Conversatorio "Saber test and the communicative approach”, celebrado el 13 de octubre de 2016, organizado por la Red de maestros de lenguas extranjeras, la secretaría de educación municipal y el Programa de Formación y Desarrollo Profesional Docente en inglés de la Universidad del Valle.

1. Saber Test and the
Communicative Approach
By Lorena Mosquera García

2. • What are your main concerns when teaching eleventh graders?
• What comes to mind when you read the words Saber test and
Communicative Approach in the same sentence?

3. Colombia Bilingüe
• The objective of Plan Nacional de Bilingüismo is “lograr ciudadanos y
ciudadanas capaces de comunicarse en inglés, de tal manera que
puedan insertar el país en los procesos de comunicación universal, en
la economía global y en la apertura cultural, con estándares
internacionalmente comparables”

4. About Saber 11 Test
• It is part of the same program
• Based on the CEFR
• Colombia Bilingüe by 2019

5. About Saber Test (cont’d)
Parte Porcentaje (%)
1 11
2 11
3 11
4 18
5 16
6 11
7 22
Total 100

7. Parts of the Test
Parte Énfasis
Parte 1 – Pragmática Propósito comunicativo del lenguaje y el lugar en que
puede aparecer, según ese propósito.
Parte 2 – Léxico Relación de un grupo de palabras con su descripción.
Parte 3 – Conocimiento comunicativo Participación en una conversación. Coherencia.
Pertinencia del lenguaje usado en situaciones
particulares recreadas en pequeñas conversaciones.
Parte 4 – Conocimiento gramatical Uso adecuado de estructuras en un texto.
Parte 5 – Lectura literal Comprensión de lectura. Paráfrasis.
Parte 6 – Lectura inferencial Intención del autor y los aspectos generales y
particulares por destacar de un texto.
Parte 7 – conocimiento gramatical y lexical Selección de las palabras correctas para completar un
texto.

8. “…Ciudadanos y ciudadanas capaces de
comunicarse…”

9. Communicative Competence
• Introduced by Dell Hymes (1966)
• Ability to use gramatical and
social knowledge performing in
real life situations.
• Basis for the Communicative
Approach.

10. Communicative Competence (cont’d)

11. Communicative Approach for You
• What do you understand by Comminicative Approach?
• If you could summarize it in two words, what would those words be?
(Taboo words: communicative, communication, and approach)
• Describe a class activity that fosters communication

12. Communicative Approach
“…language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear
relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the
use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what
is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or
situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why
they have come together to speak)“(Berns, 1984, p. 5)

13. Saber and the Communicative Approach
Can Reading be communicative?

14. • Communication suggests
interaction
• Direct communication between
the reader and the author
• Communicate to others
• Collaborative Reading

15. Pre-Reading Tasks
• Think-pair-share
• Tell your partner what you know
about the topic
• Do a quiz in pairs to find out
what you know about the topic
• Look at some pictures related to
the topic
• Skimming the first paragraph for
gist and then predicting

16. While-Reading Tasks
• Jigsaw Reading
• Cut up texts
• Running and Reading
• Pair Reading
• Reading/Speaking gap activities
• Expert Reading

17. Post-Reading Tasks
• Think-pair-share
• Discussions about the text
• Summarizing texts
• Reviewing texts
• Using a 'follow-up' speaking task
related to the topic
• Looking at the language of the
text (e.g. collocations)
• Comprehension games

18. Reading Strategies
• Previewing
• Predicting
• Skimming and scanning
• Guessing from context
• Paraphrasing

19. Strategies to Teach Text Comprehension
• Monitoring Comprehension
• Metacognition
• Graphic and semantic organizers
• Answering questions
• Generating questions
• Summarizing

20. Test-Taking Strategies
Strategies used before answering the test such as:
• Read all questions first to start with the easy one/s
• Write an outline for each question first
• Read instructions carefully
• Budget time (i.e. allocate specific time to each question according to
its difficulty or length)
• Form a mental image of the answer
• Underline key words in the questions.

21. Test-Taking Strategies (cont’d)
Strategies used during answering the test such as:
• Answer questions in chronological order
• Revise each question immediately after answering it
• Use all available test time
• Immediately write what comes to mind
• Answer all questions even the one/s I do not know

22. Test-Taking Strategies (cont’d)
Strategies used after answering the test such as:
• Revise answers to correct spelling and grammatical mistakes
• Re-read all questions to make sure I understood them correctly
• Revise both content and language
• Avoid last minute changes

23. To Sum up
• Saber English test assesses language use
• Reading can be communicative
• There are plenty of ideas we can bring to class to work with Reading
tasks communicatively
• We should focus on each step of the process: pre, while, and post
• Students need some Reading strategies
• Students need text comprehension strategies
• Communicative competence is about the use of the language. We do
not need to focus on Grammar and Vocabulary