Frustrations and Challenges in Teaching Listening and Speaking

1. Teaching Listening and Speaking Joe McVeigh King Saud University PYP 21 January 2013

4. A joke

5. A joke A: “It’s windy.” B: “No, it isn’t. It’s Thursday. C: “So am I. Let’s get off and have a cup of tea.”

6. Frustrations and challenges in teaching listening

7. A three-ring circus

8. One minute to gather short responses. (Facilitator microphones off) • Chime to stop talking. • One minute to report back (twenty seconds for each group, turn on mics as needed.)

9. Frustrations and challenges in teaching listening

10. Time to stop. Shhhh.

11. Report back

12. Listening basics

13. How is spoken language different from written language?

14. Time to stop. Shhhh.

15. Report back

16. Real time/speed control • Reductions, blends, false starts • Loose organization of speech: • short, vague language • non-fluent • little subordination • use of gestures and body language

17. How do we decode language ? • An unbroken stream of sound • Is broken up into groups of sounds • Which are recognized as words • Whose meaning is accessed • And the relationship of the words to each other is established

18. What do we do when things are ambiguous or unclear? • We use real-world knowledge • We use the immediate context • We use word-order strategies • We use pauses, stress, intonation

19. Beginning students and poor listeners in general often lack bottom-up skills. • They can’t segment speech • They don’t recognize words • They use the words they do know, even if implausible • They may get some specific information, but have a hard time with main ideas.

20. Too much going on

21. How do listeners need to break up the speech stream? • Work with thought groups • Recognize • assimilation • deletion • insertion • strong (tell) and weak (open) forms

22. Distinguishing sounds: minimal pairs

23. 1 bin 2 pin 3 Ben 4 pen

24. Q: Skills for Success Listening & Speaking 1

25. Q: Skills for Success Listening & Speaking 1

26. Writing things down dictation

27. Ways to use transcripts • Ss mark stressed words. • Instead of audio, teach can read and hyper-stress for beginners. • Intermediate/advanced students: Predict stress, then check • A crosses out words in the script and hands the script to B, who listens and restores text as (1) A reads OR (2) both listen again. • Ss try to match the speed and intonation of the script. • For grammatical focus, highlight the forms in the script, or raise hands when they hear that form.

28. Frustrations and challenges in teaching speaking

29. Time to stop. Shhhh.

30. Report back

31. Working with speaking

32. Power Tools Using language to get more language

33. Controlled to less controlled activities

34. Repetition and drills

35. Variety

36. Dialogs

37. Using dialogues • Read and look up • Partners make mistakes on purpose • Strip stories – reconstruct the dialogue after hearing it • Personalize the dialogue • Voice variations • Physical variations: standing, moving in line, back to back, etc.

38. Q: Skills for Success Reading & Writing Intro

39. Time to stop. Shhhh.

40. Report back

41. Information gap activities

42. Q: Skills for Success Listening & Speaking 1

43. Free conversation

44. Structure – direction and narrowing the topic

45. Q: Skills for Success Listening & Speaking 1

46. Word Stress

47. pencil today yesterday tomorrow

48. in ter es ting In tres ting

49. Sentence stress and reduced forms

50. Djeet yet? No, joo?