2. Introduction
• Teaching listening and speaking skills has become
vital to learning a second language.
• Listening was thought of as a mastery of skills, such
as identifying key words and recognizing reduced
words.
• It then became bottom-up and top-down, followed
by prior knowledge and schema.
• The current view is that a listener is an active
participant that uses facilitation, monitoring, and
evaluating strategies.
3. Speaking was…
Memorizing, repeating, and drill-based
Communicative language changed grammar-based
syllabi to communication syllabi.
Fluency became popular.
4. The Teaching of Listening
• 2 views: listening as comprehension and listening as
acquisition.
• Listening as comprehension is based on the main
function of listening in second language learning is
to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse.
• Spoken discourse is instantaneous, unplanned, uses
hesitations, reduced forms, fillers and repeats, and
a linear structure (p. 3).
5. Bottom-Up Processing
• Using the incoming input as the basis for understanding
the message. Comprehension is the process of
decoding.
• Teaching Bottom-Up:
– Retain input while it is being processed
– Recognizing word and clause divisions
– Recognize key words
– Recognize key transitions in a discourse
– Recognize grammatical relations between key elements in
sentences
– Use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence
function (Richards, 5).
6. Task Examples of Bottom-Up
Processing
Identify sequence markers
Identify key words
Distinguish between positive and negative
statements.
7. Top-down Processing
• Use of background knowledge in understanding the
meaning of a message. It could be previous knowledge
of a topic, situational/contextual, or schema.
• Teaching Top-down:
– Use key words to construct schema
– Infer the setting of the text
– Infer the role of the participants and their goals
– Infer cause and effect
– Infer unstated details of a situation
– Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation
(Richards, 9).
8. Task Examples of Top-Down Processing
KWL charts
Predict another speaker’s part of the conversation
Read news headlines, guess what happened, then
listen to the news and compare
9. Strategies for Listening
Cognitive: comprehension, storing/memory process,
retrieval
Metacognitive: assessing, monitoring, self-
evaluating and self-testing
10. Listening as Acquisition
• Listeners extract meaning from the message.
• Use both bottom-up and top-down processing.
• Language of utterances is temporary.
• Teaching listening strategies can make more
effective listeners.
• Some tasks to improve acquisition are true-false,
picture identification, and sequencing tasks.
11. Input vs. Intake
Schmidt (1990) argued “that we won’t learn
anything from input we hear and understand unless
we notice something about the input” (Richards, 13).
Input- what a learner hears
Intake- the part that the learner notices
Only intake can serve as the basis for language
development (Richards, 14).
12. Noticing and Restructuring
Noticing Activities: using the listening texts for
comprehension activities and use them for language
awareness.
Restructuring Activities: oral or written tasks that
involve productive use of selected items from the
listening text.
13. The Teaching of Speaking
Employs more vague or generic words than written
language.
Show variation between formal and informal
speech.
May be planned or unplanned.
14. Conversational Routines
Use of fixed Styles of Speaking
expressions What is appropriate
“It doesn’t matter.” for the context?
“I see what you mean.” “Whacha up to?/What
“Just looking, thanks.” are you up to?
Differences between
formal and informal
speech.
15. Functions of Speaking
3 functions of speaking
Talk as Interaction: primarily a social function. Focus is
on the speaker, not the message.
Talk as Transaction: focus on what is said or done. The
message is #1! (Problem-solving activities, asking for
directions).
Talk as Performance: public speaking, form of
monolog, mimics written language.
16. Implications for Teaching
What kinds of speaking skills does the course focus
on?
Identifying teaching strategies for each kind of talk
Talk as Interaction: “small talk”, personal experiences
Talk as Transaction: role play, small group activities
Talk as Performance: examples of speeches
17. Challenges for Teachers
Help develop fluency, accuracy, and
appropriateness of language use.
Move from linguistic competence (mastery of
linguistic system) to communicative competence
(know how to use English appropriately for a range
of different purposes).
18. Resources
Richards, Jack C. Teaching Listening and Speaking:
From Theory to Practice.
