Practical teaching methods for listening to and reading in English lessons

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Practical teaching methods for listening to and reading in English lessons

Yerokhin O.V.

У статті досліджено роль інтерактивних методів при навчанні аудіюванню та читанню, визначено їх місце в розвиткові соціокультурної компетентності учнів; обґрунтовано використання інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій у навчальному процесі та їх переваги порівняно з традиційними технологіями організації самостійної навчальної роботи.

Listening has been regarded as one of the most difficult competence to develop. It has some characteristics that make it unique. In a listening situation, it is difficult to stop it to have time to think and process the information, so one of the major difficulties in teaching listening is that speech just flows and learners need to be adapted to it to process faster the information received. It is no exaggeration to say that how well students

interactive method competence learning

Develop the ability to comprehend what they read has a profound effect on their entire lives. A major goal of teaching reading comprehension, therefore, is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and experiences they must have if they are to become competent and enthusiastic readers.

This article explores the role of interaction in listening and reading comprehensions development, provides an explanation of what teachers need to make their learners respond to what they listen, read, give feedback to it and keep the learning language process going.

Listening is one of the most important skills we have. The quality of learners' listening has a major impact on their work effectiveness and their relationships with others. In the decades of the 1950s and 60s, language teaching methodology was concerned with the speaking ability, as a result learners normally made meaningfulness drills of language they did not understand. It was with the Total Physical Response developed by James Asher that listening took place as a more important component in language learning and teaching to later continue this belief with the Natural Approach. Research suggests that people remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what they hear. So, when learners receive directions or they are presented with information, they don't hear the whole message either. By becoming better listeners, learners will improve their productivity, as well as their ability to influence, persuade and negotiate. What's more, they will avoid conflict and misunderstandings [1, 43].

One of the effective ways to improve learners' listening skills is to practice active listening. This is where a conscious effort is made to hear not only the words that another person says but, more importantly, try to understand the complete message being sent.

Let's have a look at some key points of active listening. When teaching listening and checking the tasks it's of a great importance for teacher to show that she listens to her student and for student to see that he is listened to. It's appropriate to use body language and gestures to convey the attention, nod occasionally, smile and use other facial expressions, encourage the learner to continue with small verbal comments. Non-verbal communication here is up to the point. To look at the speaker directly, put aside distracting thoughts, avoid being distracted by environmental factors are the things which will give a clear message to the learner that he is listened to and heard.

Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. The learner's role is to understand what is being said. This may require her/him to reflect to what is being said and ask questions. A good idea is to do this by paraphrasing: «What I hear is... « or « It sounds like you are saying...»; asking questions to clarify certain points: «What do you mean when you say.?»; summarize the speaker's comments periodically. It's known that interrupting is a waste of time as it frustrates the speaker and limits full understanding of the message. The main thing is let the speaker finish each point before asking questions and don't interrupt with counter arguments.

Active listening is a model for respect and understanding. To gain information and perspective, to add nothing by attacking the speaker or otherwise putting him or her down, to be open and honest in response, to assert opinions respectfully and to treat the other person in a way that he or she would want to be treated are among the key points. Using active listening today is worth doing just to become a perfect communicator, improve productivity and develop better relationships. Perhaps the most important skill children learn is the ability to listen closely and comprehend what they have heard. Learners' listening skill levels can make a difference in their performance as well as the class atmosphere. By employing a variety of creative exercises, teachers can help learners develop strong listening skills that will aid them throughout their academic careers [3].

By raising students' awareness of listening as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching listening strategies, teachers help their learners develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.

Before doing any listening activity teachers should: set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen for; decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed; determine whether to attend to the overall meaning or focus on the words and phrases. To monitor listening comprehension it would be a good idea to: verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses; decide what is and is not important to understand; listen or view again to check comprehension. To evaluate listening compre-hension and develop some strategies for further improvement teachers ought to: evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area; evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular types of listening tasks; decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task; modify strategies if necessary.

For transactional listening such materials as radio and television programs, public address announcements (airports, train/bus stations, stores), speeches and lectures, telephone customer service recordings etc can be used. The teacher's role here is:

to help learners identify the listening goal: to obtain specific information, to decide whether to continue listening, to understand most or all of the message;

to help learners with outline predictable sequences in which information may be presented(patters: who-what-when);

to make identifying key words/phrases easier for learners.

In interactional mode of listening the listener focuses on the

speaker's meaning rather than the speaker's language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear.

As we can see listening is not a passive skill; it is very interactive since it has many processes in order to assimilate it.

Another issue is that it is necessary not only comprehend what we listen, but to respond appropriately and opportunely to it, the interaction that takes place in a conversation. Then it is a must to teach not only listening skills but conversational skills as well. Our learners will be engaged in real situations where these skills will be needed, so it is important to consider strategies and techniques to foster such skills.

Being aware of the factors of good listening comprehension teachers will be able to develop and provide a wide variety of examples of listening situations and more than that to create techniques in which the learner can respond to the listening input through interacting. Teachers' responsibility here is to work with the information they have and be ready to discover something new and useful through experience and observation.

For many years, teaching reading comprehension was based on a concept of reading as the application of a set of isolated skills such as identifying words, finding main ideas, identifying cause and effect relationships, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing. Teaching reading was viewed as a mastery of these skills. Comprehension instruction followed what the study called mentioning, practicing, and assessing procedure where teachers mentioned a specific skill that learners were to apply, had learners practice the skill by completing workbook pages, then assessed them to find out if they could use the skill correctly. Instruction neither helped students learn how or when to use the skills, nor was ever established that this particular set of skills enabled comprehension.

It's obvious that teachers need to build comprehension through the teaching of strategies and environments that support text understanding. It is important for educators to help learners become active, purposeful readers. Teaching reading compre-hension is an active process of constructing meaning, not skill application. Consequently, it has to be:

interactive, involve not just the reader, but the text and the context in which reading takes place;

strategic, readers have purposes for their reading and use a variety of strategies as they construct meaning;

adaptable, readers change the strategies they use as they read different kinds of text or as they read for different purposes.

First of all, to become good readers, learners have to set goals for their reading. Coping with the task for reading they need to deal with the meaning of words. Besides, it's understandable, that learners have to be selective and use own background knowledge to create images, ask questions, and make inferences. And the main thing is to monitor their comprehension as they read.

Teachers should find time to give learners practice in the skill of reading that is enjoying and understanding the meaning of a text. Learners do read in order to learn something new, but there are many other reasons for reading too, such as for pleasure. Authentic materials can be challenging for low-level learners, but the teacher can grade the task so that at least something is achievable. Learners are motivated by age-appropriate tasks, so teachers should provide them with the type of reading texts they naturally read in their own language, such as magazines and emails.

A perfect tool to develop learners' reading comprehension is WebQuest [5]. The crucial point here is that WebQuest utilizes cooperative learning due to the realistic sources used, which includes up-to-date articles and databases, access to experts, and accumulation of different perspectives on the same topic. It has to be highlighted that as learners complete more WebQuests they will become increasingly aware that their individual work has a direct impact on the intelligence of their group's final product. It is important to note that a WebQuest should not be taught and used in isolation. It has to be connected to the curriculum and other activities that are taught in the classroom. A WebQuest is designed as a method to integrate technology, but technology use does not have to be the sole purpose of the WebQuest.

Being an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web it is wrapped around an interesting task that is ideally a scaled down version of things that adults do as citizens or workers.It requires higher level thinking, not simply summarizing and includes synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity and judgment. Though WebQuest makes good use of the web, books and other media can be used within a WebQuest, but if the web isn't at the heart of the lesson, it's not a WebQuest. For learners it can't have a shape of a research report or a step-by-step science procedure. Having learners simply distilling web sites and making a presentation about them isn't enough.

Teachers can suggest their learners having short term (designed to be completed in one to three class periods) or longer term (designed to take between one week and one month) WebQuest depending on their learners' reading skills[4]. No doubt, that short one will be a good step for the beginning and to attract learners to this reading tool a teacher should pass all the step of the quest together with the learners. Then, when the idea is clear, the teacher may just coordinate the activity.

There are some critical attributes of a WebQuest:

Introduction, should orient a learner as to what is coming and raise some interest in the learner through a variety of means.

Task, a description of what the learner will have done at the end of the exercise. It could be a product or a verbal presentation.

Process, clearly described steps that let the learners know the process to go through to accomplish the task. It can also provide learning advice.

Information sources, a list of webpages which the teacher has located to help the learner accomplish the task. Should also include resources not on the Web and all resources may not be used by all.

Evaluation, need to be able to measure results.Evaluation rubrics (may take different forms) designed by the teacher are the most authentic assessment.

Conclusion

Brings closure to the guest, reminds the learners about what they have learned and encourages them to extend the experience into other domains.

Among non-critical attributes for WebQuest these ones should be mentioned: WebQuest most likely to be group activity, include role-playing for learners, can be both single discipline or interdisciplinary.

Working with webpages learners will have to study lots of information that means they will have much reading and listening practice. However, it is not necessary to understand every word in order to gain an understanding of a text. We sometimes don't understand every word in our own language, yet we still manage to get meaning. Besides, learners often need to be taught this strategy.

A good reader, as well as a good listener, is an active reader when interpreting a text. He/she often needs to use own knowledge and experience of the world in order to understand what the writer/author means. There may also be predicting, questioning, re-reading happening. Unless the teacher has set specific tasks to practise reading, it is unlikely that the learners will get much meaning from the text beyond the new language that is focused on.

It should be stated, that authentic assessment is geared toward assessment methods which correspond as closely as possible to real world experience.Authentic assessment takes this principle of evaluating real work into all areas of the curriculum. This involvement empowers learners and as a result, their learning becomes more focused and self-directed. Authentic assessment, therefore, blurs the lines between teaching, learning, and assessment.

Every learner is an individual. Every learner has his/her own range of levels. Teachers do not teach groups, they teach groups of individuals. Therefore what teachers have to look at looked are strategies, techniques teachers can use to overcome challenges. With a bit of imagination and thought listening and reading classes will become fun.

Література

Бабінська П.К. Практичний курс методик викладання іноземної мови. - М.: Тетра Систем, 2005.

Колкер Я.М. Практична методика навчання мови. - М.: Видавничий центр «Академія», 2004.

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