Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Liuhuang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Meizhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
In this unit, I learned what receptive skills are and how to teach them to students effectively. Reading and listening are language receptive skills. They are two skills that are equally important to learn. When giving a lesson, we need to understand why we read or listen. We read or listen primarily for entertainment or for a purpose. We read and listen by predicting what something by be about from a headline or article. We may scan a newspaper for specific information, or skim a book or listen to some words of a dialogue to get a general idea of what it is about. We may read or listen to ever word of a dialogue to understand the content in detail. Or we may deduct what a text or dialogue is about, sometimes seeing beyond the literal meaning of words. Potential problems students may have with reading include that they may read word for word, the sentences may be too long, and the structure of what they read may be too long or unfamiliar to them. Problems students may have with listening is that the flow of information needs to be consistent, the speed of speech should not be so fast, and the accent may be unfamiliar for them to understand the language. To avoid these problems, we can pre-teach vocabulary and choose texts/dialogue within a students zone of proximal development (ZPD) of which they may read and listen to confidently build their skills. Topics should be of interest to the students so as to keep them engaged during the lesson. Tasks should be enjoyable and not too difficult or to easy; having students working in pairs allows for interaction and reduces stress of doing a task individually. If games are to be used, they should have explicit rules, a teaching point, and an element of fun. Games that can be adapted for teaching receptive skills are jeopardy and tic-tac-toe.
