Teaching language skills

Teaching listening:

-the goal of teaching receptive skills:

The receptive skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to
produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. These skills are
sometimes known as passive skills. They can be contrasted with the productive or
active skills of speaking and writing.

The main objective of receptive skills is not the teaching of more grammar and
vocabulary, but the development of the learners' ability to understand and interpret
texts using their existing language knowledge.

Language learning depends on listening .Listening provides the aural input that
serves as the basic for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken
communication.

Stages of teaching listening:

Pre-listening: we prepare our students to listen.

While listening: we focus our students’ attention on the listening text

and guide the development of their understanding of it.

Post-listening: we help our students integrate what they have learnt from
the text into their existing knowledge. ( what they already know )

Stages of a listening task :

1-The teacher generates interests in the topic for example asking the class
about their experience of , feeling on , or knowledge about , the topic .

2-The teacher presents some key vocabulary in the listening task-for

example, by giving or eliciting a definition or an example.
3-The teacher sets a gist listening task –for example who is talking , about
what and why ?she then plays a short section of the recorded extract , and
checks answers

4-The teacher sets a task that requires listening for spesfic details .She
plays the complete recording , checks the answers and replays sections if
necessary

5-The teacher foucses on features of grammar or vocabulary that occurs

in the recording e-g by asking students to complete a gapped transcript .

6-Learners read the transcript of the recording and listen at the same time
.

The steps of a listening task:

1. Activating interest and background knowledge (top-down) to help

understanding.
2. Pre-teaching vocabulary (bottom-up knowledge).
3. Setting a task provides a motivation to listen. More general tasks
precede more specific ones.
4. More specific tasks requiring more intensive listening.
5. Following the transcript helps resolve more residual problems of
understanding, and forms links between the aural signal and
written words.
6. The text is used as a source of language focus after it has been
thoroughly understood.

Activities:

Use pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are

going to hear or view.

Sample pre-listening activities:

 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs

 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
 reading something relevant
 constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words
showing how they are related)
 predicting the content of the listening text
 going over the directions or instructions for the activity
 doing guided practice

Sample while-listening activities

 listening with visuals

 filling in graphs and charts
 following a route on a map
 checking off items in a list
 listening for the gist
 searching for specific clues to meaning
 completing cloze (fill-in) exercises
 distinguishing between formal and informal registers.
 Post-listening
There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are
reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used
to express the content.
Listening Strategies

The following strategies from Rost 1991 are considered to be the

areas where we can help learners with their listening:

 Using background knowledge (what we already know about the

content and form) and context to predict and then confirm
meaning.
 Recognising words.
 Discriminating between sounds.
 Identifying grammatical groupings of words, e.g. perfect tenses,
conditionals.
 Identifying expressions and sets of utterances which function as a
whole.
 Identifying paralinguistic cues (intonation, stress, weak forms, etc).
 Rejecting superfluous content.
 Recalling important words and ideas.

Listening Strategies
Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the
comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by
how the listener processes the input.

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background
knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language.
This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to
interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies
include

 listening for the main idea

 predicting
 drawing inferences
 summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the
message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates
meaning. Bottom-up strategies include

 listening for specific details

 recognizing cognates
 recognizing word-order patterns

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and

evaluate their listening.

 They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular
situation.
 They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected
strategies.
 They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening
comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies
selected was an effective one.

Listening for Gist:

This is where somebody listens in order to get the main idea of what
is being said without focusing on specific details and without hesitating
over unknown words.

Intensive Listening:

Intensive listening involves zeroing in on particular segments of the

text, and this should come only after the students have developed global
comprehension of the text. Intensive listening may target different goals
such as:

 getting more detailed understanding of some segments of the text,

 transcribing certain segments in the text,
 guessing the meaning of a word or phrase from context,
  looking at certain grammatical structures in the text to see how
they can aid comprehension, etc.

Extensive Listening:

This involves students listening for long periods and usually for
pleasure.

Listening for Specific Information:

 Students need to develop the ability to locate the places where they
need to listen closely.
 Once they know 'where' to look for the answer comfortably, then
they can worry about 'what' to look for.

Listening for Detailed Information:

This is the type of listening you engage in when listening to

announcements in a railway station or when listening to directions in a
street. You are listening intensively in order to understand all information
given.

Developing Listening Skills

 Each learning experience may involve more than one item (songs,
movies, phone calls, news, conversations, …)
 Listening can range from being very interactive ( involves speaking
as well ) to wholly non-interactive ( one-way )
 Listening can be:
o Face to face.
o Disembodied (radio, phone).
o Reinforced with images (TV, Cinema).
 The purpose of listening can be:
o Transactional (information is being conveyed).
o For pleasure (songs, films).
 Listening can be:
 o Intensive (every word counts).
o For the gist.
Problems for Students : What makes listening to a second
language difficult for students

 Unfamiliar context.
 Unknown vocabulary.
 Lack of time to process information, lack of concentration and
anxiety about longer texts.
 Too fast. Can’t distinguish separate words.( pace )
 Can’t follow the rhythm. Not able to recognise sense groups,
inferred message, mood or intonation.
 Difficult accents.
 Background noises.
A listening passage may be difficult when:

 Top-down knowledge (extralinguistic information) is lacking.(

Topic )
 Bottom-up knowledge (linguistic information) is lacking.(
language )

Comprehension results from the interaction of top-down and

bottom-up levels of knowledge.

To maximize comprehension, it helps to activate:

 Top-down knowledge (to establish the general situation, topic,
context of the text).
 Bottom-up knowledge (to provide help with individual words in
pre-teaching vocabulary or allowing dictionaries).

Teaching speaking :
1- What are the main characteristics of spoken language?
- Clustering
- Redundancy
- Reduced forms
- Performance variables
- Colloquial language
 - Rate of delivery
- Stress – rhythm and intonation

2- What is the purpose of speaking ?

Speaking activities provide opportunities for rehearsal ,

give both teacher and students feedback and motivate
students for their engaging qualities
They help students to be able to produce language
automatically –a crucial stage on the way to autonomy .
- improving students' communicative skills, because, only
in that way, students can express themselves and learn
how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in
each communicative circumstance

The main types of speaking activities ?

Controlled activities
Guided activities
Creative and freer activities
Designing and assessing speaking tasks :
Practical
Purposeful
Productive
Predictable
Adaptable
Activities : discussions , role plays , surveys , presentations ,
guessing games, information gap

What is the difference between a controlled speaking activity and a

free speaking activity?

Controlled practice activities are accuracy based activities ; language

is controlled by the teacher

Ex : whisper drill , look and say , picture dictation , substitution drill

 Free activities : they are fluency based activities .The scenario is
usally created by the teacher but the content of language isn’t .

What is the difference between information gap activity and jigsaw

activity :

Information gap activity :

Is an activity where learners are missing the information they need

to complete a communicative task and they need to talk to each other to
find it .

Jigsaw activity : are more elaborate information gap activities that

can be done with several partners .Each partner has one or a few pieces of
the puzzle and the learners must cooperate to fit all the pieces into a
whole picture .In other words , jigsaw technique is a method of
organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each
other to succeed .It breaks classes into groups and breaks assignment into
pieces that the group assembles to complete the jigsaw puzzle .

What is the difference between a role paly and a simulation?

Role Play

One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students

pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles.
In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as
who they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the
student that "You are David, you go to the doctor and tell him what happened
last night, and…" (Harmer, 1984)

Simulations

Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations

different than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations,
students can bring items to the class to create a realistic environment. For
instance, if a student is acting as a singer, she brings a microphone to sing
and so on. Role plays and simulations have many advantages. First, since
they are entertaining, they motivate the students. Second, as Harmer (1984)
suggests, they increase the self-confidence of hesitant students, because in
role play and simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not
have to speak for themselves, which means they do not have to take the
same responsibility.

Teaching functions:

1-Langauge presentation: Dialogue format

Target function should occur naturally and represents the one that
native speakers would use most frequently in that situation

Provide more than one dialog to show how language varies

depending on :

a- The relationship between speakers ( formality levels )

b- The type of task
2-Highlighing of function in dialogs

-Exploit the dialogs and have the students discover instances of the
target function ( linguistic exponents ) and underline them

-Develop a grid that allows a visual display of language forms to

social parameters of the situation

- transfer the linguistic forms of the target function out of the dialoge
to see in isolation ( on the blackboard or OHP) and arrange them
according to formality level , type of task in the grid .

3-Contolled practice: Focus on accurately producing and supplying

the appropriate linguistic form for the function:
 Provide exercises that limit students’ attention to the linguistic forms
of the target function so that they can be accurately produced

These exercises should be meaningful and realistic (unconnected

practice sentences) provide unifying context, a lot of practice can center
around dialog activities

- Make sure that the exercise is not simply a mechanical

transformation where students could supply the
correct linguistic form of the function without
considering the meaning of the whole exchange.

Presentation: context /Situation /scenario /Dialog : activating

students’ schema and previous knowledge

Highlight the structure ( examples )

Practice : Controlled practice activities : Matching /gap filling

/reordering /classifying /repetition drilling

Semi controlled or guided activities: completing dialogs

Production : free activities : provide a situation ; brainstorming ,

generating ideas ( role play ) //it should also be communicative ( realistic
, meaningful , authentic )

Ecrif framework for teaching functions :

E: reading the dialog

C: highlight steps /exponents

R:gap filling activity

I:slights /dialog substitution

F:free speaking activity ( model the activity )

 Remember : substitutional drilling / scrambled dialog , reordering
the steps

Dialogue : the script is provided and students read it

Role play : the script is not provided .Students use the language they
have learned on their own in a situation provided by the teacher

Learners should be made aware that the same language forms (

exponents ) maybe used to different things or express different meanings .

It is advisable to adopt a text-based approach to the teaching

/learning of language functions, that is deal with them as they occur
naturally in various types of texts .

Language functions are ways we can use language to achieve a

communicative purpose.

Exponents: linguistic forms of a function / Where by a language

function is realized.