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This unit focused on the two receptive skills: reading and listening. Successful reading and listening means not just understanding individual words, but understanding context, which requires pre-existent knowledge. Some of the skills we use when reading or listening are: predicting, scanning for specific information, skimming for general understanding, thorough reading, and deducing meaning from context. Receptive skills can be used either for entertainment or for some specific purpose or goal. Reading can be problematic for English learners when the sentences are long and complex, or when there are many unknown words. Listening is usually even more difficult for students because they only have one chance to hear the words. When I ask my students if they read or listen to anything in English for fun, they usually reply that it takes too long to look up all the words they don?t know. I agree with the text that it?s essential to be able to read and understand without knowing every single word. A good idea is to pre-teach only the most important vocabulary. Authentic texts are those that are not designed for language learners. I normally only use these with advanced students, but I suppose it would be possible to find something that could be used for lower levels as well. Choosing a topic that interests the students is very important. I find that this is especially difficult with business students, but I try to pick topics related to the industry they work in. Creating interest can also be challenging, especially if it is not a topic that I am particularly knowledgeable about. Bringing in visual aids can definitely help. I have never tried a text jumble or jigsaw reading, but now I can see how it would help with comprehension. Another good idea is to take the text away from the students before asking them to write a summary. If you don?t do that, they might be tempted to copy directly from the text.
