATION: SENDER, RECEIVER,

FUNCIONALITY AND CONTEXT.
We can start saying that language is a set of arbitrary symbols, which allows us
to establish relationships with people. In other words, language allows communication
and communication is the way which makes people, as members of a society, interact. In
this essay I am going to talk about the notion of language as communication. For this
purpose, I am dividing the topic into six main sections: the origin of communication and
language, Communicative Competence, communicative situation, functions of language,
oral language versus written language, communicative activities and a final conclusion.
THE ORIGIN OF COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE
Communication is supposed to have existed since the beginning of time in
different ways. Not just human beings, but also plants and animals communicate with
the world using different codes. For example, animals are able to use sounds and several
movements to communicate different things, such as hunger, sexual attraction
However, there is a big difference between the hoot of an owl, the grunt of a pig and a
man standing before an audience saying to be or not to be.
Consequently, we can say that there are a lot of ways to communicate. These
ways have changed a lot during years. For instance, a lot of years ago, people
communicated with each other by making sounds with different objects (drums for
example), using smoke signals Then writing appeared in Egypt, first just using pictures
and little by little a graphic system appeared, for example, the Scandinavian runnes.
This has gone on improving until the modern times where we communicate with
each other, among other ways, using the Internet and mobile phones. Now our modern
smoke signals are the missed phone calls which we make to our friends or to any
member of our family.
FROM COMMUNICAVE APPROACH TO COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Noam Chomsky said that human beings have a subconscious knowledge to make
sentences grammatically correct, in other words, to use the grammatical rules of this
language in a proper way. This was a first communicative approach.
Little by little this term went on developing and Hymes replaced Chomskys
notion of Competence with his own concept of Communicative Competence. He argued

that Communicative Competence not only involved the construction of sentences but
also the rules of use. When a speaker speaks, he does not only apply grammatical rules,
but also he forms correct utterances and knows how to use these utterances
appropriately.
To reach communicative competence we must work on the following subcompetences:
- Grammatical competence: the child produces correct sentences, from the
grammatical point of view.
- Socioliguistic competence: the child produces correct messages according to
the context, speakers, the aim of communication.
- Discursive competence: the child interprets a message according to the
context or situation.
- Strategic competence: the child is able to use communication strategies, verbal
or non-verbal, to compensate for gaps or interruptions.
- Socio-cultural competence: the child is able to familiarise with the sociocultural context where the language is spoken.

COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION
According to Jackobson these are the main elements in a communicative
situation:
- Sender: the person who sends the message.
- Receiver is who receives the message.
The relation between the participants is essential in this way. When we talk
about them we have to mention two main axes: Power and Solidarity. Solidarity is when
a communicative relationship is reciprocal, for example, when we are talking to friends;
while Power reigns when an interaction is not reciprocal, such as when you are talking
with a Universitys teacher.
- Message is the content of the information.
- Channel is the mean through which the message travels: radio, phone, paper. ..
- Code is the set of signs, which are combined using rules that the sender and
the receiver are familiarized with. Code: language. Other codes: facial expressions,
body language.

- Context is the situation of the message.

Other important items are:
- Purpose: the main objectives of communication.
- Topic: what we are talking about.

FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children, which
we, as teachers, must know. The first four functions help children to satisfy physical,
emotional and social needs. These are:
- Instrumental: this is when the child uses language to express his needs: Im
thirsty.
- Regulatory: this is where language is used to tell others what to do: Go away.
- Interactional: here the language is used to make contact with others and to
form relationships: I love you, mummy.
- Personal: this is the use of language to express feelings, opinions and individual
identify: My lovely teddy.
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative and representational, all
helping the child to connect with his environment.
- Heuristic: this is when language is used to get knowledge from the
environment: Why has daddy gone?.
- Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories, jokes and to create an
imaginary environment.
- Representational: when language is used in order to convey facts and
information.
ORAL LANGUAGE VERSUS WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Although both spoken and written are used to communicate, there are many
differences between them. For example, the use of grammar is different. In spoken
language, we use grammar in an opener way than in the written form. In oral language we
can use different gestures to get our communicative goal in a more effective way. While
in written language gestures cant be used. (Except on the Internet, where we can use
emoticons which are small pictures of a face expressing: sadness, happiness As I have
said language and communication have changed a lot)

In addition, written language is different to spoken language in the use of

intonation, for instance, when we are talking we use more interjections, exclamations and
questions as we can get an answer of our listener.
Another difference is the organization, in spoken language we use more
conjunctions and our speech is not so structured because it is more spontaneous than the
written one. The ideas in the written language have a more precise order to get
coherence in order to obtain a good communication. When we are talking we can check the
understanding, there is a feedback, while in written there is not.
The spoken language appears first, due to the fact that the writing system of
any language is developed or invented in order to record speech when the need arises.
Even today, there are many world languages which can be spoken but they do not have a
standard written form.
Furthermore, the moment in which both of them appear is completely different.
Thus, a person acquires a language by listening to it since birth. Then, speaking appears.
These two capacities are related to oral language. Finally reading and writing skills are not
developed naturally but learnt during the school period.
COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
A communicative activity must be: unpredictable, interactive, within a context
and authentic. Communicative activities to develop oral skills, that is what we as Infant
and Primary teachers have to do, are:
- Listening to songs and stories, Role plays, fill in the gaps, problem solving,
describing personal experiences and communicative games in general.
Communicative activities to develop written skills are:
- Writing shorts texts, writing instructions, filling in forms, filling in the gaps,
writing questions or answers

CONCLUSION
To sum up, for us, as English teachers, the use of language as communication is
very important, as I have tried to show above. But I want to conclude saying that it is also
essential that teachers create a comfortable environment in which children can
communicate.

Because the student has to be the main character in the teaching and learning
process to create significant knowledge as Ausbel said. With our attitude, comments and
activities, we have to create a nice lesson plan in which our pupils can communicate freely
always led by us to get the didactic aims established for their level.
But to make a nice environment also means the usages of different resources
and materials to fulfil communication. Teachers in class have to use different materials
so that students can understand us and achieve their aims through different ways.
We know that our language is a very important instrument to achieve
communication; in contrast, every student does not process information in the same way.
Our task is to transmit it using different devices in order to get communication to be
effective.