What is meant by "textual" and "linguistic" teaching points

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What does a foreign language teacher teach? The foreign language, right? Or maye not only. Maybe language teachers also need to deal with texts: how they are constructed, how to organize the ideas in a text to make it communicate what I want, how to link ideas... It should come as no surprise that the Literacy Approach is firmly based on the second view of language teaching. And because this is not what most foreign language teachers are trained to do, this "textual" aspect is the one that appears first in the teaching points section of the planning grid.


The "textual" aspect is further divided into two elements, text features and text effect. The first one focuses more on the formal aspects of the texts, the ones that can be seen by watching the video, reading the text or listening to the podcast: the use of direct speech, the structure into paragraphs, the way the image and the words on the screen communicate together in a power-point presentation, etc.

The second aspect is less immediately visible, as it is related to the effect the text creates in the viewer / reader / audience: do I believe the writer? Does the descrption help me imagine the scene? Do I find the speaker friendly? Does the story engage me? All of these address strategies for effective communication - ways in which skilful users of the language communicate anc¡d achieve their purpose (explain, entertain, convince, etc.). The more we learn from them, the more skilful our communication is likely to become. Working on these aspects may sound very complicated, and certainly beyond the possibilities of a primary student, but my experience shows that even young children recognize basic strategies and are able to imitate them. From what I have seen, the main challenge lies more in the teachers becoming aware of these text features than in the students being able to recognize them once they have been pointed out.

Of course, the division into these two aspects is somewhat forced as the use of direct speech or a third person narrator has an affect on the audience, so that they could really be seen together. However, since text awareness raising does not seem to be the focus of much teacher training, most teachers I know would not focus on the effect unless explicitly told to do so - hence the division.

The same could be said about the "linguistic" teaching points: text effect is created through language, texts are structured through language, so why separate the two aspects? The answer is, once again, to make sure the lingistic aspects are focused on, but also because some lingustic aspects are related to the topic rather than textual aspects of the model text. For example, in a recipe students will learn vocabulary related to cooking, and this vocabulary is not directly related to the structure of the text or its effect.         

One of the elements in the "linguistic" category that confuses many teachers I work with is "academic language". This refers to language features that are typical of academic communication such as specific vocabulary like technical terms, expressing logical relations through linking words or phrases, the use of generic terms (e.g. elements, aspects), etc. Because the Approach was first born in the context of CLIL programs, this feature was identified as important for the students' progress in their subjects taught in another language. However, like any other category, it is not mandatory to work with any elements in this category. Not all texts (and text-types) offer items in all the categories, which means not all the lines in the teaching points table need to be filled. This is important, as otherwise we could feel pushed to identify some secondary feature in a given text to work on it, just because we feel we have to fill the relevant line in the planning grid. 

This entry is proably a little (or very) dry, and my apologies for this. Next week I'll try to make ammends by illustrating what I mean with a completed grid to work on a biography. The model text for this unit can be found here: https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/general-history/florence-nightingale/ in case you already want to take a look. Watch this space for more 😊 

If you would like to kow more about this approach, you might want to follow this blog


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