Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiamao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Zhaoqing 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.
All four language skills--reading, listening, writing, and speaking--are equally important in order to master a language. In this unit, we focus on the first two, the receptive skills. Receptive skills are easier to learn because, as the name suggests, the student is merely receiving and processing information, as compared to the latter two skills, where the student is proactively producing the language. There are a variety of skills that accompany the ability to read and listen, including predicting, scanning, skimming, deducting, and reading for detail, that are useful in comprehending context. We, as teachers, must help students to understand not only the basic vocabulary but also the context around it that gives reading and listening meaning beyond the literal sense. Having students know what vocabulary they will encounter before presenting them with a reading or listening exercise will help with their comprehension, but we must also focus on preparing them to understand through overall meaning as well instead of agonizing over the definition of every word present in the activity. In order to maintain enthusiasm and high levels of engagement among students, we should also cater to their individual interests by providing them with passages that they will enjoy and remember to provide a variety of activities in both topic and skills required to master the receptive side of language.
