Session 05: Developing language skills: Listening & Reading

Question 1

What types of skills are there?

Answer 1

receptive: listening/writing or reading
productive: coherent speaking or coherent writing
interactive: discourse/mediation or correspondence, mediation

Question 2

what are the four traditional skills and what are alternatives?

Answer 2

Reading
Listening
Speaking
Writing

Alternatives:
- integrating skills: most activities are multi-skills activities
- three skills: complrehension, conversation and composition
- five skills: further skills proposed by scholars: mediation, culture, electronic literacy
- modern skills: EFL learners today have access to authentic English texts
-> skill “playing” instead of “reading”

Question 3

What is the conclusion to why there are so many skills

Answer 3

skills are changing (new media) and new ways must be developed to help learners exploit their media literacy

Question 4

What is the conclusion to why there are so many skills

Answer 4

skills are changing (new media) and new ways must be developed to help learners exploit their media literacy

Question 5

Name and brietfly describe the characteristics of skills

Answer 5

• Hierarchical: one is normally better at some skills, some skills are prioritized
• Target-orientated: starting point for the use of language is the users wish to communicate
• Involve the evalutation of data: mental effort expended by effective listeners or readers
• Selective: personal priorities
• COmbinatory: e.g. replying to questions: produce a response well formed in terms of syntax, phonology and semantics
• Non-stereotyped: every communicative act is a new event because it involves the first five features of skills

Question 6

Name the four subskills in listening

Answer 6

Recognition (What is the gist)
Interpretation (stress, rhyme, intonation, grammar)
Incooporation (forming any sense of what you have heard)
Construction (constructing an answer)

Question 7

Name the four subskills in reading

Answer 7

Recognition (of the relevant information of the task)
Understanding (sorting the explicit from implicit information
Distinguishing (the main from the supporting ideas -> what is the important message?)
Deduction (what message do I get?)

Question 8

What are Top-down skills and how does it function in the listening process?

Answer 8

= Background knowledge, experience you can draw from (e.g. you know from experience what to do at the airport)
- while listening you can develop your experience

in the listening process:
- listening for the gist, topic, main ideas
- listening for specific information
- guessing

Question 9

What are Bottom-up skills and what is their function in the listening process?

Answer 9

= language skills (e.g. words and syntax)
you need them to understand a text or listening correctly (e.g. constructing a response)

in the listening process:
- identify grammatical forms and functions
- recognize linking words
- listen for intonation patterns in utternances

Question 10

Explain the relation between Top-down and Bottom-up skills

Answer 10

Both skills function simultaneously and are mutually dependent
Different types of processing may occur simultaneously or in any order

Question 11

What causes Mishearings/Mondgreens?

Answer 11

• happens when you lack both top-down and bottom-up skills or because of homophony
• to prevent that: provide words for students that are necessary

Question 12

Name ways of listening while teaching

Answer 12

• pre-listening
• listen to the text and perform a variety of tasks
  -> evaluation by correct or incorrect answers

Question 13

What are difficulties while listening?

Answer 13

• students run into a text for the first time, lots of unknown words
• accents maybe
• pace

Question 14

What can you, as a teacher, do to respond to listening difficulties?

Answer 14

• slow it down
• play it more times
• introduce unknown vocabulary before listening

Question 15

What are pre- while- and post-listening activities?

Answer 15

Pre: read a short text about the topic, ask about predictions
While: simple questions, not much writing or reading, spotting mistakes, matching pictures
Post: sum it up, roleplay, add additional information or context, alternate ending writing

Question 16

What is the problem in todays classroom and what are possible solutions?

Answer 16

Problem:
- teachers often focus on the outcome; very context-related
what answers are right or wrong, not important why
- when teachers come across an error, they ask about the right question instead of finding the source of the mistake
- no time for individualization

Possible aaproach: diagnostic approach
=Allows teachers & students to attent listening difficulties and practice strategies to miminish them
- using incorrect answers to detect weaknesses
- avoiding listening tasks that require memorization
- helping students to develop a wider range of listening strategies
- differentiating between listening skills
- providing top-down and bottom-up listening practice

Question 17

Describe the reading process and the correlation with the listening process

Answer 17

Saccaden: when reading a text your eyes jump through the text & you miss some percent
Fixierungspunkte: the points where your eyes rest
Refixierung: jump back and read the missed points
Predicting: you expect something to happen

Correlation:

• You have to apply knowledge
• You have to look for patterns

Question 18

Name the Top-down and Bottom-up skills of the reading process

Answer 18

Top-down:
- readers world
- construction of meaning
- modifying background knowledge

Bottom-up:
- focus on the text
- construction of comprehension
- awareness

Question 19

Name ways of reading

Answer 19

Skimming (main points, global meaning)
Scanning (specific information)
Intensive (detailed understanding)
Extensive (general understanding)
Critical (underlying contexts and purposes)
Read along
Error spotting
Fast Reading