Teaching Listening and Speaking
Teaching Listening and speaking
Hi, readers!
Welcome back!
It’s a nice day, right? Yeaps.. I hope all of you feel good with love and peace.
Today we will discuss Young Learners Teaching listening and speaking. Speaking and listening is uncommon for all of us, right?!
Maybe some of you want to know what is listening and what is speaking?
Listening is the receptive use of language. It is the process of interpreting messages by using
context and one’s knowledge of language and the world. The development of listening skills has
an impact on the development of other skills (Rost 2002; Linse 2005)
Speaking is the active use of language to express meaning. Speaking involves expressing ideas, opinions or a need to do something and establishing and maintaining social relationships and
friendships (McDonough and Shaw 2003).
Listening
Techniques teach in Listening are:
Illustration of Listening Tasks
Paul (2003) said that students learn through sensing whole chunks of language, and through thinking and guessing.
Example: teacher or tapes first.
Listening and color
Letting children simply color the picture, teachers can make it into a language activity, as illustrated in the following sample story, which can be used with 8 to 10-year-old learners.
Example: coloring sheets
Listen and arrange
Paul, (2003) said that stories can be a supplementary material when teaching English to young learners particularly when the stories can be integrated to the course
Example: stories
Listen and do
Asher (2009) argues that TPR (Total physical response )is based on the theory that people learn best when they are actively involved and understand the language they hear, which is especially true of children whose physical and cognitive development can be supported by relating meaning to movement.
Listen and repeat
Paul, (2003), states that children love songs. Children keep songs in their heads, sing them after class, hum them on the way home, and sing them at home. They like the singing activity and songs provide many opportunities to get new words and to acquire the model pronunciation.
Example: song, chants, story refrains
Listen and draw
Paul (2003) argues that dictation exercise is always an important technique of teaching listening because it trains students’ comprehension in differing English sounds. Dictation doesn’t have to be boring in which teachers simply state the words and students write the words in their notebooks, it can be so much fun and interesting, apply it in language games.
Example: Didactic
Speaking
Techniques teach in speaking
Classroom language
Several simple expressions that teachers can use as classroom instruction are as:
Good morning
How are you today?
See you next meeting
Dialogues and role play
According to Brezigar (2010), dialogues and role play based on real-life conversations are oral activities that can be used to bridge the gap between guided and free tasks. Learners can find them entertaining and motivating as they take on the role of imaginary character. The use of puppets, physical movements and realia can make a dialogue come alive for young learners, giving them a communicative purpose.
Teaching kits
To induce meaning to students, teachers can act out or use picture to describe the word. Translating the new word into students’ native language is unnecessary. Teachers can provide themselves with puppets, pictures, cassettes videos, and so forth. Puppets may bring certain feelings among children. Children can enjoy acting out scenes with puppets or toy animals. Students can develop their own characters and voices based on the puppets. Pictures can help students in understanding meaning, they can also be used in coloring activities, retelling stories, or language games. Cassettes and videos are also wonderful for introducing songs, pronunciation, and so on.
Before I close this blog, I want to inform you about Listening and Speaking. Anyone who has taught a listening and speaking course to second language (L2) learners knows that it can be challenging. Besides the challenge of meeting learners’ needs in general, teachers often find that some students are afraid to communicate for fear of making mistakes or may simply be uninterested in the topic. Fortunately, there are ways to successfully address such challenges, and music-based instruction is one of them.
The field of psycholinguistics reports on a noticeable relationship between the spheres of music and language during brain development that can begin even before the age of two. The brain can understand and then organize the rhythm and syntax of music and language in similar ways (McMullen and Saffran 2004).
Students benefit most when an appropriate song is selected for the lesson. Based on ideas from Simpson (2015) and Abbott (2002), the following list of questions will help guide the decision-making process for a teacher who is choosing a song:
Content: Does the theme of the song match up with your lesson?
Clarity of speech: Can your learners understand the lyrics?
Age: Repetitive songs may be better for young learners, while thought-provoking songs may be more suitable for older learners. What is the median age of your students?
Speed: Is the tempo, or speed, of the music what you want it to be?
Vocabulary: Is there specific vocabulary in the song that correlates with the lesson?
Grammar: Does the song highlight a grammar point that your lesson focuses on?
Idioms: How much idiomatic language does the song contain, and would you like to focus learning on the idioms in the song?
Popularity: Might your learners want to suggest songs they like?
Cultural sensitivity: Consider whether the song fits in with the cultural norms of your learners. Do the lyrics present an opportunity to explore topics of culture, diversity, and multiculturalism?
Offensive lyrics: Do you want to avoid using songs with explicit lyrics?
Well, I think that’s all for today!
I hope this blog can inform you about teaching young learners in speaking and listening. See you in the next blog!
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