What is receptive - productive skill?

Listening is the ability to identify and understand spoken language. Listening is a receptive skill.
The receptive skills used in language acquisition: listening and reading enable the productive
skills: speaking and writing (Saricoban, 1999). Listening is the communication skill used most
often in the assimilation of information and the most neglected in foreign language teaching
(Norris, 1993).

Effective listening is dependent upon the listener?s decoding skills, i.e. the listener?s ability to
make sense of the message. For foreign language learners accurate and intelligent listening is a
necessity. A good teacher will enable intelligent listening by enhancing her student?s decoding
skills.

Unlike written and spoken evidence, successful listening is more difficult to measure. The blank
stare may signify only partial understanding ? but where are the gaps? Gaps in decoding skills
are hard for both the student and teacher to identify and diagnose. The first listening skill taught
is the ability to recognize the need for more information. A first speaking skill is to respond
appropriately (e.g. Please repeat. Please speak slowly.).

Integration with other skills:

The building of successful decoding skills requires the teaching and use of reading, writing,
speaking and listening skills in the foreign language. A good foreign language teacher will break
down confusing signals into their parts, show the correctly written words, explain the content
and context and allow spoken and written practice. Receptive and productive communication
skills are integrated; therefore the teaching of these skills is necessarily integrated.

Phases in the acquisition of listening skills:

A person immersed in a foreign language, with little or no instruction in the acquisition of the
new language (and no functioning decoder) will perceive messages in the new language as
noise. If the language is directed at the non speaker with anger, frustration or derision ? the
experience will be fearful and confusing.

When this person learns some important words, phrases and cultural signals ? the decoder starts
to function. While the majority of aural messages may still be noise, the new language learner
can respond to simple (and probably important) messages appropriately. Adults living in foreign
countries can ?get by? for many years (or a lifetime) with minimal decoding skills.

When decoding skills are acquired in a more systematic, purposeful way (e.g. in a classroom) the
new language learner becomes able to understand and respond more fully. He begins to build a
cache of vocabulary in memory and becomes able to identify the purpose of a message. As
language learners advance from beginner to intermediate levels errors in listening become less
frequent. Decoding becomes less of a conscious effort as the learner builds upon experience and
knowledge.

What a skilled listener can do:

A functioning internal decoder allows the skilled listener to understand or predict the main topic
of the message. The skilled listener draws from her memory bank of previous experience with
the spoken language to assist in decoding the message. (Saricoban, 1999)
Previous experience provides the confidence a skilled listener needs to recognize that 100%
understanding is not needed to derive meaning from the message. The learner gradually
becomes able to filter the extra sounds and missing sounds that may or may not affect the
message. (Norris, 1993)

A skilled listener can recognize ?reduced language?. The Saricoban 1999 article quotes Brooks
(Language and Learning, 1960): ?Native speakers reduce the clarity of speech signals to the
minimal required for comprehension?. Language is most often reduced by contractions and
elision (dropping sounds). So ?I am happy to meet you? sounds like (I?mappy tomeetu). Norris
points out that a skilled teacher helps raise awareness of reduced forms in spoken language.

Enabling more than teaching:

Teachers are enabling the listening skill, rather than teaching it. Exercises designed to build
decoding skills are necessarily integrated into foreign language instruction. Beginners learn the
sounds, meaning and written form of common words and phrases. As learners progress they are
more able to identify sounds within words and content within phrases.

In classroom exercises we stress listening for meaning ? enabling the listener to discard
irrelevant information in a message and concentrated on the relevant portion. Within
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation exercises we introduce the spoken form of the word or
phrase and warn apt listeners that it is reduced from the written form. Through repetition the
learner?s decoder is enabled to attribute meaning to the reduced signals.

As decoding skills are refined, confidence increases and learners become enabled to identify
sounds and meaning outside of the controlled classroom environment.
Receptive skills

The receptive skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce language to do these,
they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. They can be contrasted with
the productive or active skills of speaking and writing.

Example
Often in the process of learning new language, learners begin with receptive understanding of the new items,
then later move on to productive use.

In the classroom
The relationship between receptive and productive skills is a complex one, with one set of skills naturally
supporting another. For example, building reading skills can contribute to the development of writing.