teaching speaking listening
TRANSCRIPT
Teaching Speaking & Listening through Communicative
Activities
Erin LowrySenior English Language Fellow
Workshop for Manizales Bilingüe February 17, 2009
The Challenge
• To integrate skills
• To provide opportunities for authentic communication contexts
• To give a reason for communication (information gaps)
• To assess these skills in an objective manner
TEACHING LISTENING
What Makes Listening Difficult?
• Clustering• Repetition• Reduced forms• Performance variables• Colloquial language• How fast someone speaks• Stress, rhythm, and intonation• Interaction
Principles for Teaching Listening
1. Expose students to different ways of processing information
– Bottom-up vs. Top-down– Interactive
2. Expose students to different types of listening
3. Teach a variety of tasks4. Consider text, difficulty, and authenticity
Helgeson, 2003
Types of Classroom Listening
• Reactive• Intensive• Responsive• Selective• Extensive• Interactive
Brown, 2001
Principles for Designing Listening Techniques
• Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating• Use authentic language and contexts• Carefully consider the form of listeners’
responses• Encourage the development of listening
strategies• Include bottom-up and top-down listening
techniques
Brown, 2001
Successful Listening Activities
• Purpose for Listening– A form of response (doing, choosing, answering,
transferring, condensing, duplicating, extending, conversing)
• Repetition depends on objectives and students’ level
• A motivating listening text is authentic and relates to students’ interests and needs
• Have the skills integrated
• Stages: Pre-task , While-task, Post-task
Activities for Beginners
• Top-down Activities– identifying emotions, understanding meaning of
sentences, recognizing the topic
Activities for Beginners
• Bottom-up Activities– discriminating between intonation contours,
phonemes, or selective listening for different morphological endings, word or sentence recognition, listening for word order
Activities for Beginners
• Interactive Activities– listening to a word and brainstorming related
words, listening to a list and categorizing the words, following directions
Listening Strategies• Teach student how to listen
– Looking for keywords– Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning– Predicting a speaker’s purpose by the context of the
spoken discourse– Associating information with one’s existing
background knowledge (activating schema)– Guessing meanings– Seeking clarification– Listening for the general gist– For tests of listening comprehension, various test-
taking strategies
Easy-to-plan Pre-Listening Activities
• Brainstorming
• Think-Pair-Share
• Word Webbing/Mind Mapping
• Team Interview
Easy-to-Plan Listening Tasks
• Agree or disagree (with explanation)• Create Venn diagrams• List characteristics, qualities, or features• Strip story (sequencing game)• Match speech to visuals• Compare and contrast to another speech or
text• Give advice
More Listening Tasks
• Compare and contrast to your own experience• Create your own version of the missing section• Plan a solution to the problem• Share reactions• Create a visual• Reenact your own version
Activities in a Listening Lesson
• Introductory – Intro to topic of the listening text and activities
that focus on the language that will be used• Main
– Comprehension activities developing different listening subskills
• Post– Learners talk about how a topic in the listening
text relates to their own lives or give opinions
Easy to Plan Post-listening Assessments
• Guess the meaning of unknown vocabulary• Analyze the speaker’s intentions• List the number of people involved and their
function in the script• Analyze the success of communication in the
script• Brainstorm alternative ways of expression
TEACHING SPEAKING
Phoneme
Morpheme
Word
Phrase
Clause
Utterance
Text
Distinctive Feature
Syllable
PHONOLOGY
MORPHOLOGY
SYNTAX
DISCOURSE
STRESS
RHYTHM
INTONATION
What Makes Speaking Difficult?
• Clustering• Redundancy• Reduced forms• Performance variables• Colloquial language• Rate of delivery• Stress, rhythm & intonation• Interaction
Tips for Teaching Speaking
• Use a range of techniques• Capitalize on intrinsic motivation • Use authentic language in meaningful
contexts• Give feedback and be careful with corrections• Teach it in conjunction with listening• Allow students to initiate communication• Encourage speaking strategies
Fluency vs. Accuracy
• Speaking at normal speed, without hesitation, repetition, or self-correction, and with the smooth use of connected speech
• Speaking using correct forms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation
Principles of Teaching SpeakingBeginners
• Provide something for the learners to talk about
• Create opportunities for students to interact by using groupwork or pairwork
• Manipulate physical arrangements to promote speaking practice
Bailey, 2005
Principles of Teaching SpeakingIntermediate
• Plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning
• Design both transactional and interpersonal speaking activities
• Personalize the speaking activities whenever possible
Bailey, 2005
Tasks & Materials
1. Conversations, guided conversations & interviews
2. Information gap & jigsaw activities3. Scripted dialogues, drama, & role-play4. Logic puzzles5. Picture-based activities6. Physical actions in speaking lessons7. Extemporaneous speaking
Communicative Tasks
• Motivation is to achieve some outcome using the language
• Activity takes place in real time• Achieving the outcome requires participants
to interact• No restriction on language used
Example Communicative Tasks
• Information gaps• Jigsaw activities• Info gap race (p. 83)• Surveys• Guessing games
References• Bailey, K.M. (2005). Practical English Language Teaching: Speaking. New York: McGraw-Hill. • Bishop, G. (2006). AP State English Lecturers Retraining Program Teacher’s Handboook.
Senior ELF Seminar Series given in Hyderabad, India. • Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy.
White Plains, NY: Longman.• Helgesen, M. (2003). Listening. In D. Nunan (Ed.). Practical English Language Teaching. New
York: McGraw-Hill.• Liao, X.A. (2001). Information Gap in Communicative Classrooms. EL Forum, 39 (4). Retrieved
from http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol39/no4/p38.htm.• Lynch, T. (2003). Communication in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.• Richards, J.C. & Renandya, W.A. (eds.) (2002). Methodology in language teaching: an
anthology of current practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.• Slagoski, J.D. (2006). Teaching Listening Skills. Senior ELF Seminar given in Samara, Russia.
Retrieved from http://slagoski.googlepages.com/downloadpresentations.