TOPIC 5 TEACHING

LISTENING AND
SPEAKING
THE PRESENTERS
SITI NUR FATIN
SITI NURASKINAH
NURUL ATIQAH

INTRODUCTION
English should start with an emphasis on listening and speaking. Young
beginners need to start with plenty of listening practice, and opportunities to
listen to rich input will naturally lead to speaking tasks.
Listening Aspects of difficulty

How to overcome the problems?

One source of difficulty is the type

and length of the text the
children listen to. Another factor is
the familiarity of the person who
they are listening to.

Teacher can adjust the speed of

their speech and modify their
language.
Teacher can also repeat
messages and use gestures
and facial expressions to help
children to work out the
meaning.

Two basic sub-skills

1) Bottom-up skills
Learners build up the
language
2) Top-down processing
Learners rely on their
schematic knowledge

Support with listening

Teacher may give the students listening
task to help them to be better. As an
example, the Listen and Do task activity.

Teacher talk in the primary English lesson

Teacher often talk a lot in the target language and this helps the children to get
used of the intonations patterns and the sounds of the language.
As the students listen, they are engaged in working out what is going on and for
some of the time they may choose to remain silent and just absorb the
language.

INTERACTIONAL MODIFICATIONS OF
LANGUAGE
Communications
Breakdown
**modifying language can include
using repetitions, comprehensions
checks and also confirmation checks.

When the breakdown is judged as unimportant,

they might simply ignore it and just carry on talking.
If the breakdown is serious, the partners will decide
to repair and rephrase what has been said by
modifying their original language use.

Listening activities for young learners

It is better to do activities that require nonverbal responses from students.
As an example, listen to rhyme/action story or song and enjoy them by
miming the action rather than producing the language. (TPR)
New language can also be introduced with support from the teachers gestures
and illustrations from the book.
Other examples of the activities are Listen and Draw the picture, Listen and
Color the Clowns clothes and many more.

Listening activities for older learners

Older learners also enjoy story telling but the teacher need to choose a
suitable story that is suitable for the older learners.
Teacher can also increase the length of the text and the activity types.
Activities for young learners can also be adapted but the teacher must
increase the level of the difficulties.
As an example, Listen and Find the insects or Listen and Describe the
town
As students grow older, they get better at both bottom-up and top-down
processing which will make them to understand and learn better during the
lesson.

TEACHING SPEAKING
Fluent speakers
To speak fluently we have to
speak and think at the same
time. As we speak we must
monitor our output and
correct any mistake as well
as planning what we are
going to say next. Fluent
speakers will also have to
learn a range of other things
such as what is appropriate
to say in certain situations,
how to manage
conversations and also how
to interrupt during the
conversations.

Teacher must make sure that the students

already know what is appropriate in which
situations and also how to be polite when
interrupting.

Speaking activities with younger groups

Teacher will help the students to construct utterances together.
The use of chunks See you tomorrow
As an example, teacher can do Guessing Games
One child will come out in front of the class and mimes an animal and
the others will try to guess the animal.

Speaking activites with older learners

Teacher can use simple dialogues or drills.
As an example, the teacher can conduct an interview or also role-play which may
require spontaneous, creative language use.

Need for meaning negotiation

During games and
interactive tasks, students
have to negotiate meaning if
they do not understand the
words used.
**Research shows that children's
ability to negotiate meaning when
they do not understand something
grow gradually with age and older
learners can successfully repair
conversations.

The demands of more complex

tasks
It is important for teacher to
exercise their best judgment
when selecting tasks for
older and experienced
learners because tasks need
to be motivating but not too
difficult.
Students need purposeful
activities which create a
communicative need and fuel
their motivations to listen and
speak.

SUMMARY
Listening and speaking are the two most important skills in most TEYL
programmes. The development of listening can be the basic of initial speaking
practice. Both younger and older learners need plenty of practice with listening
and speaking activities and need confidence building to be able to speak up. It
is important for teacher to plan both their listening and speaking activities
according to their leaners age, interests and abilities.