Teaching Listening
Teacher’s Quota
Principle 3 : Once will not be enough
Teachers should try to teach listening as often as possible. Listening is one of the skills that is not only rules on it like grammar. It needs lots of practice. It will be better if the teacher practice it continuously. They don’t need much time to practice listening. The important is they should practice it constantly.
Principle 5 : Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
· In teaching listening, we need not only Englisg, but we also need to teach how it’s used. In this case we’re not only concern in language system (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) but also should concern in the use of language syatem (understanding and conveying meaning).
· When the teachers teach listening they need to teach not only English, but they also need to teach how it s used. They need to teach both:
a. The language system, (they knowledge of language: grammar and vocabulary etc.) and
b. The use of the language system (the skills of language use)
Principle 6 : Good teacher exploid listening tests to the full.
· Listening skills can be taught explicitly, through direct instruction and in multiple formats. Some skills can be taught explicitly. Below are links to specific examples to activities where the following skills are taught:
a. relating to similar experiences
b. predicting what will happen next
c. retelling a sttory in order
d. asking relevant questions (KWL activity referenced below)
e. taking notes
f. analyzing and synthesizing what is read
g. figurative language
h. also, distingushing fact from opinion
· Some informal classroom opportunities to teach listening include:
a. play mime games to demonstrate body language through physical and facial expressions.
b. Before an assembly, discuss the who, what and why of the presentation.
c. Discuss what listening “looks like,” how do their bodies look when they are listening?
d. Play games involving listening for following directions (drawing an unseen object), understading what is said (you mean?), remembering what is said (telephone operator game) etc.
e. Listen to, write and share a poem a day.
f. Sequence the events of the day or week and have students draw a timeline to post on their desks.
Student’s Quota
Principle 1 : The tape recorder is just as important as the tape.
The problem with most listening classes, is that they get stuck at number 1. too many classes concentrate on teaching the language system and miss the skills of language, in this case listening.
Principle 2 : Preparation is vital.
One of the largest inhibitors for students is often mental block. While listening, a student suddenly decide that he or she doesn’t understand what is being said. At this point, many students just tune out or get caught up in an internal dialogue trying translate a specific word. Some students convince themselves that they are not able to understand spoken English well and create problems for themselves.
Principle 3 : Once will not be enough.
Imagine you want to get in shape. You decide to begin jogging. The very first day you go out and jog seven miles. If you are lucky, you might even be able to jog the seven miles. However, chances are good that you will not soon go out jogging again. Fitness trainers have taught us that we must begin with little steps. Begin jogging short distances and walk some as well, over time you can build up the distance. Using the approach, you’ll be much more likely to continue jogging and get fit. Just like in listening practice. To understand or mastery the text, students need more than once to listen. Students also should practice constanly in order to improve their listening skill.
Principle 4 : Student should be encouraged to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the laguage.
- Using the language system involves how we apply this knowledge of the language system to understand or convey meaning and how we apply particular skills to understand and convey the meaning.
- In learning listening, students not only demand to understand every single word but also demand to understanding meaning indeed.
- Students need to apply the same approach (jogging) to listening skills. Encourage them to get a film, or listen to an English radio station, but not to watch an entire film or listen for two hours. Students should often listen, but they should listen for short period – five to ten minutes. This should happen four or five times a week. Even if they don’t understand anything, five to ten minutes is a minor investment. However, for this strategy to work, students must not expect improved understanding too quickly. The brain is capable of amazing things if given time, students must have the patience to wait for results. If a student continues this exercise over two to three months their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve.
Principle 5 : Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
Students’s knowledge of the langauge system includes they knowledge of words, how these words are properly put in order (syntax or grammar), how these words are said in connected streams (phonology), how these words are strung together in longer texts (discourse) and so on.
TEACHING SPEAKING
Teacher’s Quota
1. Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language. These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others. Much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication.
Language learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:
a. Mechanics (prronunciation, grammar and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation
b. Functions (transaction and interaction): Knowing when clarity of message is essential (transaction/information exchange) and when precise understanding is not required (interaction/relationship building)
c. Social and cultural rules and norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers, relative roles of participants): Understadinf how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumtances, about what, and for what reason.
In the communicative model of language teaching, instructors help their students develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for real-life communication situations. They help their students develop the ability to produce grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific contexts, and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation.
2. The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation.
To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, instructor can use a balanced activities approach that combines language input, structured out put, and communicatve out put.
Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material they need to begin producing language themselves.
Language input may be oriented or form oriented.
a. Content-oriented input focuses on information, whether it is a simple weather report or an extended lecture on an academic topic. Content-oriented input may also include descriptions of learning strategies and example of their use.
b. Form-oriented input focuses on ways of using the language: guidance from the teacher or another source on vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar (lingustic competence); appropriate things to say in specific contexts (discourse competence); expactations for rate of speech, pause length, turn-taking, and other social aspects of language use (sociolinguistic competence); and explicit instruction in phrases to use to ask for clarification and repair miscommunication (strategic competence).
In the presentation part of a lesson, an instructor combines content-oriented and form-oriented input. The amount of input that is actually provided in the target language depends on student’s listening proficiency and also on the situation. For students at lower levels, or in situations where a quick explanation on a grammar topic is needed, an explanation in English may be morre appropriate than one in the target language.
Structured output focuses on correct formm. In structured outpuut, students may have options for responses, but all of the options require them to use the specific form or structure that the teacher has just introduced.
Structured output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific language items recently introduced, sometimes in combinations with previously learned items. Instructors often use structured output exercises as a transition between the presentation stage and the practice stage of a lesson plan, textbook exercises also often make good structured output practice activities.
In a balanced activities approach, the teacher uses a variety of activities from these different categories of input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels, including beginners, benefit from this variety; it is more motivating, and it is also more likely to result in affective language learning.
3. Students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning, but speaking is also a crucial part of the language learning process. Effective instructors teach students speaking strategies – using minimal responses, recognizing scripts, and using language to talk about language – that they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in using it. These instructors help students learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn.
a. Using Minimal Responses
Language learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the taking. One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges. Such responses can be especially useful for beginners.
Minimal responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another sspeaker is saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying, without having to simultaneously plan a response.
b. Recognizing Scripts
Some communcation situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken exchanges - - a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or scripts. So do the transactional exchanges involved in activities such as obtaining information and making a purchase. In these scripts, the relationship between a speaker’s turn and the one that follows it can often be anticipated.
Instructors can help students develop speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response. Through interactive activities, instructors can ggive students practice in managing and varying the language that different scripts contain.
c. Using Language to talk about language
Language learners are often too embarrased or shy to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. Instructors can help students overcome this reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any typr of interaction, what ever the participant’s language skill levels. Instructors can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check.
By encouraging students to use clarification phrases in class when misundertanding occurs, and by responding positively when they do, instructors can create an authentic practice environment within the classroom itself. As they develop control of various clarification strategies, students will gain confidence in their ability to manage the various communication situations that they may encounter outside the classroom.
4. Traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form of drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer. The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer. The purpose of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and aswer the question.
5. To create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, instructors need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression. However, quantity alone will not necessarily produce competent speakers. Instructors need to combine structurd output activities, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy, with communicative output activitiies that give students opportunities to praactice language use more freely.
Student’s Quota
1. In communicative output, the learne’s main purpose is to complete a task, such as obtaining information, developing a travel plan, or creating video. To complete the task, they may use the language that the instructor has just presented, but they also may draw on any other vocabulary, grammar and communication strategies that they know. In communicative output activities,the criterion of success is whether the learner get the message acrooss. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it interferes with the message.
2. In everyday communication, spoken exchanges take place because there is some sort of information gap between the participants. Communicative output avtivities involve a similar real information gap. In order to complete the task, students must reduce or eeliminate the information gap. In these activities, language is a tool, not an end in itself.
3. Two common kinds of structured output activities are information gap and jigsaw activities. In both tthese types of activities, students complete a task by obtaining missing information, a feature the activities have in common with real communication. However, information gap and jigsaw activities also set up practice on specific items of language. In this respect they are more like drills tha like communication.
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