CC BY
81
УДК 372.881.1
С. П. Асатрян
доцент каф. педагогики и преподавания иностранных языков, Ереванский государственный университет языков и социальных наук имени В. Я. Брюсова, Армения; e-maiL: asatryansusanna@yahoo.com
ИНТЕГРАЦИЯ РЕЦЕПТИВНЫХ И ПРОДУКТИВНЫХ УМЕНИЙ В ПРОЦЕССЕ ОБУЧЕНИЯ АУДИРОВАНИЮ В ШКОЛЕ
Аудирование является важным коммуникативным умением, без которого коммуникация в целом невозможна. Оно является целенаправленным, активным умением, обучение которому способствует также совершенствованию умений говорения, чтения и письма. Именно поэтому автор подчеркивает значение взаимосвязанного формирования умений. Использование разнообразных аутентичных лингвистических и экстралингвистических учебных материалов будет способствовать совершенствованию межкультурной коммуникативной компетенции учащихся.
Ключевые слова: аутентичность; взаимодействие; коммуникативные упражнения; рецептивные и продуктивные умения и навыки; повторение и закрепление языкового материала; ситуации реального общения.
S. P. Asatryan
Assistant Professor, Department of Pedagogics and Teaching Foreign Languages, Yerevan Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences, Yerevan, Armenia; e-mail: asatryansusanna@yahoo.com
INTEGRATION OF RECEPTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE SKILLS WHILE TEACHING LISTENING IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
Listening is an important communicative skiLL without which communication is practica^y impossible. It is a purposeful and active skiU, the teaching of which aLso supports the mastery of speaking, reading and writing. That is why the author emphasizes the importance of developing integrated skiUs. Continued exposure to diverse authentic verbaL and non-verbaL Language teaching materiaLs wiLL heLp foster learners' cross-cultural communicative competence.
Key words: authenticity; interaction; communicative activities; receptive and productive skiLLs; recycLing and revision of Language materiaL; reaL-Life situations.
Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. An independent listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. J. Willis lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:
- predicting what people are going to talk about
- guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic
- using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand
- identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information
- retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing)
- recognizing discourse markers, e. g., Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc.
- recognizing cohesive devices, e. g., such as and which, including linking words, pronouns, references, etc.
- understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues to meaning and social setting
- understanding inferred information, e. g., speakers' attitude or intentions.
Other specialists single out another set of listening sub-skills [Scrivener 2007; p. 179; Sheils 1993; p. 28]:
- coping with the sounds
- understanding intonation and stress
- coping with redundancy and noise
- predicting
- understanding colloquial vocabulary
- understanding different accents
- using visual and environmental clues.
Listening is a receptive skill closely connected with speaking, which is why integrating language skills can help
- practice and extend the learners' use of a certain language structure or function
- develop the learners' ability in the use of two or more of the skills within real contexts and communicative framework.
Besides, integrated activities provide variety in the classroom and thus maintain motivation and allow the recycling and revision of language which has already been taught separately in each skill.
For language teaching purposes we can distinguish four levels of listening comprehension closely related to the listener's attention span: Level 1. Fragmentary comprehension due to limited attention span. Level 2. The material is comprehended but usually not analyzed for its value.
Level 3. On this level, answers are sought as a key to action. This form of listening does not require long, sustained concentration.
Level 4. This is the stage of analytical and critical listening. The listener does not only seek an answer to a question but evaluates the quality of the answer. Round-table discussions or talks require this level of listening comprehension
- To improve our learners' listening skills we should let them
- adopt a positive attitude
- look for verbal and non-verbal clues.
In contemporary foreign language teaching methodology the listening process is subdivided into three stages, associated with corresponding activities, they are:
- pre-listening (the purpose of listening should be given at this stage)
- during (while) listening
- post-listening (often associated with speaking) [Scrivener 2007; p. 4445; Sheils 1993, p. 60-64].
While - listening activities can be categorized into the following main types:
- listen and do
- listen and transfer
- listen and infer.
"Listen-and-do" activities imply that the language learners listen to the text and while listening they perform commands, follow instructions, draw, tick off items on the list, sequence the text, match strip cartoons (picture stories), maps, plans, family trees, pictures with the heard texts etc. Actually they perform receptive exercises.
"Listen-and-transfer" activities - the students listen to information and transfer it to tables, diagrams, graphs, drawings, notes etc.
"Listen-and-infer" activities - these are generally task-based exercises to interpret situations, moods and attitudes in the oral discourse, make assumptions and have judgements, e.g. of the "true - false techniques", open-ended question exercises, etc.
Teaching to listen involves listening to monologues and dialogues.
A monologue can be of the "spoken" and "written" type. Listening to spoken and written monologues makes a difference. Written texts have longer sentences. They are more organized into meaningful units. Oral monologues are more spontaneous and redundant, i.e. many details are omitted or repeated.
In listening activities, we listen for a purpose. We can categorize the goals of listening as listening for enjoyment, for information, for persuasion, for perception or to solve problems.
We make an immediate response to what we hear and try to answer the following questions: who is speaking (gender, occupation, age)
- how many people are speaking
- how they are speaking (emotional attitudes)
- what they are speaking about
- what message they are actually communicating
- why they are speaking (what is the information gap between them).
In terms of purposes we can listen for:
- general information (understanding the main points)
- specific information (understanding the particular items)
- cultural interest
- the organization of ideas, sequence of events
- analysis of lexical / structural / functional items [Common European Framework... , p. 65].
As has been mentioned above, some listening tasks require developed speaking skills, others do not, which makes it possible to classify listening tasks into the following categories:
- Listening and making no oral response (obeying instructions, physical movement, building models, picture dictations, etc.),
- Listening and making short responses (true / false exercises, noting specific information, etc);
- Listening and making a longer response (answering comprehension and discussion questions, making predictions, summarizing, etc.).
Lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to listening comprehension. In order to teach listening skills, the teacher should be aware of the difficulties.
Listening exercises should be as natural and authentic as possible. So, the teacher must be a very creative person and teach listening in a communicative context, and integrate different communicative skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Here are some examples of effective listening activities which require interactive contexts, authenticity and learners' autonomy:
Jigsaw listening - This allows the learners to work at their own speed, controlling the CD player or tape recorder themselves and repeatedly
playing parts of a text until they are really happy with their understanding of it. It also involves a lot of message-oriented communication and useful group cooperation:
- Working in small groups, learners listen to separate small parts of a longer recording, i.e. each group hears different things.
- They then meet up, perhaps in pairs, threes or fours, with people from groups that listened to other parts of the recording.
- They report to each other what they have heard and compare ideas and reach a conclusion / consensus or complete some specific task. The task might be simply to construct a full picture of the recording's contents [3, p. 182; 4, p. 68-69].
Sample of Jigsaw listening task
In groups learners listen to the separate parts of the text. Then sharing the
information that got from each part, they make conclusions and answer the
following questions:
1. Is English winter cold?
2. Autumn in England is foggy and windy, isn't it?
3. Is Indian summer a sunny summer?
4. Why is English weather warm?
As J. Harmer states, Jigsaw listening works because it gives students a purpose for listening and a goal to aim, for solving some problems related to text comprehension or some specific linguistic items [2, p. 142].
Tape Gallery task
It is a variation of jigsaw listening. Teachers find about ten interesting short jokes, stories, advertisements or poems (not more than a minute long) and record themselves reading them, each onto a different cassette or CD. They borrow two or three extra tape recorders / CD players and place them at different locations around the room. Learners must know how to operate the machines. Then they are invited to wander freely around the different places, changing tape / CD or location at will, with the aim of choosing their favourite recording.
The teacher's task is to make sure that the learners play recordings softly and that they don't all gather round one machine. Afterwards, the teacher gets feedback on what they enjoyed or learned.
Discussion
The teacher asks the class questions about a topic, but does not record their responses. Then reads a passage which relates to the same topic. Then
she asks them the same questions again. Afterward, initiates a discussion as to the effectiveness of the pre-listening questions: did they help the listener focus more quickly? Why or why not?
Listening to the dialogue and acting it out
Learners ask their friend where a) he / she, b) his / her parents, c) grandparents came from, for example:
David: Did you come to the US from Ireland, Chris?
Chris: Yes, Davy, but long ago. My great-great-parents came here at the beginning of the century. They were farmers and they dreamed of having their own land. So they went to the south and settled there.
David: It is a typical story of an Irishman in America. But you don't look like an Irishwoman.
Chris: Oh, my grandma was Cuban and my Ma is Japanese.
David: And your boyfriend is Italian. America really is a melting pot.
Chris: Yes, so many people came and settled here.
Unstructured Tasks
Learners describe one of the following and record it onto a cassette, computer program, etc. (students may be permitted to make some brief notes to prepare)
- a process such as cooking rice or riding a bike
- a familiar person
- a landmark in your locale
- conduct a survey of native speakers regarding views on a controversial issue; present and discuss the summary.
True-False
Each student has a card - on one side of the card the word 'yes' is written, on the flip side 'no' (in the target language, of course); students hold up the appropriate card in response to the teacher's questions. This exercise can also be done using hand signals instead: thumbs up or down, or using one's left or right hand to indicate yes or no.
Listening to the text and matching the pictures given with the descriptions heard
In the text learners are going to listen to the descriptions of different religions, their beliefs and the architectural features of the temples special to each religion. There are several advantages to this activity. The recordings allow participants to hear themselves speak in the target language, which can be very helpful for shy learners. Students view this as an easier form of homework than a written assignment which will motivate the student to complete the task.
To promote communicative environment in class and integrate learners' receptive and productive skills, it might be appropriate to organize group surveys, self introductions, short speeches, chatting and discussing, exchanging news and views, interviewing and being interviewed as well. The main point is to broaden our learners' repertoire of receptive and productive experiences by incorporating and welcoming diversity, authenticity and interaction in class.
REFERENCES
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, Modern Languages Division, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 2001. 259 p.
Harmer J. How to Teach English, Pearson, Longman, 2010. 448 p. Scrivener J. Learning Teaching. Macmillan, 2007. 430 p.
Sheils J. Communication in the Modern Language Classroom. Council of Europe, 1993. 310 p.
Wilson J. How to Teach Listening, Pearson, Longman, 2009. 190 p.
