This aspect of the course involved practical work on intensive reading,
summarizing, note taking, explaining and reformulating. All such activities
involve understanding the semantic structure of texts, both in their local and
global organization. As well as these aspects of lexical cohesion and logicolinguistic
relations, the theory also covered narrative structure ( cf. Labov,
1972b) and speech act theory, as well as communicative competence in
general. Such practical activities blur the distinction between EFL and study
skills. This means that language is not being taught in an intellectual
vacuum, but as a tool. It also blurs the distinction between EFL and mother
tongue teaching, since many such analytic activities are also useful with
native speakers.