Spoken Communication Skills

Developing Listening and Speaking Skills

 Communication in the Classroom
If you want to encourage real communication in
the classroom you need to
Establish English as the main classroom
language
Try to use interesting topics and stimulating
activities, which take the learners minds off
the language
Real life events ( weather, the students cloths,
their health and mood, pictures and realia brought
to class)
Events in the world outside ( new films, a circus in
town, national sports victory, the students families,
etc.)
 Focus on fluency vs. accuracy

Support and encourage listeners in their

efforts to communicate their ideas
Dont try to control what they say
Dont interrupt learners everytime they make
a language mistake to correct them.
 Listening Skills
Listening is not a passive skill but a receptive skill. It
requires as much attention and mental activity as
speaking.

That of the time an individual is engaged in

communication, approximately 9 per cent is devoted to
writing, 16 per cent to reading, 30 per cent to speaking,
and 45 per cent to listening.
 Debates concerning the
development of listening skills
Debates focusing on the nature of listening input
Whether or not listening should be made
comprehensible for learners through simplification?

Debates focusing on the role of listening in the

early ELT curriculum
Whether teachers should stress the importance of
learners haing a silent period in the early stages of
learning and wait for readiness to produce the
language
 Debates concerning the
development of listening skills
Debates on the role of listening for
comprehension and development of oracy (the
ability to understand and participate in spoken
communication)
How can classroom practice rehearse the kinds of
listening purposes and situations that learners will
experience outside the classroom?
How can we help learners build confidence in dealing
with authentic spoken English?
What kind of classroom procedures will develop
listening ability?
 What do we know about the
listening process?
There are two types of listening processes
Bottom-up process
Top-down process
Bottom-up:
We use our knowledge of language and our ability to
process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that
speech presents to us
Top-down
We infer meaning from contextual clues and from making
links between the spoken message and various types of
prior knowledge which we hold.
 What learners need to be
able to do in order to listen
effectively
Bottom-up processes
Retain input while it is being processed
Recognize word divisions
Recognize key words in utterances
Recognize key transitions in a discourse
Another interesting development was
One of theproblems was.. / In contrast
Recognize grammatical relations between key elements in
sentences
Recognize the function of word stress in sentences
Recognize the function of intonation in sentences
What learners need to be
able to do in order to listen
effectively
Top-down processes
Use key words to construct the schema of discourse
Infer the role of the participants in a situation
Infer the topic of a discourse
Infer the outcome of an event
Infer the cause and effect of an event
Infer unstated details of a situation
Infer the sequence of a series of events
Infer comparisons
Distinguish between facts and opinions
Types of Listening

Participatory Listening
Interactional (for the purpose of engaging in social rituals)
Transactional (for the purpose exchanging information)
dentification of specific details
Non-Participatory
Listening to live conversations without taking part
Listening to announcements to extract info.
Listening to or watching films, plays, radio and songs
where purpose is enjoyment
Following instructions in orderto carry out a talk efficiently
Attending a lecture or following a lesson
Liistening someon egive a public address
 What are the implications for
the English Language
Classroom?
Creating reasons for listening (motivate students)
Teachers need to ensure that learners experience a range
of listening purposes, especially those that might be
immediately relevant to their lives outside the classroom.
What purpose might there be for listening to this particular
text?
Is thatpurpose similar to the purpose a listener might have
in real life?
Does the task given to the learner encourage that listening
purpose?
 Which is more authentic?
Asking learners to listen to a short airport announcement to
obtain information about a particular flight, as a passenger ?
OR
Asking learners to listen for the details of four different flights ?

Skills that are practised

Listening for key words
Picking out relevant information
Retaining significant details
Designing listening activities
for the classroom
The standard procedure used for listening
activities are
Pre-listening stage
While-Listening stage
Post-listening stage
Pre-Listening stage

The purpose of the pre-listening stage is to

Prepare the learners for what they are going to hear
by
activating existing prior knowledge
introducing necessary schematic knowledge
Introducing the language which students will encounter
Objectives
Contextualize the text
Provide any information to help learners appreciate the
setting and the role relationships between particiapnts
Activity types for the pre-listening
stage
Predicting content from the title of a talk
Talking about a picture which relates to the text
Discuss relevant experiences
Discussing the topic
Answering a set of questions about the topic
Agreeing or disagreeing with opinions about the
topic
Associate vocabulary about the yopic
Predict info. about the topic
Write questions about the topic
While-Listening Stage
Purpose of While-listening stage is
TO HELP learners understand the text
While learners listen they need to be involved in an authentic
purpose for listening and encouraged to attend to the text more
intensively
While-Listening activities
Ticking multiple-choice items
Filling in a chart
Complete a table, map or picture
Matching pictures with the text
Making notes
Answer questions
Complete sentences
Post-Listening Activities
The purpose of post-listening activities is to help learners
connect what they have heard with their own ideas and
experienxe.
Helps learners to move easily from listening to another
skill.
Post-listening Activities
Give opinions
Relate similar experiences
Role-play a similar interaction
Write a brief report
Write a similar text
Debate the topic