Unit 3 The Teaching and Learning of ESOL

Module 2 Listening and Reading

At the end of this module you will:-

a) know what the four skills and their categories are

b) know ways of training learners to develop listening and reading

skills

c) understand why learners have difficulty with listening

d) be able to identify the sub-skills needed for successful listening and

reading

e) consider a range of exercises to check reading comprehension and

learn what types of exercises to avoid

f) begin to be aware of how a skills lesson is put together

 The Skills - Introduction

There are 4 primary language skills, referred to as speaking, listening,

reading and writing. It is important to distinguish between them (though they
are very much interlinked in many situations) as they demand different
abilities. For example, giving a speech requires a different skill from
understanding what you hear when someone else gives a speech, or from
presenting the information in the speech in written form, or from reading what
someone else has written on the subject. All these four skills must be included
in a general English teaching syllabus.

There are courses in English for Specific Purposes, which need to be heavily
weighted in one or two of the skills, eg courses for telephone operators teach
more listening and speaking. However, even courses as specific as that need
a certain amount of the other skills - a telephonist may need to read a memo,
or leave a written message for someone, thus needing the skills of reading
and writing.

There are further sound reasons for including all the four skills in the syllabus
and often in a single lesson:

1. People get tired after a certain period of activity and they need
a change of activity. The saying 'a change is as good as a rest'
certainly applies to the language classroom.

2. In any group there will be several different styles of learner. Some

students need to write what they learn in oral practice because they get
comfort from the written word, others will not need to see the written
word. If you give the class the chance to hear and say and see and write
a piece of language you will be catering for all styles of learner.

Skills and the textbook

Some textbooks put emphasis on one or two skills and either omit or
downgrade the others. Books which lay great importance on grammar often
focus mainly on reading and writing, whereas audio-lingual course books
concentrate on listening and speaking (they are, however, course books which
have been written and need to be read). Before taking on a new class, look
carefully at the textbook to see if it provides insufficient practice in all the four
skills. Plan ahead and be ready with supplementary material should the book
be lacking in practice in any particular skill. Writing is the most commonly
neglected! Authentic texts, readers, recordings of dialogues, extracts from
DVD and contemporary news downloads or articles from the internet will be
very useful for this purpose. Start making your collection now!

Unit 4 1 Module 2
Although real life communication rarely consists of only one of the four skills, it
is important to look at the skill areas separately to begin with in order to
identify what learners need to be able to do, and how we, as teachers, can
best help them acquire that ability.

What mistakes do teachers make? Look at these confessions.

I translate words in texts for my students when they ask me.

I play the recording over and over as many times as the students want me to,
usually about 4 or 5.

I usually give my students the transcript to look at while they listen.

If I don’t, they never understand.

I like having discussions, but the same students talk all the time.

I don’t use long texts in class because my students can’t read long texts.

I don’t do writing in class except writing down board work and some worksheet
completion, as it wastes time. My students write for homework.

I translate unknown words for my students before they read a dialogue or text,
otherwise they couldn’t read it.

Think about these as we go through the next two modules.

Two types of skills

The 4 skills are traditionally divided into receptive and productive skills. As
the names suggest, the receptive skills are those which enable the learner to
understand language and to receive information via language. They are
listening and reading. The productive skills are those which enable the
learner to produce language. They are speaking and writing.

One misconception is that the receptive skills are passive and the productive
skills are active. Because any act of listening or reading is supposed to have
an aim – whether it be understanding the main idea of a text, identifying the
characters in a play or deciding on your attitude to the speaker's opinion – the
listener of reading is actively involved in the process.

Unit 4 2 Module 2
In this module our focus will be on the two receptive skills: listening and
reading.

Part 1. Listening skills

When teaching listening skills, we have to make sure a range of training

techniques are employed and not rely on students to 'pick up' by themselves
what the language sounds like. This rarely happens, and a failure to employ
training techniques may lead to the situation where learners may be highly
competent in written skills, or have an excellent knowledge of grammar, but
are unable to comprehend the simplest of listening passages. It is essential
that we recognise areas of potential difficulty and plan our listening activities
and materials accordingly.
First, however, we need to consider problem areas in listening and then
possible solutions to those difficulties.

Listening difficulties

If we compare listening to the other receptive skill, reading, the task of

understanding spoken English also poses the following challenges:

 There is anxiety caused by the fact that when we hear English in real life
we only hear it once and are expected to understand immediately. If you
miss something in a written text, you can always return to an earlier
point, read more slowly and think, however with real-life listening you
don't have such a luxury.

 Words are written the same way no matter what the speaker's origin is
(except some minor spelling differences), however when you listen, you
can hear the same words pronounced quite differently depending on the
speaker's accent.

 Authentic speech contains pauses, fillers, repetitions, incomplete

sentences, false starts and restructurings.

 Information is often presented in a less well-organised and more random

order than in writing.

 Spoken grammar often differs from written grammar (see Unit 3 Module
1).

Unit 4 3 Module 2
The recordings that we use in class often minimise these difficulties, especially
for lower levels. Thus, the information will be better organised, the language
used will be grammatically correct and the accent will be as 'standard' as
possible. The teacher may play the same extract twice or several times (but
even so, there may be no opportunity for a student to pause where they fail to
understand and play a shorter segment several times, unless it's a one-to-one
class).

Our ultimate aim, however, should be to enable students to understand

authentic spoken English. We should create opportunities for students to hear
authentic language, but also be aware of the difficulties that such an objective
poses and not be too demanding requiring 'perfect' understanding of details.

Different kinds of listening

Students should be encouraged to practise extensive listening, ie listen to the

English language from various sources outside the classroom, listen for
pleasure.

In this section we will focus on the listening activities that take place inside the
classroom and are referred to as intensive listening, ie listening to relatively
short dialogues or texts with a specific purpose. Such listening involves two
main sub-skills: listening for gist and listening for detail.

Listening for gist

There are times when we listen to something in order to get a general idea of
the content, or 'the gist', rather than specific details. Sometimes we need to
recognise the function of the dialogue – for example, is the speaker making
arrangements, expressing an opinion, making an enquiry; are the speakers
discussing their opinions of a book they have both read or are they having a
row? At higher levels – intermediate and above – students need practice in
recognising attitude (by work on intonation patterns) and recognising changes
in direction or topic when listening to speeches, long listening texts, or taking
notes in university lectures.

A pre-listening gist question can prepare the students and encourage them not
to worry about details but to concentrate on understanding the general idea.

Post-listening questions such as 'How would you describe A's feelings?' allow
them to interpret what they have understood without worrying about specifics.

Listening for detail

Unit 4 4 Module 2
When we listen for detail, our attention is focused and we are searching for
specific information in the listening passage. For example, we could be
listening for details of the weather in our region, a train departure time or the
football results of our favourite team. As we listen carefully, we select the
information we require and ignore the rest. Because we know beforehand what
we want to hear, it becomes easier to concentrate and focus our attention to
listen selectively. There are several ways of training our students to develop
the sub-skill of listening for detail.

a) Prediction

By asking students to predict what they are going to hear, based on a topic
word or sentence, you are preparing your learners for what to expect. Guided
questions help them decide what to listen for, and keep them focused on the
main points. This technique can be repeated towards the end of a listening
passage by asking students to predict the ending. This can be done in pairs or
groups and it keeps students actively involved in the listening process.

b) Comprehension exercises

Different types of exercises will ensure that listening skills are being
developed. Exercises can be set midway as well as at the end of a listening
passage, and can be in the form of true/false questions, 'wh' questions (who,
what, where), sentence completion, gap-filling, error correction, table filling,
form-filling, etc.

c) Listening for language items

An exercise may require that you listen and identify specific lexical or
grammatical items in a text, eg note all the past participle forms of verbs or all
the superlative adjectives.

Listening for gist and listening for detail should be carried out separately from
each other. It is difficult for students to do both at the same time. Check tasks
to make sure that you do not have them trying to do too many things at once.
When a new listening passage, a monologue or a dialogue, is introduced,
students will naturally want to know what it is generally about first and discover
details later. So it's logical to begin with gist exercises for the first listening and
give detailed exercises for the second listening.

Unit 4 5 Module 2
SELF-CHECK 3:2 1

Here are two different listening activities:

a) listening to a group discussing the British Royal Family and deciding whether the
general feeling is pro- or anti- Royalists

b) listening to the travel news for motorway hold-up information

The first involves listening for gist.

The second involves listening for detail.

1. In a) what helps you identify the general feeling of the speakers?

2. In b) what specific information/key words would you be listening out for if you were
hearing this in the car south of Knutsford on the M6?

Transcript (a)
(3 speakers chatting)

A: Yeah, but I mean what’s the point of them? They don’t do anything
very much to help the country -

B: And it’s not like I mean Prince Charles - he may or may not get to be
King – it’s about being useful -

C: The Queen’s all right though and she’s doing well for 87 or 88 – how old is she now?
Her mum lived to be over 100.

B: The Queen should be in good shape - wish I had that many people to
look after me when I’m old and it’s not real work like -
C: Yeah, all those dinners and stuff like parties - but I bet she gets
bored, poor thing - oh no another local Balmoral special.

A: The main problem is there are too many of them ‘minor Royals’.

B: I agree how many is it now?

A: Loads, I dunno.

Transcript (b)

News is coming in now of diversions in place northbound below Junction 19 for Knutsford
on the M6. The northbound carriageway is completely closed due to a lorry shedding its
load of chocolate sauce across all three lanes. Northbound drivers are being directed to
leave the motorway at junction 18 for Holmes Chapel and rejoin the motorway at Junction
19. The diversions will be in place for about 6 hours and motorists are advised to use
other routes if possible as tailbacks are building up back to Junction 16.

Unit 4 6 Module 2
COMMENT

1. The intonation of the speakers helps identify their attitude. The

vocabulary used can be identified as having mainly negative or ironic
connotations. Even if we are not required to focus on each comment
individually, the general number of phrases conveying negative feelings
and irony suggests what the attitude of the speakers is (what's the point,
not real work, get bored, poor thing, too many of them, etc)
2. You'd probably be listening for the details of a possible detour, ie
where you can leave the motorway and where you can rejoin it.

Every text that you use in the classroom needs to be looked at carefully. If you
are going to design useful questions then you need to be able to identify the
important points. It’s no use getting involved in teaching student about
‘Balmoral’ in Transcript (a) or ‘chocolate sauce’ in Transcript (b)!

Available materials

You may be using a course book which comes with a good selection of
listening materials. However, in a teaching situation where resources are
limited, you will have to search for materials yourself. On TEFL websites, you
can find recordings suitable for different proficiency levels. Your ultimate aim,
as has been said before, is to expose students to authentic English speech
and teach them to understand language spoken with a natural speed in a
range of realistic situations. So try to use authentic sources of spoken English,
such as TV, radio, podcasts, or Youtube.

Higher-level learners (intermediate and upper-intermediate to some extent;

advanced and mastery in particular) should be prepared to understand TV and
radio broadcasts intended for native speakers of English.

For TASK 2 in this module you are going to use a news broadcast as a
stimulus for listening practice. First, here is some practice designed to get you
thinking about the questions you can ask based on a recording and what
information students are able to access.

SELF-CHECK 3:2 2

Look at the transcript below and make notes on the following questions:

TRANSCRIPT OF THE BBC WORLD SERVICE NEWS SUMMARY, 3 FEBRUARY 2015.

Unit 4 7 Module 2
The International Court of Justice in the Hague has ruled that neither Serbia nor Croatia
committed genocide during the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s. The judges
said that while both sides have committed crimes, they failed to substantiate the genocide
allegations against each other. The judges also encouraged both countries to cooperate
to ensure peace and stability.

Chadean troops invaded Nigerian territory in a reported ground offensive against Boko
Haram militants. It follows two weeks of air strikes against the insurgents. A Nigerian
spokesman said that troops from Chad were working with Nigerian forces on the border
with Cameroon.

Israel has demanded the scrapping of the UN enquiry into the conflict in Gaza last year
following the resignation of the man leading the investigation. William Schabas has
previously carried out consultancy work for the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The
Israeli government said that would make him biased and described the enquiry as a
'kangaroo court'.

Pope Francis has decreed that Oscar Romero, the Salvadorian Archbishop, seen as a
hero by Catholics in Latin America was killed out of hatred for his faith. The Pope's
declaration of martyrdom clears the way for the beautification of Archbishop Romero, who
was murdered by right-wing death squads in 1980 while celebrating mass.

Members of Parliament in Britain are debating whether IVF babies can be created using
genetic material from three people. Scientists say using the DNA of a second woman, as
well as that of the mother and father, could prevent deadly genetic diseases being passed
from mother to child.

Greek share prices have jumped 11 percent after the new Greek government backed
away from demands for a write-off of its bailout loans. Investors took hope that a deal on
Greek debt was possible.

An advert for a graphic design job in France has been withdrawn because it says the
candidate should, if possible, not be a Jew. The company, the Paris-based NSL studio,
has apologised. On Monday, the company was quoted as saying that they meant the
candidate should not be someone with cultural or religious needs.
A wide-ranging survey into the attitudes of Afghan men towards women suggests many of
them see women as subordinates and routinely sideline them. Researchers describe the
men’s attitudes as discouraging.

1. What level do you think you could use this for and why?

2. What words and phrases might students find difficult?

3. What topic in the bulletin do you think is the easier to understand?

Unit 4 8 Module 2
 4. What topic do you think is the most obtuse or complicated?

5. Underline the names in the transcript. Will you create exercises based on the
names?

6. Can you find any areas of vocabulary that you could exploit in a lesson?

7. What section of the listening would you choose to have students listen for detail?

8. What section would you not focus on at all?

9. Which sections best lend themselves to follow-up discussions?

COMMENT

1. This is not suitable for beginners or elementary. Low intermediates or

intermediates could access this text in the form of a gap-fill listening activity
focusing on certain words:

Chadean troops …........... Nigerian territory in a reported ground ….................. against

Boko Haram militants. It follows two weeks of air strikes against the …................. A
Nigerian spokesman said that troops from Chad were working with Nigerian …............ on
the border with Cameroon.

(Note that the missing words are thematically linked and could be a basis for
discussion. Do not choose words to miss out at random.)

This listening task is best suitable for upper-intermediate students to check

gist and detailed comprehension.

2. Any news item may have such words. For example, in the fourth item, such
low-frequency vocabulary as has decreed, martyrdom, beautification will be
challenging to comprehend as well as the proper names (Salvadorian
Archbishop etc). In the sixth one, such collocations and phrasal verbs as 'have
jumped', 'backed away', 'write off' and 'bailout loans' can be a problem.

3. This depends on the class, but perhaps it's the one about IVF babies. The
main idea is expressed in relatively simple vocabulary.

Unit 4 9 Module 2
4. Probably the one about Pope Francis due to the numerous proper names
and low-frequency words, as well as two different time periods being referred
to.

5. Specific names, like William Schabas, should not be asked for - you could
possibly ask the students to provide country names but no more. (The same
goes for numbers; you should not check specific numbers unless you are
making a teaching point, for example the pronunciation of years).

6. One idea is legal vocabulary based on the first and third news items:
court, has ruled, the judges, failed to substantiate, encouraged, biased,
enquiry.

7. Any of them as long as you know why you have chosen it.

8. Unless your students are economists, the one on Greek debt may be too
obtuse and difficult to expand upon.

9. The extracts about babies, the job advert and attitude to women lend
themselves to a discussion about issues of ethics and equality.

Unit 4 10 Module 2
Now consider the following extract:

Students can improve their listening skills - and gain valuable language input - through a combination of
extensive and intensive listening material and procedures. Listening of both kinds is especially important
since it provides the perfect opportunity to hear voices other than the teacher's, enables students to acquire
good speaking habits as a result of the spoken English they absorb and helps to improve their
pronunciation.

Extensive listening
Just as we can claim that extensive reading helps students to acquire vocabulary and grammar and that,
furthermore, it make students better readers (see below), so extensive listening (where a teacher
encourages students to choose for themselves what they listen to and to do so for pleasure and general
language improvement) can also have a dramatic effect on a student's language learning.

Extensive listening will usually take place outside the classroom: in the students' home, car or on personal
MP3 players as they travel from one place to another. The motivational power of such an activity increases
dramatically when students make their own choices about what they are going to listen to.

Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of sources. Many simplified readers are now
published with an audio version on cassette or CD. These provide ideal sources of listening material. Many
students will enjoy reading and listening at the same time, using the reader both in book form and on an
audio track. Students can also have their own copies of coursebook CDs or tapes, or recordings which
accompany other books written especially at their level. They can download podcasts from a range of
sources or they can listen to English language broadcasts online, either as they happen or as 'listen again'
events on websites such as www.bbc.co.uk/radio.

Of course, radio broadcasts are authentic and as such they may cause some learning problems for students
at lower levels. However, in a short article about listening to the radio, Joseph Quinn advised students not to
worry if they don't understand everything. They don't actually need to, and they're bound to take in a lot of
language even if they are not aware of it. To make the most of this kind of input, students should set
themselves a simple listening task, adopt a relaxed posture and 'lie down and doodle' while they listen
(Quinn 2000: 14).

In order for extensive listening to work effectively with a group of students - or with groups of students - we
will need to make a collection of appropriate tapes, CDs and podcasts, clearly marked for level, topic and
genre - though John Field thinks that it is very difficult to judge the difficulty of a text and, therefore, difficult
to grade listening (Field 2000a: 195). These can be kept, like simplified readers, in a permanent collection
(such as in a self-access centre or on a hard disk so that students can either listen to them on the spot or
download them onto their MP3 players). Alternatively, they can be kept in a box or some other container
which can be taken into classrooms. We will then want to keep a record of which students have borrowed
which items; where possible, we should involve students in the task of record-keeping.

The keenest students will want to listen to English audio material outside the classroom anyway and will
need little encouragement to do so. Many others, however, will profit from having the teacher give them
reasons to make use of the resources available. We need to explain the benefits of listening extensively
and come to some kind of agreement about how much and what kind of listening they should do. We can
recommend certain CDs or podcasts and get other students to talk about the ones which they have enjoyed
the most.

In order to encourage extensive listening we can have students perform a number of tasks:

Unit 4 11 Module 2
They can record their responses to what they have heard in a personal journal or fill in report forms which
we have prepared, asking them to list the topic, assess the level of difficulty and summarise the contents of
a recording. We can have them write comments on cards which are kept in a separate comments box, add
their responses to a large class listening poster or write comments on a student website. The purpose of
these or any other tasks is to give students more and more reasons to listen. If they can then share their
information with colleagues, they will feel they have contributed to the progress of the whole group. The
motivational power of such feelings should not be underestimated.

Intensive listening: using audio material

Many teachers use audio material on tape, CD or hard disk when they want their students to practise
listening skills. This has a number of advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: recorded material allows students to hear a variety of different voices apart from just their
own teacher's. It gives them an opportunity to 'meet' a range of different characters, especially where 'real'
people are talking. But even when recordings contain written dialogues or extracts from plays, they offer a
wide variety of situations and voices. Audio material is portable and readily available. Tapes and CDs are
extremely cheap, and machines to play them are relatively inexpensive. Now that so much audio material is
offered in digital form, teachers can play recorded tracks in class directly from computers (either stand-
alone or on a school network). For all these reasons, most coursebooks include CDs and tapes, and many
teachers rely on recorded material to provide a significant source of language input.

Disadvantages: in big classrooms with poor acoustics, the audibility of recorded material often gives cause
for concern. It is sometimes difficult to ensure that all the students in a room can hear equally well. Another
problem with recorded material in the classroom is that everyone has to listen at the same speed, a speed
dictated by the recording, not by the listeners. Although this replicates the situation of radio, it is less
satisfactory when students have to take information from the recording (though see below). Nor can they,
themselves, interact with the speakers on the audio track in any way and they can't see the speaking taking
place. For many of these reasons, students may wonder why they should get involved with such material.
Finally, having a group of people sit around listening to a tape recorder or CD player is not an entirely
natural occupation.

Despite the disadvantages, however, we will still want to use recorded material at various stages in a
sequence of lessons for the advantages we have already mentioned. In order to counteract some of the
potential problems described above, we need to check audio and machine quality before we take them into
class. Where possible, we need to change the position of the tape recorder or CD player (or the students) to
offset poor acoustics or, if this is feasible, take other measures, such as using materials to deaden echoes
which interfere with good sound quality.

An issue that also needs to be addressed is how often we are going to play the audio tracks we ask students
to listen to. The methodologist Penny Ur points out that in real life, discourse is rarely ‘re-played' and
suggests, therefore, that one of our tasks is to encourage students to get as much information as is
necessary or appropriate from a single hearing (Ur 1996:108). It is certainly true that extracting general or
specific information from one listening is an important skill, so the kind of task we give students for the first
time they hear an audio track is absolutely critical in gradually training them to listen effectively. However,
we may also want to consider the fact that in face-to-face conversation we do frequently have a chance to
ask for clarification and repetition. More importantly perhaps, as Penny Ur herself acknowledges, this ‘one
listening' scenario conflicts with our wish to satisfy our students' desire to hear things over and over again.

If students are to get the maximum benefit from a listening, then we should replay it two or more times,
since with each listening they may feel more secure, and with each listening (where we are helping
appropriately) they will understand more than they did previously. As the researcher John Field suggests,
students get far more benefit from a lot of listening than they do from a long pre-listening phase followed by
only one or two exposures to the listening text (Field 1998a, 2000b). So even when we set prediction and
gist activities for Type 1 tasks, we can return to the recording again for Type 2 tasks, such as detailed
comprehension, text interpretation or language analysis. Or we might play the recording again simply

Unit 4 12 Module 2
because our students want us to. However, we do not want to bore the students by playing them the same
recorded material again and again, nor do we want to waste time on useless repetition.

As with reading, a crucial part of listening practice is the lead-in we involve students in before they listen to
recorded material, for, despite John Field's comments about long pre-listening phases, what students do
before they listen will have a significant effect on how successfully they listen, especially when they listen
for the first time. In a recent study Anna Ching-Shyang Chang and John Read wanted to find out what kind
of listening support was most helpful for students who were doing listening tests. Overwhelmingly, whether
students were ‘high' or ‘low-proficiency' listeners, they found that giving students background knowledge
before they listened was more successful than either letting them preview questions or teaching them some
key vocabulary before they listened (Ching-Shyang Chang and Read 2006: 375-397). Of course, listening
practice is not the same as testing listening; on the contrary, our job is to help students become better
listeners by blending Type 1 and Type 2 tasks so that they become more and more confident and capable
when they listen to English. But what this study shows is that activating students' schemata and giving them
some topic help to assist them in making sense of the listening is a vital part of our role.

Who controls the recorded material?

We said that a disadvantage of recorded material was that students all had to listen at the same speed -
that is the speed of the recording, rather than at their own listening speed. Nevertheless, there are things we
can do about this.

Students control stop and start: some teachers get students to control the speed of recorded listening.
They tell the teacher when they want the recording to be paused and when they are happy for it to resume.
Alternatively, a student can be at the controls and ask his or her classmates to say when they want to stop
or go on. lt is possible that students may feel exposed or embarrassed when they have to ask the teacher to
pause the recording. One possible way of avoiding this is to have all students listen with their eyes closed
and then raise their hands if they want the recording to stop. No one can see who is asking for the pause
and, as a result, no one loses face.

Students have access to different machines: if we have the space or resources, it is a very good idea to
have students listen to different machines in small groups. This means that they can listen at the speed of a
small group rather than at the speed of the whole class. Having more than one machine is especially useful
for any kind of jigsaw listening.

Students work in a language laboratory or listening centre: in a language laboratory all the students
can listen to material (or do exercises or watch film clips) at the same time if they are in lockstep (that is all
working with the same audio clip at the same time). However, a more satisfactory solution is to have
students working on their own. All students can work with the same recorded material, but because they
have control of their own individual machines, they can pause, rewind and fast forward in order to listen at
their own speed.

The three solutions above are all designed to help students have more control even when they are
members of a large group. Of course, students can go to learning/listening centres on their own and they
can, as we saw above, listen on CD, tape or MP3 players (or computers) to any amount of authentic or
specially recorded material in their own time.

Unit 4 13 Module 2
Intensive listening: 'live' listening
A popular way of ensuring genuine communication is live listening, where the teacher and/or visitors to the
class talk to the students. This has obvious advantages since it allows students to practise listening in face-
to-face interactions and, especially, allows them to practise listening-repair strategies, such as using
formulaic expressions (Sorry? What was that? I didn't catch that), repeating up to the point where
communication breakdown occurred, using rising intonation (She didn't like the ... ?), or rephrasing and
seeing if the speaker confirms the rephrasing (You mean she said she didn't know anything? if the speaker
says something like She denied all knowledge of the affair). Students can also, by their expressions and
demeanour, indicate if the speaker is going too slowly or too fast. Above all, they can see who they are
listening to and respond not just to the sound of someone's voice, but also to all sorts of prosodic and
paralinguistic clues.

Live listening can take the following forms:

Reading aloud: an enjoyable activity, when done with conviction and style, is for the teacher to read aloud
to a class. This allows the students to hear a clear spoken version of a written text and can be extremely
enjoyable if the teacher is prepared to read with expression and conviction. The teacher can also read or act
out dialogues, either by playing two parts or by inviting a colleague into the classroom. This gives students a
chance to hear how a speaker they know well (the teacher) would act in different conversational settings.

Story-telling: teachers are ideally placed to tell stories which, in turn, provide excellent listening material.
At any stage of the story, the students can be asked to predict what is coming next, to describe people in the
story or pass comment on it in some other way.

Interviews: one of the most motivating listening activities is the live interview, especially where students
themselves think up the questions. In such situations, students really listen for answers they themselves
have asked for - rather than adopting other people's questions. Where possible, we should have strangers
visit our class to be interviewed, but we can also be the subject of interviews ourselves. In such
circumstances we can take on a different persona to make the interview more interesting or choose a
subject we know about for the students to interview us on.

Conversations: if we can persuade a colleague to come to our class, we can hold conversations with them
about English or any other subject. Students then have the chance to watch the interaction as well as listen
to it. We can also extend storytelling possibilities by role-playing with a colleague.

Intensive listening: the roles of the teacher

As with all activities, we need to create student engagement through the way we set up listening tasks. We
need to build up students' confidence by helping them listen better, rather than by testing their listening
abilities. We also need to acknowledge the students' difficulties and suggest ways out of them.

 Organiser: we need to tell students exactly what their listening purpose is and give them clear
instructions about how to achieve it. One of our chief responsibilities will be to build their confidence
through offering tasks that are achievable and texts that are comprehensible.

 Machine operator: when we use audio material, we need to be as efficient as possible in the way we
use the audio player. With a tape player this means knowing where the segment we wish to use is on
the tape, and knowing, through the use of the tape counter, how to get back there. On a CD or DVD
player, it means finding the segment we want to use. Above all, it means testing the recording out
before taking it into class so that we do not waste time trying to make the right decisions or trying to
make things work when we get there. We should take decisions about where we can stop the
recording for particular questions and exercises, but, once in class, we should be prepared to respond
to the students' needs in the way we stop and start the machine. If we involve our students in live
listening, we need to observe them with great care to see how easily they can understand us. We can
then adjust the way we speak accordingly.

 Feedback organiser: when our students have completed the task, we should lead a feedback

Unit 4 14 Module 2
 session to check that they have completed it successfully. We may start by having them compare
their answers in pairs and then ask for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular.
Students often appreciate giving paired answers like this since, by sharing their knowledge, they are
also sharing their responsibility for the answers. Because listening can be a tense experience,
encouraging this kind of cooperation is highly desirable. It is important to be supportive when
organising feedback after a listening if we are to counter any negative expectations students might
have, and if we wish to sustain their motivation.

 Prompter: when students have listened to a recording for comprehension purposes, we can prompt
them to listen to it again in order to notice a variety of language and spoken features. Sometimes we
can offer them script dictations (where some words in a transcript are blanked out) to provoke their
awareness of certain language items.

Film and video

So far we have talked about recorded material as audio material only. But of course, we can also have
students listen while they watch film clips on video, DVD or online. There are many good reasons for
encouraging students to watch while they listen. In the first place, they get to see 'language in use'. This
allows them to see a whole lot of paralinguistic behaviour. For example, they can see how intonation
matches facial expression and what gestures accompany certain phrases (e.g. shrugged shoulders when
someone says I don't know), and they can pick up a range of cross-cultural clues. Film allows students entry
into a whole range of other communication worlds: they see how different people stand when they talk to
each other (how close they are, for example) or what sort of food people eat. Unspoken rules of behaviour
in social and business situations are easier to see on film than to describe in a book or hear on an audio
track. Just like audio material, filmed extracts can be used as a main focus of a lesson sequence or as parts
of other longer sequences. Sometimes we might get students to watch a whole programme, but at other
times they will only watch a short two- or three-minute sequence. Because students are used to watching
film at home - and may therefore associate it with relaxation - we need to be sure that we provide them with
good viewing and listening tasks so that they give their full attention to what they are hearing and seeing.

Finally, it is worth remembering that students can watch a huge range of film clips on the Internet at sites
such as You Tube (www.youtube.com) where people of all ages and interests can post film clips in which
they talk or show something. Everything students might want is out there in cyberspace, so they can do
extensive or intensive watching and then come and tell the class about what they have seen. Just as with
extensive listening, the more they do this, the better.

Viewing techniques
All of the following viewing techniques are designed to awaken the students' curiosity through prediction so
that when they finally watch the film sequence in its entirety, they will have some expectations about it.

 Fast forward: the teacher presses the play button and then fast forwards the DVD or video so that
the sequence shoots past silently and at great speed, taking only a few seconds. When it is over, the
teacher can ask students what the extract was all about and whether they can guess what the
characters were saying.

 Silent viewing (for language): the teacher plays the film extract at normal speed but without the
sound. Students have to guess what the characters are saying. When they have done this, the
teacher plays it with sound so that they can check to see if they guessed correctly.

Unit 4 15 Module 2
 Silent viewing (for music): the same technique can be used with music. Teachers show a sequence
without sound and ask students to say what kind of music they would put behind it and why. When the
sequence is then shown again, with sound, students can judge whether they chose music conveying
the same mood as that chosen by the film director.

 Freeze frame: at any stage during a video sequence we can freeze the picture, stopping the
participants dead in their tracks. This is extremely useful for asking the students what they think will
happen next or what a character will say next.

 Partial viewing: one way of provoking the students' curiosity is to allow them only a partial view of
the pictures on the screen. We can use pieces of card to cover most of the screen, only leaving the
edges on view. Alternatively, we can put little squares of paper all over the screen and remove them
one by one so that what is happening is only gradually revealed. A variation of partial viewing occurs
when the teacher uses a large ‘divider’, placed at right angles to the screen so that half the class can
only see one half of the screen, while the rest of the class can only see the other half. They then have
to say what they think the people on the other side saw.

Listening (and mixed) techniques

Listening routines, based on the same principles as those for viewing, are similarly designed to provoke
engagement and expectations.

 Pictureless listening (language): the teacher covers the screen, turns the monitor away from the
students or turns the brightness control right down. The students then listen to a dialogue and have to
guess such things as where it is taking place and who the speakers are. Can they guess their age, for
example? What do they think the speakers actually look like?

 Pictureless listening (music): where an excerpt has a prominent music track students can listen to
it and then say - based on the mood it appears to convey - what kind of scene they think it
accompanies and where it is taking place.

 Pictureless listening (sound effects): in a scene without dialogue students can listen to the sound
effects to guess what is happening. For example, they might hear the lighting of a gas stove, eggs
being broken and fried, coffee being poured and the milk and sugar stirred in. They then tell the story
they think they have just heard.

 Picture or speech: we can divide the class in two so that half of the class faces the screen and half
faces away. The students who can see the screen have to describe what is happening to the students
who cannot. This forces them into immediate fluency while the non-watching students struggle to
understand what is going on, and is an effective way of mixing reception and production in spoken
English. Halfway through an excerpt, the students can change round.

 Subtitles: there are many ways we can use subtitled films. John Field (2000a: 194) suggests that one
way to enable students to listen to authentic material is to allow them to have subtitles to help them.
Alternatively, students can watch a film extract with subtitles but with the sound turned down. Every
time a subtitle appears, we can stop the film and the students have to say what they think the
characters are saying in English. With DVDs which have the option to turn off the subtitles, we can
ask students to say what they would write for subtitles and then they can compare theirs with what
actually appears. Subtitles are only really useful, of course, when students all share the same L1. But
if they do, the connections they make between English and their language can be extremely useful.

Unit 4 16 Module 2
Listening lesson sequences

No skill exists in isolation (which is why skills are integrated in most learning sequences). Listening can thus
occur at a number of points in a teaching sequence. Sometimes it forms the jumping-off point for the
activities which follow. Sometimes it may be the first stage of a 'listening and acting out' sequence where
students role-play the situation they have heard on the recording. Sometimes live listening may be a
prelude to a piece of writing which is the main focus of a lesson. Other lessons, however, have listening
training as their central focus. However much we have planned a lesson, we need to be flexible in what we
do. Nowhere is this more acute than in the provision of live listening, where we may, on the spur of the
moment, feel the need to tell a story or act out some role. Sometimes this will be for content reasons -
because a topic comes up - and sometimes it may be a way of re-focusing our students' attention. Most
listening sequences start with a Type 1 task before moving on to more specific Type 2 explorations of the
text. In general, we should aim to use listening material for as many purposes as possible - both for
practising a variety of skills and as source material for other activities - before students finally become tired
of it.

Examples of listening sequences

In the following examples, the listening activity is specified, the skills which are involved are detailed and
the way that the listening text can be used within a lesson is explained.

Where possible, teachers can bring strangers into the class to talk to the students or be interviewed by
them. Although students will be especially interested in them if they are native speakers of the language,
there is no reason why they should not include any competent English speakers. The teacher briefs the
visitor about the students' language level, pointing out that they should be sensitive about the level of
language they use, but not speak to the students in a very unnatural way. They should probably not go off
into lengthy explanations, and they may want to consider speaking especially clearly.

The teacher takes the visitor into the classroom without telling the students who or what the visitor is. In
pairs or groups, they try to guess as much as they can about the visitor. Based on their guesses, they write
questions that they wish to ask.

The visitor is now interviewed with the questions the students have written. As the interview proceeds, the
teacher encourages them to seek clarification where things are said that they do not understand. The
teacher will also prompt the students to ask follow-up questions; if a student asks Where are you from? and
the visitor says that he comes from Scotland, he can then be asked Where in Scotland? or What's Scotland
like?

During the interview the students make notes. When the interviewee has gone, these notes form the basis
of a written follow-up. The students can write a short biographical piece about the person - for example, as
a profile page from a magazine. They can discuss the interview with their teacher, asking for help with any
points they are still unclear about. They can also role-play similar interviews among themselves.

We can make pre-recorded interviews in coursebooks more interactive by giving students the interviewer's
questions first so that they can predict what the interviewee will say.

Unit 4 17 Module 2
A popular technique for having students understand the gist of a story - but which also incorporates
prediction and the creation of expectations - involves the students in listening in order to put pictures in the
sequence in which they hear them. In this example, students look at the following four pictures:

They are given a chance, in pairs or groups, to say what they think is happening in each picture. The
teacher will not confirm or deny their predictions. Students are then told that they are going to listen to a
recording and that they should put the pictures in the correct chronological order (which is not the same as
the order of what they hear). This is what is on the tape:

ANNA: Morning Stuart. What time do you call this?

STUART: Er, well, yes, I know, umm. Sorry. Sorry I'm Late.
ANNA: Me, too. Well?
STUART: I woke up Late.
ANNA: You woke up Late.
STUART: 'Fraid so. I didn't hear the alarm.
ANNA: Oh, so you were out last night?
STUART: Yes. Yes. 'Fraid so. No, I mean, yes, I went out last night, so what?
ANNA: So what happened?
STUART: Well, when I saw the time I jumped out of bed, had a quick shower,
obviously, and ran out of the house. But when I got to the car ...
ANNA: Yes? When you got to the car?
STUART: Well, this is really stupid, but I realised I'd forgotten my keys.
ANNA: Yes, that is really stupid.
STUART: And the door to my house was shut.
ANNA: Of course it was! So what did you do? How did you get out of that one?
STUART: I ran round to the garden at the back and climbed in through the window.
ANNA: Quite a morning!
STUART: Yeah, and someone saw me and called the police.

Unit 4 18 Module 2
 ANNA: This just gets worse and worse! So what happened?
STUART: Well, I told them it was my house and at first they wouldn't believe me.
It took a long time!
ANNA: I can imagine.
STUART: And you see, that's why I'm late!
The students check their answers with each other and then, if necessary, listen again to ensure that they
have the sequence correct (C, A, D, B). The teacher can now get the students to listen again or look at the
tapescript, noting phrases of interest, such as those that Stuart uses to express regret and apology (Sorry
I'm late, I woke up late, 'Fraid so), Anna's insistent questioning (What time do you call this? Well? So what
happened? So what did you do? How did you get out of that one?) and her use of repetition both to be
judgmental and to get Stuart to keep going with an explanation she obviously finds ridiculous (You woke up
late, Yes, that is really stupid, Quite a morning! I can imagine). The class can then go on to role-play similar
scenes in which they have to come up with stories and excuses for being late for school or work.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Unit 4 19 Module 2
 Part 2. Reading skills

What happens when we read in a foreign language?

It does not necessarily follow that because students can read in their own
language they will be efficient readers in English. Training in the skills involved
in reading must be given, as reading is not an inbuilt skill. It is also not a
passive process, contrary to traditional belief. Reading is an active process in
which practice in all the sub-skills is vital as no improvement can be effected
without guided practice.

In Part 1, we mentioned the difficulties that one has to face when trying to
understand spoken language. The main difficulty associated with reading, as
compared with listening, is that we cannot use such clues as the intonation,
body language and facial expressions of the speaker. When we read, however
– and that means if we read well – we also use clues. We look at the layout
and pictures. We go quickly through the text to see how long it is and what
it is about. We use the words we know to help us decide the meaning of the
words we don’t know. We do this from the time we first begin to read in our
own language.

But when we start to read in a foreign language, it often happens that we try to
read word by word and we reach for the dictionary all the time. We get stuck
on trying to read details instead of trying to find out the overall meaning. In
short, we do not use the whole range of reading skills that we possess in our
mother tongue.

The writer and reader

The writer is someone who has something to say through written text to the
reader. However, it is important to remember that the writer and reader are not
identical and the message intended by the writer may not be the message the
reader extracts from the text. Readers bring both knowledge and opinion to
what they read. For example, a text may include the following sentence:

He lived his life like a typical bank manager.

Now answer the following questions:

1. How do bank managers travel to work?

2. What do they wear to work?

3. What do they do in the bank?
Unit 4 20 Module 2
4. What time do they finish every day?

None of the answers to those questions were in that sentence.

We interpret the writer's message in our own way. Since different people have
a different concept of a bank manager's life, there will be different
interpretations of the sentence. We may or may not know much about bank
managers and we may or may not share the writer's view of bank managers
as, say, bywords for respectability and regularity. If we think bank managers
are crooks who take bribes as a matter of course and have henchmen to kill
their enemies then the sentence will mean something very different to us and
our answers to questions based on the sentence will be very different.

Using context to guess and predict

Don’t let students use the dictionary every time they see an unfamiliar word.
Make them guess meanings of words from context. Only after they have
attempted a guess can they look up the word if they want to check
themselves. Give them time limits for reading and an easy task so that they do
not have time to find every word on the page. Make it clear to them that
understanding a text does not necessarily mean understanding every word in
it.

Teach prediction skills by using texts with pictures and headlines. If students
see an article headed: RABBIT SAVES FAMILY IN HOUSE FIRE they should
be encouraged to predict / guess the story and the vocabulary that may be
used in it. Alternatively, you can give students a list of key vocabulary from the
story and they can guess what the story is about. When students read to
check their predictions, their motivation and concentration are always higher
than if they are simply asked to read a new text and find out what it is about.

SELF-CHECK 3:2 3

Read the following paragraph and think about the answers to the questions. Do not use a
dictionary.

You are very unlikely to nulp a grizza, because they fozzle at night and not with other
grizzas. If you want to see one fozzling for gawls among the loobs, you have to spult
nabbly for many hours without making a gank.

Unit 4 21 Module 2
1. What do you think a grizza is?

2. What kinds of facts about grizzas do we learn from the text?

3. What do you think ‘fozzle’ means? And 'loobs'? And ‘gank?’

You will find answers later in the module.

Sub-skills of reading

A student needs to master different ways of reading a text.

Think back to the listening section. As with listening, students need to be

encouraged to read extensively, ie read a variety of texts on their own, such
as fiction, magazine articles, or Wikipedia. When they encounter the same
structures and vocabulary multiple times, their ability to understand written
English improves and they are able to deal with more and more difficult texts.

The two types, or sub-skills, of intensive reading in the classroom, are

reading is for gist (also called 'skimming') and reading for detail (also called
'scanning').

Skimming involves running your eyes over a piece of text in order to

understand its overall idea. For example, you may want to ascertain if it is
relevant to your needs and whether it's worth being read more carefully. You
may want to establish if any exciting events are described in the text or it is
just an opinion piece. You may need to find out whether the text is negative or
positive in tone. Or, if the author comments on a conflict, you may want to find
out which side he/she is on or whether he/she tries to remain neutral.

Scanning involves looking for specific information in the text. For example,
you want to find out the score of a game between Real Madrid and Barcelona
and you want to know whether Christiano Ronaldo has scored. You will then
read through the match report looking for numbers and identifying which of
them refer to the final score and you will also look for any mention of
Christiano's name in the text and, when you locate it, you'll read around that to
find out whether he scored a goal.

In another, broader classification there are four sub-skills of reading.

The first sub-skill involves 'superficial understanding' and is used in reading

a newspaper or detective story, for example, in order to pick out the main
points of the story, look for clues etc. The main concerns here could be 'what
Unit 4 22 Module 2
is going on?' ‘why are they doing what they are doing?’ or 'how will it all end?'
This is quite similar to extensive reading, where you read large amounts of text
for pleasure.
The following techniques are more intensive.

The second sub-skill is described as 'imaginative understanding' and is

used in the study of literature. A task requiring imaginative understanding
could be, for example:
Where Seamus Heaney says: ‘I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness
echoing’ - what is he trying to tell us about his attitude to poetry?

The third sub-skill is referred to as 'precise understanding' and it involves

thorough comprehension of a text with focus on the exact meaning of every
word and sentence. (Unfortunately, sometimes this turns out to be the only
sub-skill practised by students in some classes).

The final sub-skill involves 'practical understanding', and this is when we

read in order to act upon what we read. This is something we do with packets
and instructions - which button to press to make the TV work or how many pills
to take and how often.

Before setting reading tasks for your students, you need to decide what your
aim is. For instance:

Do you want to train your students to answer questions precisely?

Do you want to increase vocabulary?
Do you want your students to decide if the text is relevant to their needs?
Are you looking at the grammar of certain types of texts?
Do you want the students to act on the information?

Much of this will depend on the nature of the class - are they general English
students, University students or Business English students? Where are they
now? In their own country or in an English-speaking environment?

SELF-CHECK 3:2 4

Look at these three descriptions. Why are these not good 'reading lessons'?

Unit 4 23 Module 2
a. In a reading lesson I first ask learners to identify all the unknown words in
the text. I then give them explanations for all the words. I finally ask them to
do the reading at home and answer the comprehension questions set in the
course book.

b. I believe it is important for learners to be able to read aloud. So I ask each of

the students to read a paragraph of the text aloud in the class. While they do
this I correct their pronunciation errors. They repeat after each correction.
Then I give them a few minutes to answer the comprehension questions.
After that, I get the correct answers and we go on to another activity.

c. Well, in a reading lesson I basically start by teaching all the unknown

vocabulary. The learners then answer the comprehension questions. Then
we check the answers. Finally we do some grammar exercises on an area of
grammar that has featured in the written text. I think that texts are a useful
way to introduce new language and vocabulary.

COMMENT

a. In this lesson, the teacher is developing the learners’ vocabulary. That is of

course if s/he is using good vocabulary techniques that make the new
words memorable. However, it doesn't seem that the teacher encourages
students to work out meanings from context. The first reading is for
identifying unknown words, whereas it's more natural to allow students to
read for gist first.

b. This lesson is one on pronunciation and perhaps stress. Asking learners to

read aloud in this manner can be called ‘barking.’ For example, read the
following words aloud: 'Dak kelp'. You pronunciation may be perfect but do
you understand what you have just read? In reading, being able to say the
words is not an essential requirement and it does not imply understanding
the text. That is why in a reading lesson students should not read aloud
unless it's an extra activity at the end whose aim is to improve
pronunciation.

c. This teacher considers a reading lesson to be an opportunity to teach

vocabulary and grammar. The comprehension questions seem to be
secondary to language exercises. There is no practice of reading sub-skills.

All three of the teachers have failed to consider:

1. the features of the text (what makes an advert different from a
Unit 4 24 Module 2
 newspaper article for example),

2. the form of the text (its paragraphs, how each part links to the next)

3. the fact that people read texts with a particular objective in mind, whether it
be to identify its topic or important details; none of these three teachers
have considered setting questions before reading or including prediction
tasks.

SELF-CHECK 3:2 5

Here is an article from a newspaper.

There follow three lesson transcripts showing teachers using it with a teenage class.
Answer the questions in bold that follow each lesson.

ARTICLE SMOKEY SAVES 10 IN FIRE

A pet rabbit called Smokey saved ten people from a terrible house fire yesterday and
is fit and well at the local fire station.
The seven-week-old baby bunny began pounding his feet on the door of his rabbit
hutch when he smelt the smoke that was coming from the kitchen of the house at about
4am yesterday.
His owner, Tanya Birch was woken by the noise and was able to escape with her two
year old daughter, Heather, picking up the rabbit on the way out of the door. They all got
out safely.
Tanya then screamed a warning to other people on the second and third floors. One
mother jumped from a second floor window with her son. Firemen were able to rescue a
family of five who were trapped on the third floor.
Tanya said: ‘We owe our lives to Smokey. If he hadn’t woken me up, we would have
been trapped by the smoke. I’m going to buy him some extra special carrots this week.’
It is thought that the fire, in the village of Watermeet near Cambridge, was caused by
an electrical problem with a heater that was left on overnight in the kitchen. Firemen are
investigating.

Lesson 1

Teacher:
OK, class. Thank you for telling me about your pets and your favourite animals. You have
some very clever pets.
Now we're going to read about a very special pet that was in the newspaper because it
saved some people’s lives.
On the board I'm going to put some words from the article.

Unit 4 25 Module 2
In pairs, I want you to discuss what you think the story is about and how the animal
helped the people.

smoke banging family 10 3rd floor

jumped rabbit

Q: What could happen next in the lesson and why?

Lesson 2

Teacher: Today class we are going to find out about someone called Smokey.
He is very famous because he did something special.
Here is the title of the newspaper article:

SMOKEY SAVES 10 IN FIRE

When we write a newspaper article we need to tell the reader:

where what

NEWS

(why)?
when

who

What happened.
Where it happened.
When it happened.
Who it happened to.

And maybe:
Why it happened

Read through the article quickly - you have about two minutes.
See if you can find out WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHO and WHY

Q: What skills will the students practise in this lesson?

Unit 4 26 Module 2
Lesson 3

Teacher:
OK, class. We have heard interesting stories about brave animals on the recording. Now
we are going to read about an animal that saved some people. Let’s think about what
happens if there is a fire in a house.
Noriko: Gets hot a lot of sm…sm….
Keiko: Smoke.
Teacher: Good. What about the people in the house?
Jun: can’t go out Keiko: Jump out window Noriko: Escape

Teacher: Yes. In this story some people escaped and some people jumped. Some
people couldn’t get out - they were trapped
But also somebody screamed, somebody smelt something, somebody pounded
(imitates pounding) and somebody picked up something. (Writes all words in bold on
board and mimes some of them.)
Write these verbs down in your book. Then read through the article to find out who did
each of these things. Write the name of the person next to the verb.

Q: How is this introduction different from the other two lessons?

How is it the same?

COMMENT

Lesson 1

Q: What could happen next in the lesson and why?

This teacher has been encouraging the students to predict what is in the
article. The most natural thing for them to do next is to read the article and find
out to what extent their predictions are correct. This would be a useful gist-
reading exercise as they will use the words that they recognise to work out the
overall meaning of the article.

Unit 4 27 Module 2
Lesson 2

Q: What skills will the students practise in this lesson?

This teacher is encouraging the students to read quickly through a text and
pick out the most important points - so they will be reading for specific
information, ie scanning the text. However, if they begin by identifying ‘what’
happened, they may initially skim the text.
She also introduces them to the idea that texts have a form - ‘newspaper
articles usually tell us’……. They are also helping each other and sharing
information - important when you are reading.

Lesson 3

Q: How is this introduction different from the other two lessons?

How is it the same?
This lesson is different because it concentrates straight away on language in
the article and especially on verbs. It is important that the vocabulary is being
presented in context.
It is the same because it encourages the class to think about the topic before
they read.

Also, in each of the three lessons the teacher reveals some pieces of
information from the text prior to reading but leaves it up to the students to find
out most of the information, thus building anticipation and making the students
want to read.

All these three exercises are useful. The teacher could do a further exercise
with students giving reasons for the actions.
Why did he pound on the door? Why were they trapped?

Types of texts

Teachers need to consider the types of texts to introduce as there are many
different types of texts you can use for reading. Textbooks are improving their
selection of interesting and relevant materials but you can always add your
own. These days it is easy to get texts from the internet on any topic, so
choose something your students are interested in. An interview with a
celebrity? A review of a new computer game? Ask your students to look
themselves for interesting articles and bring them in. Tell them to find English
on packets in the kitchen and signs in the street. Even if they are not living in

Unit 4 28 Module 2
an English-speaking country they will still be able to find examples of English.
Bringing into lessons material that they have found will encourage them to
read outside class.

Once you have chosen a text, think about your exercises. Cut up a catalogue
or web page and ask students to match the product picture with the
description – to practise skimming and scanning. Cut up a long text such as a
story and ask students to put the sections in the right order – to focus on the
organisation of a text. Ask students to read part of a story in groups and then
finish the story in a logical way – to work on prediction and style.

You can also choose a few short texts on the same theme and ask students to
write True/False questions for their classmates to answer - reading for detail.

SELF-CHECK 3:2 6
Here are 5 texts and 5 activities. Match an activity to each text.

Advertisement

Health leaflet

Murder story

Problem letter

Guide book

 Cut this half way through and ask them to guess the end.
 Each group should read and write a reply
 Find the adjectives that make the car sound attractive.
 Read and mark places on a map
 Give each group a different topic and ask them to design a diagram or picture.

Exploiting texts

Planning how to use a text involves thinking about two things:

 the focus of the reading exercises

 how the text will fit into a lesson or series of lessons you are doing and
link with other skills work.

Unit 4 29 Module 2
The type of activity you do with a text should be a natural one. 'Read through
this six page report on global warming and pick out the adjectives’ is a rather
pointless activity, but finding adjectives in a car advertisement helps to
highlight how adverts persuade us.

There are three main focus areas to think about:

 the information in the text

 the structure and style of the text
 the vocabulary and grammar used in the text.

It is very important that you as a teacher devise exercises that are clearly
focused and that will both be informed by pre-reading activities and lead to
post-reading activities.

SELF-CHECK 3:2 7

Here is an example of a teacher’s set of reading comprehension questions.

1. What is the problem with the questions that need to be answered in full sentences?

2. What is the problem with the true and false questions?

3. What is the problem with the 'focus on language' task?

4. How could the questions be improved?

TEXT

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the seventh deepest lake in the
world. It has a depth of 1,943 feet. The lake partly fills a deep caldera that was formed
when a volcano called Mount Mazama collapsed around 7,700 years ago. A caldera
means a basin or deep place formed by the explosion or collapse of a volcano. The
waters of this lake are especially blue and free of pollutants because the lake has no
inlets. The water is replenished by rainfall and snow.

A secchi disk is used to determine how clear water is. This is a disk that is like a CD. It is
dropped into the water while connected by a rope. Scientists measure the depth of clarity
by seeing how far the disk can be dropped while a person is still able to see its reflection.
At Crater Lake, readings are in the high 20 to mid 30 meter range. This is very clear for
any natural lake. These bright blue waters greatly enhance Crater Lake National Park,
which has beautiful surrounding woodlands.

Unit 4 30 Module 2
TEACHER’S QUESTIONS

1. Answer in full sentences

What happened to the volcano mentioned in the text?

What is a caldera?
What is a secchi compared to?
What are the clarity figures for Crater Lake?
How is a secchi disk lowered into water?

2. True or False?

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States

The waters of this lake are especially green.
A secchi disk is used to determine how clear water is

3. Focus on language

Write out all the plural nouns from the text.

COMMENT

1. These questions focus on non-essential information in the text.

Answering these questions doesn't mean having a clear idea of what the
text is about or a having obtained a useful set of information. They check
understanding of professional jargon, which your students are unlikely to
need in real life. It is extremely hard to devise a way to lead from these
questions to any meaningful post-reading activities. They are unlikely to
be an extension of any pre-reading discussion, either.
2. These questions can be answered even by someone who doesn't know
English, so they are completely meaningless. Two of them are exact
photocopies of sentences in the text, so all you need is match them
visually and say 'yes'. One is also a photocopy but 'green' is used
instead of 'blue', which is obviously not the same. Such questions do not
check reading comprehension.
3. This is a pointless activity as plural forms are not a noteworthy language
feature of the text. There aren't even any irregular plurals.
4. Asking questions to establish the fact that the lake is very clean and that
people take care of preserving its ecological purity would be more
useful. That would allow students to understand the main idea and most
salient details of the text and would easily lead to a discussion on ways
to preserve nature. It could, in turn, lead from a pre-reading discussion
on beautiful, pristine places the students have visited.

Unit 4 31 Module 2
SELF-CHECK 3:2 8

Here are two texts and examples of a range of more focused exercises that could be used
with texts to improve students' reading skills.
Study them carefully and make notes on:

 who each text is suitable for.

 what sub-skill is being taught in each exercise: skimming or scanning.
 where students are required to predict.
 what areas of language the exercises are focusing on.

Then suggest a way in which the lesson could continue from these texts into a speaking,
listening or writing exercise.

Unit 4 32 Module 2
TEXT 1

(The student would have a diagram to go with this text)

Exercise 1

Read through the text quickly and say whether it

 describes what a typical English house looks like

 describes how a typical English house has changed in the recent decades
 describes the writer's attitude to a typical English house

THE TYPICAL ENGLISH HOUSE

A detached house stands on its own. A semi-detached house is joined to the house next
door along the central wall. The ‘semi’ is the most typical kind of English house. It has
front and back gardens and often a garage at the side.

The outline on the next page shows the ground floor of a typical ‘left-hand’ semi. It has a
lot of rooms, but if you look at the rooms you will see that they are all quite small. People
often ‘live’ in the dining room, keeping the lounge for visitors. This means that they spend
most of their time in a room only about 11' 6" x 10' 6". The dining room in this house is
connected to the lounge by a room divider, and the kitchen is connected to the dining
room by a hatch in the wall. Both the lounge and the dining room have open fireplaces.
The kitchen has a sink unit on the back wall of the house and the back door is on the left.
The front door opens into the hall. There is one other way in and out of the house and this
is through French windows which open onto the garden to the rear of the dining room.
The house from front to back measures 24' 6", the lounge being 13' in length.

Exercise 2

Now read the text more carefully and answer the following questions about the house.

1. Put in the dimensions which you know.

2. Mark with a cross the location of the attached "semi".

3. [picture] - which room is this?

Exercise 3

Fill in the blanks.

1. Figure 1 marks the position of a ..........

2. Figure 2 marks the position of a ..........

Unit 4 33 Module 2
3. Figure 3 marks the position of a ..........

4. The two figure 4's mark the position of the ..........

5. Figure 5 marks the position of the ..........

6. Figure 6 marks the position of the ..........

7. Figure 7 marks the position of the ..........

TEXT 2

Pre-text question

The following words will be used in the text. What do you think the text will be about?
What events will happen in the text? Make notes of your ideas.

careless
criticized
violation
freeway
damage

Exercise 1

Read the following text and answer the question after each paragraph. Then read on and
find out if you have guessed correctly. (Note: the text is projected onto a screen. Students
are not shown the next part of the text until the teacher has elicited their answer to the
question after the previous part).

1 Colleen was in a hurry, which made her driving even more careless than usual.
Her boyfriend Simon had already criticized her many times for failing to stop
completely at stop signs. That's what they call a “California, or rolling, stop,” he
told her.

5 “If the cops catch you sliding through a stop like that,” he said, wagging a finger
at her, “they'll give you a ticket for running a stop sign. That's a moving violation.
That means at least a $100 ticket, plus eight hours of driving school for another
$30.”

What do you think Colleen said in reply?

9 “I know, I know,” she replied. “But I never do it when they're around, so how can
they catch me?” Simon was about to tell her that cops have a habit of suddenly
appearing out of nowhere, but Colleen told him to stop thinking so negatively.
“You are bad luck,” she said. “When you talk like that, you make bad things
happen.” He told her that life doesn't work that way.

Why do you think Colleen was in a hurry on that particular day?

Unit 4 34 Module 2
15 Colleen was in a hurry because she needed to drop off a package at the post
office. It had to get to New York by Wednesday. She exited the freeway and
pulled up at the stop sign. No cars were coming. It was safe to pull out. She hit
the gas pedal.

What do you think happened next?

19 Bang! The car in front of her was still sitting there. The driver was a young
woman, who got out of her car, walked back to look at the damage to her new
car, and started yelling at Colleen.

“What were you waiting for?” Colleen demanded.

From http://www.eslfast.com/eslread/ss/s052.htm

Now read the notes you made before you read the text. Were your initial guesses about
the text correct?

Exercise 2

Make notes of the expressions and structures used in the text to

a) warn somebody
b) reply to a warning

Exercise 3

Are the following statements true or false?

1. It was the first time that Simon criticised Colleen for her driving style.
2. Colleen believed that if she couldn't see any cops when going through a stop sign, she
wouldn't be caught.

3. Colleen was in a hurry to get to New York.

4. The young woman reacted calmly to the incident.

5. The young woman's car was damaged.

Exercise 4

Explain what is meant by the following words ie what the author is referring to.

1. that – line 3
2. it – line 9
3. they – line 9
4. it – line 16
5. there – line 19

Unit 4 35 Module 2
ENDNOTE

What about the ‘grizzas’ earlier in the module?

To remind you, here was the exercise:

You are very unlikely to nulp a grizza, because they fozzle at night and not with other
grizzas. If you want to see one fozzling for gawls among the loobs, you have to spult
nabbly for many hours without making a gank.

1. What do you think a grizza is?

2. What kinds of facts about grizzas do we learn from the text?

3. What do you think ‘fozzle’ means? And 'loobs'? And ‘gank?’

Well, as you may have guessed, there is no such thing as a grizza. (If anyone
ever discovers a ‘grizza’, please contact INTESOL immediately and we will
rewrite the module).

Any deductions you made were based on your understanding of text structure,
other words in the text and the grammatical structures in it.

You expected the text to have meaning and structure. You had schemata in
your head for how informational texts were organised. That is why, despite not
knowing what a grizza was or what some other words in the text meant, you
were probably able to deduce that
 a grizza is a kind of animal
 the text is about the animal's behaviour
 a grizza engages in a certain activity on its own at night
 the text indicates what actions are required from you if you want to
see a grizza
 'fozzle' probably means 'look (for)', 'search' or 'hunt'
 'loobs' is either some kind of vegetation or rocks/stones
 'gank' is probably 'noise', 'sound' or 'movement'.

If you were able to work out so much from the text without knowing many
words in it, it proves that a lot of information is available to the reader through
contextual clues and that it is not always necessary to know the precise
meaning of each word in a text.

To sum up, remember that good readers

Unit 4 36 Module 2
  Enjoy reading
 Guess from context
 Practise extensive reading at home
 Are able to get the whole meaning of a text, not only specific details
 Read anything (signs, adverts, packets) trying to expand the range of
texts they can read and understand.

Unit 4 37 Module 2
Now consider the following extract:

Extensive and intensive reading

To get maximum benefit from their reading, students need to be involved in both extensive and intensive
reading. Whereas with the former, a teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they read
and to do so for pleasure and general language improvement, the latter is often (but not exclusively)
teacher-chosen and directed. It is designed to enable students to develop specific receptive skills such as
reading for gist (or general understanding - often called skimming), reading for specific information (often
called scanning), reading for detailed comprehension or reading for inference (what is 'behind' the words)
and attitude.

Extensive reading
We have discussed the importance of extensive reading for the development of our students' word
recognition - and for their improvement as readers overall. But it is not enough to tell students to 'read a lot';
we need to offer them a programme which includes appropriate materials, guidance, tasks and facilities,
such as permanent or portable libraries of books.
Extensive reading materials: one of the fundamental conditions of a successful extensive reading
programme is that students should be reading material which they can understand. If they are struggling to
understand every word, they can hardly be reading for pleasure - the main goal of this activity. This means
that we need to provide books which either by chance, or because they have been specially written, are
readily accessible to our students.
Specially written materials for extensive are often referred to as graded readers or simplified readers. They can
take the form of original fiction and non-fiction books as well as simplifications of established works of
literature. Such books succeed because the writers or adaptors work within specific lists of allowed words
and grammar. This means that students at the appropriate level can read them with ease and confidence.
At their best, despite the limitations on language, such books can speak to the reader through the creation
of atmosphere and/or compelling plot lines.

To encourage students to read this kind of learner literature - or any other texts which may be
comprehensible in the same way - we need to act in the following ways:

Setting up a library: in order to set up an extensive reading programme, we need to build up a library of
suitable books. Although this may appear costly, it will be money well spent. If necessary, we should
persuade our schools and institutions to provide such funds or raise money through other sources. If
possible, we should organise static libraries in the classroom or in some other part of the school. If this is
not possible, we need to work out some way of carrying the books around with us - in boxes or on trolleys.

The role of the teacher in extensive reading programmes: most students will not do a lot of extensive
reading by themselves unless they are encouraged to do so by their teachers. Clearly, then, our role is
crucial. We need to promote reading and by our own espousal of reading as a valid occupation, persuade
students of its benefits. Perhaps, for example, we can occasionally read aloud from books we like and
show, by our manner of reading, how exciting books can be. Having persuaded our students of the benefits
of extensive reading, we can organise reading programmes where we indicate to them how many books we
expect them to read over a given period. We can explain how they can make their choice of what to read,
making it clear that the choice is theirs, but that they can consult other students' reviews and comments to
help them make that choice. We can suggest that they look for books in a genre (be it crime fiction,
romantic novels, science fiction, etc.) that they enjoy, and that they make appropriate level choices. We will
act throughout as part organiser, part tutor.

Extensive reading tasks: because students should be allowed to choose their own reading texts, following

Unit 4 38 Module 2
their own likes and interests, they will not all be reading the same texts at once. For this reason - and
because we want to prompt students to keep reading - we should encourage them to report back on their
reading in a number of ways.
One approach is to set aside a time at various points in a course - say every two weeks - at which students
can ask questions and/or tell their classmates about books they have found particularly enjoyable or
noticeably awful. However, if this is inappropriate because not all students read at the same speed (or
because they often do not have much to say about the book in front of their colleagues), we can ask them
each to keep a weekly reading diary, either on its own or as part of any learning journal they may be writing.
Students can also write short book reviews for the class noticeboard. At the end of a month, a semester or a
year, they can vote on the most popular book in the library. Other teachers have students fill in reading
record charts (where they record title, publisher, level, start and end dates, comments about level and a
good/fair/poor overall rating), they ask students to keep a reading notebook (where they record facts and
opinions about the books they have gone through) or they engage students in oral interviews about what
they are reading.

Intensive reading: the roles of the teacher

In order to get students to read enthusiastically in class, we need to work to create interest in the topic and
tasks. However, there are further roles we need to adopt when asking students to read intensively:

 Organiser: we need to tell students exactly what their reading purpose is, give them clear
instructions about how to achieve it and explain how long they have to do this. Once we have said
You have four minutes for this, we should not change that time unless observation suggests that it is
necessary.
 Observer: when we ask students to read on their own, we need to give them space to do so. This
means restraining ourselves from interrupting that reading, even though the temptation may be to
add more information or instructions. While students are reading we can observe their progress since
this will give us valuable information about how well they are doing individually and collectively. It will
also tell us whether to give them some extra time or, instead, move to organising feedback more
quickly than we had anticipated.

 Feedback organiser: when our students have completed the task, we can lead a feedback session
to check that they have completed it successfully. We may start by having them compare their
answers in pairs and then ask for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular.
Students often appreciate giving paired answers like this since, by sharing their knowledge, they are
also sharing their responsibility for the answers. When we ask students to give answers, we should
always ask them to say where in the text they found the relevant information. This provokes a
detailed study of the text which will help them the next time they come to a similar reading passage.
It also tells us exactly what comprehension problems they have if and when they get answers wrong.
It is important to be supportive when organising feedback after reading if we are to counter any
negative feelings students might have about the process, and if we wish to sustain their motivation.

 Prompter: when students have read a text, we can prompt them to notice language features within it.
We may also, as controllers, direct them to certain features of text construction, clarifying ambiguities
and making them aware of issues of text structure which they had not come across previously.

Intensive reading: the vocabulary question

A common paradox in reading lessons is that while teachers are encouraging students to read for general
understanding, without worrying about the meaning of every single word, the students, on the other hand,
are desperate to know what each individual word means! Given half a chance, many of them would rather
tackle a reading passage with a dictionary (electronic or otherwise) in one hand and a pen in the other to
write translations all over the page! It is easy to be dismissive of such student preferences, yet as Carol
Walker points out, 'It seems contradictory to insist that students "read for meaning" while simultaneously
discouraging them from trying to understand the text at a deeper level than merely gist' (1998: 172).
Clearly, we need to find some accommodation between our desire to have students develop particular

Unit 4 39 Module 2
reading skills (such as the ability to understand the general message without understanding every detail)
and their natural urge to understand the meaning of every single word.

One way of reaching a compromise is to strike some kind of a bargain with a class whereby they will do
more or less what we ask of them provided that we do more or less what they ask of us. Thus we may
encourage students to read for general understanding without understanding every word on a first or second
read-through. But then, depending on what else is going to be done, we can give them a chance to ask
questions about individual words and/or give them a chance to look them up. That way both parties in the
teaching-learning transaction have their needs met. A word of caution needs to be added here. If students
ask for the meaning of all the words they do not know - and given some of the problems inherent in the
explaining of different word meanings - the majority of a lesson may be taken up in this way. We need,
therefore, to limit the amount of time spent on vocabulary checking in the following ways:

 Time limit: we can give a time limit of, say, five minutes for vocabulary enquiry, whether this
involves dictionary use, language corpus searches or questions to the teacher.

 Word/phrase limit: we can say that we will only answer questions about five or eight words or
phrases.

 Meaning consensus: we can get students to work together to search for and find word meanings. To
start the procedure, individual students write down three to five words from the text they most want to
know the meaning of. When they have each done this, they share their list with another student and
come up with a new joint list of only five words. This means they will probably have to discuss which
words to leave out. Two pairs join to make new groups of four and once again they have to pool their
lists and end up with only five words. Finally (perhaps after new groups of eight have been formed - it
depends on the atmosphere in the class), students can look for meanings of their words in
dictionaries and/or we can answer questions about the words which the groups have decided on. This
process works for two reasons. In the first place, students may well be able to tell each other about
some of the words which individual students did not know. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that
by the time we are asked for meanings, the students really do want to know them because the
intervening process has encouraged them to invest some time in the meaning search. 'Understanding
every word' has been changed into a cooperative learning task in its own right.

In responding to a natural hunger for vocabulary meaning, both teachers and students will have to
compromise. It's unrealistic to expect only one-sided change, but there are ways of dealing with the
problem which make a virtue out of what seems - to many teachers - a frustrating necessity.

Unit 4 40 Module 2
Intensive reading: letting the students in
It is often the case that the comprehension tasks we ask students to do are based on tasks in a coursebook.
In other words, the students are responding to what someone else has asked them to find out. But students
are far more likely to be engaged in a text if they bring their own feelings and knowledge to the task, rather
than only responding to someone else's ideas of what they should find out. One of the most important
questions we can ever get students to answer is Do you like the text? (Kennedy 2000a and b). The question
is important because if we only ever ask students technical questions about language, we are denying them
any affective response to the content of the text. By letting them give voice (if they wish) to their feelings
about what they have read, we are far more likely to provoke the 'cuddle factor' than if we just work through
a series of exercises.

Another way of letting the students in is to allow them to create their own comprehension task. A popular
way of doing this - when the text is about people, events or topics which everyone knows something about -
is to discuss the subject of the text with the class before they read. We can encourage them to complete a
chart (on the board) with things they know or don't know (or would like to know) about the text, e.g.

This activity provides a perfect lead-in since students will be engaged, will activate their schemata, and will,
finally, end up with a good reason to read which they themselves have brought into being. Now they read
the text to check off all the items they have put into the three columns. The text may not give them all the
answers, of course, nor may it confirm (or even refute) what they have put in the left-hand column.
Nevertheless, the chances are that they will read with considerably more interest than for some more
routine task.

Another involving way of reading is to have students read different texts and then share the information
they have gathered in order to piece together the whole story. This is called jigsaw reading.

Reading lesson sequences

We use intensive reading sequences in class for a number of reasons. We may want to have students
practise specific skills such as skimming/reading for general understanding or 'gist' or scanning/reading to
extract specific information. We may, on the other hand, get students to read texts for communicative
purposes, as part of other activities, as sources of information, or in order to identify specific uses of
language.
Most reading sequences involve more than one reading skill. We may start by having students read for gist
and then get them to read the text again for detailed comprehension; they may start by identifying the topic
of a text before scanning the text quickly to recover specific information; they may read for specific
information before going back to the text to identify features of text construction.

Unit 4 41 Module 2
Examples of reading sequences
In the following example, the reading activity is specified, the skills which are involved detailed, and the
way that the text can be used within a lesson is explained.

In this example, students predict the content of a text not from a picture, but from a few tantalising clues
they are given (in the form of phrases from the passage they will read).

The teacher gives each student in the class a letter from A to E. She tells all the students to close their
eyes. She then asks all the students with the letter A to open their eyes and shows them the word lion,
written large so that they can see it. Then she makes them close their eyes again and this time shows the B
students the phrase racial groups. She shows the C students the phrase paper aeroplanes, the D students
the word tattoos and the E students the word guard. She now puts the students in groups of five, each
composed of students A-E. By discussing their words and phrases, each group has to try to predict what the
text is all about. The teacher can go round the groups encouraging them and, perhaps, feeding them with
new words like cage, the tensest man or moral authority, etc. Finally, when the groups have made some
predictions, the teacher asks them whether they would like to hear the text that all the words came from, as
a prelude to reading the following text aloud, investing it with humour and drama, making the reading
dramatic and enjoyable.

Unit 4 42 Module 2
 From Maximum Security by R O'Connor in the literary magazine Granta (no. 54, 1996)

The students now read the text for themselves to answer the following detailed comprehension questions:

Before moving on to work with the content of the text, the teacher may well take advantage of the language
in it to study some aspects that are of interest. For example, how is the meaning of would different in the
sentences I ... wondered what I would do if he refused and a teacher ... who ... would turn towards the board ... ?
Can students make sentences using the same construction as He was easily the tensest man I had ever seen
(e.g. He/She was easily the (superlative adjective + noun) I had ever (past participle) or I could tell you my real
name, but then I'd have to kill you (e.g. I could .., but then I'd have to .. ). The discussion possibilities for this text
are endless. How many differences are there between Robert O'Connor's class and the students' own class?
How many similarities are there? How would they (the students) handle working in a prison? Should
prisoners be given classes anyway, and if so, of what kind? What would the students themselves do if they
were giving their first English class in a prison or in a more ordinary school environment? Part of this
sequence has involved the teacher reading aloud. This can be very powerful if it is not overdone. By mixing
the skills of speaking, listening and reading, the students have had a rich language experience, and
because they have had a chance to predict content, listen, read and then discuss the text, they are likely to
be very involved with the procedure.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Unit 4 43 Module 2
 Copyright INTESOL Worldwide 2015

Unit 4 44 Module 2