Teach English in Zhonglou Zhen - Rizhao Shi

There are two major categories of skills: receptive and productive. Productive skills, such as speaking and writing, are used to produce language. By contrast, receptive skills are the ones we use to receive language. Receptive skills include reading and listening. To develop receptive skills, students should do a lot of reading and listening in class for two main reasons. The first and more obvious reason is to practice those skills. Practicing reading and listening is a prerequisite to getting better at receiving language. The second reason is to get familiar with the language. For these two reasons, it is essential to structure lessons around some sort of text, either reading or listening. When it comes to lesson structuring, it is useful to acknowledge that there is no single way of organizing tasks. Contrary, the teacher should understand the principles and purposes of centering lessons around reading and listening activities. The first step for successful teaching of receptive skills is choosing the right text. Firstly, the text should be engaging for learners to read or listen to. They should want to read or listen to it. Even when selecting among texts that are in the course book, the teacher has to make sure the text would be interesting to their students. Secondly, the text should be of an appropriate level for learners. The teacher should use texts that are more difficult only in rare circumstances. In most cases, the text should be aligned with the learner’s level, as it would make students more confident about their receptive skills. The second step is to increase interest in the topic related to the text. To that end, the teacher should activate schemata of learners. Raising interest would improve receptive skills of learners because it would be easier for them to grasp the message of the text if they are aware of the subject. To enhance the student’s motivation to read or listen to the text, the teacher may show a related visual aid, such as an image. Another way to boost interest is to give learners a time-limited group task. Further, the teacher may start a personalized discussion related to some aspect of the text. The three methods above would help activate learners’ schemata so that they would better perceive the text. time-limited group task. Further, the teacher may start a personalized discussion related to some aspect of the text. The three methods above would help activate learners’ schemata so that they would better perceive the text. The third step is to introduce learners to new vocabulary before reading or listening to the text. Learners should at least know the meaning of a few keywords in the text or the words necessary to complete the task following reading or listening. However, it does not mean that the teacher should pre-teach every unknown word. All the steps above are necessary to perform before reading or listening to the text. The following steps should be conducted during reading or listening. The first step is to give the gist task to the student. However, it is necessary to make the gist task reasonably challenging. The teacher should not ask about anything clearly mentioned in the text because learners would stop listening or reading once they find the answer to the gist task. Contrary, the gist task should require learners to get a good overview of the text. Suitable gist tasks include prediction checking or choosing the correct title. It is also essential to give students uninterrupted time to solve the gist task. The teacher should also consider allowing students to do the peer check before going to class feedback. The next step is getting short class feedback. After the completion of the gist task, the teacher should give a second task, for example, by setting up a question on some specific information in the text. At this step, the teacher should avoid the same wording in the question as in the text. During the feedback stage, the teacher should ask follow up questions related to learners’ answers.