RECEPTIVE SKILLS

- Skill together: input & output

- Role of the teacher
- Procedures: Pre-, While-, Post-
- Intensive & Extensive:
advantages & disadvantages
- Common techniques
 Group discussion
1. Procedure/ stages of teaching
Reading/Listening.
2. Criteria to choose good reading/listening
materials.
3. Kinds of Reading/Listening tasks.
4. Reasons why we should not use audio file of
reading to teach Listening.
5. Should we teach listening skill separately?
Why/ Why not?
 AGENDA
• Receptive Skills Practice - An Overview
• Traditional vs Modern Methodology
• Task feedback circle
• Eliciting and Concept checking
• Skills work guidelines
 OVERVIEW
RECEPTIVE SKILLS PRACTICE
Main focus is on real communication (understanding of
reading/listening) & focus on specific sub-skills (e.g.
inferring meaning of unknown items)

PRESENTATION “REAL LIFE”

ICP PRACTICE (CP) PRODUCTION
SCP/FREER LANGUAGE
Focus is on learning, PRACTICE
recalling & Focus on choosing USE
manipulating specific suitable items & on
language items integrating them into
conversations, etc.
 EXAM CHANGES?
• Cambridge exams test students’ ability to
use English in “Real Life” situations
• Less focus on “Language Conventions”
(e.g. spelling, subj/verb agreement, etc.)
• Successful candidates apply the sub-skills
used in every day English
 Traditional methodology
• Hand out the text or play a recording of it with
little or no preparatory work
• Ask the students to read or listen
• Ask the students detailed questions about its
informational & language content

• Question: In what ways might this type of plan

be unsatisfactory?
Listening is one of the four Macro skills. What
are some of the Listening micro skills needed?
• Understanding the gist of what is heard, e.g.
Who is talking? Where are they? What are they
doing? Relationship?
• Understanding precise information re. quantity,
reference numbers, prices, etc. when listening to
a business telephone call
• Compensating for words & phrases not heard
clearly in an informal situation e.g. at a pub or
party
 Consider how you listen to a radio weather
broadcast.
• Half-listen until you hear information relevant to your
part of the country & concentrate to catch the key
phrases.
• What would be different if you listened to one in a
foreign language you’ve been studying for a year or so?
• Even if you DID know all the words and grammar
used, you would still have to:
✓Decipher the words because the announcer “talks too
fast”
✓Try to pick out what is important and what is not.
 Modern principles
• Extensive reading & listening (for gist or for specific
information) are more common in real life than are
intensive reading & listening (word by word)
• Intensive reading & listening may inhibit development-
to worry about meaning of every word in text and so
working from the part to the whole
• Effective readers & listeners work from the whole to
the part using overall context to help clarify meaning of
individual words & structures. They tolerate
uncertainty, ignoring unknown items or inferring their
meaning from context.
The task-feedback circle
A basic procedure
 Eliciting & Concept Checks
There are three steps to eliciting:
1. You convey a clear idea to the students, perhaps by using
pictures, gestures or questions, etc.
2. The students then supply the appropriate language,
information, ideas, etc.
3. You give them feedback
You can elicit: ideas, feelings, meanings, context, memories…
You can’t elicit: things they do not know
Teach then Check
1. Practice is more important than input
2. Teach a little amount then check what the students have
taken in
Skimming is a form of rapid reading for
finding the general idea—or gist—of a
passage or a book.
When you skim, you have a general question
in mind, something you need or want to
know about the text, such as:
• What is the general meaning?
• Does this agree with what I already know
about this subject?
• What is the writer's opinion?
• Will this information be useful to me?
Concept Questions
Some examples
A. She’s given up smoking.
1. Did she smoke before? (Y)
2. Does she smoke now? (N)
3. Did she stop? (Y)
B. I’m looking forward to my vacation.
1. Is the speaker thinking about the past, present, or future?
(Future)
2. How does he/she feel about it? (Happy, excited)
3. Is he/she excited? (Yes)
C. You shouldn’t have suggested that.
1. Did the person suggest something? (Yes)
2. Now or in the past? (the past)
3. Is the speaker happy about it? (No)
4. Is the person criticizing the person’s actions? (Yes)
 How not to do it
⚫What’s the problem with the following ways of
checking understanding:
✓Do you understand?
✓(To low level students) “What does
‘disorientated’ mean?”
✓OK, everyone understands so let’s move on.

⚫Concept Questions are a useful way of checking

students’ understanding of items you are
presenting, but they must be well thought out. Can
you identify the problem with these concept
questions?
A. He managed to climb the mountain. (manage +
to + base form)
• Concept Question: Did he manage to climb the
mountain?
B. I’m used to commuting to San Francisco. (be used
to + verb + ing)
• Concept Question: Am I describing an experience
which although at first problematic has now
become somewhat easier for me to deal with?
C. He used to smoke. (used to + base form)
• Concept question: Did he use to drink?
D. He is an optimistic person.
• Concept question: Is he happy?
 Limit Your language: Less is More
What the teacher says… What the lower level
student hears…

“Blah, blah, blah, blah,

“So why don’t we all get in blah, OK? Blah, blah,
pairs, OK? And then try to blah, blah, blah, OK?
figure out those questions, Blah, blah, blah, blah,
OK? And let me know when blah, OK?
you’ve finished, OK?”
 Check your reading habits
• Do you try to pronounce every word as you read?
-> understand less.
• Do you usually move your lips while you read silently?
-> prevent you from ever reading faster
• Do you follow the words you read with your finger or a
pencil?
-> slow you down
• Do you translate into your native language as you read
in English?
-> prevent you from concentrating on the ideas.
 Read meaningful phrases
• read meaningful groups of words, which are
much easier to remember than a lot of
separate words.
• form connections among the ideas in the text
and with information or ideas we know.
• tend to make longer phrases so they can take
in more text at a time.
 Skip over unknown words
• Do not stop when you come to an unknown
word.
• Skip over the word and continue reading.
• In some cases, knowing the meaning of the
word will not be necessary for understanding
the important ideas in the passage.
• In other cases, you may be able to get a
general sense of the word from the context
 Summarizing
• rewriting the important parts in a much shorter
form
• using some words from the text and some of your
own words
• summarizing is especially useful for:
+ Reviewing and memorizing information in
textbooks for exams;
+ Preparing information or ideas from
different sources so you can include them in a
report or paper.