Topic 7

Question 1

How can speech be defined?

Answer 1

Speech is the most obvious aspect of language and the universal material of human language

Question 2

How can listening comprehension be regarded?

Answer 2

As the development of pupils’ ability to understand, respond to spoken language or the listening skill as well as to communicate in speech or the speaking skill.

Question 3

According to Harmer (1983), if we want our pupils to engage actively in a listening activity, what should we do?

Answer 3

If we want our pupils to engage actively in a listening activity, they must be either interested in what they are going to listen to or they must find it useful. In both cases, they must have expectations about the content of the listening text.

Question 4

what constitutes good practice when teaching/learning listening comprehension?

Answer 4

Listening comprehension lessons…
- must have definite goals, carefully stated
- should be constructed with careful step by step planning
- should have a structure which demands active pupil participation
- should stress conscious memory work
- should teach, not test

Question 5

Explain EXTENSIVE LISTENING

Answer 5

In extensive listening the language level is within the students’ capacity and they listen for pleasure and interest. The passages can be long or short. One of the advantages of extensive listening passages is that they need not be under the direct control of the teacher, but function as back-up material for the pupil to listen to in his own time at his own speed.

Question 6

Explain INTENSIVE LISTENING

Answer 6

Intensive listening is the most widely-used form of listening practice in classrooms. Students are asked to listen to a passage with the aim of collecting and organizing the information it contains. The type of passages used is usually a little different from that used to extensive listening: it contains more concrete information and often is not so easy for the students to understand on first hearing. Passages should be short and played several times.

Question 7

What can effective language instructors do to help students hone their listening skills?

Answer 7

They should show students how they can adjust their listening behaviour to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.

Question 8

What are LISTENING STRATEGIES?

Answer 8

They are techniques that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input (top-down or bottom-up strategies)

Question 9

Explain TOP-DOWN LISTENING STRATEGIES

Answer 9

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing.

Question 10

Explain BOTTOM-UP LISTENING STRATEGIES

Answer 10

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include listening for specific details, recognizing cognates, recognizing word-order patterns, etc.

Question 11

What defines a student that is a competent listener?

Answer 11

Students who can use listening strategies to maximize their comprehension of aural input, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Question 12

What can instructors do to make students competent listeners?

Answer 12

• Develop awareness of the listening process and listening strategies
• Allow students to practice all the strategies by using authentic listening tasks
• Respond to student communication as a listener rather than as a teacher
• Show students the strategies that will work best for the different listening purposes and types of text
• Encourage students to be conscious of what they’re doing
• Encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and their strategy immediately after completing an assignment
• Encourage the development of listening skills and the use of listening strategies by using the target language to conduct classroom business
• Explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of listening task or with another skill

Question 13

What should the instructor do when designing listening activities?

Answer 13

• Construct the listening activity around a contextualized task
• Define the activity’s instructional goal and type of response
• Check the level of difficulty of the listening text
• Use pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are going to hear or view
• Match while-listening activities to the instructional goal, the listening purpose and students’ proficiency level
• Use post-listening activities to check comprehension, evaluate listening skills and use of listening strategies, and extend the knowledge gained to other contexts.

Question 14

What are the three areas of knowledge involved in speaking?

Answer 14

Mechanics, function and social and cultural rules and normes

Question 15

Explain MECHANICS (area of knowledge involved in speaking?

Answer 15

The use of the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation

Question 16

Explain FUNCTION (area of knowledge involved in speaking?

Answer 16

The knowledge about when clarity of message is essential and when precise understanding is not required

Question 17

Explain SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RULES AND NORMS (area of knowledge involved in speaking?

Answer 17

The understanding of how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason

Question 18

What can instructors do to help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking?

Answer 18

Instructors can use a balanced approach that combines language input, structured output, and communicative output.

Question 19

Explain LANGUAGE INPUT (technique that can help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking)

Answer 19

Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading passages and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material they need to begin producing language themselves. Language input may be content oriented or form oriented.

Question 20

Explain STRUCTURED OUTPUT (technique that can help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking)

Answer 20

Structured output focuses on correct form. In structured output, students may have options for responses, but all of the options require them to use the specific form or structure that the teacher has just introduced. Structure output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific language items recently introduced, sometimes in combination with previously learned items. Instructors often use structured output exercises as a transition between the presentation stage and the practice stage of a lesson plan

Question 21

Explain COMMUNICATIVE OUTPUT (technique that can help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking)

Answer 21

In communicative output, the learners’ main purpose is to complete a task, such as obtaining information, developing a travel plan, or creating a video. To complete the task, they may use the language that the instructor has just presented, but they also may draw on any other vocabulary, grammar and communication strategies that they know. In communicative output activities, the criterion of success is whether the learner gets the message across. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it interferes with the message.

Question 22

Effective instructors teach students speaking strategies by:

Answer 22

• Using minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges
• Recognising scripts or patterns that are used often and might be helpful for students
• Using language to talk about language, assuring students that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any type of interaction, and they should be prepared

Question 23

What are the two types of activities that instructors need to combine to produce competent speakers?

Answer 23

STRUCTURED OUTPUT ACTIVITIES, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy (e.g., information-gap and jigsaw activities), and COMMUNICATIVE OUTPUT ACTIVITIES that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely (e.g., role plays and discussions).

Question 24

Explain STRUCTURED OUTPUT ACTIVITIES

Answer 24

In these types of activities, students complete a task by obtaining missing information, a feature the activities have in common with real communication. However, information-gap and jigsaw activities also set up practice on specific items of language. In this respect, they are more like drills than like communication. Structured output activities can form an effective bridge between instructor modelling and communicative output because they are partly authentic and partly artificial. Like authentic communication, they feature information gaps that must be bridged for successful completion of the task. However, while authentic communication allows speakers to use all of the language they know, structured output activities lead students to practice specific features of language and to practice only in brief sentences, not in extended discourse.

Question 25

Explain COMMUNICATIVE OUTPUT ACTIVITIES

Answer 25

Communicative output activities allow students to practice using all of the language they know in situations that resemble real settings. In these activities, students must work together to develop a plan, resolve a problem, or complete a task. In role plays, students are assigned roles and put into situations that they may eventually encounter outside the classroom. Because role plays imitate life, the range of language functions that may be used expands considerably. Also, the role relationships among the students as they play their parts call for them to practice and develop their sociolinguistic competence. They have to use language that is appropriate to the situation and to the characters.