AULA 5

ESTUDOS AVANÇADOS DE
LÍNGUA INGLESA –
COMPREENSÃO AUDITIVA E
COMUNICAÇÃO ORAL

Prof. Prof Stephen Greene

INITIAL TALK

As we have said before, for a lot of students listening and speaking are the
end goals for learning a language. For these people, learning grammar and lexis
and practising reading and writing are only part of the process that must be
endured in order to be able to listen and speak effectively. So far in this module,
we have looked at what listening and speaking are, and tried to draw up some
principles for designing or adapting activities that either teach or practise these two
activities. In the next two lessons, we will focus on practical activities and try to
evaluate good and bad tasks and how they can be improved, if they need to be.
In this lesson, we will look at the practical implications of practising speaking
and listening skills in the classroom. By the end, we will see how we can avoid a
lot of the problems inherent with listening and speaking by proactively planning
around them. In the final lesson, we will focus on how listening and speaking can
be integrated with each other and other skills or learning objectives, such as
reading and writing.

CONTEXTUALIZING

In this lesson, we will look at the practicalities of writing or adapting listening

and speaking activities to the classroom. The one thing to remember is that, on the
whole, and in accordance with the precepts of the communicative approach, or
CLT, we want to make our activities as authentic as possible. There will, however,
sometimes be an occasion when we might not want to be totally authentic, and we
shall see one such example at the end when we focus on drills.
In the course of this lesson, we will focus on these questions:

 What is task-based learning and how can it help the productive skills?
 How can effective instructions help our classroom activities?
 How can we organise listening activities?
 What do we need to take account of when preparing good speaking
activities?
 How can we make drills more interesting and communicative?

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THEME 1 – TASK-BASED LEARNING

In the 1990s, as part of the communicative approach, or CLT, the idea of

task-based learning was developed. It has proven to be hugely influential in all
areas of language teaching, from international publishers to independent teachers
creating their own material. We do not have the time in this part of the course to
go into great detail about task-based learning, but we can look at how it has
affected speaking and listening activities.
In this approach, there is a pre-task, when students and teacher explore the
topic by brainstorming ideas or talking about issues associated with the topic. The
students then move on to the task cycle, which involves doing the task while the
teacher monitors their performance, preparing to talk or write about what they did
in the task and what they discovered, and then reporting everything to the rest of
the class. Following this, the class focusses on the language that was used and
tries to rectify any problems that were noted during the monitoring phase. Finally,
the students do the task again, hopefully better than the first time.

Figure 1 – A framework for task-based learning

Source: Willis, 1996.

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1.1 An example class

Selivan (2012) gives a number of practical examples for how this framework
could be implemented the classroom. One example Selivan uses is of students
describing a photograph:

PRE-TASK: Show childhood photos of famous people on the board. Ask

students to guess who these people are.
TASK: In pairs, students show each other their childhood photographs
they have brought from home. They describe what is depicted in the
photo and talk about that stage of their lives. Teacher monitors and notes
down students’ errors as well as lexical deficiencies. Students then report
to the rest of the class on any new or interesting things they have learned
about their partners.
POST-TASK: Students listen to a recording of a competent language
user describing the photo. Students then work with a transcript of the
recording and analyse interesting linguistic features, including:
 Before I came over here…
 We used to… we would... and then we'd...
 It was in the summer when I’d just + past participle
 When I turned 13…
Teacher can also focus here on the mistakes students made, e.g. past
forms etc.
REPEAT TASK: students change partners and repeat the task
incorporating (hopefully) the language dealt with in the previous stage
OR students upload their photos to the class blog and write brief informal
descriptions.

1.2 Advantages

This is a very practical approach to language teaching and encourages

teachers and students to focus on what they need. It is also excellent because,
when doing the task, students realise the language they need and so are ready to
be instructed in this language later by the teacher. The task will be authentic and
so very relevant to the students. Finally, the class is very student-centred, as the
teacher only teaches the language that is found missing from the first task, instead
of predicting what students might need.

1.3 Disadvantages

While this is great in theory, in practice it might not work. Students often are
not interested in watching other people do the task and lack the necessary skills to
analyse how others perform the same task. Many students will often completely
fail at the task in the first place because they just do not have the language
necessary to succeed. In addition, teachers often find it difficult to react in the
middle of the class and create activities to meet the needs of their students.

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 These criticisms have led to many teachers modifying the approach and
focussing on the task cycle: give students some language; ask them to do a task;
give feedback and corrections; and then ask them to do the task again. This gives
students lots of practice in both speaking and listening activities.

THEME 2 – INSTRUCTIONS

It does not matter how good your activity is, how much time you have spent
planning it or how relevant it is to your students’ needs – if your students do not
know what they have to do, the activity will fail. Not only this, but students will lose
all confidence in the teacher and, if it continues, they will lose all enjoyment from
learning English and eventually give up. If you have a choice between an average
activity that is easy to instruct, and an exciting activity that you cannot instruct, go
with the average one.

2.1 Keep instructions short

Think about the last time you asked for directions. If you are told to take the
first left, cross the traffic lights, turn right after the supermarket, go straight ahead
for about half a dozen blocks, turn right after the post office and then go over the
bridge until you see a roundabout and take the third exit, you will probably not
remember much at all. It is the same with instructions in class; if you try to give too
much information, students will not remember everything.
This means you have to keep your instructions short. A good guide is to
have no more than three different steps at a time, as students are more likely to
be able to remember three different things. Once students have completed the first
portion, stop them and instruct the next part, and proceed again with about three
different steps.

2.2 Use your fingers

One of the things that language learners can have most difficulty with is
noticing the signposts, or cohesive devices, when listening to exercises that show
the direction a speaker is taking. This is something that obviously needs to be
practised during listening exercises, but not while the teacher is giving instructions.
The only objective of instructions is to understand what has to be done, not improve
listening skills, although that might be a helpful by-product.

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 This means that words and phrases like ‘after that’, ‘next’, and ‘then’ can be
lost during instructions and students are not aware of the chronology of the
instructions, and thus they get confused about what needs to be done. Assuming
we are following the rule of not having more than three stages to any set of
instructions, hold up one finger to show you are talking about the first step. As you
move on to the second step, hold up two fingers and repeat it for the third step.

2.3 Exemplify

To avoid lengthy and wordy explanations of what students have to do, a

simple example often works wonders. Teachers can either demonstrate the activity
themselves or use a strong student to show what has to be done.

2.4 Look at your students

The easiest way to see if your students have understood the instructions is
to look at them. If they look as if they are paying attention and taking in what you
are saying, then there is a good chance they will be able to perform adequately. If,
however, students look confused, then there is a good chance they have not
understood. While it sounds easy to say, it can be a challenge to look at your
students because you need to concentrate on what you are saying, show books or
exercises to the students, or there are just too many students in the class.

2.5 Check your instructions

If, for whatever reason, you are unable to watch your students’ reactions or
have some reason not to trust that students have understood them, then you have
a decision to make. You can either repeat your instructions or check them. The
problem with repeating them is that whatever caused the problem the first time
around will probably also cause a problem the second time. If you elect to check
your instructions, you can find out where the misunderstanding has occurred and
take steps to fix the problem.
Asking something like ‘Do you understand?’ is not an effective way of
checking your instructions. Students might think they have understood and say
‘yes’, when in reality they have not. Alternatively, they might be too embarrassed
to admit to not understanding or just do not want to have the teacher repeat the
instructions again. Instead, it is better to ask questions like ‘Should you do A or

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B?’, or ‘What should you do after this?’. By eliciting the correct answers, you can
be reasonably sure students have understood.

2.6 Repeat activities

Recycling activities you have used in the past is an easy way to get around
the problem of having to constantly instruct students. If students have done an
activity before, they can often instruct themselves. Of course, you need to be
careful not to repeat too often as students, and probably you, will quickly get bored.

2.7 Build confidence

There are going to be misunderstandings in the classroom, at all levels, but

especially at lower levels. Accept that this is going to happen and develop coping
strategies. For example, do not blame the students, be calm, quickly and
confidently react to whatever problem crops up. One particular strategy that works
well is to make sure students have confidence in you by being well-prepared and
having a good track record with most other activities. If you and your class have
one or two problems, this can easily be accepted, because students will be
confident that you succeed most of the time and will quickly focus on the next
activity. If students lose confidence in you, then they will not be prepared to
experiment and forgive you in the future.

THEME 3 – LISTENING IN CLASS

It is easy to practise listening in class. Either you, as the teacher, open your
mouth and say something for students to listen to, or you press play on the CD
player and students listen to that instead. Except, there is much more to it than
this. Think about how we listen in the real world. We nearly always have a reason
to listen to something, some motivation to pay attention and focus on what is being
said. Then, when we are listening we are again doing something; maybe checking
the information is the same as we expected, or taking notes in class, or responding
to orders.
Finally, more often than not, there is some sort of response after we have
finished listening. We might argue with the speaker or write an essay or complain
about having to follow orders, but there is usually some sort of response. If this is

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true in real life, and we are trying to make our classroom activities as authentic as
possible, then we need to try to incorporate these elements into our practice tasks.

3.1 Pre-listening

We have two goals for this stage of a listening activity. The first goal is to
prepare our students to face the challenge of the task by pre-teaching any
necessary lexis. The second goal is to motivate the students to want to listen and
activate their schemata, or, in other words, to get them thinking about the topic of
what they are going to listen to and examine how they think it will be presented.
There are many ways to introduce new vocabulary to students, and this is
not the place to look at all of them. Some common tasks include matching words
or phrases to definitions, matching words or phrases to images or asking students
to provide their own definition. The important thing to note, however, is that, as a
pre-teaching exercise, the words or phrases should appear in the listening and be
integral to understanding the text.
The idea of the second goal is that students should be prepared for what
they are going to listen to, and not spend the first minute just trying to work out the
context. Warming students up to the topic could be as simple as just telling them
what they are going to listen to, but ideally it should involve some action on the
part of the students. Some examples include:

 Asking students to predict answers to questions before they listen;

 Asking students to write their own questions;
 Asking students to look at any titles or images and asking them to predict
what is going to happen;
 Showing an image connected to the listening topic and asking students to
describe it or think about what it represents.

3.2 While-listening

This is what traditionally is thought of as the main listening activity. If you

have selected a task that is appropriate to the students’ level and prepared them
in the pre-listening activity, then this should run smoothly.
Some examples of while-listening tasks could include:

 Listen and check predictions from the pre-listening stage;

 Listen and write an answer;
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  Listen and answer multiple choice questions;
 Listen and draw a picture according to a description;
 Listen and perform a physical response.

It is very common to ask students to listen to the same passage more than
once and do a different activity. The advantage of this is that you could ask them
to listen and understand the general gist the first time around, and then listen for
something more detailed on the second listening. This type of activity fits in nicely
with the idea of top-down processing, fully exploits the listening material and allows
students time to gain a better understanding of the passage.

3.3 Post-listening

This is the part where teachers can use the listening activity, and the context
they have created, to explore different aspects of English. Teachers could decide
to focus on the language from the listening to teach lexis, grammar or some
element of phonology. The fact that, hopefully, students have understood the
message of the task means that any language that is examined now will have the
great advantage of being analysed in context with the meaning fully developed.
Teachers also (or alternatively) have the option of developing the ideas
introduced in the listening activity to integrate speaking, writing or reading skills.
For example, in a listening activity that focusses on a conversation in a restaurant,
students could be encouraged to write and then perform their own roleplay.
It is unfortunate, but many times teachers find themselves unable, or
unwilling, to complete post-listening exercises. This might be down to time
constraints or a lack of understanding for their worth – whatever the reason, it is
regrettable.

3.4 Tips and cheats for listening activities

So long as you have included strong pre-, while- and post-listening

activities, any teacher can be sure they are on the right track. However, there are
a number of other things we can include with any listening activity that can take it
to the next level:

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 Check in pairs – before you conduct feedback as a class, ask students to
check their answers in pairs. This brings with it a number of advantages.
For example:
 it increases the amount of STT and reduces TTT;
 it provides students with more opportunities to speak English;
 students can check their answers and so will be more confident about
speaking in front of the class if their partner has the same answer.
 Use the transcript – the transcript is an incredibly powerful tool that many
teachers neglect. The fact that published material devotes so much space
to transcripts should show you how important they are. Some tasks you can
do include:
 analyse a specific language point, e.g., find the examples of the present
perfect or the preposition ‘on’ in the transcript;
 use the transcript to find the answers if students have not understood
something;
 ask students to listen to the pronunciation of certain words or phrases as
they read.
 Put students in charge – ask students if they would like to listen again or
put one in charge of playing and pausing the CD. Empowering students like
this can have a hugely positive effect on their self-confidence in the
classroom, as they take ownership of their own learning instead of just
relying on the teacher to teach them.
 Repeat – do not be afraid of repeating a listening text a number of times.
This repetition could be to do the same task again if students have not
understood the first time, or it could be the same text with a different activity.
By listening more than once, students are able to develop a better
understanding of something and have more time to focus on meaning.
 Top-down – if you have more than one task for students to do with the one
listening text, then try to use the top-down processing technique we
examined earlier in this module. The first task should focus on a more global
meaning, the second should be more detailed and the third should look at
individual sounds, words or phrases.
 Keep it short – if you are producing your own material or looking for
something from Youtube or another video streaming site, keep the material
short. If the material is more than 2 or 3 minutes, and you want to listen to

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 it 3 times, then that is a large chunk of your class. It can also be difficult for
students to pay attention for such a long period of time. There might be an
argument for longer time periods with more advanced students if you want
to focus on extensive listening.

THEME 4 – SPEAKING IN CLASS

Some students are happy to talk no matter what. It seems that all you have
to do is set them free and they will talk away without a care in the world. However,
can you be sure they are talking about the rights things? Or even if they are using
the appropriate language? They might be able to complete a particular task, but it
is the process that matter most – how they achieve the task and what they learn
from it, rather than the product, the task itself.
Furthermore, while some students might be confident enough to talk in any
situations, this does definitely not apply to all students. The secret, then, is to fully
prepare students for what they have to do before they start. If they have the
information they need, time to prepare and the necessary, lexis then the chances
of a successful activity are greatly enhanced.

4.1 Information

If students need some information in order to do the task, give them time to
find it or read it. For example, if you want students to do a roleplay, give them time
to read any cue cards. If you want them to debate something, give them time to
find out the facts that they will need. This preparation could be done in class or as
part of the previous class’s homework. It may seem that you are wasting time that
could be better spent on actually talking, but the time you invest here will be paid
back with a more efficient activity.

4.2 Individual preparation

Previously in the class, we have talked about speaking strategies and

coping strategies. One such strategy is preparing what you want to say before
needing to say it. For example, in real life, if a person is going to buy a pair of
trousers using their second language, then before they go into the shop they might
think about what they need and the language they need to describe it. How can
they talk about colour, prices and sizes? How can they ask for the dressing room?

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How can they ask about a returns policy? They could also try to predict the type of
answers they might receive so they are ready for the ensuing conversation.
If this is a legitimate strategy to use outside the classroom, then we should
also use it inside the classroom. We should use it to ensure a good task and also
to train students to use this strategy themselves. Of course, we will not always
have the chance to prepare what we want to say, as life is not always kind –
therefore, we should not always use this strategy.

4.3 Lexis

If the task needs certain language to be accomplished, make sure you have
introduced it before the activity begins. It might be the case that you are using the
activity to revise certain language you have already introduced, in which case,
remind students and put it on the board so that they can easily use it should it be
forgotten in the heat of the activity.

4.4 Tips and cheats for speaking activities

 What is your goal? – Do you want to practise speaking or are you using
speaking to practise a grammar or lexical item? It is important to be clear in
your own mind what your objectives are so that you can evaluate the
success, or not, of the activity and provide valuable feedback. If your goal
is a particular grammar or lexical point, then your feedback will be more
focussed on this. If the activity is more focussed on speaking skills, then you
might be more willing to ignore other problems.
 Give time warnings – There is nothing more dispiriting than being
motivated by, and involved in, an activity only to have the teacher
unexpectedly end the task before you have finished it. Likewise, there might
be some students who find themselves talking about the weather rather than
the task at hand, so a gentle reminder that there are only a few minutes left
will focus their minds. In the same vein, students who have just finished will
not mind waiting a minute or two for the rest of the class to finish.
 Early finishers – Have some ideas for the quick students to do while the
others finish, if it is going to be more than a couple of minutes. If you leave
students to their own devices, they could become disruptive or bored of the
class. Have an extra activity lined up so that they can keep doing something

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 to keep them busy. This extra activity should not be an exercise from the
book, as it will seem as if you are punishing them for working fast.
 Timing – Knowing when to finish an activity is something that comes with
experience. You want to give enough time for people to complete the
exercise, but not so much that students get bored with the activity. You
cannot have the whole class waiting for one or two slow students, but at the
same time you cannot expect everyone to go at the same speed as the
quickest. Pay attention to the class to get a feeling for when interest is
starting to dip and then call an end to the task.
 Monitoring – What the teacher does while the students are speaking can
have a very powerful effect on the results of the activity. If the teacher looks
through their notes for the next task, or stares out the window, students will
notice and stop working well. Instead, the teacher should monitor the class’s
performance, perhaps even making notes to refer to after the class has
finished and to help with giving feedback. If the activity has been set up
properly, there should not be any real need to intervene in the activities.
Instead, the teacher should find a spot in the classroom where they can hear
as many students as possible. If it is not possible to hear everyone from one
place, then move around after a few minutes. Do not try to do this hidden
away from the students, but in full view so everyone knows where you are.
If you hear a group laughing, smile at the same time, even if you do not
know what the joke was. Acting like this will make it seem as if you are able
to hear everybody.
 Class size – You need to be aware of the size of your class and the
limitations this will have on the tasks. A large class will be noisy and make
life difficult for you in monitoring everyone. A small class will be quiet which
might intimidate students and restrict the number of activities you can
perform.

THEME 5 – DRILLS

In its most basic form, a drill is a classroom technique in which the teacher
usually models a piece of language and the students copy it. There can be different
types of drills. For example, a student repeats individually, in groups or as a whole
class. In its simplest form, the student merely repeats what the teacher has said,

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but substitution drills demand that students manipulate the language in some way.
For example:

 Teacher: Apple juice

 Students: I like it
 Teacher: Grapes
 Student: I like them
 Teacher: Bananas, not
 Student: I don’t like them

Drills were developed as part of the behaviourist approach to teaching

languages. The idea was that by repeating language over and over it would enter
the subconscious and then be ready for recall when needed. Although a lot of the
theory behind behaviourism for language teaching has been discredited, drills still
survive in many language classrooms.

5.1 Drills are bad

Drills have a bad name among many teachers and researchers. Some of
the reasons for this dislike of drills include:

 There is no focus on meaning. Drills merely require students listen and

repeat without actually worrying about what they are saying means.
 Drills are not communicative, as there is no transactional or phatic function
to drills.
 Drills are not authentic. When was the last time you did an exercise like this
in real life?
 Drills are too teacher-centred. The teacher is on control, not the student.
 Drills are boring.

5.2 Drills are good

Despite these downsides, many teachers, and indeed students, like drills
and continue to use them. Some reasons for this include:

 Drills are safe. Precisely because there is no focus on meaning, we do not

need to worry about it and so can focus on aspects of pronunciation or
structure.

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  Drills promote confidence because students feel they have achieved
something.
 Drills can help a teacher notice mistakes, especially pronunciation mistakes,
because they are specifically paying attention to them.
 Being teacher-centred is not always a bad thing. Many students like it when
the teacher takes control of the class.
 If handled appropriately, drills do not need to be boring.

5.3 How to make better drills

If you are determined to use drills in class, how can you make them more
interesting for students? Some answers to this question include:

 Keep them short. If a lot of the class is taken up with drills, they quickly
become boring;
 Vary the drill. Use whole class, groups and individual drills;
 Vary the type of drill. Use repetition, substitution, written drills and any
other type you think is useful;
 Don’t ‘go around the class’ so that students know who is next. The
student at the end of the row will feel increasingly anxious as their turn
approaches, while the student who did the first drill will lose all interest;
 Mix it up by whispering the prompt or shouting it out loud and have
students copy you. Change the groups by asking for all the men and then
all the women. Or everyone over / under a certain age, or all the good-
looking people. This will make sure students are paying attention to you
instead of just mindlessly repeating what you have said.

CONCLUDING

In this lesson, we have looked at how task-based learning, as part of the

communicative approach to language learning, can provide a useful framework for
constructing speaking and listening exercises. We also examined the importance
of giving effective instructions for whatever you want your students to do. In terms
of listening, we looked at why we need to include pre-, while- and post-listening
tasks before looking at the practical aspects of doing listening exercises in the
classroom. For speaking, we examined why it is so important to fully prepare the
students for the task they are going to do, before again looking at practical aspects
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of implementing speaking exercises in the classroom. Finally, we looked at the
topic of drills, why they are controversial and how to use them better in class. In
the next lesson, we will look at how to integrate speaking and listening skills
activities with other skills.

MANDATORY READING

Theoretical approach text

GALLACHER, L. Project work with teenagers. British Council, 2014, Available in:
<https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/project-work-teenagers>. Access: 15
jun. 2018.

Practical approach text

SPECK, C. 8 Great Ways to Use Dictation with ESL Students. Busy Teacher.
Available in: <https://busyteacher.org/25011-8-great-ways-to-use-dictation-with-
esl-students.html>. Access: 15 jun. 2018.

Further knowledge

ACTIVITIES to promote interaction and communication. CAL – Center for Applied

Linguistics. Available in: <http://www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/el
ltoolkit/Part2-41Interaction&Communication.pdf>. Access: 15 jun. 2018.

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REFERENCES

BROWN, J. D. Teaching by Principles: An interactive approach to language

pedagogy. New York: Pearson Education, 2001.

RHALMI, M. Task Based Language Teaching. My English Pages, 2018. Available

in: <http://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/task-based-language-teaching-tblt/>.
Access: 15 jun. 2018.

SCRIVNER, J. Learning Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Ltd: 2005.

SELIVAN, L. In Defence of TBL. Leoxicon, 2012. Available in:

<https://leoxicon.blogspot.com.br/2012/05/in-defence-of-tbl.html>. Access: 15 jun.
2018.

THORNBURY, S. Speaking Instruction in the Cambridge Guide to Pedagogy

and Practice in Second Language Teaching Cambridge. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.

WILLIS, J. A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Harlow: Longman Group Ltd,

1996.

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