Developing Interactional Skills
Listening
The essential point is to be able to understand what is said in order to function satisfactorily in the situation. It is hard to listen to a foreign language, espeacially for young children. The teacher will have to decide how much of the general classroom language such as instructions, questions, praise will be in the pupil’s L1 and how much in English. It is certain taht listening is not a passive activity. Making students to simply listen and remember leads to anxiety. In this situation, the teacher’s role is to direct the students’ attention to specific points while doing listening activities. Also, she can do this by using activiets, supporting, learners’ understanding and guide their attention to specific parts. There are some specific guidelines which are useful when planning how to develop pupils’ listening skills
1. Give the children confidence
It is known that all the children cannot understand every word while listening. For this reason, the teacher’s advance planning will decide what we to expect the children to do. For example, do you want them to summarize a story the first time they hear it? Of course, not. By taking into consideration our students’ levels, we should make them listen at least two or three times. Also, the the teachers’ gestures and tone of voice and visual aids are important to make the students feel confident.
2. Explain why the children have to listen
The children should know why they are listening. The purpose of the activity and what the children are going to do should be clear. This helps to build up learner’s confidence and reduce anxiety. There are different kinds of listening purposes:
- To phsically settle pupils: to relieve them when they are making noises. Also, they will be engaged with some formal mental activities.
- To stir pupils: to stimulate or allow them to physically ‘let off steam’ if they get bored or tired.
- To improve the general listening attitude: improve concentration and memory, listen to have a fun
- To develop aspects of language: listen to develop the skills of pronuncing the words, stressing, rhyming and intonation. All these provide practices for pronunciation, for tenses, grammar and vocabulary related to the topic.
- To reinforce conceptual development: some spoken texts are useful for reinforcing concepts such as numbers, size or cause and effect.
- To interact with other: by listening and asking questions, checking meaning, agreeing the children are encouraged to work with others.
- To provide support for literacy: there should be connection between spoken and written English.
3. Help children develop specific strategies for listening
Intelligent guesswork is an important strategies that the teacher should teach. Pupils’ background knowledge has an important role on working out something that they are not sure about. To provide support and raise pupils’ awareness, they should be aware of this. There are some important listening strategies.
- Predicting : To encourage the students, to guess what they will be listening to is useful. Using pictures helps the students guess the topic, the language or the other details.
- - Working out the meaning from the context: The teacher should encourage the students to use pictures, their general knowledgeor the message to make familiar the meaning of unknown words
- Recognizing discourse patterns and markers : Transitions, connectors make the students predict what is coming next in a spoken text. Also, sequence markers are necessary in stories and instructions.
4- Set a specific listening task:
There are three stages which are important for listening: pre-listening activites , while listening activities and post listening activities.
The teachers need to develop repertoire of different pre, while and post activity types to make listening a learning-focus process. When listening to a series of actions in a narrative, a listening task asking the children to arrange a series of pictures again supports the child’s understanding very well. Apart from these, the activities should be graded according to their difficulties and teachers might like to go through the list and see their pupils’ needs and interest.
5- Organize listening
A cassette or pre record material does not decide the development of listening skills. ın fact, most listening is teacher talk. However; a cassette of published listening materials is useful to have a good model of spoken English. In addition, it may help introduce variety by setting up a ‘listening corner’. In one part of the classroom, for one or two groups to use at a time while the rest of the class does something else. The activities can be designed as ‘self-correcting’, so the children can understand quickly whether a listen and sequence activity has benn completed equally.
Speaking
This part will explain the expectations of the pupils, the initial stages of their learning and the organization of speaking activities, a typology of activities to develop speaking.
Expectations
According to most children, learning an L2 is equal to speaking it. Also, they come to the foreign language classroom with a good mastery of their own L1 and they expect it to be as easy as their own first language. they want to see immediate results. The children should also be given opportunities to speak as much as possible to progress and fulfill their expectations and to avoid disappointment.
The initial stages
The first times of language learning has a great importance for the students. The students shouldn’t be expected to produce much language at the beginning of the learning period. First, they should be taught vocabulary for basic concepts, such as numbers or colors. These also provide the basis for subsequent activities. They can be given English names. Also, teaching song or rhymes at the beginning of learning period is also beneficial to give them the idea that they are learning fast.
Also, the students should be aware of why they are learning English. They can be shown the famous people speaking English to make them see the importance of that language. In addition, the English words such as hamburger, hotel, football also used in our language should be reminded them. The different pronunciation between our language and English should be shown them. The main intent is to make them raise their awareness of language and to increase the student’s confidence.
Formulaic language
As explained above, the teacher shouldn’t expect much language from the students at the beginning of the learning period. What they learn in the initial stages will be formulaic language because they produce the language as whole chunks rather than putting together word by word. The formulaic language consists of routines or patterns memorized by the children and this helps them communicate with a minimum of linguistic competence. The formulaic language consists of:
· Simple greetings: Hi! How are you?
· Social language: Have a nice day!
· Routines: What time is it?
· Classroom language: Stand up. Repeat after me.
· Asking permissions: Can/May I go to the toilet?
· Communication strategies: What does ….. mean, please? Can I have ……please?
As much as the students are exposed to this language, they will learn to use it.
A typology of speaking activities
This typology shows the speaking activities from more tightly controlled to freer communicative language use.
Organizing speaking activities
Some activities require the students to work in pairs or groups or to move around. How to arrange the classroom for these activities to be done the teacher should put emphasis on it. The pupils may want to record themselves and listen to their recordings. Retelling a story may be both entertaining and beneficial for the students. This may help them motivate and become aware of the structures and vocabulary. In Turkey, the “DynEd” system used in developed schools may be thought useful when considered from this perspective.
The students also need a variety of activities, different patterns of interaction and opportunities to maximize talk in the classroom in order to sustain speaking.
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<v:imagedata src="file:///C:DOCUME~1glshLOCALS~1Tempmsohtml1
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T.C
MERSİN UNIVERSITY
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING DEPARTMENT
READING AND WRITING
SUBMITTED TO: FİRDEVS ULAŞ
SUBMITTED BY:
Gülşah Pala 07271018
Derya Kaynak 06271034
Gülhan Baykara 07271010
İpek Toplu 07271015
Mehmet Evlice
Emre Deveci
MERSİN, 2011
LEARNING TO READ IN THE L1 & L2
According to educationalists, the development of reading skills in a foreign language is greatly- assisted if pupils have developed strong reading skills in their first language. But there is not enough research to show conclusively whether this is true or how the transfer mechanism works. At the beginning, teachers of very young children may not use a coursebook at all, or may use coursenbooks that rely on pictures alone.
What Do Children Already Know About Reading?
When children learn to read successfully in their L1, they develop different forms of awareness and knowledge. Awareness and knowledge about print is the realization that represents speech, and is written in a certain direction. The challenge for children, of course, is to find out how print represents sounds.Graphonic knowledge is how certain sounds occur together. Lexical knowledge is that certain words are very common, collocate or go together (e.g. at the seaside). Syntactic knowledge helps children to ‘chunk’ phrases and to predict what might come next in a sentence or story. Semantic knowledge is the knowledge of the world and experience of life and culture helps pupils to have expectations about literacy events. It seems highly likely that if a child has developed all these kinds of awareness in one language they will soon realize that they apply to the new language also, but in different ways. This process will be enhanced if teachers engage the pupils in activities that help them to make these links.
LEARNING TO READ IN ENGLISH: THE INITIAL STAGES
It is important not to place too many reading demands on younger learners who are still learning to read in their L1.
Which Teaching Methods are in Use?
The most effective way of teaching reading means using a balanced approach with several methods. This approach aims to enhance children’s phonemic. Phonological and morphological awareness.
Most teachers use a balance of activities that focus on sounds, letters and words but also activities that promote word recognition associated with meaning, for example the Look and Say. Look and Say is based on encouraging sight recognition of the most common words, such as the, he, she, is, are, so that part of reading becomes automatic.
Coping with the System of Spelling in English (ortography)
Once children are introduced to the written word in English, they will quickly discover that English spelling does not always help them in their reading.
Developing Print Awareness
Decorate the classroom with functional print, such as alphabet friezes, flashcards, posters, words of songs, or signs, using published material or materials you make yourself.
Supporting Reading in the Initial Stages
It is important to introduce reading after the pupils have some basic knowledge of the spoken language so that it quickly becomes meaning-based and not simply decoding. Nevertheless, reading in English in the early stages will combine ‘meaningful’ reading in sentences supplemented by independent reading at the letter and word level.
Generally the teacher should support pupils’ association of letters, words and pictures through songs, visual aids, games and so on. At first pupils will be introduced to pictures only, then pictures and word together as flashcards. We should take into consideration that pupils enjoy listening to simple dialogues and stories which are well illustrated and have an interesting story line.
Reading to Learn: the Later Stages
As pupils become more confident in reading their own language, they use reading to learn. After an initial introduction to English learning, pupils will be expected to cope with the independent reading required of a coursebook.
Reading Strategies
Research has shown that actively encouraging learners to use comprehension strategies helps them understand both spoken and written passages more effectively. For example, if learners know that they are listening to or reading something to get a general picture, they will listen or read in a slightly different way than if they are expected to listen or read in detail for specific parts of message. A learning-centered approach to reading uses activities in a three stage model: pre-, while- and post-reading.
Reading Activities
Traditionally, pupils are asked to complete gap-filling activities or comprehension questions after reading a text. Reading to learn activities which are meaning-focused are often referred to as DARTS (directed activities related to texts). These focus on the processes and outcomes of reading. DARTS include reconstruction activities and analysis activities.
Reconstruction Activities
These activities include matching parts of sentences or ‘speech bubbles’ to characters, fill in gaps in sentences or texts, sequencing parts of a sentence or text, predicting the next parts of a sentence or text after reading a section at a time, completing tables, flowing chatrs, completing pictures or diagrams with colours, labels or missing parts.
Analysis Activities
In analysis activities pupils hunt for specific information to organize it in some ways. They may underline any shape words in blue and any size words in red.
Reading awareness activities
It is also helpful to reinforce the idea that reading is used for a variety of purposes. Language awareness activities can be encouraged by asking pupils to notice similarities and differences between alphabets. Older pupils can be introduced to the notion of genre, or text type, where pupils are introduced to the names of different types of texts, such as greetings card, menu, comic, brochure, manual, advertisement. They are then asked to label different types of text with these names. The pupils can compare specific text types, such as comics or menus with examples in both their L1 and L2. make sure you try and have a wide range of text types around the classroom which are described or labelled in English.
Reading Activities for both Stages
Table 4 describes some of these activities which range from the simple to the more complex and explains whther the activities focus on learning to read or reading to learn. The learning to read activities include developing phonemic skills or sight recognition of key vocabulary, while those based on reading to learn are often integrated with other skills. The reading to learn activities emphasize reading for meaning and may also develop concepts, study skills, thinking skills, such as problem solving and a greater awareness or texts and discourse.
LEARNING TO WRITE IN THE L1 AND L2
The kinds of writing activities pupils do tend to fall into two sets in the same way that they do for reading:
1. Learning to write: it is where pupils are involved in tightly guided copying which focus on “surface” features such as handwriting, spelling, punctuation and using the correct word and grammar.
2. Writing to learn: there may be less tightly controlled writing activities, moving to much freer or even creative writing, in this process there are higher cognitive demands and a greater focus on meaning and personal expression as well as forms.
The demands of activities and tasks for productive skills (speaking and writing) can be divided into two categories. The first one is “choosing the right language”, the second one is related with “thinking and having ideas” such as remembering, choosing, selecting, ordering, prioritizing and interpreting visual clues using a picture or graphic organizer.
The language demands of a writing task depends on the category. In leaning to write, the main point is on form and surface features in that writing activities tend to focus on word or sentence level.
In writing to learn, children have higher cognitive features such as choosing the right vocaulary, grammar, sentence patterns, spelling, having ideas and joining them, thinking of writing as communication and focusing on the message and the reader.
Kroll and Welis(1983) have identified some stages through which English native-speaker children appear to progress, both in terms of their writing skills and their attitudes to writing.
The preparatory stage
It is when the child acquires the basic mechanisms of handwriting and spelling which become automatic for most children by the age of seven.
The consolidation stage
When chidren seven or older, writing is still personal, situational and context-bound. Between seven and nine years age many native speaker chidren become fluent story writers, develop much greater awareness of the fact that the success of writing depends on its communicative effectiveness with others.
The diffrerentation stage
It is at around nine or ten years of age. For example the structure of story becomes more organized and sentence structure becomes more formal. Children are more aware of a range of text types and the different purposes and audience for this.
When should children learn best to write in the foreign language?
There are different examples in different countries, in Korea, the seventh revision of the primary ELT curriculum deliberately and distortingly prohibits written English from being taught at the beginning stage. In Austria, writing used to be banned in the early stages. In Twain, pupils are expected to focus on writing in the foriegn language class quickly, sometimes even at the kindergarden. What is important is that teachers need to be sensitive to the different demands and purposes of written tasks they impose on their pupils and to be aware of a variety of ways of supporting their writing.
The initial stages
Copying is the best at the early stages because it provides opportunities to practice handwriting, learn and consolidate their understanding of new vocabulary, develop an awareness of and confidence in English spelling and practice a range of simple sentence patterns they have learned to use in speaking.
Pupils in the second year move on to practice wriring sentences very simple, short texts. This writing provides specific language practice like in selecting and spelling words correctly, using the correct word order, using grammatical structures accurately, linking sentences together with simple conjuctions.
Tips for writing
Children enjoy personal writing, so it is a good idea to personalize writing tasks. Contextualized writing is important, if it is possible, it should be a real-life situation, as when pupils write up the results of survey they have carried out with classmates. Older people will aware of writing for an audience, so displaying children’s works is a good idea.
English spelling
According to Palmer(1991),there are four main ways in which children learn the spelling of words:
- Visual style: learners respond to the shapes of words and the patterns letter strings.
- Auditory style: it is better for learners to sound the word out as they can recognize the relationship between sounds and letters.
- Kinesthetic style: spelling is a graphic-motor skill
- Linguistic style: they develope skills in seeing relationship between words based on grammar and meaning.
But it is important that multi-sensory approach is best for all young learners.
The “look,say,cover,write,check” technique that teachers can teach their pupils for self-testing their spelling is as follows:
1. Look and notice the letter shapes and number of letters, think about the word and make a mental picture. Make this picture big then small, in different colours. If the word is right you can draw a real picture of the word.
2. Say the word and then the letters out loud. Listen carefully.
3. Write the word in the air with one finger several times, making it large and small.
4. Cover the word and try to write it correctly on paper, syllable by syllable.
5. Make sure you have a letter for each of the most important sounds.
6. See if it “looks right”. If not change it.
7. Now check to see if the spelling is correct; if not, repeat stages 1-6.
Guidelines for a supportive writing classroom
- Reinforce the connection between writing and speaking English and reading and writing in English.
- Try to develop an awareness of enviromental print.
- Make sure your classroom has many examples of English writing.
- Develop the concepts of English letters with letter cards.
- Have a special “letter days” where children bring in things.
- Count the words in a line of print or clap for each word spoken to develop a concept of a word.
- Reinforce the concept of words and letters with alphabet songs.
- Create a Post Office with pupil made stamps, letters, envelops,post box.
- Help pupils build lists of high frequency words from their reading and writing using personal picture dictionaries.
- Compile a class news book where you write news very simply with the help of the class.
- Words can be organized as “sentence makers”, so they make up whole sentences which the pupils piece together.
WRITING IN THE LATER STAGES
After two years of English, many pupils have mastered some of the more basic skills in writing and should be encouraged to produce writing for a specific context and audience which goes beyond the practice stage. Guided copying at sentence level and above can be supported through the use of support frameworks and graphic organizers such as pictures, written models, tickcharts, flow charts, grids and so on. These give learners support in producing written work within clearly defined constraints: For example, the use of aVenn diagram to classify information can provide a simple sentence pattern such as ‘My guinea pig eats lettuce and my cat drinks milk but my tortoise eats lettuce and drinks milk too.
The next stages can be practice with more complex Venn diagrams, ending with the pupils to creating their own diagrams for other pupils to create sentences. Pupils can also produce some of the activities outlined earlier, such as word search or gap-filling, for other pupils to complete.
More creative writing activities, which encourage the children to compose their own sentences or texts, provide useful and motivating practice in planning, organizing ideas and understanding the conventions of discourse. As children grow in confidence some might like to become more involved in choosing text types for themselves. In planning the vocabulary they want to they can do word maps for example, where they map out some of the key ideas and vocabulary for writing a descriptive or even a poem.
Charts with notes can also be used to provide support in organizing and can reduce some of the cognitive load of writing texts.
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Thinking questions
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Language I need
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What does this animal look like?
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A tiger is…
It has
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Where does it live?
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I lives in…
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What does it eat?
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It eats…
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How does it move?
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I walks and runs… It can also…
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What does it like doing ?
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It likes to…
It likes climbing…
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Anything else?
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For pupils, it would be rather boring for all writing to remain at the practice level, although it is unrealistic to imagine that one can encourage creativity without specific practice at word or sentence level.
Guided activities at sentence level and above for older pupils may include putting words in the correct order, matching sentence halves and copying, gap-filling using visuals or words, writing captions for pictures, writing speech bubbles or dialogues, creating sentences from a tickcharts, and sequencing sentences. Such activities provide practice in handwriting, spelling, identifying lexical sets, learning or reinforcing meaning, grammar patterns, organization of ideas and integrating writing with other ideas. To develop a greater awareness of different text types, the children should ideally have collected, discussed, and read a variety of text types, perhaps in both the L1 and in English.
Producing different text types needs to be guided, bur after modelling and rehearsal can also provide opportunities for pupils to express their own meanings and be more creative.
Personal writing includes such forms as diaries, shopping lists, reminders and recipes. Social writing may involve thank you letters, invitations, congratulations, text messages or instructions. Examples of public writing are letters to other classes, forms, posters, menus or class magazines. Creative writing can include shape poetry, riddles, stories, plays, songs or designing food packets. And study writing can include personal dictionaries and self-assessment.
When supporting writing tasks with older children it is important to keep the same basic principles in terms of preparing pupils through talk. The teacher should also be aware of the language demands and thinking demands. The language demands can be broken down into key language functions, such as identifying, describing and comparing people, places and things, writing instructions, describing a simple process or cause and effect, sequencing events or classifying. The language functions can then be analysed into key words, not just nouns but also verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and key sentence patterns. For older pupils the structure of the different text types can be represented by visual and graphic organizers, so that, for example, a story has a flow chart of main events or a chart showing characters and events.
The Story of Princess Smartypants is an example:
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The story
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Action 1
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Action 2 etc
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Who?
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Princess Smartypants
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Where?
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In the King and Queen’s castle
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When?
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It is time for her to marry a prince
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Action?
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She tries to find a husband
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What’s wrong?
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She does not want to marry
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What happened next?
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She asks a prince to do a very diffucult task
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What happaned in the end?
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The prince cannot do the task
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And so?
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She does not marry him!
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Responding to writing
The way in which teachers respond to or mark writing will depend on the kind of writing focus the writing activity practices and the age and language level of the pupils. Where the focus is on surface features such as handwriting, spelling or on language forms such as new vocabulary and sentence patterns, and activities based on very tightly controlled copying, you are more likely to insist upon accuracy. The main point is to develop a sense of what each child has tried very hard or has been rather sloppy. You can then recognize both accuracy and effort.
Where pupils are struggling to incorporate their own words or meanings into sentences or texts which are not so tightly controlled, the teacher may be more inclined to comment on the content and the child’s willingness to ‘have a go’ at writing. In this case you might want to write short comments such as Very interesting/exciting/funny. I enjoyed your story; Iliked your ending; Can you tell me why…? Can you think of some other…? What do you think…? Well done. You have tried hard.
Developing Interactional Skills
Listening
The essential point is to be able to understand what is said in order to function satisfactorily in the situation. It is hard to listen to a foreign language, espeacially for young children. The teacher will have to decide how much of the general classroom language such as instructions, questions, praise will be in the pupil’s L1 and how much in English. It is certain taht listening is not a passive activity. Making students to simply listen and remember leads to anxiety. In this situation, the teacher’s role is to direct the students’ attention to specific points while doing listening activities. Also, she can do this by using activiets, supporting, learners’ understanding and guide their attention to specific parts. There are some specific guidelines which are useful when planning how to develop pupils’ listening skills
1. Give the children confidence
It is known that all the children cannot understand every word while listening. For this reason, the teacher’s advance planning will decide what we to expect the children to do. For example, do you want them to summarize a story the first time they hear it? Of course, not. By taking into consideration our students’ levels, we should make them listen at least two or three times. Also, the the teachers’ gestures and tone of voice and visual aids are important to make the students feel confident.
2. Explain why the children have to listen
The children should know why they are listening. The purpose of the activity and what the children are going to do should be clear. This helps to build up learner’s confidence and reduce anxiety. There are different kinds of listening purposes:
- To phsically settle pupils: to relieve them when they are making noises. Also, they will be engaged with some formal mental activities.
- To stir pupils: to stimulate or allow them to physically ‘let off steam’ if they get bored or tired.
- To improve the general listening attitude: improve concentration and memory, listen to have a fun
- To develop aspects of language: listen to develop the skills of pronuncing the words, stressing, rhyming and intonation. All these provide practices for pronunciation, for tenses, grammar and vocabulary related to the topic.
- To reinforce conceptual development: some spoken texts are useful for reinforcing concepts such as numbers, size or cause and effect.
- To interact with other: by listening and asking questions, checking meaning, agreeing the children are encouraged to work with others.
- To provide support for literacy: there should be connection between spoken and written English.
3. Help children develop specific strategies for listening
Intelligent guesswork is an important strategies that the teacher should teach. Pupils’ background knowledge has an important role on working out something that they are not sure about. To provide support and raise pupils’ awareness, they should be aware of this. There are some important listening strategies.
- Predicting : To encourage the students, to guess what they will be listening to is useful. Using pictures helps the students guess the topic, the language or the other details.
- - Working out the meaning from the context: The teacher should encourage the students to use pictures, their general knowledgeor the message to make familiar the meaning of unknown words
- Recognizing discourse patterns and markers : Transitions, connectors make the students predict what is coming next in a spoken text. Also, sequence markers are necessary in stories and instructions.
4- Set a specific listening task:
There are three stages which are important for listening: pre-listening activites , while listening activities and post listening activities.
The teachers need to develop repertoire of different pre, while and post activity types to make listening a learning-focus process. When listening to a series of actions in a narrative, a listening task asking the children to arrange a series of pictures again supports the child’s understanding very well. Apart from these, the activities should be graded according to their difficulties and teachers might like to go through the list and see their pupils’ needs and interest.
5- Organize listening
A cassette or pre record material does not decide the development of listening skills. ın fact, most listening is teacher talk. However; a cassette of published listening materials is useful to have a good model of spoken English. In addition, it may help introduce variety by setting up a ‘listening corner’. In one part of the classroom, for one or two groups to use at a time while the rest of the class does something else. The activities can be designed as ‘self-correcting’, so the children can understand quickly whether a listen and sequence activity has benn completed equally.
Speaking
