martes, 1 de diciembre de 2009

Summary of Article #4

Communicative Competence: A Pedagogically Motivated Model with Content Specifications

By: Celce-Murcia, Dőrnyei, Thurrell

    The authors in this article present the relationship between model of communicative competence and pedagogical specification of content for CLT not unified under a comprehensive, theoretical model of language teaching.  They believe that competence is a powerful source of insight about what needs to be learned for syllabuses writers, teachers, materials creators, and performance evaluators.  The article continues to present four authors with different reactions towards this model.  They are Chomsky, Dell Hymes and Canale & Swain. 
     In the version used by Canale, the model includes four components:
1. Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge of the language code 
2. Sociolinguistic Competence involves the mastery of the sociocultural code of language use
3. Discourse competence is the ability to combine language structure into different types of solid texts.
4. Strategic Competence is the knowledge of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies.
     Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei and Thurrell (CMDT) further refined the model by making finer distinctions inthe area of sociolinguistic competence.
 l. Linguistic Competence (not narrowly grammar)
 2. Strategic Competence (efficiency and recovery)
 3. Sociocultural Competence (non-linguistic knowledge for appropriate deployment of linguistic  
 4. Actional Competence (carrying out/understanding communicative intent by performing and interpreting speech acts and speech events)
5. Discourse Competence concerns the selection, sequencing of linguistic items to achieve a unified spoken/ written text.  Five components are suggested : cohesion, delxis, coherence, genre and converstional structure. 

      The article ends with a chart of a chronological evolution model which also includes  Canale &Swain and  Canale's models.

Journal #3

Write about one of the techniques that seem to be more feasible and convincing for you to use in your own teaching?

SOCIAL INTERACTIVE TECHNIQUE: Activity of Show and Tell 

     If you teach young children you know they always have something to tell you and to share with the class. The minute they see you, they start telling you a million of things all at once.  Although one loves to hear their news, jokes, sad and happy stories, it takes time away from getting started with your instuctional class. For years, I like to use show and tell activites as a way to use their excitement about sharing their different experiences. This has become a class favorite. Students love sharing about themselves and special news.  At the same time they are interacting and developing their public speaking skills. In the beginning of the year I give them sentences starters to help them get starter.  As I said, this interactive activity is a favorite for all my students in my classroom and parents love it too because they get to share their child's experience at home. It's also more meaningful for parents to see their child actual work.  

     A good follow up activities is to have them write about their show and tell experience and post them up in the classroom. During class breaks the students interacts their written news or stories that have been posted.  These activities are a great way to interact and communicate with my students!   Don't be surprise about how much you can learn from your students too!