Unit3 Mod2

Unit 3 The Teaching Teachi ng and Learning Learni ng of ESOL Module 2 Listening Liste ning and Reading Readi ng

At the end of this module you will:a) be able able to identif identify y a range of of skills skills needed needed for for successfu successfull reading b) know ways ways of traini training ng learners learners to to develop develop those those skills skills c) underst understand and why why learners learners have have difficu difficulty lty with with listenin listening g d) be able able to help help students students to to develop develop listeni listening ng skills skills e) begin begin to be be aware aware of how how a skills skills lesson lesson is put togethe together r

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THE SKILLS - INTRODUCTION There are 4 primary language skills, usually referred to as: speaking, listening, reading and writing. It is important to distinguish between them (though they are very much interlinked in many situations) as they demand different abilities, eg giving a speech requires a different skill from understanding what you hear when someone else gives a speech, or to presenting the information in the speech in written form or to reading what someone else has written on the subject. All these four skills must be included in a general English teaching syllabus. There are courses in English for Specific Purposes, which need to be heavily weighted in one or two of the skills eg courses for telephone operators teach more listening and speaking. However, even courses as specific as that need a certain amount of the other skills - a telephonist may need to read a memo, or leave a written message for someone, thus needing the skills of reading and writing. There are further sound reasons for including all the four skills in the syllabus and often in a single lesson: 1. People get tired after a certain period of activity, they need a rest or change of activity - the saying - 'A change is as good as a rest' certainly applies to the language classroom. 2. In any group there will be several different styles of learner. For example while some adults need to write what they learn in oral practice because they get comfort from the written word, others will not need to see the written word. If you give the class the chance to hear and say and see and write a piece of language you will be catering for all styles of learner.















SKILLS AND THE TEXTBOOK Some textbooks put emphasis on one or two skills and either omit or downgrade the others. Books which lay great importance on grammar often focus mainly on reading and writing, whereas audio-lingual course books concentrate on listening and speaking (they are however course books which have been written and need to be read). Before taking on a new class, look carefully at the textbook to see if it provides insufficient practice in any of the four skills. Plan ahead and be ready with supplementary material should the book be lacking in practice in any particular skill. Writing is the most commonly neglected, by the way! Authentic texts, readers, recordings of dialogues, extracts from DVD and contemporary news downloads or articles from the internet will be very useful for this purpose. Start making your collection now! Although real life communication rarely consists of only one of the four skills, it is important to look at the skill areas separately to begin with in order to identify what learners need to be able to do, and how we, as teachers, can best help them acquire that ability. What mistakes do teachers make? Look at these confessions.

I translate words in texts for my students when they ask me. I play the tape over and over as many times as the students want me to, usually about 4 or 5. I usually give my students the tapescript to look at while they listen. If I don’t they never understand. I like having discussions, but the same students talk all the time. I don’t use long texts in class because my students can’t read long texts. I don’t do writing in class except writing down board work and some worksheet completion, as it wastes time. My students write for homework. I translate unknown words for my students before they read a dialogue or text, otherwise they couldn’t read it.















Listening skills are so important that we have to make sure a range of training techniques are employed and not rely on students to 'pick up' by themselves what the language sounds like. This rarely happens, and leads to the situation where learners may be highly competent in written skills, or have an excellent knowledge of grammar, but are unable to comprehend the simplest of listening passages. It is essential that we recognise areas of potential difficulty and plan our listening activities and materials accordingly. First, however, we need to consider problem areas in listening and then possible solutions to those difficulties.















Listen to the sound file (Listening Task.mp3) and complete the table below:Problems learners have

Ways we can help

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

(Please submit all tasks together at the end of the module.)















When our attention is focussed and we are listening for a particular purpose, we call this 'Intensive listening'. For example, we could be listening for details of the weather in our region, a train departure time or the football results of our favourite team. As we listen carefully, we select the information we require and ignore the rest. Because we know beforehand what we want to hear, it becomes easier to concentrate and focus our attention to listen selectively. There are several ways of training our students to develop the skills required for intensive listening. a) Prediction By asking students to predict what they are going to hear, based on a topic word or sentence, you are preparing your learners for what to expect, and guided questions help them decide what to listen for, and keep them focussed on the main points. This technique can be repeated towards the end of the listening text by asking students to predict the ending. This can be done in pairs or groups and is particularly successful with narratives. This keeps students actively involved in the listening process. b) Questions Different types of exercises will ensure that listening skills are being developed. As with reading skills, exercises can be set midway as well as at the end of the listening text, and can be in the form of true/false questions, 'wh' questions (who, what, where), sentence completion, gapfilling, error correction, table filling, form-filling etc.

EXTENSIVE LISTENING

















by recognising changes in direction or topic when listening to speeches, or longer listening passages, or taking notes in university lectures. Exercises in extensive listening A general pre-set question given before listening can prepare the students and encourage them not to worry about details but to concentrate on understanding the general idea. Questions given afterwards such as 'How would you describe A's feelings?' allow them to interpret what they have understood without worrying about specifics. It is almost impossible for students to do both. They can’t listen intensively for a long time and they don’t notice mood while they are listening for precise information. Check tasks to make sure that you do not have them trying to do too many things at once. SELF-CHECK 3:2 1 Here are two different listening activities: a) listening to a group discussing the British Royal Family and deciding whether the general feeling is pro- or anti- Royalists b) listening to the travel news for motorway hold-up information The first involves extensive listening. The second intensive listening for specific information. In a) what helps you identify the general feeling of each of the speakers? Who is the most negative or positive? A B or C? In b) what specific information/key words would you be listening out for if you were hearing this in the car south of Knutsford on the M6?

















B: The Queen should be should be in good shape - wish I had that many people to look after me when I’m old and it’s not real work like C: Yeah, all those dinners and stuff like parties - but I bet she gets bored, poor thing - oh no another local Balmoral special. A: The main problem is there are too many of them ‘minor Royals’. B: I agree how many is it now? A: Loads, I dunno. Transcript (b) News is coming in now of diversions in place northbound below Junction 19 for Knutsford on the M6. The northbound carriageway is completely closed due to a lorry shedding its load of chocolate sauce across all three lanes. Northbound drivers are being directed to leave the motorway at junction 18 for Holmes Chapel and rejoin the motorway at Junction 19. The diversions will be in place for about 6 hours and motorists are advised to use other routes if possible as tailbacks are building up back to Junction 16. COMMENT Every text that you use in the classroom needs to be looked at carefully. If you are going to design useful questions then you need to be able to identify the important points. It’s no use getting involved in teaching student about ‘Balmoral’ in Transcript (a) or ‘chocolate sauce’ in Transcript (b)!

















Available materials Now we have arrived at our first module on texts, look around at your situation with regards to materials. If you are not teaching, what is your possible future destination? If you are teaching, how do you rate the available resources? TESOL teaching situations are very varied. Some teachers may barely have their own stable internet connection in their local internet café and no printer. Others may have interactive white boards and projectors in every classroom. Cassette recorders are still used in a lot of schools and some of those do not even have a recording facility. While this module explores the different possibilities, it will be up to you to adapt to your situation. For TASK 2 you are going to use a news broadcast as a stimulus for listening practice. First here is some practice designed to get you thinking about questions and what information students are able to access. SELF-CHECK 3:2 2 Look at the transcript below taken from a news bulletin and make notes on the following questions: TRANSCRIPT OF THE SIX O’CLOCK NEWS BBC RADIO THREE 5 JUNE 2007 President Bush has made a direct appeal to Russia to embrace plans for a missile defence system in mainland Europe. In a speech in the Czech Republic, Mr. Bush said that the cold war was over, and Russia had nothing to fear. He went on to criticise the Russian government’s record on democracy. Channel Four is ignoring a request by Princes William and Harry not to

















A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a 32 year old Kate Beadley, who disappeared after going out on a date in West London. Police discovered a woman’s body in woods near Watford yesterday. Carl Joseph Taylor, who’s twenty-seven, was remanded in custody until September. The former White House aide to the US Defence Secretary, Dick Cheney, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for perjury. Louis Libby lied to an investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA agent to the press. The Palestinian president, Mahmood Abass, has marked the 40th anniversary of the start of the six-day Middle East war of 1967 with a warning that his people are on the brink of civil war. He said internal fighting was at least as dangerous as the occupation which followed Israel’s capture of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. In the City, the 100 Share Index closed down 21 points, at 6642 (read as sixty six - forty two) And the weather tonight will stay dry with clear periods, and some misty cloud across eastern and central areas. Tomorrow, that cloud will clear, leaving warm sunshine. The best of the sun will be in the west.

















3. What topics topics in the bulletin bulletin are fairly fairly easy to understand? understand?

4. What topic topic do you think is the the most obtuse or complicated? complicated?

5. Underline Underline the number numbers s in the trans transcrip cript. t. 6. Underline Underline the names names in in the transcri transcript. pt. 7. Can you find find any areas areas of vocabulary that you could exploit exploit in a lesson?

8. What section section of the listening listening would would you choose choose for an intensive intensive listening activity?

9. What secti section on would would you not focus on on at all? all?



















COMMENT 1. This is not suitable for beginners but low intermediates could access this text in the form of a gap fill listening activity focusing on certain words: President Bush has made a direct appeal to Russia to embrace plans for a ………..system in mainland Europe. In a speech in the Czech Republic, Mr. Bush said that the ………was over, and Russia had nothing to fear. He went on to criticise the Russian government’s record on …………… Note that the missing words are thematically linked and could be a basis for discussion. Do not choose words to miss out at random. 2. The students will struggle with idioms like making a U turn and buckling under pressure. pressure. Concepts such as the idea of ‘in of ‘in the public interest’ and interest’ and ‘gross ‘gross disrespect’ are disrespect’ are also hard work. There are a number of words connected with crime that will need to be dealt with - perjury, remanded in custody, leaked information leaked information and so on. 3. The two easiest topics to understand are the weather and the body found in the woods as these are written in a very straightforward way. 4. The hardest one without explanation is probably the one on the Princes. The sentence structure and flow of ideas is not straightforward,



















Now consider the following extract: Students can improve their listening skills - and gain valuable language input - through a combination of extensive and intensive listening material and procedures. Listening of both kinds is especially important since it provides the perfect opportunity to hear voices other than the teacher's, enables students to acquire good speaking habits as a result of the spoken English they absorb and helps to improve their pronunciation.

Extensive listening Just as we can claim that extensive reading helps students to acquire vocabulary and grammar and that, furthermore, furthermore, it make students students better better readers readers (see below), below), so extensive extensive listening listening (where a teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they listen to and to do so for pleasure and general general langua language ge improvement improvement)) can also have a dramatic dramatic effect effect on a student' student's s langua language ge learning. Extensive listening will usually take place outside the classroom: in the students' home, car or on personal MP3 players as they travel from one place to another. The motivational power of such an activity increases dramatically when students make their own choices about what they are going to listen to. Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of sources. Many simplified readers are now published with an audio version on cassette or CD. These provide ideal sources of listening material. Many students will enjoy reading and listening at the same time, using the reader both in book form and on an audio track. Students can also have their own copies of coursebook CDs or tapes, tapes, or record recording ings s which which accom accompa pany ny other other book books s writte written n especi especial ally ly at their their level. level. They They can download download podcasts from a range of sources or they can listen to English language language broadcasts broadcasts online, either as they happen or as 'listen again' events on websites such as www.bbc.co.uk/radio. Of course, radio broadcasts are authentic and as such they may cause some learning problems for



















They can record their responses to what they have heard in a personal journal or fill in report forms which we have prepared, asking them to list the topic, assess the level of difficulty and summarise the contents of a recording. We can have them write comments on cards which are kept in a separate comments box, add their responses to a large class listening poster or write comments on a student website. The purpose of these or any other tasks is to give students more and more reasons to listen. If they can then share their information with colleagues, they will feel they have contributed to the progres progress s of the whole whole group. group. The The motiva motivatio tional nal power power of such such feelin feelings gs should should not be underestimated.

Intensive listening: using audio material Many teachers use audio material on tape, CD or hard disk when they want their students to practise listening skills. This has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Advantages: recorded material allows students to hear a variety of different voices apart from just their own teacher's. It gives them an opportunity to 'meet' a range of different characters, especially where 'real' people are talking. But even when recordings contain written dialogues or extracts from plays, plays, they offer a wide variety variety of situation situations s and voices. voices. Audio Audio material material is portabl portable e and readily readily availa available ble.. Tapes Tapes and and CDs are extrem extremely ely cheap, cheap, and and machin machines es to play play them them are relati relativel vely y inexpensive. Now that so much audio material is offered in digital form, teachers can play recorded tracks in class directly from computers (either stand-alone or on a school network). For all these reasons, most coursebooks include CDs and tapes, and many teachers rely on recorded material to provide a significant source of language input. Disadvantages: in big classrooms with poor acoustics, the audibility of recorded material often gives cause for concern. It is sometimes difficult to ensure that all the students in a room can hear equally well. Another problem with recorded material in the classroom is that everyone has to listen at the same speed, a speed dictated by the recording, not by the listeners. Although this replicates the situation of radio, it is less satisfactory when students have to take information from the recording (though see below). Nor can they, themselves, interact with the speakers on the audio track in any way and they can't see the speaking taking place. For many of these reasons, students may wonder



















even when we set prediction and gist activities for Type 1 tasks, we can return to the recording again for Type 2 tasks, such as detailed comprehension, text interpretation or language analysis. Or we might play the recording again simply because our students want us to. However, we do not want to bore the students by playing them the same recorded material again and again, nor do we want to waste time on useless repetition. As with reading, a crucial part of listening practice is the lead-in we involve students in before they listen to recorded material, for, despite John Field's comments about long pre-listening phases, what students do before they listen will have a significant effect on how successfully they listen, especially when they listen for the first time. In a recent study Anna Ching-Shyang Chang and John Read wanted to find out what kind of listening support was most helpful for students who were doing listening tests. Overwhelmingly, whether students were ‘high' or ‘low-proficiency' listeners, they found that giving students background knowledge before they listened was more successful than either letting them preview questions or teaching them some key vocabulary before they listened (ChingShyang Chang and Read 2006: 375-397). Of course, listening practice is not the same as testing listening; on the contrary, our job is to help students become better listeners by blending Type 1 and Type 2 tasks so that they become more and more confident confident and capable when they listen to English. But what this study shows is that activating students' schemata and giving them some topic help to assist them in making sense of the listening is a vital part of our role.

Who controls the recorded material? We said that a disadvantage of recorded material was that students all had to listen at the same speed - that is the speed of the recording, rather than at their own listening speed. Nevertheless, there are things we can do about this. Students control stop and start: some teachers get students to control the speed of recorded listening. They tell the teacher when they want the recording to be paused and when they are happy for it to resume. Alternatively, a student can be at the controls and ask his or her classmates to say when they want to stop or go on. lt is possible that students may feel exposed or embarrassed when they have to ask the teacher to pause the recording. One possible way of avoiding this is to have all



















Intensive listening: 'live' listening A popular way of ensuring genuine communication is live listening, where the teacher and/or visitors to the class talk to the students. This has obvious advantages since it allows students to practise listen listenin ing g in face-to face-to-fa -face ce intera interacti ction ons s and, and, espec especia ially lly,, allow allows s them them to practi practise se listen listenin ing-r g-rep epair air strategies, such as using formulaic expressions (Sorry? What was that? I didn't catch that), repeating up to the point where communication breakdown occurred, using rising intonation intonation (She didn't like the ... ?) , or rephrasing and seeing if the speaker confirms the rephrasing (You mean she said she didn't know anything? if anything? if the speaker says something like She denied all knowledge of the affair). Students can also, by their expressions and demeanour, indicate if the speaker is going too slowly or too fast. Above all, they can see who they are listening to and respond not just to the sound of someone's voice, but also to all sorts of prosodic and paralinguistic paralinguistic clues. Live listening can take the following forms: Reading aloud: an enjoyable activity, when done with conviction and style, is for the teacher to read aloud to a class. This allows the students to hear a clear spoken version of a written text and can be extremely enjoyable if the teacher is prepared to read with expression and conviction.The teacher can also read or act out dialogues, either by playing two parts or by inviting a colleague into the classroom. This gives students a chance to hear how a speaker they know well (the teacher) would act in different conversational settings. Story-telling: teachers are ideally placed to tell stories which, in turn, provide excellent listening material. At any stage of the story, the students can be asked to predict what is coming next, to describe people in the story or pass comment on it in some other way. Interviews: one of the most motivating listening activities is the live interview, especially where students themselves think up the questions. In such situations, students really listen for answers they themselves have asked for - rather than adopting other people's questions. Where possible, we should have strangers visit our class to be interviewed, but we can also be the subject of interviews ourselves. In such circumstances we can take on a different persona to make the interview more interesting or choose a subject we know about for the students to interview us on.





















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Feedback organiser : when our students have completed the task, we should lead a feedback session to check that they have completed it successfully. We may start by having them compare their answers in pairs and then ask for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular. Students often appreciate giving paired answers like this since, by sharing their knowledge, they are also sharing their responsibility for the answers. Because listening can be a tense tense experie experience, nce, encouragi encouraging ng this kind of cooperat cooperation ion is highly highly desirab desirable. le. It is important to be supportive when organising feedback after a listening if we are to counter any negative expectations expectations students might have, and if we wish to sustain their motivation.

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Prompter: when students have listened to a recording for comprehension purposes, we can prompt them to listen to it again in order to notice a variety of language and spoken features. Sometimes we can offer them script dictations (where some words in a transcript are blanked out) to provoke their awareness of certain language items.

Film and video So far we have talked about recorded material as audio material only. But of course, we can also have students listen while they watch film clips on video, DVD or online. There are many good reason reasons s for encou encourag ragin ing g stude students nts to watch watch whil while e they they listen listen.. In the first first place place,, they they get to see see 'language in use'. This allows them to see a whole lot of paralinguistic behaviour. For example, they can see how intonation matches facial expression and what gestures accompany certain phrases (e.g. shrugged shoulders when someone says I don't don't know), know), and they can pick up a range of cross-



















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Silent viewing (for music): the same technique can be used with music. Teachers show a sequence without sound and ask students to say what kind of music they would put behind it and why. When the sequence is then shown again, with sound, students can judge whether they chose music conveying the same mood as that chosen by the film director.

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Freeze frame: at any stage during a video sequence we can freeze the picture, stopping the participants dead in their tracks. This is extremely useful for asking the students what they think will happen next or what a character will say next.

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Partial viewing: one way of provoking the students' curiosity is to allow them only a partial view of the pictures on the screen. We can use pieces of card to cover most of the screen, only leaving the edges on view. Alternatively, we can put little squares of paper all over the screen and remove them one by one so that what is happening is only gradually revealed. A variation of partial viewing occurs when the teacher uses a large ‘divider’, placed at right angles to the screen so that half the class can only see one half of the screen, while the rest of the class can only see the other half. They then have to say what they think the people on the other side saw.

Listening (and mixed) techniques Listening routines, based on the same principles as those for viewing, are similarly designed to



















Listening lesson sequences No skill exists in isolation (which is why skills are integrated in most learning sequences). Listening can thus occur at a number of points in a teaching sequence. Sometimes it forms the jumping-off point for the activities which follow. Sometimes it may be the first stage of a 'listening and acting out' sequence where students role-play the situation they have heard on the recording. Sometimes live listening may be a prelude to a piece of writing which is the main focus of a lesson. Other lessons, however, have listening training as their central focus. However much we have planned a lesson, we need to be flexible in what we do. Nowhere is this more acute than in the provision of live listening, where we may, on the spur of the moment, feel the need to tell a story or act out some role. Sometimes this will be for content reasons - because a topic comes up - and sometimes it may be a way of re-focusing our students' attention. attention. Most listening sequences sequences start with a Type 1 task before moving on to more specific Type 2 explorations of the text. In general, we should aim to use listening material for as many purposes as possible - both for practising a variety of skills and as source material for other activities - before students finally become tired of it.

Examples of listening sequences In the following examples, the listening activity is specified, the skills which are involved are detailed and the way that the listening text can be used within a lesson is explained.



















A popular technique for having students understand the gist of a story - but which also incorporates prediction and the creation of expectations - involves the students in listening in order to put pictures in the sequence in which they hear them. In this example, students look at the following four pictures:



















ANNA: STUART:

ANNA: STUART:

This just gets worse and wo rse! So what happened? Well, I told told them it washouse m y and a t first first they wouldn't believe me. It took a long time! I can imagine. And yo u see, that's why I'm late!

The students check their answers with each other and then, if necessary, listen again to ensure that they have the sequence sequence correct (C, A, D, B). The teacher t eacher can now get the students to listen again again or look at the tapescript, noting phrases of interest, such as those that Stuart uses to express regret and apology (Sorry I'm late, I woke up late, 'Fraid so), Anna's insistent questioning questioning (What time do you call this? Well? So Well? So what happened? So happened? So what did you do? How did you get out of that one?) and her use of repetition both to be judgmental and to get Stuart to keep going with an explanation she obviously finds ridiculous (You woke up late, Yes, that is really stupid, Quite a morning! I can imagine). The class can then go on to role-play similar scenes in which they have to come up with stories and excuses for being late for school or work. Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.





















TASK FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTOR TASK 2 You are going to prepare a listening exercise which will firstly train extensive listening skills, then move on to develop intensive listening skills. Because we have already mentioned the importance of using authentic materials, your task is this:



















PART 2 READING SKILLS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE READ IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE? It does not necessarily follow that because students can read in their own language that they will be efficient readers in English. Training in the skills involved in reading must be given, as reading is not an inbuilt skill. It is also not a passive process, contrary to traditional belief. Reading is an active process in which practice in all the sub-skills is vital as no improvement can be effected without guided practice.



















The writer’s message comes to us and we interpret it. If we answer the questions in a certain way then we are sharing experience with the writer. We may think we know about bank managers and how they are bywords for respectability and regularity. But if we think bank managers are crooks who take bribes as a matter of course and have henchmen to kill their enemies then the sentence will mean something very different to us and the answers will be very different.



















Practise at home Get the whole meaning of a text. Read anything (signs, adverts, packets) Enjoy reading and try out new things • • •

TYPES OF READING A student needs to be able to read on different levels, both extensive, extensive, and intensive. intensive. Think back to the listening section. The purpose for which the student requires the language determines the particular sub-skills of



















Are you looking at the grammar of certain types of texts? Do you want the students to act on the information? Much of this will depend on the nature of the class - are they general English students, University students or Business English students? Where are they now? In their own country or in an English speaking environment? SELF-CHECK 3:2 4





















example, read the following words aloud: Dak kelp. Do you understand what you have just read? You can read the words and I



















Tanya then screamed a warning to other people on the second and third floors. One mother jumped from a second floor window with her



















NEWS



















But also somebody screamed, somebody smelt something somebody pounded (made a noise) and somebody picked up something. (Writes



















This teacher is encouraging them to read quickly through a text and pick out the most important points - so they will be scanning the text.



























































































































































































Unit3 Mod2

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