¡Mira quién calla! La didáctica del silencio en el aula de ELE

Abstract

For some time, the teaching of foreign languages gives great weight to the acquisition of communicative competence and the teaching and learning of the sociocultural aspects of the language to be learned. Although curriculum plans and classroom programs give much importance to the prototypical communicative functions of language, scientific and educational community does not recognize the need to include nonverbal aspects of communication in teaching Spanish as a foreign language (ELE). As a result, the treatment of nonverbal communication (NVC) in the classroom of Spanish is very limited and fragmentary. This is seen more in the almost non-existent treatment of some non-verbal signs as silence. The objectives of this work are to reflect on (1) the communicative functions of silence in the Spanish culture, (2) the process has received non-verbal communication in the curriculum programs (MCER and PCIC), and (3) the possibility include silence in the classroom of Spanish as a foreign language by level and integrated way. After clarified these issues, we present a didactic unit to work silence in the initial levels of ELE. After clarified these issues, we present a didactic unit to work silence in the initial levels of ELE. All this is presented from an empirical study of several conversations corpus Val.Es.Co. (2002), which suggests that silence is a cultural element and sometimes ambiguous that should be addressed in linguistic research and teaching included in ELE.