TEACHING RECEPTIVE SKILL
Receptive skills are the ways in which people extract meaning from the discourse the see or hear.
A. How we read and listen
In this case the approaches process is comprehension as receptive skill.
A1 What we bring to the task
Students can understand the content of the task without knowing the language used on the task. The task should be adapted to the level we will give, like kind of task and what is the content of the task. It will make it easy to predict for the children.
A2 Reasons for reading and listening
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Instrumental: it is used to make us achieve the clear aim
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Pleasurable: it depends on the peoples’ interest.
A3 Top-down and bottom-up
In the top-down processing the reader or listener gets a general view of reading or listening passage by, in some way, absorbing the overall picture I bottom up processing the reader or listener focuses on individual words and phrases, and achieves understanding by stringing these detailed elements together to build up a whole.
A4 Different skills
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Identifying the topic: the topic can be caught by the good reader and listener quickly and make the process more effective.
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Predicting and guessing: the reader and listener can predict like vocabularies to understand.
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Reading and listening for general understanding: the reader and listener can understand without worrying too much about details, like skimming.
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Reading and listening for detailed information: it happened if there is an instruction or direction or description of scientific procedures.
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Interpreting text: listener and reader can interpret literally in meaning using variety of clues.
B. Problems and solutions
B1 Language
Languages with longer sentences are more difficult than the shorter one. Words, also there are many unfamiliar words that difficult to understand. Readers and listener should read or listen again to get the clear meaning.
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Pre-teaching vocabulary: it can be done through reading and listening text. Students can observe the words and predict the word.
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Extensive reading and listening: it is done when the reader or listener are on their own. Like when they are reading in their level will give benefit for them. It will improve their skill automatically.
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Authenticity: when readers and listeners miss the quite words, they are still able to catch the general meaning authentically.
B2 Topic and genre
Sometimes the receptive activities are not successful because the topics are unfamiliar with the students. It will decrease the students’ interest on the topic.
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Choose the right topics: choose the variety of topics that student interest in. it can be found by questionnaires, interview, or student reaction in doing activities. And should be remembered that students interest are different each other.
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Create interest: it can be done by talking many activities like ask students to predict something, sport they interest, and pictures they interest.
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Activate schemata: it can be done by giving students task and interesting activities that can activate their interest.
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Vary topics and genres: it should be suited with the students needs and interest.
B3 Comprehension tasks
The task should be comprehensive task, not testing task. It will improve the students’ receptive skill and the students’ comprehension.
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Testing and teaching: The best task is those which raise the students’ expectations and help them. The comprehension items help students to understand something rather than challenge the students. But it depends on the conditions in which the students are asked to perform that task.
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Appropriate challenge: the task should not be easy or difficult, but should be suited with the students’ level to achieve the right purposes. So, the tasks should be achievable depends on the students’ level.
B4 Negative expectations
Students do not have high expectations of reading and listening because they feel that it is to difficult to understand the passage and listening task. So, they feel that it is frustrating. How to change negative expectation into realistic optimism?
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Manufacturing success: give the students challenge suit with their level and give the clear purpose in achieving the successful by ensuring them. Learn from past negative experiences to create ideal conditions in the future.
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Agreeing on a purpose: give an agreement the purposes will be achieve on this learning, for understanding or discovering information, or what? If it is done, the students will be easy to choose how they can achieve the purposes by doing approache
CHAPTER 16 LISTENING
A. Extensive and intensive listening
Listening can also improve the students’ pronunciation if listening can be a good habit.
A1 Extensive listening
It can improve the students’ skill if it is suited with the students’ interest or pleasure and give great effect to the students. It is done outside the classroom. It is provided in tape and it also should be suited with the level of students.
A2 Intensive listening: using taped material
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Advantages: it allows students to listen variety of variety voices provided by the teacher. They also will have many different situations in talking like dialogue, etc. it is portable, cheap, and readily available.
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Disadvantages: it is not proper to be done in a big classroom with poor acoustics and audibility of taped. It is difficult to be heard by all students. The students are as listeners to the tape. They cannot interact with the tape and cannot see the speaker directly. It is also not a natural occupation.
If we want to use tape or disk as media, we have to check that the machine and sound in class are well. It also considers how may times we will play the tape in class because it is different when students are talking face to face to the real speaker. They can do clarification and repetition.
A3 Intensive listening: ‘live’ listening
It has obvious advantages because students can interrupt and clarify the speaker directly. Students also can see who are they are listening to, and the speaker sad students also can see their expressions.
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Reading aloud: it is interesting because the students can hear loudly and clearly. It is enjoyable for them, moreover, if the teacher can act out dialogues by inviting a colleague into the classroom.
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Story telling: it gives an excellent material to the students. They also can be asked to predict what happened next and be asked the character of the story.
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Interviews: it is good activity for the students because they can really listen and answer by themselves. If possible, it also can invite strangers to do interview in classroom.
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Conversation: it is also interesting if we can invite the colleague to come to the class to have conversation. It will give chance to the students to watch and listen interaction directly. It also can be done in story telling or role playing.
A4 Intensive listening: the roles of the teacher
In this case, we have to build the students’ confidence by helping the, listen better rather than their listening abilities.
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Organizer: give the clear purposes and instruction to achieve the purposes. It can be done by giving achievable and comprehensible task.
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Machine operator: if we use tape, we have to use it efficiently. We have to prepare and set it up well before entering the classroom to avoid wasting time.
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Feedback organizer: it is important to give feedback after students finish doing the task. It can be done by comparing their answer in pairs, sharing knowledge or sharing responsibility. It is important to counter negative expectation and to motivate them.
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Prompter: after finishing do listening comprehension, we can do script dictations to uplift their awareness of certain language.
B. Listening lesson sequences
Listening can occurs in a number of points in teaching, like prologue before teaching, and others. It can be a way of refocusing the students’ attention. Listening sequences sometimes involve a mixture of language skill.
B1 Examples of listening sequences
Example 1
: Interviewing a stranger
Activity
: live listening
Skills
: predicting, listening for specific information, listening for detailed information.
Age
: any
Level
: beginner and above
The students will interest in guess, can guess who the visitor is, and what level they will use. Students can do interview and clarify what the visitor has been said if it is not clear yet. After finish they can write a short biography of the visitor. They can do similar interview in role play activity.
Example 2
: Sorry I am late
Activity
: getting events in the right order
Skills
: predicting, listening for gist
Age
: young adult and above
Level
: lower intermediate
Example 3
: Telephone messages
Activity
: taking messages
Skills
: predicting, listening for specific information
Age
: teenager
Level
: elementary
Example 4
: UFO
Activity
: jigsaw listening
Skills
: listening for detailed information
Age
: adult
Level
: upper intermediate
Example 5
: We had a nice time, but.
Activity
: analyzing conversations
Skills
: predicting, listening for detailed information, listening for text construction
Age
: young adult and above
Level
: intermediate
Example 6
: At the post office
Activity
: analyzing language exchanges
:
Age
: adult
Level
: upper intermediate/advanced
C. The sound of music
Music is powerful stimulus for students engagement precisely because it speaks directly to our emotions while still allowing us to use our brains to analyze it and its effects if we so wish. It can entertain and give different atmosphere in class. They can listen, write, describe, discuss about the music.
Example 7
: Ironic
Activity
: understanding song lyrics
Skills
: listening, reading for general and detailed comprehension
Age
: young adult and above
Level
: intermediate
It is very useful to use song lyrics as text to work. Music must be popular and consider the students like. Students can bring their favorite song or use another older song. Before doing this activity, teacher should learn about the music first to know the lyrics and meaning of the music. Teacher should help the students to explain and give information about lyrics that students do not know. Teacher also can give blanked out song lyrics and ask the students to fill it out with the words that have been listed.
Source: Buku The Practice of English Language Teaching, Third edition By Jeremy Harmer
