Receptive skills

This is a basic presentation about how to teach listening and reading as receptive skills. It is based on information from Harmer (2007).

1. LISTENING AND READING: RECEPTIVE SKILLS IN EFL BA IN SPANISH, ENGLISH, AND FRENCH Yamith José Fandiño [email protected] DIDACTICS OF ENGLISH

2. INTRODUCTION

3. Language skills

4. Teaching Reading Reasons for reading Read texts in English for careers, for study purposes or for pleasure. Have a positive impact on language acquisition and vocabulary knowledge. Provide good models for English writing.

5. Teaching Reading Different kinds of reading EXTENSIVE READING INTENSIVE READING It refers to reading students do away from the classroom. Novels, graded readers, web pages, newspapers, magazines, etc. Students read texts for enjoyment and to develop general readings skills. Examples: Book reports, club discussions, creative writing, vocabulary journals, writing reviews, or silent reading in class. It refers to the detailed focus on the construction of reading texts that takes places in classrooms. News articles, poems, reports, blog posts, short stories, etc. Examples: skimming a text for specific information to answer true or false statements, scanning a text to match headings to paragraphs, or scanning jumbled paragraphs and then reading them carefully to put them into the correct order.

6. Teaching Reading Reading levels Authentic texts Texts that are not written for language learners. Texts for competent users of the language. Menus, timetables, signs and basic instructions, longer prose, etc. Simplified or graded readers Texts that are written for language learners. Texts for intensive reading. Chapters or extracts from books, newspapers, magazines, websites, etc.

7. Teaching Reading Reading skills SCANNING SKIMMING READING FOR DETAILED COMPREHENSION Students do not read every word or line. Instead, students read the text for particular bits of information they are searching for. Example: A telephone number, a date, the price of a product, etc. Students read a text to get a general idea of what it is about. Example: Decide if a piece of news is relevant for a class assignment, find a job advertisement or select a movie review. Students read the text for a deep comprehension of its content, form and structure. Example: Understanding the author’s message, distinguish the main ideas from the supporting details, and interpreting implied but non-explicitly stated information.

8. Teaching Reading Reading principles Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading. Encourage students to respond to the content of a text (and explore their feelings about it), not just concentrate on its construction. Prediction is a major factor in reading. Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts. Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full.

9. Teaching Reading Reading sequences Magazines Look at images and discuss. Identify the origin of the text. Read the text and work with vocabulary. Study some of the language in the text. Write a similar description or create a role play.

10. Teaching Reading Reading sequences Campaigns Look quickly at the text to predict what it is about. Look again and answer some questions. Match words and meanings. Read carefully to correct some sentences. Participate in activation role play according to given prompts.

11. Teaching Reading Reading sequences Webquest Introduction stage: Overall theme is presented, background information is activated, and key vocabulary is practiced. Task section: The assignment is explained, and students receive instructions. Process stage: Students explore given web links and get information needed to do the task. Evaluation stage: Students check what they have learned and do some extra language work.

12. Teaching Reading More reading suggestions Jigsaw reading Students read a short text which sets up a problem and then, in groups, they read different texts, all of which are about the same thing. When they have read their texts, they come together in groups where each student has read a different text, and they try to work out the whole story, or describe the whole situation Reading puzzles Give students texts which have been chopped up so that each paragraph is on a different piece of paper. Students must reassemble the text. Using newspapers Students do all kinds of matching exercises , such as ones where students must match articles with their headlines or with relevant pictures. At higher levels, we can have students read three accounts of the same incident and ask them to find the differences between them.

13. Teaching Reading More reading suggestions Following instructions Students read instructions for a simple operation and must put the instructions in the correct order. They can also match instructions with the pictures that normally accompany such instructions in manuals. Poetry In groups, students are each given a line from a poem. They can’t show the line to the other members of the group, though they can read it out loud. They must reassemble the poem by putting the lines in order. Students read different poems and then, without showing their poem to anyone else, they must go round the class finding similarities and differences. Play extracts Students read an extract from a play or film and, after ensuring that they understand it and analyzing its construction, they must work on acting it out.

14. Teaching Reading More reading suggestions Predicting from words and pictures Students are given several words from a text. Working in groups, they must predict what kind of a text they are going to read - or what story the text tells. They then read the text to see if their original predictions were correct. We can also give students pictures to predict from, or slightly bigger fragments from the text. Different responses Apart from answering comprehension questions with sentences, saying whether something is true or false or finding particular words in the text, students can (a) put information into graphs, tables or diagrams, (b) describe the people in the text (where no physical description is given, (c) infer the writer’s attitude from a text or (d) do genre analysis (How texts are constructed) .

15. Teaching Reading Encourage students to read Library : Students need to have access to a collection of readers, both at their own level and above and below it. Choice : A major aspect of joyful reading is that students should be able to choose what they read - both in terms of genre but also, crucially, level. Feedback : Students should have an opportunity to give feedback on what they have read, either verbally or in written form. Time : Students receive time for reading in addition to those occasions when they read on their own. It is a good idea to leave a ten-minute reading period at various times during a course just to get students comfortable with the activity.

16. Teaching Listening

17. Teaching Listening Reasons for listening Listen to understand what people say. Listen to improve pronunciation. Listen to understand regional varieties and different world Englishes .

18. Teaching Listening Different kinds of listening and sources INTENSIVE LISTENING EXTENSIVE LISTENING Students listen specifically in order to work on listening skills, and in order to study the way in which English is spoken. It usually takes place in classrooms or language laboratories, and typically occurs when teachers are present to guide students. Listening which the students often do away from the classroom, for pleasure or some other reason. The audio material they consume in this way - often on CDs in their cars, on MP3 players, DVDs, videos or on the internet - should consist of texts that they can enjoy listening to because they understand them without the intervention of a teacher. RECORDED EXTRACTS LIVE LISTENING CDS, tapes or via MP3 players of some kind that are frequently commercially produced, either as part of a coursebook or as supplementary material. It refers to situations in which the teacher brings visitors into the class or, if this is not possible, role-plays different characters for the students to talk and listen to. The main advantage is that this listening makes the experience more dynamic and exciting.

19. Teaching Listening Listening levels Different genres and registers News broadcasts, public announcements, recorded messages, lectures, phone conversations, dramatic dialogues, etc. Authentic or non-authentic listening. Authentic speech is speech not spoken for language learners. It offers realistic language use. Radio shows, radio commercials, weather forecasts, conversations, etc.

20. Teaching Listening Listening skills LISTEN FOR PARALINGUISTIC CLUES LISTEN FOR DETAILS LISTEN FOR GENERAL UNDERSTANDING Recognize paralinguistic clues such as tone and pitch of voice, accent, and intonation in order to understand mood and meaning. Listen for specific information (such as times, platform numbers, places, names, quantities, numbers, etc.) Listen for general understanding (when they are listening to a story or interacting in a social conversation).

21. Teaching Listening Listening principles Encourage students to listen as often and as much as possible. Help students prepare to listen. Once may not be enough. Encourage students to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the language. Different listening stages demand different listening tasks. Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.

22. Teaching Listening Listening sequences Live interviews Prepare questions for a visitor. Students ask questions and take notes. Use phrases to interact with the visitor. Find out about the visitor. Write a profile of the visitor, write to them a thankful note, or discuss wit the class about the visitor.

23. Teaching Listening Listening sequences Buying tickets (products or services) Describe pictures. Listen to match pictures to conversations. Listen again and to fill in blanks in audio scripts. Focus on specific language. Activate the language in order to have similar exchanges.

24. Teaching Listening Listening sequences Prerecorded authentic interview-narrative Students look at a picture and speculate about the person. Look at some questions before they listen to the person speak. Discuss the questions and predict answers. Play the audio track. Students go through the questions again to see if they agree with the answers. Students listen to a second audio and do a similar process. Students work with audio scripts to identify grammatical constructions or pronunciation issues / Students can retell the story.

25. Teaching Listening More listening suggestions Jigsaw listening In three groups, students listen to three different tapes, all are about the same thing (witness reports after an accident or a crime, phone conversations arranging a meeting, different news stories which explain a strange event, etc.). Students must assemble all the facts by comparing notes. Message taking Students listen to a phone message (recorded messages or announcements) being given. They must write down the message on a message pad. Music and sound effects Songs are very useful because, if we choose them well, they can be very engaging. Students can fill in blanks in song lyrics, rearrange lines or verses, or listen to songs and say what mood or message they convey.

26. Teaching Listening More listening suggestions News and other radio genres Students listen to a news broadcast (radio commercial, radio phone-ins, etc.) and have to say which topics from a list occur in the bulletin and in which order. They then must listen for details about individual stories. Poetry Students can listen to poems being read aloud and say what mood they convey (or what color they suggest to them). They can hear a poem and then try to produce an appropriate title. They can listen to a poem which has no punctuation and put in commas and full stops where they think they should occur. Stories When students listen to people telling stories, there are several things we can have them do. Perhaps they can put pictures in the order in which the story is told. Sometimes we can let students listen to a story but not tell them the end. They must guess what it is and then, perhaps, we play them the recorded version. Monologues We can ask students to listen to lectures and take notes. We can listen to dramatic or comic monologues and ask the students to say how the speaker feels. We can have them listen to speeches (at weddings, farewells, openings, etc.) and get them to identify what the subject is and what the speaker thinks about it.

27. Teaching Listening Audio and video Play the video without sound Students and teacher discuss what they see and what clues it gives them, and then they guess what the characters are saying. Play the audio without the picture This reverses the previous procedure. While the students listen, they try to judge where the speakers are, what they look like, what’s going on, etc. When they have predicted this, they listen again, this time with the visual images as well. Freeze frame The teacher presses the pause button and asks the students what’s going to happen next. Can they predict the action - and the language that will be used? Dividing the class in half Half the class face the screen. The other half sit with their backs to it. The ‘screen’ half describe the visual images to the ‘wall’ half.

28. References Harmer, J . (2007). How to teach English (New edition) . USA : Pearson Longman.