Communicative skills involve the ability to interact successfully through listening, speaking, reading, writing, and language usage. Listening and speaking skills are especially important in early childhood development as they allow children to communicate and develop language. Key listening skills include understanding speech, following instructions, and interpreting tone. Speaking skills that should be encouraged include pronunciation, conversation skills like greeting and questioning, and expressing ideas, opinions and information.

1. Section 2 Communicative Skills
In this section you’ll be looking at what communicative skills involve. You will
learn about listening, speaking, reading, writing and language usage skills.
“Communicative competence is when speakers (and writers) choose the right
register, choose language suitable to the situation, language which is appropriate
and acceptable in context, that is, saying/writing the right thing in the right place
at the right time.” (M.Jago “Language and Style” p34). In other words,…
The objective of teaching English communicative competence is the
development of the ability to interact successfully in English and that this involves
comprehension as well as production, where all the communication skills are
imbedded. As educarer/pre-school teachers we want to give children the
opportunity to develop and practice these skills in order to help them to
communicate in English.
We will now look at the skills more closely.
1. Listening Skills
Listening is a receptor skill. This means…
In ECD and pre-primary education, you must help children to develop listening
skills, because …
You need to encourage the development of the following facets of listening:
• understand English when spoken by a native speaker with normal
conversational rhythm and intonation
• listen for specific information, for example “I bought five apples at the
shop”
• obtain the gist of what is being said and listening for main ideas, for
example “… overcast with thundershowers = weather report”
• follow instructions, for example “ Fold your arms and shut your eyes”
• follow directions, for example “Find a partner and line up behind Lukas
and Lucia”)
• interpret intonation patterns and tone (recognition of anger (e.g. “are you
late again?)
• recognise function of structures, for example an interrogative as a
request: “Could you pass the pencil, please?”)
• recognise and interpret rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and onomatopoeia
(eg nursery rhymes).
Next we will explore what speaking skills involve. Together with listening skills,
speaking skills help us to communicate effectively. Why do you think this is the
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [1]: The objective for this
section is “explain what ‘communicative
skills’ involve”. The problem with this section
is that you approached it from the angle of a
formal English lesson. Thus, I have deleted
quite a bit of information, and you will still
have to expand on your content slightly. Please
refer to comments below.
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [2]: Please start with a definition
of ‘communicative skills’. Briefly explain the
difference between communicative and
communication skills. You seem to have used
these terms interchangeably, but in my
understanding there is a slight difference.
Communication skills also involve non-verbal
communication (e.g. facial expressions,
gestures).
A quick internet search brought up the
following; it might be helpful:
Basic interpersonal communicative
skills (BICS) are language skills needed
to interact in social situations, for example,
when speaking to a friend on the
telephone. BICS refers primarily to
context-bound, face-to-face
communication, like the language first
learned by toddlers and preschoolers,
which is used in everyday social
interaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_interpers
onal_communicative_skills
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [3]: Please explain in simpler
words
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [4]: Please explain what receptor
skills are.
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [5]: Please briefly explain why
you must develop children’s listening
skills/why listening skills are important
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [6]: It would be preferable if you
use complete sentences here, and write short
paragraphs (you include many bullet lists in
this unit). You can expand your explanations,
especially in the last 3 bullet points.
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [7]: The difference between
instructions and directions is not clear. The
example here could just as well be called an
instruction, in my opinion. Giving a bit more
of an explanation (as requested in the previous
comment) should do the trick

2. case? Well, when we communicate (converse, talk) with another person, we
need to speak and listen, in order to respond appropriately.
2. Speaking Skills
Speaking skills are…
We should encourage children to pronounce individual English sounds and
words correctly. It is very important that we conduct conversations with individual
children and groups of children as often as possible. Conversation will help them
to develop important language functions, such as greeting people, asking and
answering questions, apologising and conveying messages, in a natural way.
We want children to take part in oral interaction, which might involve the
following:
• Expressing:
- thanks (e.g. ‘Thank you for finding my pencil’)
- requirements (e.g. ‘May I have a drink of water?’)
- opinions (e.g. ‘I don’t like very hot weather’);
- comment (e.g. ‘My friend is not feeling well today’)
- attitude (e.g. ‘I feel very happy in my educare group)
- confirmation (e.g. I will bring my book tomorrow’)
- apology (e.g. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to break your sandcastle)
- want/need (e.g. ‘ I am thirsty. May I have some water please?)
- information (e.g. ‘You spell my name Ann without a final ‘e’.’)
- complaints (e.g. ‘He stood on my foot!’)
- reasons (e.g. ‘I’m late because my mother had to help my grandmother
this morning’)
• Narrating a sequence of events (e.g. ‘I hurt my arm by …’)
• Eliciting
- information( e.g”. …………………………………………………………”)
- directions(e.g.”…………………………………………………………….”)
- service(e.g.”………………………………………………………………..”)
- clarification (e.g ”. …………………………………………………………..”)
- help (e.g
”……………………………………………………………………..”)
- permission (e.g.” ……………………………………………………………”)
• Directing
- ordering (“ ………………………………………………………………….”)
- instructing (how to)
(“…………………………………………………………….”)
- persuading (“
……………………………………………………………………..”)
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [8]: Please add some kind of
introductory sentence/paragraph to lead into
this discussion. As with ‘listening skills’, you
can briefly state why speaking skills are
important/why we must encourage children to
develop them. Keep in mind that in ECD you
may well have children who are still in the
process of learning to speak
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [9]: At this point you had
included an in-text question, asking students to
provide examples of the listed speaking skills.
However, you did not provide any kind of
feedback, so the students have no way of
knowing if their examples are appropriate.
Therefore, please provide example here. You
can ask students to give examples of some of
these facets of speaking skills in the Self-Mark
Activity

3. - advising, (“
………………………………………………………………………..”)
- warning
(“………………………………………………………………………….”)
• Reporting
- descriptions (“…………………………………………………………”)
- comment (“
……………………………………………………………………”)
- decisions
(“…………………………………………………………………….”)
In Section 4 you will learn how to encourage children’s speaking skills.
Next, we will take a brief look at what reading and writing skills involve. Although
you will not actually teach children how to read and write in educare and pre-
primary, you will already be preparing them for these skills through early literacy
activities. These activities are very important because they build the foundation
for learning to read and write in Grade 1.
3. Reading Skills
Reading, like listening, is a receptive skill.
As we mentioned above, you will not teach children how to read, but rather
prepare them for reading (although you may well find a surprising number of pre-
school children who can already read). The range of pre-reading skills you will
help to develop in children include (but are not limited to):
• letter skills (recognising letter shapes, learning the most common sounds
of letters)
• concepts of print (knowing how to handle books - holding them the right
way up, turning the pages in sequence, exploring the pictures, knowing
that the words can be read to tell a story)
• rhyming (through poetry and songs)
Nurturing these pre-reading skill sin children is essential as it will help them to
more easily develop reading skills. Reading skills include:
• Reading aloud: When reading aloud, the reader must focus on correct
pronunciation, phrasing, stress (or emphasis) and slur
• Silent reading involves the following:
- word recognition
- an increase in eye-span and speed of reading
- scanning for information
- reading for main ideas
- reading for supporting ideas
- anticipating ideas
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [10]: Under the heading
‘listening’ you call this a ‘receptor’ skill.
Which is correct? If both are correct, please
indicate under ‘listening skills’ that receptor
skills are also called receptive skills

4. - predicting actions, behaviour and outcomes
• Reading for purpose includes the following:
- sequence of events
- cause and effect
- setting in time and space
- proof, justification and reason
- description of people/places/scenes
- humour and wit
- explanation and argument
- plot and themes
- character and character traits
- metaphor and simile
- contrasts and similarities
- sensory impressions
- relationships
- mood, tone and emotions
- figures of speech and idiomatic language
- inferring ideas, interpreting and evaluating
- judgment of reality or fantasy/ fact or opinion/ appropriateness /
worth /acceptability / ideas / character / moral values / description /
imagery
4. Writing Skills
Writing skills include;
Spelling correctly; punctuating correctly; selecting and using the best tenses;
writing clear, coherent, balanced sentences; varying sentence length and
sentence beginnings; defining clearly; finding the best word; avoiding repetition /
editing sentences for unnecessary words; writing a topic sentence; finding and
selecting information; arranging supporting ideas; developing a paragraph;
planning longer pieces of writing; choosing topics; interpreting topics; describing
people, places, scenes, experiences; reporting; narrating; writing about ideas;
stating an opinion, a point of view; stating facts logically; drawing on own
experiences in order to write sincerely; writing short, striking introductions and
conclusions; suiting vocabulary, language and tone to the topic and the
audience; using dialogue in compositions; writing friendly and business letters,
notes, dialogues, etc; proofreading and editing / finding and correcting own
errors.
As with reading skills, writing skills are not appropriate for the educare and pre-
primary setting. However, a good communicative teacher is able to develop
preparatory tasks in listening and oral activities, which will aid the development of
these writing skills in future.
To end off this section, we will have a brief look at language usage skills.
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [11]: Please do the following:
•Start with a brief explanation of what
writing skills are
•Briefly refer to pre-writing skills
•This ‘paragraph’ is not reader friendly. Use
either full sentences or a bullet list
Look at how I have structured the discussion
under ‘reading skills’ and do something
similar for ‘writing skills’

5. 5. Language Usage Skills
Boy: I ain’t got no pencil
Teacher: No Alfie, don’t say that. We say:
I don’t have a pencil
You don’t have a pencil
He doesn’t have a pencil
We don’t have pencils
You don’t have pencils
They don’t have pencils
Boy: Gee whiz, what happened to all them pencils?
A lack of grammatical ability sets limits to what can be achieved in the way of
skills performance. It is thus important to consider language usage as a skill to be
developed during the listening and oral practice in the MT English educare
classroom.
Practising language structures
A structure is the pattern in which words are meaningfully arranged in a
sentence. Each word in the sentence may be replaced by another, changing the
meaning of the sentence, but not the basic structure.
Examples
Structure 1 (subject + verb + adverb)
- Ndahafa sings beautifully
- Frederika sings beautifully
- Frederika speaks beautifully
- Frederika speaks well
Structure 2 (subject + verb + preposition + object)
- the nurse laughed at Andre
- the teacher laughed at Andre
- the teacher looked at Andre
- the teacher looked for Andre
- the teacher looked for Jan
Sentences chosen as models for practice with your educare children should be
natural and useful, the kind of thing MT speakers of English would actually say to
one another. The structures you select should be graded, proceed to complex
ones, e.g.” He goes to town” continues to “After he has done his homework, he
goes to town”.
Incorporate the structures you wish to practice into a dialogue or a reading
passage; then use the actual words of the dialogue or passage as models.
Structures can also be practised and contextualized with the aid of substitution
tables. Group discussions, quizzes, games can also be used most effectively for
language usage practice.
Roya Dieh; 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [12]: The problem with this sub-
section is that it focuses on teaching English as
a subject (which as explained is not done in
ECD and pre-primary).
The following needs to be done, please:
•Start with an explanation of what language
usage skills are
•Adapt the discussion to the ECD and pre-
primary context (you will likely have to
delete most of what you have written?)
•The example does not seem appropriate for
our context – it refers to a child who is
speaking incorrect English in an English
classroom; it is reminiscent of American
slang (ain’t got no)
Consider also that the age-group we are
dealing with (approx. 2-6 years) is still
developing language. A 2-year old is still
learning how to speak, for example. How do
language usage skills relate in that context?
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [13]: You wouldn’t practice
language structures so directly with ECD and
pre-school children

6. We have discussed communicative skills in this section, focussing on listening
and speaking, as these are the skills we facilitate in the educare classroom. Now
complete the following Self-Mark Activity in your notebook to test your
understanding.
Self-Mark Activity 2
1. Look at the list below and tick those things which humans use to
communicate with one another. Compare your answers with your partner and
write your answer below:
style of dress body posture
gestures fluency
listening hair style
facial expressions vocabulary
accurate use of language structures behaviour
eye movements accent
2. In your opinion, which of the items in the list above contribute most to
communication? Number the 5 most important (1 = most important). Then
compare your answers with a partner.
A development activity for listening and speaking is, of course, telling and
reading stories to children. Story time is a very special time in the day for young
children, so we want to be good storytellers. Therefore, in the next section we will
give you some tips for storytelling.
Roya Diehl 11/30/2012 12:38 PM
Deleted: communication
Roya Dieh; 10/11/2016 8:27 PM
Comment [14]: You must please replace
all of these questions with questions that test
the learning objective
Roya Diehl 10/11/2016 8:28 PM
Comment [15]: This is about
communication in general, rather than
communicative skills. Furthermore, you do not
cover any of this in the content. But the Self-
Mark Activities must relate to the content (and
to the learning objectives of course)