Developing listening & speaking skills

What is a communicative task?

• an activity or exercise

• an activity that has (a) an objective attainable only by the interaction among participants

• an activity with a focus on meaning exchange

• an activity that focuses on accuracy

Interpersonal communication is

• spontaneous

• two-way communication that is negotiated between and among speakers

• one-way communication to an audience of listeners (or readers/viewers) in which the message usually cannot be clarified or negotiated.

• centered around a meaningful context

Presentational communication is

• spontaneous

• two-way communication that is negotiated between and among speakers

• one-way communication to an audience of listeners (or readers/viewers) in which the message usually cannot be clarified or negotiated.

• centered around a meaningful context

Sketches and rehearsed roleplays are examples of

• Presentational tasks

• Interpersonal tasks

• Speaking tasks

• Listening tasks

Information gap and ranking activities are examples of

• Presentational tasks

• Interpersonal tasks

• Speaking tasks

• Listening tasks

Listening tasks can be challenging to teenagers because

• There is the problem that confronts all students of English and that is the way that individual sounds change in connected speech (i.e. assimilated, elided and weak forms). This can mean that students simply turn off when listening to English being spoken as it seems too difficult to follow without a high level of concentration.

• More and more teenagers have problems with short attention spans which makes the discipline of listening to reasonably extended discourse in English much more difficult.

• The level of motivation of teenage students can vary enormously. Some teenagers are of course very keen to learn while others are in class because they are forced to be there, not because they want to be there.

A framework for listening skills lessons ...

• includes three parts: pre-, while-, and post-listening stages

• always integrates speaking tasks

• can integrate other skills

• includes adapted audio materials

Listening can be more engaging if teachers

• ask students to bring prepared songs or any other listening material in English to the classroom

• Use transcripts and or captions when listening

• turn prediction activities into a game by putting my teenage students in groups before they listen and asking them to try to predict the answers to listening tasks where they have to pick out detailed information

What can teachers do to maximize students' level of engagement in having conversations in English

• Activate students' interest in the topic

• Create a reason for students to listen to classmates and be engaged in the conversation

• Use fill in the blanks exercises

• Make students' accountable for their conversation

What is the major challenge to integrating communicative tasks in your teaching?

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