DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment has to fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: between 6 and 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if
there are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Size: 11.
- Line height: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be done in this Word document and has to fulfil the rules of
presentation and edition, as for quotes and bibliographical references which are
detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the Study Guide.
Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the Study Guide.

The assignment mark is 100% of the final mark, but the participation in the activities
performed during the tutorials can improve this mark.

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

Assignment:

Take the unit from the course book Bachillerato Made Easy, Richmond Publishing,
available in the Assignment files section (at the same place where you can find this
paper): 05_DLS_Unit.pdf, and analyse how the unit deals with the four skills, relating
your analysis to the theory which has been examined in this subject.

Note: Use the approach taken to analyse materials in this subject as a model for the
format and analysis of examples in your assignment. In other words, your assignment
should use similar headings to those used in this subject.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the
cover (see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions
will not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

“BACHILLERATO MADE EASY”

FOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS

BOOK ANALYSIS

Name and surname(s):Angélica Maria

Escamilla Martinez
Login:MEFPMTFL558013
Group:22
Date: May 14th, 2009.

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 - INTRODUCTION

2 - TEXTBOOK ANALYSIS
2.1 Reading:
2.1.1 Use or Usage
2.1.2 Genuiness and Authenticity
2.1.3 Types of Questions
2.1.4 Top-down or Bottom-up Approach
2.1.5 Activities

2.2 Listening:
2.2.1 Principles
2.2.2 Processing Reception, Interpretation and Response
2.2.3 Classroom Considerations
2.2.4 Activities

2.3 Speaking:
2.3.1 Interactive Approach
2.3.2 Spoken Language Forms
2.3.3 Implications for the Classroom
2.3.4 Grouping
2.3.5 Topic or Task based activities

2.4 Writing:
2.4.1 Typology
2.4.2 Writing Organization
2.4.5 Audience

3 - CONCLUSIONS
4- BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

1 – INTRODUCTION

Most teaching approaches propose techniques and activities to develop and

assess the four language skills. A text book should be designed to encourage
communication, learning in context, process writing, literary analysis, critical thinking,
as well as pair and group work, featuring activities that motivate students to develop
greater cultural competency and proficiency in all four language skills. To aid
acquisition, new and recycled grammar points should be carefully woven into each
lesson's content and writing activities.
The objective of this analysis is to identify whether “Bachillerato Made Easy”
brings a full coverage of language skills in a top-down approach which is highly
recommended to provoke critical thinking and allow the student’s schema to then
enrich the authenticity of the texts.
I will be analyzing Unit 7 from “Bachillerato Made Easy 2” Student’s Book
published by Richmond Publishing.

2 - TEXTBOOK ANALYSIS

2.1 Reading
It is critical that teachers help their students create meaning. Students can
become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading and as a
result, they become unmotivated. A teacher needs to design and teach different
strategies in order to help students close the gaps in their understanding.

2.1.1 Use or Usage

As mentioned in our textbook, the use of language is for effective
communication while the usage is to demonstrate the knowledge of the linguistic rules
studied.
At “Bachillerato Made Easy” the text called “Making and Keeping Friends” is
working on the correct use of the language since it brings phrasal verbs that are
constantly used making it a more natural type of text.

2.1.2 Genuiness and Authenticity

Modifying a text usually implies “translating” it into something else. As stated by

Raquel Varela “a comparison of a text and its simplified version reveals the simplified
text to be related to the original, but rather as a police identikit picture is related to a
high quality portrait”. (R. Varela, 2003:322).

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

The text included in unit 7 “Making and Keeping Friends” has a genuine sense.
And this is confirmed by a while-reading activity which aims to give students confidence
and not panicking at the first sight of a difficult text also providing strategies of
breakdown and skimming.
This text is provoking a relationship between the reader and the text itself by
carefully introducing in the “Before Reading” section many unfamiliar words which will
then ease the reading and the obtaining of the overall meaning of the text preparing a
reading-friendly atmosphere.

2.1.3 Types of Questions

The reading comprehension questions available in this section are of the following
type:

a. True or False question activity: it is one of the most recommended activities for
reading comprehension for it will demonstrate if there has been a good
comprehension of the text.
b. Using your own words questions: This is the activity where the reader will
completely engage with the reading for he/she will be able to explore and express
his reactions to the article. Some of the questions are related to the actual
comprehension of the passage while two of them are polar questions that invite the
reader to look outside of the text to find the answers and bring back his experience
to enrich then the rapport.
c. Multiple choice question activity: This activity is based on identifying synonyms of
phrasal verbs found within the text. This activity is mostly focused on obtaining
more functional tools.

2.1.4 Top-down or Bottom-up Approach

“Reading is not decoding written language to spoken language, nor does it
involve the processing of each letter and each word. Reading is a matter of bringing
meaning to print, not extracting meaning from print.” (McCormick, T. 1988:46) This is
clearly a definition of a top-down approach at reading which is recommended to
develop critical thinking.
Activity three of the reading section invites students to focus on the text on
italics (type face) where students are requested to translate them and discuss their
meaning. This clearly brings the learners’ schema into the topic before beginning with
the actual reading of the text. If teacher tries to foster this discussion in L2 it will allow
cooperative learning to take place while sharing opinions.

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

2.1.5 Activities
The activity types identified in the reading section of this unit are as follows:
- Understanding text organization
- Checking comprehension
- Inferring
- Dealing with unfamiliar words
- Linking ideas
- Understanding complex sentences
- Reacting to the text
- Skimming
- Scanning
- Writing summaries and reports. This is done in the Language section,
page 63 activity 6.

2.2 Listening:
Listening skills are tied to speaking and pronunciation skills. Listening plays an
important role in language learning for several reasons. First, listening provides
comprehensible input for the student which is essential for learning to occur. Second,
listeners need to interact with speakers to achieve understanding. Third, listening
exercises help learners to focus on new forms of vocabulary and grammar.

2.2.1 Principles
At this stage, it is important to make clear the difference between listening and
understanding. They are two separate processes. We should distinguish between
listening as a process which requires mere listening to the message and which does
not necessarily involve interpretation or reaction to the text, and listening
comprehension as a process which involves the meaningful interactive activity for an
overall understanding of the text and requires listeners to focus on selected input,
construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge.
“Listening comprehension consists of far more than understanding what words
and sentences mean; it involves understanding what speakers mean”. (H. Ferrer,
2001:125)

2.2.2 Processing Reception, Interpretation and Response

In “Bachillerato Made Easy” we do not have access to the actual recording reason
for which we are not able to check several aspects:
- “untidy aspects” of the spoken form which makes it a real-life recording type.
- Richard’s 9 medium factors have not been able to be analyzed since they are
based on the recording.

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 DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS - Assignment

The following facts have been observed:

- Listener is not involved in conversational exchanges but only listening
comprehension.
- Listener is merely playing a receptor role.
- Activity 2 of this section is focused on helping the learner bring his syntactic
knowledge to organize and summarize the information heard by ordering it.
- None of the activities in this section elicit schema from learners, it is all based on
listening comprehension.
- The activities presented therein do not foster a response from the listener.

2.2.3 Classroom Considerations

I am not able to fully check the following considerations due to the lack of the
recording:
- Whether the recorded text is within the students’ level of competence. I tend to
believe the book may be working with authentic material as with the reading
section, considering that activity one is introducing vocabulary to get a general idea
of what the topic will be about.
- Whether the recording is creating an affective atmosphere to keep the students’
motivation and interest toward the text.
- Unable to identify if it is a real-life listening text with environmental cues and short
chunks or whether it has been simplified and whether a low-risk or high-risk
strategy is being applied.

Observations:
- The topic is interesting itself and teenagers are very familiar with it.
- There is no collaborative discourse taking place.
- None of the following tasks are presented to the learner:
o Information-gap tasks
o Opinion-gap tasks
o Reasoning-gap tasks

2.2.4 Activities
As for the listening activities the following have been identified:
PRE-LISTENING WHILE-LISTENING POST-LISTENING
Pair Dictation. Although it Putting in order. Arranging Using information to
has not been specified based headings in order per answer listening
on what lexis. recording. comprehension questions.
Pre-viewing language. The

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matching of columns to
identify synonyms .
2.3 Speaking:
Speaking is usually the top priority as it’s one of the most important aspects of
the language for communication with the advantage that students enjoy it.
Furthermore, speaking activities improve the atmosphere in the classroom, group
dynamics and help build a rapport between students and teacher. Speaking activities
are also a good indication of students' strengths and weaknesses.
As mentioned by Jack Richards “Communicative competence includes
grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and
strategic competence, which reflect the use of the linguistic system and the functional
aspects of communication”. (Richards, 2002:206). As a whole it makes the skill
function correctly to convey the desired meaning and expected response.

2.3.1 Interactive Approach

Within the speaking section of the textbook the first activity is focused on pair
group or small group work where discussion will take place in reference to the topic.
This will allow coding and decoding to begin taking place.

2.3.2 Spoken Language Forms

Per activity 1 in the textbook and per the spoken language forms from Brown and Yule,
The forms which to my opinion will be happening during the discussion based on the
output level of the students are:
- Very few passives
- Not many explicit logical connectors
- The use of generalized vocabulary
- Repetition of the same syntactic form
- Turn taking (as a rule)

2.3.3 Implications for the Classroom

- Use of fillers. “The use of tags, fillers and repair signals in L2 during a conversation
are used to focus attention on important utterances.” (Goebel: 2001,335). If
teacher has made the students aware of the use of fillers as well as practiced some
of them then learners will probably make use of some of them to allow for thinking
time for output.
- Interference. Most likely during the discussion there will be some L1 interference
as it continuously takes place within real-time speaking with non-native speakers.
- Teacher’s use of English. I believe in any EFL classroom, the teacher should use
dominantly L2 considering that his/her input may be the only input available for the

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student throughout the day. Therefore, the teacher should take advantage of the
time interacting with the students. In the book there is no reference to the teacher’s
role during speaking activities, it seems to be a monitoring role.
- Interaction between the teacher and the learner. As mentioned in the above
paragraph, the teacher seems to be only monitoring and not with much active
participation which at the same time allows for more peer correction and
collaborative learning.
If the teacher does a good monitoring role, she may be able to extend the
questions during the discussion to elicit longer answers, nevertheless, leaving the
responsibility of the interaction in the learners’ hands to continue the discussion.

2.3.4 Grouping

There is no question that grouping is highly favorable specially when dealing

with speaking skills. Mixed ability groups are also a desirable approach to improving
negotiation of meaning among peers.
In the unit analyzed, there is reference to working in groups, however, since
teacher’s edition is not available we cannot identify what the grouping approach is or
whether it must be determined then by the teacher in her classroom.

2.3.5 Topic or Task based activities

The activities presented in page 67 in the speaking section are both topic-based
which is “harassment”. Students are elicited to talk about their experiences, express
opinions and use their knowledge and imagination based on the situations presented.
The activities observed are mostly: question and answers, discussions,
dialogues and problem solving.

2.4 Writing

When we write, we are thinking about editing and generating ideas at the same time.
As stated by Raimes (1985: 83) writing should be primarily a means of communication.
She relates that, "They are saying something that nobody cares about in order to
practice something else." For Raimes, the teaching of writing should stress the
students' ideas and how they express those ideas rather than stressing grammar.
Furthermore, Raimes continues stating “"Giving an assignment involves more
than selecting a topic for the students to write on. It means giving the suggestions as to
how to go about writing it." This is exactly where the teacher has to do a good
facilitator job.

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2.4.1 Typology

Among the types of writing presented along our course, we will begin analyzing
“Bachillerato Made Easy 2” to identify which types are being requested in the activities.
- Institutional Writing. On page 63 activity 6 requests a report to be written on what
people have said corresponding to a text to be analyzed.
- Study Writing. On page 66 an essay is being requested.

The style for the activity is personal, for it is expressing an opinion on the topic
“Friends”.

2.4.2 Writing Organization

There is a great emphasis on organization of the essay to be generated. The

book presents a well structured step by step organizational basis from brainstorming to
making a conclusion. Four sections are included in this activity to make sure the
student is following a sequenced path: “getting started, generating ideas, getting
organized, and checking and revising”.
This is a free composition activity maintaining a focus on the finished product.
It is process writing the method that is being taught since all steps are included:
planning, organizing, composing, drafting, reviewing, revising and editing.
If we were to use Ur’s classification of writing activities, we would consider
these activities as “writing as means and end”, since a good product is expected but
there is also a focus on the process.

2.4.5 Audience

As we all know, audience plays a principal role in the developing of writing. In

this case students are aware that the opinion essay they are producing is not only for
the teacher but most likely to share with their classmates.

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3 – CONCLUSIONS

Reading: “Bachillerato Made Easy 2” makes reading not only informative but also
pleasurable and fun while managing a top-down approach and allowing students to get
a good relationship with the text in a critical thinking formation. It covers several
reading skills with the three very important sections in reading: pre-reading, while-
reading, and post-reading strategies.

Listening: In this section listening comprehension acquires the leading role, no

opportunities to interact are provided to the students who are acting as a mere
receptors.
If recording was available we could analyze other aspects such as: high or low risk
strategies, authenticity, affective atmosphere being created, adequate level, etc.
In my opinion, this section could be very well enhanced with more enriching activities
that elicit critical thinking and collaborative learning from students.

Speaking: The speaking section presents a very interesting topic to teenagers and as
in any L2 acquisition process some interference from L1 is probably expected from the
interaction.
Group interaction is fostered by the activities shown therein although there is no further
specification as to how the groups have to be conformed as well as how the teachers
manages her L2 input.
Activities are topic-based and well structured.
Speaking activities are presented well sequenced and graded beginning with a self-
assessment as warm-up for the speaking activity, followed by a semi-controlled
practice and ending with a freer discussion.
On page 64 some grammar related exercises are also working with the speaking skill in
a very controlled situation.

Writing: The activities shown in this unit lead the student to a good process writing of a
topic essay. There is a high emphasis on organization.

Overall, I find this book quite complete when dealing with the four language skills.
Perhaps the listening section could be enhanced a little more as to develop more
critical thinking skills.

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4- BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Varela, Raquel, “All About Teaching English: A Course For Teachers of English:
Pre-school Through Secondary”, Editorial Ramón Areces, 2003.

2. McCormick,Thomas W. “Theories of reading in dialogue: An interdisciplinary

study”. New York: University Press of America, 1988.

3. Ferrer, Hang, “Teaching English in a Spanish Setting”, Universitat de València,

2001.

4. Richards, Jack., “Methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current

practice”, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

5. Goebel, Mary. “Studies in Bilingualism”, Multilingual Matters, 2001.

6. Raimes, A. “What Unskilled ESL Students do as they Write. A Classsroom

Study of Composing”, TESOL Quarterly 19,2.

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