Listening
The top-down processing – drawing on our intelligence and experience, the predictions we can make to understand the text.
The bottom-up approach – building up a meaning by recognizing letters and words, working out sentence structure and making conscious use of it when an initial reading leaves us confused.
Skimming – reading very fast to find only the main ideas of a text
Scanning – reading very fast to find specific pieces of information
Developing strategies for listening:
-giving children confidence – listening to understand the “gist” (the general content of a spoken word) not every single word -predicting
– encourage children to predict what they think might come next in a spoken message (successful prediction makes them feel more confident)
-inferring opinion or attitude – an awareness of stress, intonation and body language help children work out meaning, especially in dialogues or story telling
-working out meaning from the context
– encourage children to use pictures and their general knowledge about a topic to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words
-recognizing discourse pattern and markers- when listening to a sequence of events (a set of instructions, a story) word such as first, then, finally, but, and, so give importnat signals about what is coming next in a spoken text Reading strategies:
-keep my eyes moving past the unfamiliar words and thus try to understand the main ideas
-start reading without panicking or thinking: Help! I’m not going to understand -look for linking words that help explain relationship between sentences (e.g. in contrast, for example)
-use different reading strategies to read different types of texts
-look at titles, subtitles, pictures and other visuals before reading
Teaching Listening.
Real-life listening:
-casual vs focused listening
-response
-visibility of the speaker
-environmental clues
-shortness
-informal speech
Factors involves In effective listening:
-the listener is relaxed
-is physically alert
-the content of the discourse is familiar
-the speaker is familiar-the listener is able to ask for clas sification and knows how to do this;
Listening in Eng lish as a foreign language:
-hearing the sound
-underst anding intonation and stress
-coping with redu ndancy and noise
-predicting
-understanding colloquial vocab lary
-using visuals and aural environmental clues;
Planning exerc ises:
-listening materials
-listening tasks( purpose to listen, moti vating ss,simplicty, feed back)
-the importance of visual materials;
Pre-istening Aims:
-to focuslearners attention on the topic of the listening pas sage
-to activate and revise language related to the topic
-to introduce new vocabulary or structures necessary for the comprehension of the text
Pre-listening act
:-look ing at the pic(describing guessing predicting)
-discussi on on a topic(brainstorm ming)
-read sth relevant prediting vocabulary
While-listeni ng
1. listening and making no responses
-following a written text-listening to a fam iliar text
-listening aided by visuals(pics diagrams)
-enter tainment (stories songs video tv)
2. listening and making short responses(verbal or non verbal)
-obeying instruct ions
-making models (lego bricks plasticine clay paper)
-picture dictation-ticking off items-true false exercises-detecting mista kes-noting specific inf
-identifying and ordering /sequencing(writing reading speaking invol ved)
-paraph rasing
-translation answering questions/multiple choice quest ions
-filling gaps
-summarizing/note taking
Post-listening
checking compreh.
Follow up act.
Itegrating the skills How to succeed with listening work?
To help ss develop confidence ‘n skills when doing listening skills the t should:
-make sure that before they begin to listen, the ss understand clearly what thaey are expected to do
-make sure that each time a listening text is heard even for the 2nd 3rd time, the ss have a specific purpose for the listening
-do plenty of pre-list work of an appropriate kind for the learners so that they will succeed with whatever listening task thay are asked to do
-encourage all attempts at carrying out the list task with out putting too much emphasis on the quality of the pr esentation of the response-encourage ss not to worry if they don’t understand every word to use different strate gies depending on the aim of listening
-never use a recor ded list text in class without having listened to it, notj ust looked through the transcript in advance
-never take a chance on whether you will be able to operate the par ticular cassette recorder
Problems with speaking activities:
1.Inhibition (real – time exposure to an audience – mistakes, fear of criticism, losing face, shyness).
2.Nothing to say (complaints about having nothing to say, lack of motive to express themselves).
3.Low or uneven participation (some learners tend to dominate, others speak very little or not at all).
4.Mother-tongue use (easiness, it feels unnatural to speak in L2, students feels less exposed).
Possible solutions to the problem:
1.Use group work (increases the amount of STT, lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the full class).
2.Base the activity on easy language – the level of language for a discussion should be lower than in intensive-learning activities; it should be easily recalled and produce by the learners – teach or review essential vocabulary before the activity starts.
3.Make a clear choice of topic and task to stimulate interest.
4.Give some instructions of training in discussion skills (include instructions about participation, appoint a chairperson to each group, etc.).
5.Keep students speaking the target language – monitor the activity, model the language.
Types of oral fluency activities:
Topic activities – learners can use ideas from their own experience and knowledge. A good topic should be appropriate for the learners, represent a controversy to divide the participants, stimulate the learners’ initiative and originality.
Task-based activities – are goal-oriented, require learners to achieve an objective (a brief note, list, drawing, spoken summary, a rearrangement of jumbled items), involves interaction between participants. Task-based activities – more talk, more even participation, more motivation and enjoyment.
Teaching speaking – activities.
Encouraging students to speak (elicitation):
1.Pictures as stimuli (flashcards, cuecards, photos, maps, postcards, slides, video).
-describing pictures and talking with pictures
-picture differences -guessing games
-picture stories
-making inferences about pictures
2.Questions and answers.
3.Describing a situation.
4.Summarizing.
5.Problem solving.
6.Discussions.
7.Dialogues.
8.Role plays (learners are given a situation plus problem or task and they are allotted individual roles) and simulations (participants speak and react as themselves in an imaginary situation or task). Integrating speaking with other skills. Speaking activities:
-acting from a script
-communication games
-discussion
-prepared talks
-questionnaires
-simulation (reality of function, a simulated environment, structure) and role-play The aims of early learning of English. Overall aims:
-to support the learners’ overall development (social, physical, emotional, intellectual),
-to develop skills that will enable them to acquire knowledge,
-to arouse children’s curiosity to discover the world around them,
-to encourage the learners to act in various situations.
Learning to communicate in English:
-learning to listen (in order to hear and understand properly)
-learning to speak (in order to be understood)
-learning to read and write
-other abilities to be developed (in order to learn how to communicate) learning to memorize, learning to create, learning to discover
Teaching Speaking-act.encouraging ss to sapek(elicitation)
*pictures as a stimuli(flash cards photos wallcharts maps slides video cluecard)-describ ing pictures ;n talking with pics-pics differences-guessi n g games-picture stories-making inferences about pics
*questions and answers(questionarries)
*describing a situateion
*summarizing
*problem solving
* discussion
*role plays and simulations
*dialogues
*using authentic materials(menus tickets timetables adverts leaflets)
*prepared talks
*sounds as stimuli
*gapped recorded conversations
Integrating speaking with other skills: -pointing-talking a stand-finding a voice in the classroom
Affective filter it’s a impediment to learning or acquisition caused by negative emotional responses to one’s environment;
Silent period time of English lesson get a lot of listening, S are not confident, T shouldn’t press them to speak
Strategic Competence ability to make up for deficinces in linguistic skills and interpretation, solve communication problem;
Communication Strat egies:
1.Achievments strategies:
a)strategies based on mother tongue(guessing strategies )
-anglicizing (foreignising)
-code-switching(borrowing)
-literal translation
b)strategies based on interlanguage:
-word-coinage
-generalization-restructingc)
co-operate strat.
2.Reduction strategies – avoidance-meaning replacement;
Reading:
Ways of reading:
Phonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters (e.g., that the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, ck or ch spellings) and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words
Extensive Reading usually means reading a lot of self-selected easy, interesting texts, and doing few or no exercises afterwards. Extensive Reading is a way to teach a foreign language (in general) and a way to teach reading (in particular).
Extensive Reading: It is the view of Palmer (1964) that “extensive reading” is considered as being reading rapidly. The readers read books after books. Its attention is paid to the meaning of the text itself not the language. The purpose of extensive reading is for pleasure and information. Thus, extensive reading is also termed as “supplementary reading”. longer texts for pleasure and needing global understanding
Intensive Reading: The work of Palmer (1921) notes that “intensive reading” means that the readers take a text, study it line by line, and refer at very moment to the dictionary about the grammar of the text itself. shorter texts, extracting specific information, accurate reading for detail.
Scanning refers to the act of briefly reading through the passage. You do not go into detail to interpret every single detail. The purpose of scanning is to just simply know what the passage is talking about, who are the characters, and some other information that is more of general.
Skimming refers to reading through a passage with great precision. The reader will be looking for clues and evidence so as to help him interpret what exactly in detail was happening and etc.
Reading Skills:
Previewing a text means gathering as much information about the text as you can before you actually read it. You can ask yourself the following questions:
Predictive reading skills are when the reader can predict or know in advance the most likely next word or words in a sentence or phrase before they actually read read them. This skill is based on the way the brain knows that some words appear more frequently together. For example, the verb 'switch' invariably it is followed either by 'on' or 'off'.
reading means comprehending a written text by extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible. For example, while looking through job ads in a newspaper we mean to locate the jobs of a particular type. A competent reader will quickly reject the irrelevant information and find what she is looking for. On the contrary, more detailed comprehension is necessary when carefully reading an article of special interest in a scientific journal.
Getting the general picture -
What reading skills should ss acquire:
Scan the text for a particular bits of inf theyare searching for
Skim a text –
Reading for pleasure –
Reading for detailed comprehension –