Teaching The HOW:

Receptive Skills

Ekaterina V. Eremina
 Language Skills
 Receptive skills
 Listening
 Reading

 Productive skills
 Speaking
 Writing
Receptive Skills
 Receptive skills are the ways in which people extract
meaning from the discourse they see or hear.

 Receptive skills are listening and reading, because

learners do not need to produce language to do these,
they receive and understand it.
WHAT MAKES ATEXT?

meaning
message
pragmatics
schema
cohesion
coherence
Schema (pl. schemata)
 F.ex. “England in a six-wicket collapse”
Cohesion
“My father once bought a Lincoln. He
did it by saving every penny he
could. That car would be worth a
fortune nowadays. However, he
sold it to help pay for my college
education. Sometimes I think I’d
rather have the Lincoln.”
Coherence

Nancy: That’s the telephone.

Ron: I’m in the bath.
Nancy: OK.
 Reading/listening purposes
• developing reading/listening skills and
strategies
• presenting/recycling grammar items
• expanding vocabulary
• giving information of interest to
students
• stimulating oral work
 Styles/strategies of
reading/listening
Reason Styles (strategies) Reading time

general skimming (very) rapid

information
about the text
specific scanning rapid
information
detailed intensive slow
information
 3 stage approach to working
with a text
Stages The main aim
Pre - reading/listening to predict the content of the text, to
stage activate the vocabulary which leads
to developing predictive skills

While - checking comprehension

reading/listening stage

Post - integration of the received from the

reading/listening stage text information with other skills
(speaking or writing)
3 Stage Approach to Teaching
Receptive Skills
 These activities encourage processing at different levels,
involving various reading/listening skills and strategies, guiding
and checking understanding. Often they will follow a pattern of
questions that encourage focus on global meaning, then on
detailed understanding and finally return to global
comprehension, though at a deeper level than at the outset.

 In these activities learners respond to the text, evaluate the

content and relate it to their own experience, often integrating
reading/listening with speaking and writing in the process.

 These activities provide a purpose for reading/listening, are

aimed at motivating learners to read/listen by stimulating their
interest or curiosity, creating expectations, activating their
background knowledge, sharing experiences and opinions, etc.
 Teaching Reading

Why do people read?

What do theyread?
How do peopleread?
Some definitions of ‘reading:’
1.Reading is an interactive process of
communication between writer and reader. O.
Polyakov. Teaching English Communicatively.
Tambov Project.
2.Reading is a process of obtaining meaning from
written text. Williams, E., Reading in the Language
Classroom
3.Reading is a process of getting information for
different purposes. Grant, N., Making the Most of
Your Textbook
Cooperative Principles
 Reader and Writer use the same code.
 Writer HAS something to say.
 Writer WANTS to be understood.
 Reader MAKES efforts and CAN efficiently
apply VARIOUS and ADEQUATE reading
strategies.
Text may look like this…
And
this is a
text as
well…
 Choosing a text
 Who is a target audience?
 What reading style is meant to develop?
 Text place in curriculum and teaching
trajectory? Level of difficulty (content,
language, discourse type, discourse
markers…)
 Information / Intrigue
 Reading skills/strategies development
potential
 Reading styles

Scanning
Skimming

Intensive
Extensive
READING STRATEGIES
Interpretation of non-text information (images)
Interpretation of textinformation
Selectivity
Whole textreading
Pragmatic analysis
Interpretation of lexical items
Inference
Word-building
Dictionary
Repetitions & ellipsis
 Reading skills
language code
links between sentences
message
text structure and messages supporting information
explicitly stated info
implicitly stated info
writer’s style predicting
text schema
 Pre-Reading Stage
 Learners form expectations about the text based on
clues from accompanying pictures or photographs, the text
type, layout, headings.
 Background information is provided or recalled (What
do you know about ..?)
 Brainstorming (e.g. learners are given the theme of the
text and try to anticipate some of the main points and offer
their own ideas).
 Key words are supplied and learners try to guess what the
text might be about.
 Discussion (a few general questions may be supplied for
guidance).
 Focus on language (e.g. learners classify words and justify
their choice of categories).
 While-Reading Stage
 Deducing meaning, e.g. from context, from previous knowledge, ...
 Answering questions, e.g. true\false, multiple choice, Wh-questions,…
 Recognizing, e.g. topic from title, headline, etc; main idea in each paragraph
and distinguish this from supporting detail; all the words relating to a
particular theme; cohesive devices: underlying connectives or relating
reference words (e.g. pronouns) to the words they refer to; …
 Matching, e.g. texts with pictures, split sentences, headlines with newspaper
articles,
 Ordering, e.g. jumbled paragraphs or sentences, a jumbled sequence of
pictures associated with the story or recipe, …
 Following instructions, e.g. tracing written directions on a map, making a
dish from a recipe, …
 Note-taking, e.g. information under specified headings in a chart or diagram,
…
 Completing, e.g. learners complete a map or diagram using information in the
text; do a crossword, fill in a questionnaire, put the missing words or sentences
in a gapped text, finish an incomplete sentence or paragraph, …
 Decision –making, e.g. learners read a travel brochure and choose the most
suitable holiday for someone with particular interests, solve a mystery or crime,
…
 Post-Reading Stage
 Personal expressions, e.g. learners express their views on
the subject of the text and relate it to their own experience
and that of their classmates; illustrate a story or their
feelings about a text (drawings or a collage of magazine
pictures).
 Speaking as follow up to reading activities, e.g. learners
discuss and justify their different interpretations of the text
read; change a narrative into a drama; role play an
interview with a character in the text or with the writer.
 Writing as follow up to reading activities, e.g. learners
reconstruct the text from key words; write a summary;
create a similar text modeled on the one just read (letter,
postcard, advertisement, etc)
 Project work (on the theme of the text), i.e. relatively
large-scale activities with authentic information gathered
by learners from the outside world.
Pre-reading = pre-teaching?!
Should we pre-teach all new vocabulary before it is met
in a reading text? The ANSWER IS …. Although some
key words will be essential to a global understanding
of the text and may need to be explained, very often
per-teaching all new vocabulary can just kill
motivation and prevent the development of reading
sub-skills and strategies.
Cunningsworth A.
https://postnauka.ru/video/57643
 Teaching listening
 Listening is the language modality that is
used most frequently.

 The aim of teaching listening – to model

listening strategies and provide listening
practice in authentic situations: those that
learners are likely to encounter when they
use the language outside the classroom.
Teaching Listening
Pre-listening

While-listening

Post-listening
Pre-Listening Activities
Prepare students:

- linguistically

- conceptually

- motivationally
Pre-Listening Stage
 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs
 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
 reading something relevant
 constructing semantic webs Activities
Pre-Listening (a graphic arrangement of
concepts or words showing how they are related)
 predicting the content of the listening text
 going over the directions or instructions for the
activity
 doing guided practice
While-Listening Stage
 listening with visuals
 filling in graphs and charts
 following a route on a map
 checking off items in a list
 listening for the gist
 searching for specific clues to meaning
 completing cloze (fill-in) exercises
 distinguishing between formal and informal registers
Top-down and Bottom-Up
Combine top-down and bottom-up
processes to prepare more effective
listeners.
Brainstorming (expressing ideas about the topic/ content of the
text based on background knowledge and experience)

Elicitation (eliciting something associated with the topic),

vocabulary work

Discussion (encouraging students to exchange ideas/opinions)

Memory games (for warming up relaxation)

Introducing the task (giving instructions)

Matching

Filling in gaps

Information transfer (maps, plans, grids, forms, etc)

Sequencing

Ticking true/false items (yes/no, etc)

Identifying the main idea

Answering questions to show comprehension

Writing answers (letters, telegrammes, messages, etc)

Speaking (e.g. debate, interview, discussion, role play, summarizing,

problem solving)

Summarizing the text

Conclusion
Obviously, the three-phase approach to the text is not
to be carried out mechanically on every occasion.
Sometimes the teacher may wish to cut out the pre-
stage and get learners to work on the text directly.
Sometimes post- work may not be suitable. However,
the advantage of three-phase approach is twofold. First
it respects and makes use of the students’ own
knowledge of language and of the world and uses this
as the basis for involvement, motivation and progress.
Secondly the three-phase approach leads to
integration of the skills in a coherent manner, so that
teaching session is not simply isolated.
 https://yandex.ru/video/preview/?filmId=11924772423
349420147&text=English+language+teaching+LISTENI
NG&redircnt=1574144524.1