teaching english listening - module one final)

8/14/2019 Teaching English Listening - Module One Final)

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Module 1

(Week Two and Three)

Sources: Teaching By Principles by DouglasBrown & Teaching Knowledge Spratt et al

Teaching English Listening/Speaking


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Listening (Unit One)

Some of the main difficulties in listeningare:

Clustering

RedundancyReduced forms

Performance variables

Colloquial languages

Rate of delivery

Stress, rhythm and intonation

Interaction


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Listening According to Brown, some important

strategies for teaching listening are:

Include a focus on listening in an integrated-

skills courseUse techniques that are intrinsically

motivating

Use authentic languages and contexts

Carefully consider the form of the listenersresponses


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Group reflection (as class or ingroups)

Consider the listening strategies wediscussed. Outline some techniques youcould use to teach these strategies tostudents in Korean middle schools.

Listen to a short audio clip (CD) of a naturalconversation and listen for the reducedforms that you hear in the conversation.What is the best way to get Koreanstudents to be aware of these forms whenlistening?


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Group reflection

Brown advises that teachers usetechniques that are intrinsicallymotivating and encourage use ofauthentic language in meaningfulcontexts to improve speaking. Whatdoes this mean, in your own words? Makea list of ways teachers in Korean schoolsmight motivate students, and use

authentic materials.


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Speaking (Unit Two)The difficulties in speaking are similar to

listening

Clustering

RedundancyReduced forms

Performance variables

Colloquial languages

Rate of delivery

Stress, rhythm and intonation

Interaction


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SpeakingSome principles for teaching speaking

are:

Focus on both fluency and accuracy,

depending on objective.Use techniques that are intrinsically

motivating

Encourage use of authentic language in

meaningful contextsProvide appropriate feedback and materials

Use the natural link between speaking andlistening.

Give students o ortunities to initiate oral


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Stress, rhythm and intonationOne of the points that Brown makes about

speaking is thatstress, rhythm and intonation are difficult to

learn and teach.Review this articleand discuss. Slide 1,2,3,4
http://esl.about.com/od/speakingadvanced/a/timestress.htmhttp://esl.about.com/od/speakingadvanced/a/timestress.htm


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Speaking activityTo each small groups assign one intonation

sheet.

Each student should choose at least oneintonation style and practice saying it. E.g.

hello to a friend youve not seen in threeyears.

After a few minutes each group member takesturn standing in front of class and saying theirsentence or word in a particular intonation. Forexample, each student from the group withthe paper marked hello should stand up andsay that word in their respective intonations.Classmates can see the list of possibilities and

have to guess which fictional situation istakin lace.


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'Hello'

to a friend

to a friend you haven't seen for 3 years

to a neighbour that you don't like

to a 6 month old baby

to someone you have just found doing something they shouldn't

to someone on the phone when you're not sure if they are still on the other end


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'Goodbye'

to a member of your family as they are boarding at theairport

to someone who has been annoying you

to a child starting his very first day at school


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'How are you?'

to someone you haven't seen for 20 years

to someone who has recently lost a member of thefamily

to someone who didn't sleep in their own bed lastnight


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'I never go to pubs'

bya person who totally disapproves of drinkingalcohol to someone who

often goes to pubs

as a response to someone who has told you they

sometimes go to pubs

said before: but I quite like discos!


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'What have you done?'

to someone who claims to have fixed your television onlythat

now it's worse than before

to someone who is scolding you for not doing anythingwhen you suspect the same about them.

to someone who has just done something very bad andwhich has serious consequences


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Practicum/presentation (Weekthree)

Week three: preparation in lab or class(first class) and presentation (second

class) of the third week.

Look at a unit in one of your textbooks thatpresents new language for speech. Find orcreate a warmer or lead-in for these target

forms. Do (teach) this warmer with yourclassmates.


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Intonation and Stress - Key to Understanding andBeing Understood

By KennethBeare

Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds ittakes.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in thedistance.

Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, tryspeaking this sentence aloud.

He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to doany homework in the evening.

Time required? Probably about 5 seconds.

Wait a minute, you might say, the first sentence ismuch shorter than the second sentence!

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in thedistanceHe can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do

any homework in the evening
http://esl.about.com/bio/Kenneth-Beare-2205.htmhttp://esl.about.com/bio/Kenneth-Beare-2205.htmhttp://esl.about.com/bio/Kenneth-Beare-2205.htmhttp://esl.about.com/bio/Kenneth-Beare-2205.htm


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This simple exercise makes a very important point abouthow we speak and use English. Namely, English isconsidered a stressedlanguage while many otherlanguages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It

means that, in English, we give stress to certain wordswhile other words are quickly spoken (some students sayeaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, eachsyllable receives equal importance (there is stress, buteach syllable has its own length).

Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why

we quickly speak, or swallow, a number of words in asentence. In syllabic languages each syllable has equalimportance, and therefore equal time is needed. Englishhowever, spends more time on specific stressed wordswhile quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

Let's look at a simple example: the modal verb "can".When we use the positive form of "can" we quickly glideover the can and it is hardly pronounced.

They can come on Friday. (stressed words underlined)

On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't"

we tend to stress the fact that it is the negative form byalso stressin "can't".


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As you can see from the above example the sentence, "Theycan't come on Friday" is longer than "They can come on Friday"because both the modal "can't" and the verb "come" arestressed.

So, what does this mean for your speaking skills?

Well, first of all, you need to understand which words wegenerally stress and which we do not stress. Basically, stress

words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as

Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter

(most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct

Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting

Adverbs e.g. often, carefully


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Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDSsuch as

Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as Pronouns e.g. they, she, us

Let's return to the beginning example to demonstrate how thisaffects speech.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.

(14 syllables)He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do anyhomework in the evening . (22 syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30%longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to

speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in eachsentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't

teaching english listening - module one final)

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