Developing listening and speaking skills in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language

This research set out to examine ways of developing listening and speaking skills in the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language. The primary aim was the development of Communicative Competence as redefined in chapter 1. In other words, it was necessary to target communicative language use (involving the relationship that exists between a text and the context in which it occurs) and communicative language ability (described as both knowledge and the capacity for relating that knowledge in communicative language use).;In order to do so, I designed a unit of learning which was concerned with developing non-reciprocal listening and reciprocal listening together with speaking. The unit of learning was tested on learners. Learners belonged to the target group and learning environment outlined in chapter 2. There were different types of constraints which needed to be given attention: constraints provided by the learners (e.g., different knowledge and abilities) and constraints provided by the learning environment (e.g., foreign setting; limited time).;The unit of learning was concerned with carrying out a target task (organising an excursion) which was based on real life situations and authentic materials. The target task was subdivided, graded and sequenced on three task types and various pedagogical activities.;The learners' performance was assessed in relation to task evaluation. It was borne in mind that the learners' success or lack of it during classroom activities was directly related to the deficiencies or effectiveness of the pegagogical tasks and the learners' understanding of the tasks' demands (rather than being exclusively dependant on the learners' lack of knowledge and abilities). The learners' performance showed that there was a task where the learners were not very successful, this was activity 4. The problematicity of the task lay in the input. It turned out to be more demanding than expected and too tiring and demotivating for learners. While the learners were carrying out the task the teacher realised that the input provided went against grammaticality. Therefore, the difficulty of the input (e.g., abundance of ellipsis) provided to the learners demands further sequencing and grading. The learners' performance during the rest of the task was very successful. The unit of learning proved that the pedagogical tasks where the learners were successful were suited to the learners' level of proficiency and had been meaningfully integrated (e.g., personal interest; aspects of real life), graded and sequenced. The activites encouraged the learners to use a variety of strategies, as outlined in chapter 3, which took into account variation in learners' knowledge and abilities. The strategies used facilitated learners' comprehension and / or production while carrying out the tasks, and therefore, the acquisition (or learning) of new knowledge. In addition, the use of top-down processing strategies appeared to favour comprehension more than the exclusive use of bottom-up processing strategies. However, in order to support or modify these claims more research is needed, especially a longitudinal study of the effect of training learners on the use of the taxonomy of strategies outlined in chapter 3.