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Unit 11 ? Teaching Receptive Skills: reading and listening A concise overview of the 11th unit: ? Reasons for reading and listening ? How we read and listen ? Problems with listening and reading ? Language ? Topics ? Create interest ? Tasks ? Outline of a typical receptive skills lesson (Patchwork) There are four basic skills in any language: receptive skills ? reading and listening, and productive skills ? speaking and writing. Reasons for reading and listening: ? For a purpose ? reading instructions on new video recorder or listening to instructions ? For entertainment ? reading a novel or listening to a joke ? enjoyable information Quite often our reading and listening may be a mix of the above two motives. How we read and listen: ? Predictive skills ? predicting content of an article or a dialogue ? Specific information ? scanning ? specific information such as football result or particular story from the news ? General idea ? skimming ? gist of a text or general understanding of the content ? Detailed information ? understanding everything in detail ? Deduction from context ? meaning of individual words or phrases from the context Language: ? Pre-teaching vocabulary ? pre-teach the words that are essential to understanding before reading or listening activity ? Careful selection of texts ? authentic and non-authentic texts Topics: The topic of the text or dialogue can also help to motivate the students. Get to know students and their interests. It will assist the teacher to select suitable material. Create interest: engage phase activities ? discussing, showing pictures, predicting what the text will be about. Tasks: we need to provide comprehension tasks that promote understanding ? jigsaw reading or jumbled texts. Outline of a typical receptive skills lesson (Patchwork): ? Engage ? Study ? Engage ? Study ? Activate ? Study ? Activate Certain conclusions can be drawn as follows: Basic keys to successful receptive skill lessons are: ? Choose material that motivates the students ? Build interest before reading/listening ? Pre-teach complex vocabulary ? Vary the type of material ? Use the material to practice different skills ? Use realistic comprehension tasks that aid understanding ? Incorporate activate phase that naturally lead on from the text ?The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.? (Amos Bronson Alcott) This quote perfectly describes the topic part of the receptive skills. Do not assume that because the topic interests you (teacher) it will be equal interest to the students. Get to know students and their interests. It will assist the teacher to select suitable material.
