Revista Conrado (Sep 2020)

Teaching strategy to develop sociolinguistic competence in 1st year at Cienfuegos University

  • Merlyn Montalvo Martel,
  • Yanely Peñate Ramírez

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 67
pp. 158 – 164

Abstract

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Communicative Language Teaching has become a well-recognized approach in this field. However, one aspect which considerable attention has been paid to, is the sociolinguistic competence. In this sense, language competence depends on the ability to recognize and produce socially appropriate language in context, taking into account the large amount of variants in cultural rules of speaking, role relationships, the shared information of the participants, and the communicative purpose for their interaction. This is the reason why this paper is aimed at elaborating a teaching strategy to develop the sociolinguistic competence in the 1st year of the Foreign Language Major (FLM) at Cienfuegos University. At present, Stephen Krashen’s theory and strategies for second language acquisition are assumed in order to substantiate the teaching strategy. From this point a series of research instruments and techniques such as analysis of documents, lesson observation, interview to English teachers and survey to students were implemented; and as a result some deficiencies were detected. Those regularities were the starting point for the implementation of this strategy, which comprises a series of topics to be developed in practical lessons enabling them to practice the basic language skills in order to master English with a high level of proficiency and increase students’ motivation for foreign language learning tasks. This also allows them to use language effectively for social purposes and to have a good command of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms as well.

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