Teaching receptive skills

Teaching receptive skills

There are four basic skills in any language :reading and listening, and speaking and writing. Listening and reading are receptive skills, because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. They can be contrasted with the productive or active skills of speaking and writing.
All are equally important and wherever possible we should try to incorporate all of them into our lessons if we want to have a balanced approach. Often we will want to focus more on one particular skill but still bring others in to create an ‘integrated’ skills lesson.

Often in the process of learning new language, learners begin with receptive understanding of the new items, then later move on to productive use.
The relationship between receptive and productive skills is a complex one, with one set of skills naturally supporting another. For example, building reading skills can contribute to the development of writing.

“ We have two ears and one
mouth so that we can listen
twice as much as we speak.”
Epictetu

“Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf”
Native American Indian Proverb
The Teaching of Listening
Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin). An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis (1981:134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:
• predicting what people are going to talk about
• guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic
• using one’s own knowledge of the subject to help one understand
• identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information
• retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing)
• recognizing discourse markers, e. g. , Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc.
recognizing cohesive devices, e. g. , such as and which, including linking words, pronouns, references, etc.
• understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc. , which give clues to meaning and social setting
• understanding inferred information, e. g. , speakers’ attitude or intentions.
According to Bulletin (1952), listening is one of the fundamental language skills. It’s a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education–their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. In this day of mass communication (much of it oral), it is of vital importance that our pupils be taught to listen effectively and critically, he says.