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TABLE OF CONTENT

1. THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATION

2. COMMUNICATION IN THE TEFL
3. VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
3.1. Transfer from verbal to non-verbal language
3.2. Transfer from non-verbal to verbal language
3.2. Dramatization/Role-playing and good teachers techniques
4. DEVELOPING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE THROUGH TRANFER OF
CODES
5. CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATION

All living creatures have a number of vehicles to transmit information to others,

communication proves essential for survival. Some creatures use vocal sounds, others
use physical movements or facial expressions. Man uses another system: complex
language, i.e. elaborate complex morphemes.

Recent investigators assume that brain has always been the most important part
of human anatomy for the evolution of language.

There are two peculiar characteristics to human language:

Productivity: every human language has an unlimited number of

sentences, even if you limit our intention to sentences that any competent
speaker of language could produce and understand. This can be by
observing when you can extend any sentence you have to a new, longer
one.

Complexity: language is not just a sequence of co-related signs. Those

signs have a relative position (syntax). Complexity is made possible thanks
to: phonetics, word-order, inflections

Communicative competence: from childhood, the child acquires an ability to grow

more and more creative with the language. The terms competence refers to the idea
that native speakers of language have an innate ability from birth to say things they have
never said before.

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Language acquisition is not only about grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. It

also involve adaptability to the context, to the interlocutor and to the purpose of the
communicative situation. Is also about the ability that speaker of a language have to
acquire the language progressively.

The varieties of language are determined by:

a. The context (dialect or register)

b. Speakers mood (nervous, relaxed, tense) and purpose (discursive,

argumentative, expository)

2. COMMUNICATION IN THE TEFL CLASSROOM

Teachers and experts in methodology believed that a language had to be

mastered through a long list of vocabulary and hard work on grammar. Nowadays,
communication in the classroom is becoming more and more important.

The appearance of the functional-notional syllabus meant that language teaching

is centred on basic linguistic functions with a communicative purpose (say hello, talking
about the past).

Some of the functions that are fundamental to communication could be:

a) Personal: polite, aggressive, happythis will have to be taught to avoid

unpleasant situations with the learner.
b) Direct: the speaker controls or has an influence on the hearer.
c) Rapport: a contact with the hearer is vital for communicative success.
d) Enjoyment: poetry, songs, etc.

The terms Teachers Talking Time (TTT) vs. Students Talking Time (STT) have also
become of paramount importance, Scarcella (1990). More participation from learner is
necessary to improve his/her ability and competence to use the language.

Teachers Talking Time was considered a bad thing when teachers in the 90s were
first trained to be a teacher. We all learned our first language partly by listening to it and
making sense, and eventually of what we hear. Most of what we heard was our parents
speaking to us (Parents Talking Time).

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TTT may be divided into two main types:

Asking questions and saying things.

The following is an account of helping teachers in training aware of their TTT
as a teaching tool; a contributing factor in their learner's understanding and
learning of a second language.

Teacher need to do two things:

Careful selection of materials.

Careful selection of methodological measures.
A decision: all pupils working on the same thing orpupils working
separately on a variety of tasks.

The dichotomy Group work vs. Individual work also needs to be considered:
group work is good for shy students (cooperation and collaboration are requires).
Individual work is favourable for concertation and grammar task, perhaps. Tasks have to
be introduced by the teacher progressively. Pupils must understand clearly what they
are supposed to do before they start.

Some strategies that can help students to improve the communicative skills are:

Oral work: grammar and phonetics are introduced and practised together.
Guided oral work: making mistakes is part of the process. With guidance
the teacher offers a number of options, the pupils choose.
Free oral production: the pupils prepare a role-play or a shot dialogue, a
personal introduction to talk alone for 30 second or 1 minute. The pupils
can use visual stimuli to present their ideas.

3. VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Verbal communication concerns both an oral or a written message to transmit a
thought, it includes gestures, mimicry and movements. Among non-verbal
communication, we have examples like:

Body language: role-plays, disguises, etc.

Artistic expression: drawing, colouring, etc.
Music expression: listening and doing, listening and dancing, etc.

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3.1. Transfer from verbal to non-verbal language

Total Physical Response (a method which attempts to teach language through
physical motor activity, it was developed by James Asher) dramatizing actions that are
expressed linguistically, i.e. I get up, I have a shower, I watch TV.

TRF is also possible with instructions that are followed by immediate action from
the hearer, pupil in the classroom environment, i.e. draw a house.

3.2. Transfer from non-verbal to verbal language

Drawing/Flashcards let the pupil speak and say what there is in each
picture.
Card-games for jobs.
Drawings/Flashcards to teach preposition (on, in, at, near, etc.)
Slides, OHP (Projector), video, DVDs to let the pupils interpret and
verbalise what they are watching.

In the classroom the teacher and students take on roles similar to that of the
parent and child respectively. Students must respond physically to the words of the
teacher. The activity may be a simple activity as Simon says.

TFR can be used to practised and teach various thing. It is good to teaching
classroom language and other vocabulary connected with actions. It can be used to
teach imperatives and various tense aspects.

TFR may also be a useful alternative teaching strategy for students with dyslexia
or related learning disabilities. Simple TFR activities do not require a great deal of
preparation on the part of the teacher. Some disadvantage could be that it not gives
students the opportunity to express their own thought in a creative way. It can be
challenge for shy students.

3.3. Dramatization/Role-playing and good teachers techniques

The childs output in the language is limited to writing run of the mil answers and
producing grammatically accurate, but isolated sentences. The conventional English
class hardly gives the learners an opportunity to use language in the way of develop
fluency in it.

An attractive alternative is teaching language through drama because it gives a

context for listening and meaningful language production. It provides situations for
reading and writing. As Wilga Rivers (1983) the drama approach enables learners to use
what they are learning with pragmatic intent, something that is most difficult to learn

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through explanation. By using drama techniques to teach English, the monotony of a

conventional English class can be broken and the syllabus can be transformed into one
which prepares learner to face their immediate word better as competent users of the
English language because they get an opportunity to use the language in operation.

Good teachers seem to know instinctively how to use performance skills in the
classroom to gain and hold students interest. It is time for us all to adopt a variety of
drama skill to win the attention and interest of our students. These skill might include
the use of body language and voice, role-playing and improvisation.

Body Language

All teachers can use appropriate the body language in their classrooms, for
example:

Exaggerating movements when something to the whole class. This should

capture the students attention.
Walking towards the person who is talking, even if it is only one or two
steps. This can have an incredibly positive effect on individuals.
Responding by smiling and nodding when a student is talking.
Keeping eye contact with the student who is talking and showing
enthusiasm with facial expressions.
Walking around the room during a discussion.
Avoiding closed by body language (such as folding arms).

Use of the voice

Like good actors, teachers need to use their voices appropriately in a variety of
situations, such as narrating a story or giving a character a distinctive accent.

We might find the following particularly useful:

Reading poetry aloud.

Varying the speed and tone of my voice in conversation and listening to
myself on a tape recorder.
Using these recordings to recognise personal speech characteristics that
might distract from the learning process and attempting to overcome
these impediments.

We need to learn to pay attention to the signals that our voices send us so that we
can take the necessary steps to avoid damaging one of our most important teaching
tools. Teachers dramatization are good for:

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Accompanying and motivating L2 use.

Increasing participation from the pupil.
Personal involvement in language.

Communicative games for the transfer of codes

Simon saysstand up, sit down, go to the door
Colour this inred, blue, pink, orange
Write the number 9, 2, 6
Bingo game, very popular, but still very effective with young learners.
Who is who, non-verbal transfer. A pupil uses mimicry to play the role of a
certain hob.

4. DEVELOPING COMMUNCATIVE COMPETENCE THROUNGH

TRANSFER OF CODES.
To achieve communicative competence, pupils must acquire not only linguistic
competence, but also rules, skills and strategies. The must adapt their reactions to
different context.

Socio-cultural rules:
Orders for movement: be quiet, sit down, and come here
Graphic orders: colour that, draw this
Silent role-playing/dramatization: somebody makes gestures and the
others express that message through language. I.e. she gets up, she open
the window

Gestures: each language has its own gestures that are peculiar only to that
language, this should be learnt in the TEFL classroom (social rules,
customs)

5. CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION
1. Teachers position in the classroom

Any child playing teacher will produce most of the behaviours used by most
teachersstanding in front of a group of relatively passive onlookers, doing most of the
talking, asking questions to which they already know the answers, and evaluating by
passing judgements. (Simon and Boyer, 1970).

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Actually the reality is that teachers tend to do a lot of the classroom talking. Two-
thirds of a lesson is talk, two-third of this is teacher talk and two-third of this teacher
talk is concerned with discipline and procedural matters rather than lesson content
itself.

The classic example of this is that teachers tend to do repeat pupils answers. We
channel all communication through ourselves and make a point nonverbally. We are
centre stage the star attraction -.

2. Teachers expressiveness

Your impact on the student is closely linked to terms such as charismatic and
enthusiastic. Researcher such as Rosenshine (1987) and Friedman (1980) note that
nonverbal expressiveness is a key variable in the explanation of these terms.

Two particular types of body language also stand out, open and closed. When
open, our bodies are more exposed and there is less closing off or erecting of barriers
such as folded arms. The way we move our bodies is also important.

3. Using your body to mirror what we say

As far back as 1966, it was show that our speech and movements are rhythmically
coordinated (Condon, 1976). We sometimes gesture as the most significant parts of
what we are saying and then there are movements of the head and the hands around
the beginning and the end of the sentences or phrases. One of the interesting aspects
of movements is a tendency to turn the head to one side, to flex the neck or to extend
the neck after or have made a pint, indicating the point is made and that transition or
new one is imminent.
We may use eye blinks at the beginning or end of words. Our posture can also
shift. For example, leaning back while we hyphenate when writing.

4. The position of your hands

There is also the question of what you do with your hand while you sit or walk.
Sometimes they are gripped behind the back. You might think that because are behind
the back in these cases, we are hiding something. Borg (2008) point out that here the
hands are not being hidden, rather they project confidence because the individual is
happy to expose the vulnerable front of the body.
Have you ever thought about the manner in which people clasp their hands behind
their backs? Borg (2008) argues that if one of the hands behind the backs is gripping the
wrist, rather than the hands being clasped together, this could indicate annoyance or
frustration. The further up the arm you go the more nervousness you are feeling.

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6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
BORG, J. (2008). Body language. London: Pearson
COHEN, D. (2007). Body Language: what we need to know. London: Sheldon Press
CONDON, W.S. (1976). An analysis of Behavioural Organisation. Sing language Studies.
FRIEDMAN, H. (1980). Understanding and Assessing Non-verbal expressiveness: the
affective communication test. Journal of personality and Social Physiology.
ROSHENSHINE, B. (1970). Enthusiastic Teaching. A research review. School Review, 78.
SCARCELLA, R. (1990). Developing Communicative Competence in a Second Language.
Heinle & Hinley Publishers.
SIMON, A. & BOYER, G. (1970). Mirrors for Behaviour: an anthology of classroom
observation instruments. Research for better schools.

TOPIC 2: COMMUNICATION IN THE TEFL CLASSROOM: VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION. EXTRALINGUISTIC
STRATEGIES: NON VERBAL REACTIONS TO MESSAGES IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.