Didactic strategy to contribute to the development of communicative competence in Health Psychology students Estrategia didáctica para contribuir al desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa en estudiantes de Psicología de la salud

Background: the cognitive, socio-cultural and communicative language teaching approach reveals the importance of syntactic speech closely related to semantic and pragmatic dimensions and aimed at understanding, analysis and construction of discourse. Objective: to design a didactic strategy that contributes to the development of communicative competence. Methods: pedagogic research on the teaching- learning process of Spanish grammar for first year students of Health Psychology in the University of Medical Sciences of Cienfuegos. The amount of knowledge students have on grammatical contents and functionality of the structures in the text and their perception and the one from former teachers on the importance of grammatical knowledge and the way it is addressed were determined. Methods used: analytic and synthetic; logical and historical; inductive and deductive; systemic, structural and modeling; as well as a desk study, surveys, diagnostic testing and consulting experts. Results: the methodologies for teaching grammar in previous educational levels do not enhance the development of communicative competence. Changes were made on the syllabus according to the cognitive, communicative and sociocultural approach and a teaching strategy successfully assessed by experts and involving the treatment of grammar from a communicative-functional perspective using this approach was proposed. Conclusions: a teaching strategy based on the cognitive, communicative and sociocultural approach for teaching Spanish grammar contributes to the development of communicative competence. Fundamento: el enfoque cognitivo, comunicativo y sociocultural de la ense anza de la lengua, revela la importancia de la dimensión sintáctica del discurso en indisoluble relación con las dimensiones semántica y pragmática, en función de la comprensión, análisis y construcción de discursos. Objetivo: dise ar una estrategia didáctica que contribuya al desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa.Métodos: investigación pedagógica sobre el proceso de ense anza aprendizaje de la asignatura Gramática Espa ola, desarrollada en la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Cienfuegos, con estudiantes de primer a o de la carrera Psicología de la salud. Se determinó el grado de conocimientos que poseen los alumnos sobre contenidos gramaticales y la funcionalidad de las estructuras en el texto, la percepción de estos y de profesores de ense anzas precedente sobre la importancia de los conocimientos gramaticales y la forma en que son abordados. Se utilizaron como métodos: análisis y síntesis, histórico-lógico, inducti