AULA 4

DIDÁTICA E MÉTODOS DE
ENSINO DE LÍNGUA INGLESA

Profª Maria Lucia Estivallet de Mesquita

INITIAL TALK

Teaching the four skills

English still retains the status of a world language for global

communication. Therefore, it is vital to learn it for professional purposes,
traveling, for acquiring information as well as other reasons.
The Base Nacional Comum Curricular, in Brazil, makes learning English
as a Foreign Language (ESL) mandatory, beginning in 6th grade. This
requirement is in line with the international trend of bilingual or even trilingual
education. In countries such as Norway, Japan, and China, students start
learning English at an even earlier age.
However, Brazil does not have enough ESL teachers, and, unfortunately,
many teachers themselves do not have enough knowledge of the language.
There is a great need for better teacher training.
In addition to this, teaching conditions are usually not ideal; teachers more
often than not have limited resources for materials, and deliver instruction to
larger than ideal groups of students. This is detrimental for the development of
the communicative competence.
The internet is also a relevant factor nowadays, as well as mass media
communication. On one hand, this has increased exposure to the English
language. After all, social media and content on the internet appear mainly in
English. On the other hand, time spent online has taken away time from verbal
communication.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that on the internet, native and non-native
speakers contribute to oral and written content and interact profusely. Given this
trend, English teachers also need to prepare learners for many environments that
often include cross-cultural interactions.

CONTEXTUALIZING

As we have seen in the previous lesson, there are four basic learning
skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The real questions are, however,
how should students learn the four skills and what are the best activities to
develop each of them?

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 Effective English teachers know that the overall goal is for language competence,
and this involves the mastery of the four skills. One of the teacher’s roles is to integrate
these skills in a productive way. Teachers should teach in a way that helps students
meet the standards and develop their communicative competence gradually.
When teachers are planning a class, it is suggested that they keep in mind
the natural order of acquisition: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is
better for students to hear the material before they use it as speakers, and that
they hear it before they see it in text. In this way, “he/she will be able to
understand the new item for quite a while before he/she is able to produce it and
use it in communication” (Laubach, 1996).
Most books and language courses for beginners try to teach reading,
writing, speaking and listening, all at the same time. A typical course book usually
contains one or two exercises of each skill per unit. If students create a gap in
one segment, it might be difficult to catch up later.
However, in real life, these skills appear interrelated and in random order,
and learners can get confused. It is also the teacher’s role to try to minimize the
confusion and introduce students to real life situations in which the skills appear
in different combinations.
In the classroom, there are specific activities designed to recreate these
situations. In them, sometimes one or two skills are emphasized, sometimes all
the skills appear during the course of a class.
Outside the classroom, students can improve their English skills in their
free time too by exposing themselves to videos, films, lectures, and talks in
English.

THEME 1 – LISTENING

To speak well, first you must listen well. Bearing that in mind, when it
comes to listening, the main concern for teachers is how to incorporate it
effectively into curriculum design.
Rost (1990) outlined the four primary goals for listening instruction:

 to improve learner's comprehension of spoken language;

 to increase the quality of learners' uptake (i.e., the words actually
retained) from spoken input;
 to develop learners' strategies for understanding spoken discourse;
 to encourage learner participation in face-to-face communication.

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 Listening has not always been important in the classroom. For example,
the grammar-translation method ignored listening. It took a long time to
understand that listening comprehension is different from hearing. In the 1950s
and 1960s, students spent many hours in language labs and classrooms
completing listening/speaking drills, but the purpose was for students to repeat
sounds accurately, not necessarily to improve listening comprehension.
Nowadays the focus in the classroom is on learning how to listen, through the
application of listening skills and strategies.
One of the strategies that effective teachers can use to help students deal
with the frustration of not understanding everything is to teach them to listen for
the gist (or general idea) of a conversation.
Another strategy is to encourage students to avoid translating to their
native tongue because this delays understanding of subsequent parts of listening
in a video, TV program, lecture, or conversation.
Teachers should also make sure that students use both top-down and
bottom-up processing strategies. Top-down processing occurs when students
utilize their prior knowledge to understand a speaker. For example, a student
may infer what a speaker intended to say given the learner's understanding of
the topic. Bottom-up processing occurs when listeners focus on the sounds,
words, or patterns of the language.

1.1 Techniques to improve listening

In general, students enjoy listening to authentic materials. Teachers

should introduce material that becomes gradually more difficult. Students should
also be able to have access to formal and informal language, as well as different
accents.
With the growth of mass media and with greater access to technology,
there are more options for listening activities in the students’ free time. They can
practice active listening outside the classroom by watching videos with and
without subtitles, and listening to lectures or talks in English.

1.2 Sample lesson focused on listening

Here are the sample steps for a class about Thanksgiving, for low-
intermediate students (aged from 11 to 17).

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 1. Lead-in: teacher introduces the topic by presenting a picture of a family
having Thanksgiving dinner.
2. Eliciting (extracting information): teacher asks students about
Thanksgiving in the USA, what they know about the celebration, history,
food, and family traditions. Additionally, the teacher can also ask students
whether they have a similar celebration in their country.
3. Presentation: In this step, the teacher presents the vocabulary related to
Thanksgiving, separating words in categories such as eating and drinking,
greetings, and historical and cultural words associated with Thanksgiving.
The objective of this step is for students to learn the appropriate use of key
terms and phrases. It will also broaden their current knowledge on the
topic.
4. Listening activity: watching and listening to a video. Before playing the
video, the teacher should tell students that they will watch it twice. The first
time, they should try to understand the overall context of the conversation.
5. After students watch the video for the first time, the teacher can encourage
a class discussion about what students have seen, whether they have
questions about the vocabulary, or their opinions about the video. This is a
good opportunity to develop speaking.
6. Writing Practice: teacher gives a handout, asks students to read the
questions, and then plays the video a second time. After the second
viewing, they will answer a questionnaire about the video. In general, it is
not good to give the handout beforehand to students, because they will try
to answer the questions and this will take their attention away from the
video.
7. The teacher gives students time to answer the handout individually.
8. In pairs, students compare their answers.
9. Finally, to close the lesson, the teacher and students go over the
questions and select the best answers for each question. To develop
accuracy, the teacher can collect the handouts and correct them at home.

THEME 2 – SPEAKING

Speaking is one of the most important ESL skills. Most students learn
English to communicate orally with native or non-native English speakers.

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 Since the early stages of learning, students develop communicative
competence, which is the ability to communicate properly within a given situation.
They should learn to choose the correct words/phrases to convey the meaning
that they need for a specific formal or informal situation.

2.1 Ways of improving speaking

Students can improve their speaking inside and outside the classroom.
The more a student speaks, the better he/she will become at it. Chatting with
classmates before and after classes is a good opportunity to improve speaking
skills.
Nowadays the internet provides many opportunities to interact with
native speakers by joining websites that help people from different countries
connect.
Students can also record themselves speaking. They can repeat the
recording several times until they feel satisfied with the results.

2.2 Development of a lesson plan for conversation

To develop an effective conversation lesson plan, teachers need to know

their students and plan lessons accordingly, adapting the syllabus, methods and
procedures to whom these students are, their age group, prior knowledge,
interests and what they want to accomplish by learning English.
Conversation lessons require a lot of preparation from the teacher. Without
a good plan, the conversation can stall and deteriorate quickly. In the preparation
step, the teacher should take into consideration students’ interests, goals, and
needs.
During the development of the lesson, the teacher has to pay attention to
not only what the students are saying (content, grammar structures,) but also
how they are saying it (pronunciation, meaning).
A good way to prepare a lesson is to divide it in 3 steps: Presentation,
Practice, and Production (PPP).

 Presentation: teacher introduces topic and material.

 Practice: guided activities such as pair work, small group, or big group
develop vocabulary and stimulate fluency.

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  Production phase: students speak more freely, teacher observes but does
not interrupt.

2.3 Speaking and culture

Another particularity of speaking is that language changes over time.

Words and their usage change over time. In addition, culture influences the
choice of words. Some words disappear over time, and other words appear.
On one hand, the word Facebook first appeared as both a noun and a
verb in the 2008 edition of the Collins English Dictionary. On the other hand,
some words disappear, particularly the ones related to technology. No one uses
the word floppy disk anymore. Very few people still use the words typewriter, and
tape recorder. In another example, sometimes brands become verbs in
sentences such as “we can skype after dinner” or “I am going to xerox the
handout for you”.
Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared on camera
correcting a woman for saying mankind. “We like to say peoplekind, not
necessarily mankind — “because it’s more inclusive,” he told her, sparking a
slew of tweets last Thursday following the Q&A at MacEwan University”.
Trudeau’s exchange reflects Canada’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. In
other countries, perhaps this would not have happened.

THEME 3 – READING

In any language, it is essential to acquire good reading skills. Students

need to read instructions and later progress to read books and other longer texts
of their interest.
However, it takes time and dedication to improve reading. L2 students can
read articles on the web and books in English to exercise this ability. Reading
improves vocabulary, thus, indirectly, it benefits speaking too.
In terms of improving reading skills, Anderson ((2005, citado por Khaki,
2014) says that, “more recently, approaches to the teaching of reading have
focused on the importance of acquiring those strategies that help students
become strategic readers while coping with difficult passages”. He goes on to
add that “the most important features of reading are that it is strategic, that is,
while reading, the readers assess whether they have achieved their purpose for

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reading or not. If not, they should adapt different monitoring activities, which is
the hallmark of good readers”.

3.1 Reading techniques

Below are some strategies that can help ESL students improve their
reading skills.

3.1.1 Skimming and scanning

In this activity, students read the material but do not focus on the words
that they do not know. In skimming, they discover the general idea of a text. In
scanning, they read the text more closely but still under time constraints, and get
more details about it, even without understanding everything.

3.1.2 Predicting

In this activity, the teacher selects a paragraph from a text and encourages
students to predict what will happen in the next one. The students can ask
questions about what they do not understand in this portion of the text. In
addition, in order to discuss their predictions with their classmates, they will need
to have an understanding of the reading, and this is a good speaking opportunity
too. They can incorporate the new vocabulary and expressions learned into their
speaking.

3.1.3 Summarizing

Retelling a story in their own words is an opportunity for students to

develop their own writing and speaking styles. They can only summarize well if
they understand the reading well, therefore this activity improves reading,
speaking, and writing.

3.1.4 Discussing

The teacher can prepare guided discussion activities to let students

communicate and explore their own unique styles for optimal reading. The
teacher can prepare questions to ask the class after reading and encourage
students to create other questions.

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 It is also possible to give them multiple-choice questions. This way, they
will have to think through and choose the best answers. In general, not all
students choose the same answers, and this provides a good opportunity for
group discussion.

THEME 4 – WRITING

Writing can be intimidating, but anyone can get used to it with discipline
and a willingness to learn. Writing well requires good vocabulary, so students
can create lists with new words or expression and try to incorporate them into
their writing. The internet also provides opportunities for students to write blogs,
or express their opinions in English.

4.1 A writing technique: quick write

Writing is challenging in many ways. Students need to conquer their

anxiety about writing their ideas correctly in English. This can be overwhelming
when they face the task of writing a paragraph, or a longer text, such as an
essay.
A way of helping students of all levels get comfortable with the idea of
writing and not worrying about mistakes is to do a quick write. In this activity, the
teacher gives students a topic and tells them to write nonstop for five minutes.
They need to keep their pencils on the paper and keep writing even if using
incorrect spelling or repetitive ideas. At the end of five minutes, the students
count the number of words they wrote and record the number in a log.
The objective of this activity is for students to see their progress in the
quantity of writing they are able to do in five minutes' time and perhaps apply this
fluency to their essay writing. Rather than quality or accuracy of the writing, the
goal here is to achieve quantity and to boost students’ confidence.

THEME 5 – COMBINING SKILLS

As it can be seen from the discussion in this lesson, mastering the four
skills requires lots of practice. It is a gradual process. Effective teachers can help
students by setting high learning standards, and integrating the four skills in
activities that get progressively more challenging. When teachers develop

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activities that incorporate the four skills simultaneously, they provide
opportunities for students to progress in all areas of language learning.
These four skills do not exist as separate entities within the language. On
the contrary, all of them are interrelated. When students are having a
conversation, they are not just speaking, but also listening. When students listen
to a lecture in class, they may also take notes. At the same time, it is possible for
students to be more competent in one skill than another. Students from some
language backgrounds may have no trouble reading and writing in English, but
find the sounds of the language more difficult to produce. On the other hand,
students from orally based cultures may find it easier to speak than to write.
Some students can speak a lot, but cannot understand much of what they hear.
The challenge for the language teacher is to provide instruction that facilitates the
development of all four skills.
The purpose of activities involving the four skills is to give learners
continuous support, opportunities to create contexts in which to use the language
for exchanges of real information, evidence of their own ability (proof of learning)
and, most important, confidence.

CONCLUDING

In a world in which English retains the status of a world language for global
communication, it is very important to learn it for professional purposes, traveling,
and for acquiring information.
English teachers need to prepare learners for many environments that
often include cross-cultural interactions. Therefore, teachers have to adapt
constantly their language content and delivery to face the demands of a rapid
changing world.
A proficient user of the language masters the four language skills:
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Thus, language teachers should design
activities that promote mastery of the four skills. Sometimes the activities involve
improving one or two skills, while other activities integrate the four skills.
There are specific techniques to develop each one of the skills. However,
these four skills do not exist as separate entities within the language; on the
contrary, all of the skills are interrelated.
The purpose of activities involving the four skills is to give learners
continuous support, opportunities to create contexts in which to use the language

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for exchanges of real information, evidence of their own ability (proof of learning)
and, most important, confidence.

MANDATORY READING

Theoretical approach text

Practical listening activities for the classroom:

LISTENING exercises. AgendaWeb. Disponível em:

<https://agendaweb.org/listening-exercises>. Acesso em: 24 maio 2018.

ENGLISH listening exercises. ESOL Courses. Disponível em:

<https://www.esolcourses.com/content/topicsmenu/listening.html>. Acesso em:
24 maio 2018.

Further knowledge

The importance of culture in speaking:

SALO-LEE, L. Cultural Speaking rules. Moniviestin. Disponível em

<https://moniviestin.jyu.fi/ohjelmat/hum/viesti/en/ics/21>. Acesso em: 24 maio
2018.

Reading comprehension strategies for ESL students:

COLORÍN COLORADO. Disponível em: <http://www.colorincolorado.org/>.

Acesso em: 24 maio 2018.

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REFERENCES

KHAKI, N. Administration of Education. Improving Reading Comprehension in a

Foreign Language: Strategic Reader. The Reading Matrix, v. 14, n. 2, Sep.
2014. Disponível em: <www.readingmatrix.com/files/11-m9371u67.pdf>. Acesso
em: 24 maio 2018.

LAUBACH Literacy Action. Teaching Adults: An ESL resource book. Syracuse,

NY: New Reader’s Press, 1996.

MIKULECKY, B. S. Teaching Reading in a second language. Londres:

Pearson Longman, 2008. Disponível em: <www.longmanhomeusa.com>.
Acesso em: 24 maio 2018.

MOWBRAY, T. The power of read and retell. Australian Journal of Language

and Literacy, v. 15, n. 2, jun. 2010. Disponível em:
<http://www.adsb.on.ca/sites/Schools/BLI/Resources/Curriculum/The%20Power
%20of%20Read%20and%20Retell[1].pdf>. Acesso em: 24 maio 2018.

ROST, M. Listening in Language Learning. 1. ed. New York: Routledge, 1990.

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