When we think we teach skills

Listening
“People never listen without a purpose, except perhaps in a language class.”
(Gary Buck)

Teach and practise strategies for dealing with not understanding
Sorry? / Pardon?
I didn’t get that, what did you say?
Sorry I’m not sure what you mean.
I’m not with you.
Could you speak more slowly please?

Bottom-up strategies include:
•Listening for specific details
•Recognizing cognates
•Recognizing word-order patterns

Possible activities:
•Identify the referents of pronouns used in a conversation
•Recognize if a sentence is active or passive
•Identify major constituents in a sentence: subject, object, verb, adverb
•Recognize the word stress to mark the information focus of a sentence
•Distinguish between sentences containing similar sounding tenses
•Recognize the time reference of a sentence
•Distinguish between positive and negative statements
•Identify prepositions in rapid speech
•Distinguish between Yes/No and Wh-questions.

Top-down strategies include:
•Listening for the main idea
•Predicting
•Drawing inferences
•Summarizing

Possible activities:
•Listen and infer the topic of a conversation
•Listen to conversations and match them to the pictures
•Identify the setting
•Read a list of key points to be covered in a conversation, listen and put them in sequence
•Read the information about a topic, listen and check whether it was mentioned •Read one side of as telephone conversation and guess the other speaker’s responses; listen and check
•Look at the pictures of people speaking and guess what they might be saying or doing; listen and check
•Complete a story, then listen to how the story really ended
•Guess what news headlines might refer to, listen and check

Strategies//sub-skills:
-Decoding features of connected speech
-Understanding key words (understanding sentence stress)
-Retention
-Recognizing non-verbal signals

How to teach:
Teach pronunciation! Drill=))
Analyse the language before they listen
Ensure repeated opportunities to hear the text
Use graded listening

Reading

vSkimming
vScanning
vIntensive reading: reading shorter texts, to extract specific info. This is more an accuracy activity involving reading in detail.
vInferring
v Extensive reading: reading longer texts for pleasure. This is a fluency activity involving global understanding.

Reading Strategies//Sub-skills:
-Identifying the text structure (main idea - supporting details - examples)
-Distinguishing main info from less important info
-Inferring the topic from pics, titles, layout (Forming predictions)
-Inferring writer’s attitude
-Inferring the meaning of unknown words
-Note-taking

e.g.Text structure:
Teach ‘main idea - supporting detail - examples’

e.g. Inferring words’ meanings from the context:
Teach the strategy of understandign key words, parts-of-speech back-up

Writing

Strategies//Sub-skills:
- getting the grammar right, spelling accurately
- having a range of vocabulary
- punctuating meaningfully
- using the conventions of layout correctly, e.g., in letters
- using a range of sentence structures
- linking ideas and information to develop a topic
- developing and organizing the content clearly and convincingly.

How to teach:
-Make it active and purposeful
-Explain the strategies, do it explicitly, not the case to avoid running commentary!=)
-Do genre or - process writing!

© Marina Mishcherikova, Delta Course 2019

Speaking

Strategies//Sub-skills:
-Turn-taking, interrupting
-Back-channeling
-Repair strategies
-Conversation management (opening, closing)
-Giving opinions (functional voc - a feature you want them to employ)
-etc.
Do move from fluency to accuracy!