TEFL Zhuhai

Each language has got four basic skills: the two receptive skills (reading and listening) and the two productive skills (speaking and writing). When Ss read or listen they do not produce any language, they just receive and comprehend information, and therefore these skills are also called “passive skills”. We have some definite motives to read or to listen to: for a purpose or for pleasure. “Interest is a motivational variable that involves not only the emotions but also the intellect, making it a powerful energizer indeed.” (Hidi, S., Renninger, K. A., & Krapp, A. (2004). Interest, a motivational variable that combines affective and cognitive functioning. In D. Y. Dai, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development. (pp.89-115). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) It usually requires us to make an increased effort to focus attention on something and comprehend new information, but if we have got inner motivation we are able to do that comparatively easy. Even if Ss are not quite interested in a topic or have little knowledge, T should make a situational interest, engage Ss into the topic and wake their curiosity up. Schraw, Flowerday & Lehman listed the following things which are luckily to motivate Ss: curiosity (use mystery), surprise (something unexpected), novelty (something new/ unusual), relevance (relate the topic to Ss), complexity (not too easy, not too complicated), prior knowledge (Ss should not have too much prior knowledge on the topic of the audio/ printed text as they won’t be interested to comprehend), explicitness and coherence (no prior knowledge is needed, but the text itself is explicit), purpose (help Ss to focus attention), perspective (focus attention on a particular character), discussion, surveys. (Schraw, G., Flowerday, T., & Lehman, S. (2001). Increasing situational interest in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 13(3), 211-224.) Both readers and listeners use a number of various skills, which play a big role in understanding of the context and development of reading and listening skills: predictive skills (e.g. predict the content of a written text or an audio text from a headline/ introduction), specific information – scanning (concentrating on particular information), general idea – skimming (concentrating on what is relevant to the general picture), detailed information (read or listen to them in a concentrated way in order to get the detailed information), deduction from context (understand both literal meaning of the words or phrases/ information and the meaning behind the words), discourse function recognition (pay attention to the organization of a given text). Reading differs from listening for the several reasons mentioned by D. Byrne, (Teaching Writing Skills. Longman, 1995): a. “Creates its own context and therefore has to be fully explicit. b. Reader not presents and no interaction is possible. c. Reader not necessarily known to writer. d. No immediate feedback possible. Writer may try to anticipate reader's reactions and incorporate them into text. e. Writing is permanent. Can be reread as often as necessary and at own speed. f. Sentences expected to be carefully constructed and linked and organized to form a text. g. Device to help convey meaning is punctuation, capitals and underlining (for emphasis). Sentences boundaries clearly indicated.” That is why Ss are supposed to read a fully explicit context which consists of carefully constructed sentences with clearly indicated boundaries. Readers are usually not able neither to clear their doubts with the writer nor give an immediate feedback. Writing is permanent, it can be reread as often as necessary, and at own speed. On the other hand, listeners are supposed to listen to a context which is sometimes not fully explicit (e.g. a dialogue). And it doesn’t necessarily consist of carefully constructed sentences with clearly indicated boundaries (e.g. shortened forms, loss of thought, fumbling, accents, lack of intonation). Listeners are sometimes able to clear their doubts by re-asking and give an immediate feedback (in a dialogue the listener can re-ask the speaker), but usually we hear it only once and don’t have time for thinking about the language and its meaning. The main difference is that listening is not permanent T should keep these differences in mind when teaching and planning the lessons.