PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE SKILLS

Oral Communication

·         Oral communication is, as Byrne says, a two way process between speaker and listener and involves the productive skill of speaking and the receptive (not passive) skill of listening.

·         Both speaker and listener have a positive function to perform:

-          The speaker has to encode the message he wishes to convey, while the listener has to decode the message.

·         Most people learning a foreign language spend more time listening than speaking.

·         The listening activity may range from the face to face understanding of several utterances spoken by one or more other persons, to listening to a speech on the radio when noise in the room or radio static may cause interference.

·         That’s why we should aim to provide our students with sufficient listening practice to enable them to understand with reasonable ease both native and non-native speakers of English when they speak at normal speed in unstructured situations.

Listening

Listening is key to all effective communication, without the ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood – communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated.

Listening and speaking

·         It’s obvious that speaking often follows listening (…)

·         Often, but not necessarily, improvement in listening comprehension will bring with it an improvement in speaking.

·         A student will learn a great deal by listening to the teacher. The teacher is the most important model on which the student will base his/her own behavior.

·         It is important, therefore, that you speak English at a speed consistent with normal stress and rhythm and intonation patterns.

Reading and writing

The fact of writing it wasn’t very important, but nowadays, the writing is converting in something very common because of the social networks as it could be whatsapp, twitter, etc. Furthermore, we cannot consider reading and writing as reciprocal activities as if we were talking about listening and speaking.

As pupils become better and better in the foreign language, the printed word becomes the main source of expanding and strengthening the language.

Reading

·         Whether or not they have mastered the skill in their own language, will have an effect on the initial stages of teaching reading in English.

·         Reading aloud is not the same as reading silently. A teacher need to read aloud, with different exercises, to tell a story would be a good exercise for reading aloud.

Listening

·         It is simply not sufficient to expose the learners to those samples of spoken language which are, for example, the presentation of the unit. These samples are simplified to provide the students with models for oral production.

·         I.e. there are oral texts specified as a presentation of the unit, for specific practice, as reinforcement or even revision.

Reasons

·         We, as non-native speakers of English, need to understand more than we should be able to produce.

·         The samples of spoken language in all course-books do not contain a sufficiently high proportion of the features of natural speech; the learners will need much more than this if they are going to be able to cope with real-life language situations.

Listening/Speaking

·         When we speak we can make use of periphrasis, gestures, facial expressions..

·         When we listen, we don’t have control over the speaker. (in the flesh, the media..)

Listening: Teacher

Do you think that listening is about getting every word that is spoken?

·         To be able to listen well gives you confidence in communication.

·         You can only talk sensibly when you can understand what is said to you.

Reasons

·         Even though good listeners may be able to get every word that they hear, this is not their concern most of the time.

·         Specify your listening objectives when you carry out a listening activity.

·         As long as you achieve your objectives…..

Listening practice

If you feel that your command……. (FALTAN COSAS, PPT no Subido)

Then… do something about it NOW before it is too late.

What you can do on your own beyond the classroom

·         TV: choose your favorite programs and make regular appointments with them.

·         Radio: you are free to do other things while listening- having breakfast, a shower, even jogging.

·         Watch news broadcasts (in English, of course) already watched on Spanish TV.

·         Good luck with your listening practice. It is not going to be easy, especially because the listening ability is hard to measure.

·         But if you keep practicing, you should find that you can gradually listen better.

·         Use the internet:

-          English listening: Explore, listen, understand: www.englishlistening.com

-          English online:  www.eleaston.com

-          www.listen-to.english.com