Teaching Listening and Speaking

 Teaching Listening and Speaking November 2006 The Importance of Listening Listening is a fundamental skill for nearly all ways of interaction and “the most important medium for input in learning a foreign language”. Some Listening Problems 2. The content. • Some of the learners better understand the reading with the text in front of them while understanding the listening from the tape makes harder to understand the content. (3) 3. Linguistic Features • While studying the second language students are exposed to formal English and they are not familiar with the slang language in the informal English. (3) 4. The Speaker • Students usually are used to hear their teacher’s accent which could be British or American English this is why it can be difficult for listener to understand the speaker with other accent. 5. The Listener • Second language learner usually spend more time reading than listening, and so lack of practice in listening to different kinds of materials makes difficult for them to understand the speaker. (3) 6. Physical Setting • Low quality listening materials makes it difficult for the listener. Noise from the tape, video, and environment can reduce the listener’s attention to the speaker. Solutions for the listening problems Teachers are always capable to help students to overcome or reduce the causes for the poor listening. 1. The Message ◦ To make listening lesson as different as possible. The inputs should vary from lectures, radio news, films TV plays, announcements, everyday conversations, interview, stories or English songs. 2. The Speaker • To provide the material that would help students to be aware of different native-speaker accents. The material should be very original from native English conversations. It is necessary to let students listen different accents. 3. The Listener • Before listening teacher should try to give the students background and linguistic knowledge. Knowing the complex sentence structure and idiomatic words and expressions would make easier for listener to understand. The Listening Process Teachers then organize the listening process which has three phases as follows: 1. Pre-Listening. 2. During Listening. 3. After Listening. Pre-Listening Pre-listening is needed to collect the information that the students already know about the topic as well to give new information for the topic and to give the purpose for the students to listen. The strategies that are good to use in the Pre- listening period: • Activate Existing Knowledge. Teacher should encourage students to ask the question: What do I already know about this topic? • Build Prior Knowledge. The student should get the information about the speaker, topic, purpose, and the concept and new words that will be heard in the presentation. • Review Standards for Listening. The students should be prepared for listening standards such as the interaction with the presenter, physical preparation for listening (to see and hear the speaker), helping the presenter “Listen to others as you would have them listen to you.” • Establish Purpose. Would encourage students to listen and be interested in the presentation. The questions could be as follow: "Why am I listening?" "What is my purpose?" During Listening The activities that the listeners do during the listening: • connect: make connections with people, places, situations, and ideas they know • find meaning: determine what the speaker is saying about people, places, and ideas • question: pay attention to those words and ideas that are unclear • make and confirm predictions: try to determine what will be said next • make inferences: determine speaker's intent by "listening between the lines"; infer what the speaker does not actually say • reflect and evaluate: respond to what has been heard and pass judgement. (5) Instructional Resources Unit The strategies that are good to use in the During listening period: Directed-Listening Thinking Activity. Teacher chooses a story with the simple and understandable episode. Before the important episodes the teacher should pause. During the pause teacher has to go through what happened till they stopped and to predict together with students what might happen in the future. The students present their own predictions and remember them. Teacher accepts all predictions as correct ones. Later on students have to explain why they came up with the certain prediction. The explanation has to be based on the information that they already know from the story. Teacher should avoid the evaluation words such as “right”, “wrong” instead teacher should use “might happen”, “possible”, or “likely”. When there is next pause, the students are allowed to change their prediction and can create the new one. Teacher should try to keep every student active in making the predictions. It is very easy to go to the wrong direction during the pause when students predict the future of the topic. Teacher should avoid hot discussions among the students, go back to the story as the discussion appears. Listening guides. Teacher could make the listening guide to focus students' attention on the content, organization of the story. For example the listening guide could be as follows: Guided Imagery. Teachers can ask students to close theirs eyes and imagine the view while they are listening. Student even could draw the pictures which would represent what they hear. Note making. This strategy goes after Guided Imagery. Students need to focus not only on their imaginations but also on the paper in order to remember the content, the strategy, the new words, expressions. Devine (1982) suggests strategies such as the following: • Give questions in advance and remind listeners to listen for possible answers. • Provide a rough outline, map, chart, or graph for students to complete as they follow the lecture. • Have students jot down "new-to-me" items (simple lists of facts or insights that the listener has not heard before). • Use a formal notetaking system (5). Critical thinking. This is one of the most important strategies that every teacher wants to achieve. Critical thinking makes listening active. In order to analyze and evaluate the material students need focus and evaluate a speaker's opinion and the importance of the ideas. In order students to use critical thinking their should know how to: • Analyze the message. • Analyze the speaker. • Analyze the speaker's evidence. • Analyze the speaker's reasoning. • Analyze the speaker's emotional appeals. After Listening This period of listening activity is like a conclusion. Teacher should understand that students need to use their information, attitude, opinions, and critical arguments to be satisfied of understanding the topic and to correct the mistakes. In order this part would go successfully, teachers should consider using the following points: • Straight after the listening student may ask the questions to their teacher to find out if the students understood the topic or text correctly. • Hook and Evans (1982) suggest that the post-mortem is crucial after the listening. It is when the students and teacher speaks about the material heard and compares it with the real life. • Teacher could choose one student or several of them to summarize the material. They can summarize orally or in writing. • Students are given some time to review their notes that they did during the listening. The information that students wrote down add to the summary or to the discussion. • Students should be given an opportunity critically to analyze and evaluate the topic they heard. • Usually the activities after all the points above would be the last engagement that would increase students interest in listening. Teacher could prepear the temple that student could fill in or student could be given the task to research more information about the topic they just hear. For younger students teacher could use art or drama (drama or drawing). (5) Listening is active which requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination. Listening modes in listening interactions: • Bidirectional – two-way communicative listening (face-to-face, telephone talk) • Unidirectional – one-way communicative listening (input from overheard conversations, announcements, media, instructions, etc.) • Autodirectional – self-dialogue communication (we re-create language internally and “listen again” as we retell heard information) Achieving skill in listening requires as much work and does becoming skilled in reading, writing, and speaking in a second language. Lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to listening comprehension. Four levels of listening comprehension: • Listening and repeating: listening to words, repeating and memorizing them; little comprehension and attention involved; not an intentional focus. • Listening and Answering Comprehension Questions: listening to a text, answering simple questions; increases students’ vocabulary, grammar constructions; is not interactive two-way communication. • Task Listening: listening-and-using (follow the directions, compete a task, solve a problem, take notes during a lecture); listening to get meaning from the input. • Interactive Listening: communicative/competence and task oriented; developing critical listening, thinking, and effective speaking abilities; interactive two-way listening. SPEAKING Why should we teach speaking skills? • Motivation • Speaking is fundamental to human communication Dealing with common arguments against teaching speaking skills in the classroom * Students won't talk or say anything: - find the root of the problem and start from there - speak in English yourself as much as possible in class When students work in pairs or groups they just end up chatting in their own language. When all the students speak together it gets too noisy and out of hand and I lose control of the classroom The best setting to acquire competence in speaking. To develop competence in both the listening and speaking areas of English the newcomers need: • Teachers who understand the stages of acquisition and adjust their input to fit each student’s level • Teachers who are tolerant to errors, enabling students to learn without being labeled or punished for their pronunciation or word choice errors. • Many opportunities to talk, listen, and interact with others – real talk, real questions, rather than inquisition with a predetermined answers that the teacher owns. • Time The three Stages – A Continuum • STAGE 1. One-way communication • STAGE 2. Partial two-way communication • STAGE 3. Full two-way communication Four levels of questioning. This hierarchy of questions is an important concept to remember. The Descriptions of the activities The listening to the song Abba - Thank You for The Music. Time: 10 minutes Level: Upper intermediate The purpose of the activity is to establish the understanding of the abbreviations of: I’m, I’ve, you’re, you’d and others. The activity consists of the four parts; 1. Students listen to the song for the first time and enjoy it. 2. The second time students have to fill the blanks while listening to the song. 3. Last time of the listening is for checking and correcting the song’s words. 4. Students have the opportunity to check their work. The correct song’s text is on the other side of the paper. Story bag Time: 10 minutes Level: upper intermediate The teacher tells the students the beginning of a story, for example: “Mr. Chuck, Professor of Chemistry, was found dead in his bedroom. Nothing has been stolen except for Mr. Chuck’s research draft.” Then the teacher shows a bag with six objects in it. The objects are clues that a detective has discovered at the place of crime. In groups of six, the students come up with the details of the crime incorporating each of the objects. Then the groups presents their stories; each students gets to speak about one of the items. Guess who? Time: 10 minutes Level: beginner, intermediate. The students write three facts about themselves on a piece of paper. Then the teacher collects the papers and redistributes them randomly among the students. The students then go around and ask questions (by making statements on the papers into questions) in order to find out who is described on their papers. The activity ends when every student has found the person described on their piece of paper. Lesson Plan 1. Theoretical presentation of teaching listening. 10 min 2. Theoretical part of teaching speaking 10 min. 3. Practical activities about listening. 20 min Activities for the beginners Activity for the upper intermediate students (listening to Abba - Thank You for the Music) 4. Practical activities about speaking 20 min “Guess who” “Story bag” 5. Conclusion and answering the questions. 5-10 min. Bibliography 1. Carole Elkeles. Listening Games And Activities. Articles for Educators. 2005

Daugiau informacijos...

★ Klientai rekomenduoja

Šį rašto darbą rekomenduoja mūsų klientai. Ką tai reiškia?

Mūsų svetainėje pateikiama dešimtys tūkstančių skirtingų rašto darbų, kuriuos įkėlė daugybė moksleivių ir studentų su skirtingais gabumais. Būtent šis rašto darbas yra patikrintas specialistų ir rekomenduojamas kitų klientų, kurie po atsisiuntimo įvertino šį mokslo darbą teigiamai. Todėl galite būti tikri, kad šis pasirinkimas geriausias!