This document discusses principles for selecting resources and activities for teaching English as a second language in primary education. It covers the role of listening, speaking, reading and writing activities, as well as songs and stories. It provides definitions of materials and resources, and discusses criteria for selecting activities to develop skills like listening, speaking, pronunciation, and fluency. A variety of activity types are described, including total physical response, games, drills, dialogs, presentations and more.

1. DIDACTICA DE LA LENGUA INGLESA
17519 PRIMARIA
MODULE 3:
GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN THE
SELECTION OF RESOURCES
AND ACTIVITIES FOR L2 IN
PRIMARY EDUCATION

2. SUMMARY
• 3.1. Definitions, methodological and cultural
foundations for the use of materials and resources in
the teaching of an L2
• 3.2. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing
activities: their role in the foreign language classroom
and the criteria for selection
• 3.3. Song activities: their role in the foreign language
classroom and the criteria for selection
• 3.4. Storytelling: the role of literature in the foreign
language classroom and the criteria for text selection
• 3.5. Characteristics and functions of language games
as a linguistic resource and the criteria for selection

3. 3.1. DEFINITIONS, METHODOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL
FOUNDATIONS FOR THE USE OF MATERIALS AND RESOURCES
IN THE TEACHING OF AN L2
• Concepts of materials and resources for foreign
language teaching NOT NEW!
Examples:
• English teaching materials documented from the
15th century (manuals, grammar books, bilingual
dialogues…)
• Erasmus supported the use of realia in the foreign
language classroom.
• Phonetic tables for English language learning
were used in the 17th century.

4. 3.1. DEFINITIONS, METHODOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL
FOUNDATIONS FOR THE USE OF MATERIALS AND RESOURCES
IN THE TEACHING OF AN L2
• In the 1960’s an early start in foreign language
learning and new teaching approaches have made
materials and resources common in the EFL
classroom.
• Traditional resources and materials: blackboard,
realia, flashcards, wall charts/posters, text books…
• Newer resources and materials: videos, cd/mps,
digital board, online material, ppt/prezi, apps…

5. 3.1. DEFINITIONS, METHODOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL
FOUNDATIONS FOR THE USE OF MATERIALS AND RESOURCES
IN THE TEACHING OF AN L2
• IMPORTANT: the selection and the use of
materials, resources and activities to achieve the
established outcomes……
• More and different materials = more posibilities all
learners will find materials suitable to their
learning objectives, cognitive styles and capacities.
• Materials and resources are a decisive element in
the relationship among:
TEACHER + LEARNER + LANGUAGE

6. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
Listening is essential in the practice of the foreign
language for the following reasons:
• Listening activities provide understandable input,
making it easier to acquire the language in general.
• Listening is a very necessary skill in situations of
everyday life outside the school environment where
students will have to know how to cope without any
major difficulties.
• Listening helps students to distinguish between
sounds, accents, intonations and rhythm patterns.

7. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• There are two types of strategies to understand oral
texts: bottom-up and top-down.
• In bottom-up processing, the listener focuses on
specific sounds, words or sentences and builds the
overall meaning of the oral text through the
sequential union of those units of meaning.
• In contrary, in top-down processing, the listener
gets a general idea of the text based on the active
listening of the text as a whole, i.e. without focusing
on specific units

8. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• The skills of oral comprehension must be taught
systematically, regularly and with varied activities.
• Three steps should be followed to make the
activities of improving oral comprehension skills as
complete as possible:
● pre-listening, while-listening & post-listening
• It should be emphasized that normally it will not be
necessary for students to understand each of the
words, but to try to capture the global message or
some specific detail that is required for the task.

9. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• Another important aspect in the teaching of oral
comprehension is the development of spelling
competence. The difficulty of English
pronunciation lies mainly in the lack of
correspondence between the phonemes and the
graphemes and the difference in the phonetic
repertoire of English and Spanish
• It is necessary to foster a metacognitive
consciousness with the purpose of the students
knowing the differences and similarities between
English and Spanish and are able to identify
patterns and rules spelling and phonetics.

10. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
Activities and resources to develop listening skills
• Activities to develop the bottom-up strategy. There
are several activities that can help students focus on
specific aspects of oral text, such as discrimination
between similar sounds (minimum pairs) and
intonation and accentuation processing.
• These activities can be: dictation, Cloze listening,
multiple response questions focused on specific
elements, etc

11. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• Activities to develop the top-down strategy.
Activities that promote this strategy should take
into account that students should be able to
anticipate, predict and infer from the information
provided. This type of activity mainly collects pre-
listening questions and discussion questions after
listening (post-listening).

12. 3.2. LISTENING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• Activities related to the total body response
technique, TPR (total physical response). These
activities are very appropriate for students in
the early primary cycles so that they begin to
participate and feel involved from the first day
of school. Children tend to accept these kinds of
activities or games very well, which are
especially useful for developing strategies for
oral comprehension and body expression.

13. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• Speaking is the language skills related to the
production of oral discourse. It is a
communicative capacity that encompasses not
only a mastery of the pronunciation, the lexicon
and the grammar of the meta language, but also
sociocultural and pragmatic knowledge.
• The development of the speaking skill requires
fluency, precision and a lexical-grammatical
repertoire sufficient to be able to participate
effectively in a communicative act.

14. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• Two types of oral communication are
differentiated: interaction and transaction.
• In interaction, communication is oriented to the
listener and usually takes short intervention
shifts.
• In transaction the communication is message-
oriented and usually involves longer
intervention shifts.

15. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
Some of the EFL activities that can be found in
interaction are:
Opening and closing
conversations
Chosing topics
Making small talk Joking
Turn-taking Using adjacency pairs
Interrupting Reacting to others
Using an appropriate
style of speaking
Recounting personal
incidents and experiences

16. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
In EFL transactions the most common activities are:
Asking questions Describing something
Explaining a need or
information
Asking for clarification
Making suggestions Justifying an opinion
Confirming information Clarifying
understanding
Making comparisons

17. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• It is important to teach pronunciation in a
communicative context.
• Pronunciation should be taught in contexts
where, for example, the misunderstanding or
misconduct of a phoneme may cause a problem
of understanding.
• It is not a question of imitating a native accent,
but of trying to produce messages as intelligibly
as possible.

18. 3.2. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES: THEIR ROLE IN
THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AND
THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
• In terms of the use of activities that promote precision
and/or fluency, the following activities are suggested:
• A. Activities that promote precision: mechanical
repetition exercises (drills), Dialogues, communicative
games (e.g. quizzes, twenty questions, etc.),
questionnaires, etc.
• B. Activities that promote fluency: questionnaires,
simulations, role plays, presentations, discussions, etc.
• C. Activities that promote precision and fluency:
questionnaires, simulations, role plays, etc.