TOPIC 5 TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKING

TOPIC 5 TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKINGTHE PRESENTERSSITI NUR FATINSITI NURASKINAHNURUL ATIQAH1INTRODUCTION

English should start with an emphasis on listening and speaking. Young beginners need to start with plenty of listening practice, and opportunities to listen to rich input will naturally lead to speaking tasks.Listening Aspects of difficulty

One source of difficulty is the type and length of the text the children listen to. Another factor is the familiarity of the person who they are listening to.Two basic sub-skills

Bottom-up skillsLearners build up the language

Top-down processingLearners rely on their schematic knowledgeHow to overcome the problems?

Teacher can adjust the speed of their speech and modify their language.Teacher can also repeat messages and use gestures and facial expressions to help children to work out the meaning. Support with listening

Teacher may give the students listening task to help them to be better. As an example, the Listen and Do task activity.2Teacher talk in the primary English lesson

Teacher often talk a lot in the target language and this helps the children to get used of the intonations patterns and the sounds of the language.

As the students listen, they are engaged in working out what is going on and for some of the time they may choose to remain silent and just absorb the language.

3INTERACTIONAL MODIFICATIONS OF LANGUAGECommunications BreakdownWhen the breakdown is judged as unimportant, they might simply ignore it and just carry on talking.If the breakdown is serious, the partners will decide to repair and rephrase what has been said by modifying their original language use.**modifying language can include using repetitions, comprehensions checks and also confirmation checks.Listening activities for young learners

It is better to do activities that require nonverbal responses from students.As an example, listen to rhyme/action story or song and enjoy them by miming the action rather than producing the language. (TPR)New language can also be introduced with support from the teachers gestures and illustrations from the book.

Other examples of the activities are Listen and Draw the picture, Listen and Color the Clowns clothes and many more.

4Listening activities for older learners

Older learners also enjoy story telling but the teacher need to choose a suitable story that is suitable for the older learners.Teacher can also increase the length of the text and the activity types.Activities for young learners can also be adapted but the teacher must increase the level of the difficulties. As an example, Listen and Find the insects or Listen and Describe the townAs students grow older, they get better at both bottom-up and top-down processing which will make them to understand and learn better during the lesson.

5TEACHING SPEAKINGFluent speakers

To speak fluently we have to speak and think at the same time. As we speak we must monitor our output and correct any mistake as well as planning what we are going to say next. Fluent speakers will also have to learn a range of other things such as what is appropriate to say in certain situations, how to manage conversations and also how to interrupt during the conversations.Teacher must make sure that the students already know what is appropriate in which situations and also how to be polite when interrupting.

6Speaking activities with younger groups

Teacher will help the students to construct utterances together.The use of chunks See you tomorrowAs an example, teacher can do Guessing Games One child will come out in front of the class and mimes an animal and the others will try to guess the animal.Speaking activites with older learners

Teacher can use simple dialogues or drills.As an example, the teacher can conduct an interview or also role-play which may require spontaneous, creative language use.

7SUMMARYListening and speaking are the two most important skills in most TEYL programmes. The development of listening can be the basic of initial speaking practice. Both younger and older learners need plenty of practice with listening and speaking activities and need confidence building to be able to speak up. It is important for teacher to plan both their listening and speaking activities according to their leaners age, interests and abilities.8