Silence in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. A taxonomic and methodological approach

Abstract

Silence has great communicative value and it gathers, in each culture, some unique qualities which bring it about and some particular communicative functions which characterize it. For this reason, it is essential that its treatment is accounted for when teaching Spanish as a foreign language (ELE) and also that every person learning Spanish as second language can get to know and apply the rules governing these non-verbal factors. Currently, silent acts have little curricular recognition and they are rarely treated in the teaching of foreign languages. This, in part, is due to the lack of consensus and exhaustive repertoires that collect most of the communicative functions of silence in Spanish culture and also because the study of silence still does not have a clear methodology that enables its incorporation to Spanish lessons. The aim of this paper is to present a classification of the communicative functions of silence in Spanish culture applicable to teaching ELE and to expose a methodology which allows introducing, in an integrated and tiered way, silence in the teaching of Spanish as a second language.