6.

Teaching the receptive skills

Ha valami nem érthetőszóljatok nyugodtan 

a) Generally about teaching receptive skills

1. A basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills

 Receptive skills are reading and listening.

 There are significant difference between reading and listening, nevertheless the basic
classroom procedure we often use is the same for both.
 The procedure for getting students to read a written text or listen to a recording
involves two types of task.
 Type 1 tasks are those where we get students to read or listen for some general
understanding, rather than asking them to pick out details or get involved in a
refined search of the text.
 Type 2 tasks, on the other hand, are those where we get students to look at the
text in considerably more detail, maybe for specific information or for
language points.

2. The procedure of teaching receptive skills:

 The procedure for teaching receptive skills generally starts with a lead in.
 Engage students with the topic of the reading or listening task
 The aim is to provoke students to get in with the knowledge, they have about
the topic.
 Students can predict what the text is about To help students predict use
pictures, headlines, general discussion about the topic…etc.
 Teacher sets some kind of comprehension task so that they will read or listen in a
general way.  The aim is to get the general understanding of the text or audio.
 Students read or listen to the text.
 Teacher directs feedback
 Teacher directs text related task

3. What makes the whole process difficult  the language issue

 In the text, there might be lots of unknown word for students, which makes it hard to
understand the text.
  How can teachers help students to understand the text in a better way?
 pre teach vocabulary: choose those words which are necessary to understand in
order to solve the task.
 extensive reading and listening: choose a reading or listening task which is
designed for the students’ level.
 authenticity: The language that students read or listen should be authentic, but
should adjust to the students’ level. If you choose the authentic material
carelessly, it can be extremely demotivating for students because they won’t
understand it.

B) Teaching reading:

1. Why teach reading?

 to be able to read in English for

 job
 study
 pleasure
 survival
 exposure to language  helps acquisition/motivating
 model for writing:
 opportunities to study language
 good focus for other skills
 develops learner autonomy

2. What kind of reading should students do?

 reading in L1
 text types
 authentic  natives of that language, it is not for language learning
purposes
 semi-authentic  looks authentic but it is modified for better understanding
 scripted  foreign learners  oversimplified
 each text type has its advantage and disadvantage
 authentic: advantage  Learners can see the text in real life context.
disadvantage  The structures are unknown for students which
can be demotivating and discouraging
  scripted: advantage: texts are designed by language learners, so
everybody understands everything, there is no unknown structure
disadvantage  these texts seem odd for natives, it is artificial
 semi authentic: the best for learning purposes
 teachers should bear in mind the following issues: topic, age, level, students’
interest
 variety and balance are needed

3. What reading skills should learners acquire?

 depending on text type:

 scanning  look through the text to find particular pieces of information
 skimming  get the gist of the text, understand the content of the text.
 Depending on purpose:
 reading for pleasure (extensive)
 reading for detailed comprehension (intensive)

4. What ae the principles behind the teaching of reading?

 Reading is not a passive skill active interaction with the text

 Students need to be engaged in what they are reading pay attention to the text
and be motivated to read
 Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text, not just
the language
 Predication is a major it is important to introduce the text, students need to have
some opinion about the topic.
 Match the task to the topic.
 Good teachers exploit the reading texts to the full

5. What do reading sequences look like

a) Attraction (Elementary)
 Patchwork
 Engage What do you find attractive in a person
 Activate  chart
 Activate  read the text Do you agree?
 Study  answer the questions
  Activate  describe somebody

b) Ghosts (lower intermediate)

 Patchwork:
 Engage  believe or not / seen or not
 Activate  look at the picture
 Activate  read and compare
 Study  read and fill in the table
 Study  reference words
 Activate  follow-up: write about a haunted house

c) Sunbathing (Intermediate)

 Straight arrows:
 Engage  look at some pictures: sunbathing  talk about it, find out students’
opinion
 Study  read the texts about four people
 Activate  What sun protector do they use?

Do they burn?

What is their skin type?

d) Poetry (intermediate-advanced)

 Engage  Do you like poetry? Can you remember any poems? What
are they about? What do poets normally write about?
 Study/Activate  students try to put the poem together while discussing
rhyme, punctuation, content

6. More suggestions

 Read small ads – write full descriptions

 Jumbled instructions  take a users manual cut out instructions, which part comes
after each other
 Recipe: matching pictures to instructions
 Extract from a play: act it out
 Words from a text: predict the story
 Match topic sentences with paragraphs
  Guess who wrote texts (pictures of people)
 Missing end of a text
 Read a ‘factfile’ and turn it into chart

C) Teaching listening

1. Why teach listening

 1st: expose Sts to:

 the T’s voice
 different varieties, dialects and accents
 foreigner’s English
 There may be differences in pronunciation and grammar alike
 T should choose with care – balance is needed
 2nd: subconscious learning  while students are listening they are subconsciously
take language.
 3rd: the more you listen, the better listener you are
 Problems with text selection
 Variety  there are different kind of dialects and accents, some of them might
be hard to understand
 ‘Standard’
 How many varieties  we should expose our students
 When a teacher selects a listening task he/she should bear in mind the following
things:
 St level
 Age
 Interest
 Availability how and from where can you get the material
 Channels
 Teachers  for example teacher read out a story and the students have to listen
to it
 Students
 Canned  materials which are recorded, for example: videos

3. Basic listening situations

 Announcements
 Radio
 Conversations
 Film, play or TV
 Meeting, seminar or discussion
 Lesson
 Talk or lecture
 Eavesdropping
 Telephone

4. Listening skill:

5. Factors which affects listening:

 Speed  can’t be controlled while playing, adjust comprehension to the speed of

speakers
 Interference: other sounds, L1  background sounds make it harder to understand
 Real time: no backtracking
 Difficult to follow
 Get lost  if missed something it is hard to get back on track
 Mostly used for testing it is not taught how to be more effective listener
 Motivation
 ‘Poor listening habits’
  Listen to every word
 Day-dream
 Pay equal attention to main and supporting ideas
 Miss ‘key words’
 Make premature judgements

6. What kind of listening should students do?

 Text type: authentic – semi-authentic – scripted

 The correct choice is as important as in reading
 Authentic texts
 Advantages:
 ‘Real’ language  if you recorded, it is nor real anymore
 Wide variety
 Speed, hesitations, repetitions  students have get use to the
characteristics of the real language
 Disadvantages:
 Discouraging
 Not relevant to the level
 Length can’t be controlled
 Scripted texts:
 Advantages
 Graded
 Motivating
 Appropriate pace  neither too fast nor too slow
 Disadvantages
 Not realistic it is sometimes artificial
 Limited variability

7. What is special about listening

 Live listening: interaction possible / non-verbal signs  gestures, mimics

 Canned: tape / video / computer  CD vs tape
 Speed of the listener depends on the speaker (vs reading), especially with recorded
text
 Easy to get lost
  Has special features: incomplete utterances, hesitations, etc
 Listening for gist first – be prepared
 casual listening  just to hear something, for example turn on the TV radio but you
do not concentrate on it.
 focused listening  start listening carefully

8. What are the principles behind the teaching of listening?

1) The tape recorder is just as important as the tape

speaker: audibility

counter knows where something stars/end

easy to wind/rewind without stopping the tape

2) Preparation is vital for both the T and Sts

T should listen several times

copy cassette

pre-listening (Engage)

3) Once will not be enough

get Students acquainted with the text

too many times is not good

4) Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a listening not just the
language

work on both content and form

5) Different stages need different tasks

well-defined aims with while-listening (Activate)

6) Good Teachers exploit listening texts to the full

various types of Study activities

9. What do listening sequence look like

1. beginner
  Engage: What do you have for breakfast?
 Study: Practice of some words
 Activate: Pictures: a café, an office and a restaurant
 Study: Task: match the pictures to the conversations
 Study: Task: fill in a table on drinks
 Activate: Role-play offering and accepting drinks
2. elementary
 Engage: pictures and the descriptions
 Study: listen and answer the questions
 Study: physical description
 Activate: act out a dialogue
3. Intermediate
 Engage: talking about cultural differences
 Engage: questions
 Listen to the text in 3 parts
 Activate: answer the Qs
 Study: past tense
 Activate: talk about past experience and give advice to each other
4. upper-intermediate
 The text is long
o Engage: rank order different sports
o Activate: discuss reasons
o Study: read 3 summaries
o Listen and decide which summary matches the text
o Study: for content details
o Activate: different role-plays

10. Where does video fit in?

 Richer than an audio tape: visual clues

 DANGER: using video doesn’t equal watching only
 Special techniques can be used:
o Without sound
o Without picture
o Halve the group
o Freeze the picture
o Make own films
o Dub
o Stop and assign a task