This is a basic presentation about how to teach listening and reading as receptive skills. It is based on information from Harmer (2007).

1. LISTENING AND
READING: RECEPTIVE
SKILLS IN EFL
BA IN SPANISH,
ENGLISH, AND
FRENCH
Yamith José Fandiño
yfandino@lasalle.edu.co
DIDACTICS OF ENGLISH

2. INTRODUCTION

3. Language skills

4. Teaching Reading
Reasons for reading
• Read texts in English for careers, for study purposes or for pleasure.
• Have a positive impact on language acquisition and vocabulary
knowledge.
• Provide good models for English writing.

5. Teaching Reading
Different kinds of reading
EXTENSIVE READING INTENSIVE READING
It refers to reading students do away from the
classroom.
Novels, graded readers, web pages,
newspapers, magazines, etc.
Students read texts for enjoyment and to
develop general readings skills.
Examples: Book reports, club discussions,
creative writing, vocabulary journals, writing
reviews, or silent reading in class.
It refers to the detailed focus on the
construction of reading texts that takes places
in classrooms.
News articles, poems, reports, blog posts,
short stories, etc.
Examples: skimming a text for specific
information to answer true or false
statements, scanning a text to match headings
to paragraphs, or scanning jumbled
paragraphs and then reading them carefully to
put them into the correct order.

6. Teaching Reading
Reading levels
• Authentic texts
Texts that are not written for language learners.
Texts for competent users of the language.
Menus, timetables, signs and basic instructions, longer prose, etc.
• Simplified or graded readers
Texts that are written for language learners.
Texts for intensive reading.
Chapters or extracts from books, newspapers, magazines, websites, etc.

7. Teaching Reading
Reading skills
SCANNING SKIMMING READING FOR DETAILED
COMPREHENSION
Students do not read every
word or line. Instead,
students read the text for
particular bits of information
they are searching for.
Example: A telephone
number, a date, the price of a
product, etc.
Students read a text to get a
general idea of what it is
about.
Example: Decide if a piece of
news is relevant for a class
assignment, find a job
advertisement or select a
movie review.
Students read the text for a
deep comprehension of its
content, form and structure.
Example: Understanding the
author’s message, distinguish
the main ideas from the
supporting details, and
interpreting implied but non-
explicitly stated information.

8. Teaching Reading
Reading principles
1. Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible.
2. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading.
3. Encourage students to respond to the content of a text (and explore
their feelings about it), not just concentrate on its construction.
4. Prediction is a major factor in reading.
5. Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts.
6. Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full.

9. Teaching Reading
Reading sequences
• Magazines
1. Look at images and discuss.
2. Identify the origin of the text.
3. Read the text and work with
vocabulary.
4. Study some of the language in the text.
5. Write a similar description or create a
role play.

10. Teaching Reading
Reading sequences
• Campaigns
1. Look quickly at the text to predict what
it is about.
2. Look again and answer some questions.
3. Match words and meanings.
4. Read carefully to correct some
sentences.
5. Participate in activation role play
according to given prompts.

11. Teaching Reading
Reading sequences
• Webquest
1. Introduction stage: Overall theme is
presented, background information is
activated, and key vocabulary is
practiced.
2. Task section: The assignment is
explained, and students receive
instructions.
3. Process stage: Students explore given
web links and get information needed to
do the task.
4. Evaluation stage: Students check what
they have learned and do some extra
language work.

12. Teaching Reading
More reading suggestions
Jigsaw reading Students read a short text which sets up a problem and then, in groups,
they read different texts, all of which are about the same thing. When
they have read their texts, they come together in groups where each
student has read a different text, and they try to work out the whole
story, or describe the whole situation
Reading puzzles Give students texts which have been chopped up so that each
paragraph is on a different piece of paper. Students must reassemble
the text.
Using newspapers Students do all kinds of matching exercises, such as ones where
students must match articles with their headlines
or with relevant pictures. At higher levels, we can have students read
three accounts of the same incident and ask them to find the
differences between them.

13. Teaching Reading
More reading suggestions
Following instructions Students read instructions for a simple operation and must put the
instructions in the correct order. They can also match instructions with
the pictures that normally accompany such instructions in manuals.
Poetry In groups, students are each given a line from a poem. They can’t show
the line to the other members of the group, though they can read it
out loud. They must reassemble the poem by putting the lines in order.
Students read different poems and then, without showing
their poem to anyone else, they must go round the class finding
similarities and differences.
Play extracts Students read an extract from a play or film and, after ensuring that
they understand it and analyzing its construction, they must work on
acting it out.

14. Teaching Reading
More reading suggestions
Predicting from
words and pictures
Students are given several words from a text. Working in groups, they
must predict what kind of a text they are going to read - or what story
the text tells. They then read the text to see if their original predictions
were correct.
We can also give students pictures to predict from, or slightly bigger
fragments from the text.
Different responses Apart from answering comprehension questions with sentences,
saying whether something is true or false or finding particular words in
the text, students can (a) put information into graphs, tables or
diagrams, (b) describe the people in the text (where
no physical description is given, (c) infer the writer’s attitude from a
text or (d) do genre analysis (How texts are constructed).

15. Teaching Reading
Encourage students to read
1. Library: Students need to have access to a collection of readers, both at
their own level and above and below it.
2. Choice: A major aspect of joyful reading is that students should be able
to choose what they read - both in terms of genre but also, crucially,
level.
3. Feedback: Students should have an opportunity to give feedback on
what they have read, either verbally or in written form.
4. Time: Students receive time for reading in addition to those occasions
when they read on their own. It is a good idea to leave a ten-minute
reading period at various times during a course just to get students
comfortable with the activity.

16. Teaching Listening

17. Teaching Listening
Reasons for listening
• Listen to understand what people say.
• Listen to improve pronunciation.
• Listen to understand regional varieties and different world Englishes.

18. Teaching Listening
Different kinds of listening and sources
INTENSIVE LISTENING EXTENSIVE LISTENING
Students listen specifically in order to work
on listening skills, and in order to study the
way in which English is spoken.
It usually takes place in classrooms or
language laboratories, and typically occurs
when teachers are present to guide
students.
Listening which the students often do away from the
classroom, for pleasure
or some other reason.
The audio material they consume in this way - often on CDs
in their cars, on MP3 players, DVDs, videos or on the internet
- should consist of texts that they
can enjoy listening to because they understand them without
the intervention of a teacher.
RECORDED EXTRACTS LIVE LISTENING
CDS, tapes or via MP3 players
of some kind that are frequently
commercially produced, either as part of a
coursebook or as supplementary material.
It refers to situations in which the teacher
brings visitors into the class or, if this is not possible, role-
plays different characters for the
students to talk and listen to. The main advantage is
that this listening makes the experience more dynamic and
exciting.

19. Teaching Listening
Listening levels
• Different genres and registers
News broadcasts, public announcements, recorded messages, lectures,
phone conversations, dramatic dialogues, etc.
• Authentic or non-authentic listening.
Authentic speech is speech not spoken for language learners. It offers
realistic language use. Radio shows, radio commercials, weather
forecasts, conversations, etc.

20. Teaching Listening
Listening skills
LISTEN FOR PARALINGUISTIC
CLUES
LISTEN FOR DETAILS LISTEN FOR GENERAL
UNDERSTANDING
Recognize paralinguistic clues
such as tone and pitch of
voice, accent, and intonation
in order to understand mood
and meaning.
Listen for specific
information (such as times,
platform numbers, places,
names, quantities, numbers,
etc.)
Listen for general
understanding (when they
are listening to a story or
interacting in a social
conversation).

21. Teaching Listening
Listening principles
1. Encourage students to listen as often and as much as possible.
2. Help students prepare to listen.
3. Once may not be enough.
4. Encourage students to respond to the content of a listening, not just
to the language.
5. Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
6. Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.

22. Teaching Listening
Listening sequences
• Live interviews
1. Prepare questions for a visitor.
2. Students ask questions and take notes.
3. Use phrases to interact with the visitor.
4. Find out about the visitor.
5. Write a profile of the visitor, write to
them a thankful note, or discuss wit the
class about the visitor.

23. Teaching Listening
Listening sequences
• Buying tickets (products or services)
1. Describe pictures.
2. Listen to match pictures to
conversations.
3. Listen again and to fill in blanks in audio
scripts.
4. Focus on specific language.
5. Activate the language in order to have
similar exchanges.

24. Teaching Listening
Listening sequences
• Prerecorded authentic interview-narrative
1. Students look at a picture and speculate
about the person.
2. Look at some questions before they listen to
the person speak.
3. Discuss the questions and predict answers.
4. Play the audio track.
5. Students go through the questions again to
see if they agree with the answers.
6. Students listen to a second audio and do a
similar process.
7. Students work with audio scripts to identify
grammatical constructions or pronunciation
issues / Students can retell the story.

25. Teaching Listening
More listening suggestions
Jigsaw listening In three groups, students listen to three different tapes, all
are about the same thing (witness reports after an accident or a crime,
phone conversations arranging a meeting, different news stories which
explain a strange event, etc.). Students must assemble all the facts by
comparing notes.
Message taking Students listen to a phone message (recorded messages or
announcements) being given. They must write down the message on a
message pad.
Music and sound
effects
Songs are very useful because, if we choose them well,
they can be very engaging. Students can fill in blanks in song lyrics,
rearrange lines or verses, or listen to songs and say what mood or
message they convey.

26. Teaching Listening
More listening suggestions
News and other
radio genres
Students listen to a news broadcast (radio commercial, radio phone-ins, etc.)
and have to say which topics from a list occur in the bulletin and in which order.
They then must listen for details about individual stories.
Poetry Students can listen to poems being read aloud and say what mood they convey
(or what color they suggest to them). They can hear a poem and then try to
produce an appropriate title. They can
listen to a poem which has no punctuation and put in commas and full stops
where they think they should occur.
Stories When students listen to people telling stories, there are several things we can
have them do. Perhaps they can put pictures in the order in which the story is
told. Sometimes we can let students listen to a story but not tell them the end.
They must guess what it is and then, perhaps, we play them the recorded
version.
Monologues We can ask students to listen to lectures and take notes. We can listen to
dramatic or comic monologues and ask the students to say how the speaker
feels. We can have them listen to speeches (at weddings, farewells, openings,
etc.) and get them to identify what the subject is and what the speaker thinks
about it.

27. Teaching Listening
Audio and video
1. Play the video without sound
Students and teacher discuss what they see and what clues it gives them, and
then they guess what the characters are saying.
2. Play the audio without the picture
This reverses the previous procedure. While the students listen, they try to judge
where the speakers are, what they look like, what’s going on, etc. When they
have predicted this, they listen again, this time with the visual images as well.
3. Freeze frame
The teacher presses the pause button and asks the students what’s going to
happen next. Can they predict the action - and the language that will be used?
4. Dividing the class in half
Half the class face the screen. The other half sit with their backs to it. The
‘screen’ half describe the visual images to the ‘wall’ half.

28. References
Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English (New edition). USA: Pearson
Longman.