Teaching language-skills

TEACHING LANGUAGE
SKILLS
SUNEETA SINGH
GISTC (KAPURTHALA)

Why Integrating?
It gives students greater motivation
that converts to better retention of
principles of effective speaking,
listening, reading, and writing. Rather
than being forced in a course that
limits itself to performance, students
are given a change to diversity their
effort in more meaningful task

Models of integrated skills approaches:
• Content-Based Instruction
• Theme –Based Instruction
• Experiential Teaching
• The Episode Hypothesis
• Task-Based Teaching

Content-Based Instruction
• It is integrates the learning of some specific
subject-matter content with the learning of a
second language
• Example: Immersion program for Elementary-
school children

Theme-Based Instruction
It is important to distinguish:
- The primary purpose of a course is to instruct
student in a subject-matter area, and
language is of secondary and subordinate
interest.
-place in equal value on content and language
objectives.

The activities
• Use environmental statistic and fact for
classroom reading, writing, discussion, and
debate
• Carry out research and writing project
• Have students create their own environmental
awareness material
• Arrange field trips
• Conduct stimulation games

Experiential Teaching
• It’s an activities that engage both left- and
right-brain processing, that contextualize
language, that integrate skills, and that point
toward authentic, real-world purpose.

Example of learning-centered:
-hands-on projects
-computer activities
-role-play and stimulation

Example of teacher-controlled
-using props, realia, visuals, show-
and tell-session
-playing games

The Episode Hypothesis
• It means the presentation of language is
enhanced if students receive interconnected
sentences in a interest-provoking episode
rather than in a disconnected series of
sentences.

Task-Based Teaching
It is an activity in which:
- Meaning is primary,
- There is some communication problem to
solve,
- There is some sort of relationship to
comparable real-world activities,
- Task completion has some priority,
- The assessment of task is in terms of outcome

Listening Comprehension In
Pedagogical Research
Some specific questions about listening comprehension:
- What are listeners “doing” when they listen?
- What factors affect good listening?
- What are the characteristics of “real-life” listening?
- What are the many things listeners listen for?
- What are some principles for designing listening
techniques?
- How can listening techniques be interactive?
- What are some common techniques for teaching
listening?

An Interactive Model of Listening
Comprehension
The process:
- The hearer processes what we call “raw
speech” and holds an image of it in short-term
memory. (phrases, clauses, cohesive markers,
intonation, and stress pattern)
- The hearer determines the type of speech
even being processed (a conversation, a
speech, a radio broadcast)
- etc

Types of Spoken Language
 Monologue
- Planned
- Unplanned
 Dialogue
-Interpersonal ( Unfamiliar, Familiar)
- Transactional (Unfamiliar, Familiar)

What Make Listening Difficult?
• Clustering
• Redundancy
• Reduced Forms
• Performance Variables
• Colloquial Language
• Rate of delivery
• Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation
• Interaction

Types of Classroom Listening
Performance
• Reactive
• Intensive
• Responsive
• Selective
• Extensive
• Interactive

Principles for Designing Listening
Techniques
• In an interactive, four-skills curriculum, make sure that
you don’t overlook the importance of techniques that
specifically develop listening comprehension
competence.
• Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating.
• Utilize authentic language and contexts.
• Carefully consider the form of listeners’ responses..
• Encourage the development of listening strategies
• Include both bottom-up and top-down listening
techniques.

Listening Techniques From Beginning
to Advanced
• Bottom-Up Exercise
• Top-Down Exercise
• Interactive Exercise

ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN
PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH
1. Conversational discourse
2. Teaching pronunciation
3. Accuracy and fluency
4. Affective factors
5. Interactive effect

WHAT MAKES SPEAKING DIFFICULT?
 Clustering
 Redundancy
 Reduced forms
 Performance variables
 Colloquial language
 Rate of delivery
 Stress, rhythm, and intonation

TYPES OF CLASSROOM SPEAKING
PERFORMANCE
1. Imitative : Drill is a legitimate part of communicative language classroom;
drill offer the students an opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain
strings of language that may pose some linguistic difficulty-either
phonological or grammatical.
 Here are some useful guidelines for successful drill :
1. Keep them short
2. Keep them simple
3. Keep them “snappy”
4. Make sure students know why they are doing the drill.
5. Limit them to phonology or grammar points.
6. Make sure they ultimately lead to communicate goals.
7. Don’t overuse them.

2. Intensive : intensive speaking can be self-initiated or it can even
form part of some pair work activity.
3. Responsive : short replies to teacher or student initiated questions
or comments.
4. Transactional (dialogue) : carried out for the purpose of conveying
or exchanging specific information, is an extended of responsive
language.
5. Interpersonal (dialogue) : carried ot more for the purpose of
maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts
and information. Students can involve some trickier conversation
of the following factors :
• A casual register
• Colloquial language
• Emotionally charged language
• Slang
• Ellipsis
• Sarcasm
• A covert “agenda”
6. Extensive (monologue) : here the register is more formal and
deliberative.

PRINCPLES FOR DESIGNING SPEAKING
TECHNIQUES
1. Use techniques that cover the spectrum of learner needs,
from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based
focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency.
2. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques.
3. Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful
context.
4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction.
5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and
listening.
6. Give students opportunities to initiate oral
communication.
7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies.

TEACHING CONVERSATION
Richards (1990: 79-80) offered the following list of features of
conversation that can receive specific focus in classroom instruction :
• How to produce both short and long turn in conversation
• Strategies for opening and closing conversations.
• How to use both a casual style of speaking and neutral or more formal
style
• How to use conversational routine. Etc
Here are some sample task that illustrate teaching various aspect of
conversation, as well as an oral grammar practice technique:
a. Conversation-indirect (strategy consciousness-raising)
b. Conversation-direct (gambits)
c. Conversation-transactional (ordering from a catalog)
d. meaningful oral grammar practice (modal auxiliary would)
e. Individual practice: oral dialogue journals
f. Other interactive techniques

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
Our goal as a teachers of English pronunciation should
therefore be more realistically focused on clear,
comprehensible pronunciation. The factor within
learners that affect pronunciation, below are the list
that you should consider:
 Native language
 Age
 Exposure
 Innate phonetic ability
 Identity and language ego
 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation.

Research on reading a second language
1. Bottom-up and top-down processing
in bottom-up processing, readers must first recognize
a multiplicity of linguistic signal. While in top-down
processing in which we draw our own intelligence and
experience to understand text.
2. Schemata theory and background knowledge
Research has shown that reading is only incidentally
visual. More information is contributed by the reader
than by the print on the page. Skill in reading depends
on the efficient interaction between linguistic
knowledge of the world.

3. The role of affect culture
The autonomy gained through the learning of
reading strategies has been shown to be a
powerful motivator (Bamford & Day 1998), not
to mention the affective power of reading itself.
Similarly, culture plays an active role in
motivating and rewarding people for literacy.
4. The power of extended reading
John Green and Rebecca Oxford (1995) found
that reading for pleasure and reading without
looking up all the unknown words were both
highly correlated with overall language
proficiency.

TYPES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Each of the types listed below represents, or is an example of, a genre of
written language:
 Fiction
 Nonfiction
 Letters
 Memo
 Message
 Announcements
 Form, applications
 Diaries, journal
 Recipes
 Maps
 Invitations
 Comic stips, etc

CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITTEN
LANGUAGE
• Performance
• Processing time
• Distance
• Orthography
• Complexity
• Vocabulary
• formality

STRATEGIES FOR READING
COMPREHENTION
• Identify the purpose in reading
• Use grapheme rules and pattern to aid in bottom-up
decoding (especially for beginning level learners)
• Use efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid
comprehension (for intermediate to advanced levels).
• Skim the text for main ideas.
• Scan the text for specific information.
• Use semantic mapping or clustering
• Guess when you aren’t certain.
• Analyze vocabulary.
• Distinguish between literal and implied meaning.
• Capitalize on discourse marker to process relationships.

TYPES OF CLASSROOM READING
PERFORMANCE
Classroom reading performance
Oral silent
intensive Extensive
Linguistic content skimming scanning global

PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING
INTERACTIVE READING TECHNIQUES
• In an interactive curriculum, make sure that you don’t
overlook the importance of specific instruction in
reading skills.
• Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating
• Balance authencity and readability in choosing texts.
• Encourage the development of reading strategies.
• Include both bottom-up and top-down techniques.
• Follow survey, question, read, recite, review sequence.
• Subdivide your techniques into pre-reading, during-
reading, and after-reading phrases.
• Build in some evaluative aspect to your techniques.

Research on Second Language Writing
• Composing vs. writing
• Process vs. product
• Contrastive rhetoric
• Differences between L1 & L2 writing
• Authentic
• The role of the teacher

TYPES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE
• Non-fiction
• Fiction
• Letters
• Greeting cards
• Diaries journals
• Memos
• Messages
• Announcements
• Newspaper “journalese”
• Academic writing
• Forms, applications
• Questionnaires
• directions
• Labels
• Signs
• Recipes
• Bills
• Maps
• Manuals
• Menus
• Schedules
• Advertisement
• Invitations
• Directories
• Comic strips, cartoon

CHARACTERISTIC OF
WRITTEN LANGUANGE:
A WRITER’S VIEW
• permanence
• Production time
• Distance
• Orthography
• Complexity
• Vocabulary
• Formality

Micro skills For Writing
1. Produce graphemes and orthographic pattern of
English
2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to
suit the purpose
3. Produce an acceptable core of words and use
appropriate word order pattern
4. Use acceptable grammatical systems, patterns,
and rules
5. Express a particular meaning in different
grammatical forms

6. Use cohesive devices in written devices in written
discourse
7. Use rhetorical forms and conventions of written
discourse
8. Appropriately accomplish the communicative function
of written texts according to form and purposes
9. Convey links and connections between events and
communicate such relation as main idea, supporting
idea, new information, given information,
generalization and exemplification
10. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings
when writing
11. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the
context of the written text.

Types of Classroom Writing
Performance
1. Imitative
2. Intensive or controlled
3. Self-writing
4. Display writing
5. Real writing
a. Academic
b. Vocational / technical
c. Personal

PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING WRITING
TECHNIQUES
1. Incorporate practices of “good” writers.
2. Balance process and product
3. Account for cultural /literary backgrounds
4. Connect reading and wri
5. Provide as much authentic writing as possible
6. Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting,
and revising stages
7. Strive to offer techniques that are as interactive as
possible
8. Sensitively apply methods of responding to and
correcting your students’ writing
9. Clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal
convention or writing

The place of grammar
No one can tell you that grammar is
irrelevant, or that grammar is no
longer needed in a CLT framework. No
one doubts the prominence of
grammar as an organizational
framework within which
communication operates.

to Teach or Not to Teach Grammar
Grammar is important in some degree in all the
six variables :
• Age
• Proficiency levels
• Educational background
• Language skills
• Style (register)
• Needs and goal

Issues About How to Teach Grammar
• Should grammar be presented inductively or
deductively
• Should we use grammatical explanations and
technical terminology in a CLT classroom
• Should grammar be taught in separate
“grammar only” classes?
• Should teachers correct grammatical errors?

Grammar Techniques
• Charts
• Objects
• Maps and drawings
• Dialogues
• Written text

Grammar Sequencing in Textbooks and
Curricula
• Grammatical categories are one of several
considerations in curricular sequencing
• A curriculum usually manifest a logical sequence of
basic grammatical structures, but such a sequence
may be more a factor or frequency and usefulness
then of clearly identified degrees of linguistic
difficulty.
• Beyond those basic structures, a few permutations
here and there will make little difference in the
eventual success of students, as long as language is
being learned in the context of communicative
curriculum.

A “Word” About Vocabulary Teaching
• These are some guidelines for the
communicative treatment of vocabulary
instructions.
• Allocate specific class time to vocabulary
learning
• Help students to learn vocabulary in context
• Play down the role of bilinguals dictionaries
• Encourage students to develop strategies for
determining the meaning of words.
• Engage in “unplanned” vocabulary teaching

Teaching language-skills

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