Communicative Approach

In this session the group continued with the presentation groups about the listening comprehension and oral expression topic.

Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach, is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study. Language learners in environments utilizing CLT techniques learn and practice the target language through interaction with one another and the instructor, study of "authentic texts" (those written in the target language for purposes other than language learning), and use of the language in class combined with use of the language outside of class. Learners converse about personal experiences with partners, and instructors teach topics outside of the realm of traditional grammar in order to promote language skills in all types of situations. This method also claims to encourage learners to incorporate their personal experiences into their language learning environment and focus on the learning experience in addition to the learning of the target language.

The emergence of English as a global language, technological innovation and a growing need for learner autonomy are changing the contexts of language learning rapidly and profoundly. Recognition of the current complexity and diversity of these contexts has led some to suggest that we have moved ‘beyond methods’ to a postmethod condition (Kumaravadivelu, 2002), that the quest for a better method has been or should be abandoned in favor of the identification of practices or strategies of teaching designed to reflect local needs and experiences.

Strategies for Oral Expression

In this session the group continued with the presentation groups about the listening comprehension and oral expression topic.

Look this information presenting in the class

Teaching Speaking

Earlier views: Methodology consisted of repeating after the teacher, memorizing a dialog, or responding to drills, reflecting the sentence-based view of proficiency (audiolingual and drill-based views of the 70’) Grammar-based syllabuses

Later views: In the 80’ emerged the communicative language teaching, until today.

Current views: Communicative approach+  intercultural competence. 

Talk as interactions: It refers to “conversation” and describes interaction which serves a social function.

When people meet, exchange greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences.

Skills involved: opening and closing conversations, choosing topics, making small-talk, joking, reacting to others, turn taking, using styles of speaking.

The best way is to provide examples embedded in naturalistic dialogs that can serve to model features how to open and close conversations, making small talks, recounting personal incidents and experiences, and reacting to what others say. Teachers should select safe topics.

Giving feedback (back channeling) involves responding to a conversational partner with expressions that indicate interest and a wish for the speaker to continue. For example: yeah, that’s interesting, really, etc.

Asking one or two follow up questions could help prepare students to interact.

Teaching Speaking

'I can understand my teacher's English, but when I speak to 'real people' I can't understand them'. This is a comment I'm sure many teachers have heard.

While it is a bit of an exaggeration, students clearly feel that classroom-based speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world. Why do students so often highlight listening and speaking as their biggest problems? Partly because of the demands of listening and speaking and partly because of the way speaking is often taught. It usually consists of language practice activities (discussions, information-gap activities etc.) or is used to practise a specific grammar point. Neither teaches patterns of real interaction.

There are three types of teaching speaking skills. Let's check them out.

Talk as Interaction:

This refers to what we normally mean by ''conversation.'' In other words, when the participants exchange ideas and thoughts during classes for a required task. In this one, there are some skills that have to be  used such as:

- Opening and closing conversations

- Choosing topics

- Making small talk

-  Joking

- Recounting personal incidents and experiences

- Turn - taking

- Interrupting

- Reacting to others

- Using an appropriate style of speaking

Talk as Transition: 

This type of talk refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. Some skills to be developed in this type are:

- Explain a need or intention

- Describing something

- Asking questioning

- Confirming information

- Clarifying  understanding

- Making comparisons

- Agreeing and disagreeing

Talk as Performance:  

This is the third type of talk and refers to the usage of speaking. For instance, public talks.

Some of the skills involved in using this talk are:

- Using an appropriate format

- Presenting information in an appropriate sequence

- Maintaining audience engagement

- Using correct pronunciation and grammar

- Creating an effect on the audience

- Using appropriate vocabulary

Implications for teaching:

For every English teacher teacher speaking skills is a challenge due to the shyness of students at the time of speaking about something when they are in a very basic level. They fear to make a mistake in front of others; therefore they avoid participating in classes.

The Teaching Of Listening

In the previous entries we will certainly exposing some features in general regarding the teaching of speaking and listening skills.

Listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of English. In other words, this view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse.

Characteristics of Listening/Spoken Discourse:

• The listener must process it ''on-line''' and there is often no chance to listen to it again.
• It strikes the second language listener as being very fast, although speech rates vary considerably.
• It is usually unplanned
• It has a linear structure compared to a hierarchical structure for written discourse.
• It is usually delivered one clause at a time and longer utterances in conversation generally consist of several or adjuncts.
• Variation of accents.

I invite you to watch this video about Listening Comprehension by professor Jack C. Richards.

Listening Comprehension

In the second session of the module, we began talking about chapter 3. Then, some group work. But in this entry I want to do is to reflect on the reading ''Teaching Listening and Speaking from theory to practice''

In this material, I found many important facts regarding teaching and practice. For example, how listening and speaking can be taught. However, I was primary focused on the teaching of speaking because in the previous entry I reflected on listening somehow. In order to, these two skills are connected because you listen what others speak or say.  So, in this material, professor Jack Richards make us to be conscious about how we as teachers can implement different ways to teach listening and speaking.

Is it appropriate for an English teacher to translate new words into the students’ mother tongue? If so, how much and how many words?

If the teacher decides that the word is useful and important, he or she should also ask:

Can the meaning of the word be inferred from the context or because it is similar to a word in the students’ mother tongue?

Can the students make an intelligent guess about the meaning of the word?

Can they check the meaning of the word in their dictionary?

it is important to continue explaing Listening is a receptive skill. This means that listening is a process in which you do not produce but receive, deal with and understand a language. Listening is an important skill in our daily life, especially when we talk to someone. We have to understand the person we talk to in order to have a satisfying conversation.

You can practise your listening skills by listening carefully to and extracting information from a text. Then consider the content of what you have just heard. We provide a lot of opportunities to train your listening comprehension.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Listening comprehension is more than just hearing what is said; rather, it is a child’s ability to understand the meaning of the words he hears and to relate to them in some way. When children hear a story, for instance, good listening comprehension enables them to understand it, remember it, discuss it, and even retell it in their own words. This is an important skill to develop even at an early age, because good listeners grow up to become good communicators.

Reflection on the video by Jack C. Richards regarding Listening

Listening Comprehension is compounded by two different strands which are: Bottom Up Processing, and Top Down Processing. These may vary depending on the students' learning background. Let's discuss a little bit deeper the topic.

Bottom up:  students are taught an specific topic. The following strategies can help teachers to put into practice the bottom up processing while teaching: 

• listening for specific details
• recognizing cognates
• recognizing word-order patterns

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.

Top down: this one depends on the background knowledge of the student on a certain topic.

Let's take a look to the strategies that can be done while teaching:

•          listening for the main idea
•          predicting
•          drawing inferences
•         summarizing

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.

To sum up, listening comprehension is really important for teachers to implement or develop this skills into their students no matter if they teach it inductively or deductively. It has to be mentioned that sometimes is necessary to expose students to real world material for creating interest on the classes.

LAST REFLECTION ON CBE AND DIDACTIC SEQUENCE

In the previous entry, we were discussing something related to Didactic Sequence. But in this last session we continued discussing about some important aspect that we have to included or develop as a teacher in a real life.

We were also discussing about inquiry reflection which is a diagram in which teachers can facilitate their preparation in the lesson plan:

•    Knowledge: which refers to what he or she is going to teach or do in the class.
•   Articulation: the way he will develop his/her class.
• Resources: what he/she is going to use in order to get his/her students attention in the class.
•   Organization: in which way he/she will do it as a lesson plan.
•   Evaluation: what contents he will consider in the assessment of his/her students. Also, they will determine the time and the type of the test.
•  Justification: why he or she is going to do so.  Basically is the purpose.

To sum up, the DS was applied to the teaching of an expository text, and different pedagogic strategies vocabulary redundancy, familiarity with the ideas involved, and a checklist to encourage student autonomy were implemented to allow students to experiment this practice as a coherent, cohesive process adapted to their needs. The final DS design stroke a balance between a grammatical and a purely ideational focus and, as a result, students were able to improve their acquaintance with, and use of, the main features of expository writing without becoming estranged in the learning process.