Teaching Functional Language and Communicative Competence Through Listening and Speaking in The Algerian EFL textbook Getting Through

Abstract

The current study deals with the teaching of functional language and communicative competence through listening and speaking activities in the Algerian EFL textbook “Getting Through” which is designed under the Competency Based Approach. The study investigates whether listening and speaking activities in “Getting Through” target the teaching of functional language and communicative competence or not. Moreover, it investigates whether these activities help EFL learners to be functionally and communicatively competent or not. In order to reach this objective, an examination of the listening and speaking activities which are provided in “Getting Through” have been done. This analysis has been guided by a framework which consists of the principles of teaching language to execute functions and to be communicatively competent. The checklist is adopted from Nunan (1989) and from Lou- Leaver & Willis (2004). For the sake of gathering more data, interviews with eight teachers of three Secondary School in Tizi-Ouzou have been conducted. The findings have been converted into numerical data, and then have been interpreted using content analysis. The results of both the textbook analysis and the teachers’ interviews show that despite some shortcomings, the listening and speaking activities target the principles of teaching functional language and communicative competence. Hence, the L/S activities help EFL learnerslikelihood to be functionally and communicatively competent in real life situations.