Overview: Module 7

The four language skills are listening, reading, writing and speaking. These skills can be
broken down into two groups: receptive (or passive) and productive (or active) skills.
Listening and reading are both classed as receptive skills because they require learners to
receive language and understand it.
Speaking and writing, on the other hand, are productive skills which require students to
produce language for themselves.
Learners often find it easier to develop their receptive skills, especially at the beginning, as they
need to be exposed to the language before they can go on to produce it.
However, all the four skills are linked and need to be developed more or less simultaneously.
For example, if a student is able to pronounce a word correctly, then they are more likely to be
able to understand it when they hear it spoken.
Similarly, working on reading skills can help to enhance a student’s writing. The four skills
naturally support and complement one another.
In the following modules we’re going to look at each of the four skills in more detail and focus
on ways of developing each when teaching EFL.
But first, it’s critical that we explore Learning Styles. These influence what materials and
examples you will use, and the way you will present them, when teaching your learners. An
awareness of learning styles is paramount when teaching the 4 skills, and vocabulary and
grammar.
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Unit 1: Learning Styles

1. So, what is a ‘learning style’?
A learning style is a more or less consistent way in which a person perceives, conceptualises,
organises and recalls information. In essence, a learner often has a preferred learning style.
This could be a preference for learning through visual activities as opposed to, for example,
audio activity.
There are other preferences, as we will see below. Proponents say that learning styles are
influenced by the individual’s genetic make-up, previous learning experiences, culture and
society.
2. Identification of learning style – useful or not?
There are different opinions and lobbies as to the relevance of the identification and usage of
learning styles in the classroom. Unfortunately, many of the opinions from either side of the
debate lack real or scientific proof as learning style methodologies remain unproven.
However, our opinion based on our experience is that learner style identification is useful and is
pretty successful, particularly with adult learners.
Many teachers and educators continue to find value and benefit by using learning styles
approaches in one way or another and, as often applies in such situations, there is likely to be
usage which is appropriate and other usage which is not.
 So, especially if you are working with young people, use methodologies with care. It is wrong to
apply any methodology blindly and unquestioningly, and wrong not to review and assess the
effectiveness of methods used.
In any case, we feel it’s important that you are aware of learning styles, no matter whether you
end up being in favour of using them or against using them.
3. Different learning styles approaches
There are a many different approaches used to determine an individual’s learning style.
We will focus on two of these.
1. Kolb’s theory
The work of Kolb and others produced the classification of learners into four groups: activists,
reflectors, theorists and pragmatists.
According to this approach:
 Activists like practical work such as labs, field work, observation exercises and using visual
source material for information etc.
 Reflectors like to learn by watching others, by taking time to consider observations of their own
experience etc.
 Theorists like lectures, reading papers on topics, considering analogies etc.
 Pragmatists like simulations, case studies, homework etc.
Thus, the four types might approach learning a software programme in different ways:
 Activists might just start using it and feel their way into it.
 Reflectors might have a go at using it and then take time to think about what they have just
done.
 Theorists might begin by reading the manual.
 Pragmatists might start using the programme, but make frequent references to the help files.
The four types of learning can be seen as cyclical stages through which a learner can progress
(Watch>>>Think>>>Feel>>>Do), as well as categorising specific kinds of learning experience.
2. The VAK approach
This is our preferred approach. It’s simple and easy to administer.
The VAK analysis identifies three learning styles: Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic (sometimes
an a is added in: kinaesthetic). Sometimes kinesthetic is said to include tactile learning and
sometimes this is added as a separate learning style.
Key points underlying this approach:
 Any individual will operate in all three modalities, but with a preference for one or two.
 Visual learners are likely to prefer mind-maps, diagrams, picturesque language, flow charts, use
of colour, white space on the page etc.
 Auditory learners are likely to prefer discussion, explaining things to others, using a tape
recorder, and teaching linked to anecdotes/jokes etc.
 Kinesthetic learners are likely to prefer group work, using models/objects in describing things,
walking around while learning, hands-on activities, books with strong plot etc.
 You should be aware of your own VAK preferences. When doing a learning styles analysis with
students, the students should be made aware of their individual preferences.
 Some research has shown that students can perform better on tests if they change their study
habits to fit their own personal learning styles. For example, visual-learning students will
sometimes struggle during essay exams, because they can't recall test material that was ‘heard
’ in a lecture.
 However, if the visual learner uses a visual aid when studying, like a colourful outline of test
materials, he or she may retain more information. For this type of learner, visual tools improve
the ability to recall information more completely.
General characteristics of the visual, audio and kinaesthetic learning styles based on the
VAK approach
Visual learner characteristics
Visual learners are those who tend to learn best through seeing things. Look over the
characteristics below to see if they sound familiar. A visual learner:
 is good at spelling but forgets names
 needs quiet study time
 has to think a while before understanding a lecture
 likes colours and fashion
 dreams in colour
 understands/likes charts
 is good with sign language
Learning suggestions for visual learners
 Draw a map of events in history or draw scientific process
 Make outlines of everything
 Copy what's on the board
 Ask the teacher to make a diagram/sketch
 Take notes, make lists
 Watch videos
 Colour code words
 Outline reading
 Use flashcards
 Use highlighters, circle words, underline
Best test type for visual learners
Diagramming, reading maps, essays, showing a process
Worst test type for visual learners
Listen and respond tests
Auditory learner characteristics
Auditory learners are those who tend to learn best through hearing things. Look over these
traits to see if they sound familiar to you. You may be an auditory learner if you are someone
who:
 likes to read to self out loud
 is not afraid to speak in class
 likes oral reports
 is good at explaining
 remembers names
 notices sound effects in movies
 enjoys music
 is good at grammar and foreign languages
 reads slowly
 follows spoken directions well
 can't keep quiet for long periods
 enjoys acting and being on stage
 is good in study groups
Auditory learners can benefit from:
 using word association to remember facts and lines
 recording lectures
 watching videos
 repeating facts with eyes closed
 participating in group discussions
 using audiotapes for language practice
 taping notes after writing them
Best test type for auditory learners
Auditory Learners are good at writing responses to lectures they've heard. They're also good at
oral exams.
Worst test type for auditory learners
Reading passages and writing answers about them in a timed test
Kinesthetic learner characteristics
Look over these kinesthetic learner traits to see if they sound familiar to you. You may be a
kinesthetic learner if you are someone who:
 is good at sport
 can't sit still for long
 is not great at spelling
 does not have great handwriting
 likes working in science labs
 studies with loud music on
 likes adventure books, movies
 likes role playing
 takes breaks when studying
 builds models
 is involved in martial arts or dance
 is fidgety (restless) during lectures
Kinesthetic learners can benefit from:
 studying in short blocks
 taking lab classes
 role playing
 taking field trips and visiting museums
 studying with others
 using memory games
 using flash cards to memorise
Key points to consider when you start teaching:
 To what extent does your teaching provide a range of activities to cater for the visual, audio and
kinesthetic learning styles?
 What opportunities do you see to enhance the range of types of activity in your classroom?
 What learning style preference do you have? Is it visual, audio or kinesthetic? Or is it a mix of
two or more?
Some people find that their learning style may be a blend of two or three styles.
Naturally, it is not always practical or even possible to account for all learning styles in a class.
However, if you do identify learning styles to inform your classroom approach, you may find
that you can gain a deeper understanding of your students' learning preferences and a greater
appreciation of their strengths.
You may also discover that an awareness of the different kinds of learning styles will help you to
create more creative and appealing lessons. This, in turn, promotes more student engagement,
as students will be leveraging learning modes that match their particular strengths.
Your students' increased engagement and success in learning may also stimulate you to raise
their expectations. This initiates a powerful expectation-response cycle that can lead to greater
achievement levels. This in turn leads to increased motivation for your students and you.
You can do your own analysis of students’ learning styles through close observation, noting
what you hear and see.
There’s also a range of materials on the internet which will give you some ideas as to how to
approach this – and you can even try out a learning styles analysis on yourself to find out what
preferred learning style you may have if you are not aware of this already.
Please note that materials on the internet may be protected by copyright and you may be
restricted to using materials for your own personal use, i.e. you must not print them off and use
them with a group of students if the materials are under copyright. Check carefully.
The best route is always to carry out your own analysis via your own approach, by observing
your students closely and noting what you hear and see.
Summary – the VAK approach
As with any learning approach, you need to decide whether this offers you any practical usage.
The VAK learning styles approach has its proponents and detractors but, overall, we feel it
serves as a good aid/reminder for you when choosing appropriate learning activities:
1. Structure learning materials around the learners’ strengths
If you have individuals or groups who have particular interests or strengths, e.g. sport, music,
and you want them to be involved and successful in their language learning, then structure your
learning materials around these interests and strengths.
2. Variety brings life to the classroom
Providing a rich mix of learning activities derived from a mix of the different preferences will
result in a lively and engaging classroom for all your learners.
3. A whole person approach
Every individual exercises all preferences to some degree or another. A multi-faceted teaching
approach that appeals to all preferences addresses the whole person in ways that more one-
sided approaches do not.
The VAK approach helps to develop the whole person within each learner, which best serves the
person’s language learning requirements as well.
Give it a try – preferably with older students.
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Unit 1: Questions
A learning style is a more or less consistent way in which a person perceives, conceptualises,
organises and recalls information.
Check answer

Proponents of learning styles say that learning styles are influenced wholly by the individual’s
genetic make-up.

Check answer

There is only one approach used to determine an individual’s learning style: the VAK approach.

Check answer

Any individual will operate in all three learning style modalities, but with a preference for one or
two.

Check answer

A kinesthetic learner will likely benefit from being involved in role playing.

Check answer

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Unit 2: Listening

Although listening is a receptive skill, some students do still find it very intimidating. It may
seem to them that people speak too fast, they don’t understand the accent or can’t tell
where one word finishes and another starts.
Aside from this, listening isn’t just about understanding each word; students may need to
listen for gist or for detail, they may need to infer a speaker’s attitude or comprehend the
meaning behind what is said.
In real-life situations we always have a context when listening; we can see the speakers,
know/can infer their relationship and have an idea of what they’re talking about based on
previous conversations or previous knowledge.
When listening to a recording in a foreign language, however, we don’t have any of this, which
makes listening even harder. It can also be difficult because spoken language is generally much
less well organised than written language.
There may be hesitations, incomplete sentences or a sudden change of topic.
This is very challenging for students and that’s why it’s important to expose them to
both authentic listening material which prepares them for the challenge of real language,
as well as ‘graded’ material to build their confidence.
 You should also consider the different types of spoken language which exist. These are a few
examples:
 Conversations
 Songs
 Speeches
 Announcements
 Advertisements
 Stories
 Lectures
Listening involves being able to understand a range of different ‘spoken texts’ and to take
meaning from them.
In the classroom we can expose students to a variety of these text types via CDs, DVDs and, of
course, our own speech. As we’ve already mentioned, when listening to a recording, whether
authentic or otherwise, we can’t see the speakers and therefore can’t infer context, whereas
in real life we usually have at least some idea of what we’re going to hear.
So, when using CDs in the classroom it’s a bit unfair to expect students to “listen to the
recording and answer the questions” without any introduction at all. If we approach listening
lessons like this, students are either able to understand and get the right answers or not, but
if not then there’s no way for them to improve.
Instead, there are a number of ways we can actually develop listening skills. The British Council
gives some really fun and interesting pre-listening tasks which can really help. They include:
 Setting the context – giving students an idea of who is speaking, where, when and an outline
of the situation
 Warmers to generate interest – if you’re listening to a dialogue about food, you could start
off by asking students their favourite foods etc.
 Activating knowledge – asking students what they already know about the topic to bring
relevant vocabulary to the forefront of their minds or giving them a short, fun quiz
 Predicting content – once they know the context they can guess what might/might not be
mentioned
 Giving students the questions before they listen – this means that they can focus and listen
out for cues in the dialogue rather than being overwhelmed trying to listen for absolutely
everything
 Predicting answers – give students time to read all the questions and make notes on possible
answers so that they’re not concentrating on reading a question when they should be
concentrating on listening!
While listening, learners often have to answer a variety of questions. It’s usually best to start
with questions which assess the students’ understanding of the general gist of the dialogue,
such as ‘why did the girl phone her friend?’, before asking them to concentrate on more
specific details i.e. ‘what time did they arrange to meet?’. This way they are less likely to
become overwhelmed and think, ‘I don’t understand anything at all!’.
Additionally, some students may have understood what they heard but may be unable to
vocalise it. For example, if they listen to a story which they have understood, they might not
necessarily be able to re-tell that story. It’s unreasonable, therefore, to ask hugely generalised
questions such as, “Okay, so what did you hear?” that students may not be able to respond
to.
Use tasks such as true/false questions or table completion to help focus students’
attention and allow you to assess accurately whether they have understood.
After listening, the students need to feedback the answers and this can be done in several ways.
A good one is getting students to check what they’ve written in pairs and if they have wildly
different responses you may need to play the recording again. If there are still problems then
you need to grade the questions or activities to a more appropriate level and then build up.
You can grade tasks rather than the recording so that students are exposed to authentic
material from an early stage but aren’t asked to complete overly-complicated activities.
Even a BBC radio interview could technically be used as a listening exercise for lower levels
where you ask them just to listen for who is being interviewed, for example. The same piece can
then be used for more advanced levels as they can be asked to identify attitudes, opinions and
more specific details.
Obviously some recordings are always going to be more appropriate for different levels but don
’t get stuck in the notion that lower levels can’t handle realistic material – they may find it an
interesting challenge!
Look at the following procedure for a listening skills lesson adapted from Scrivener’s Learning
Teaching and put the items in the correct order:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Show students a picture of a bus station and ask 'Where is this?', 'What do you think is
happening?' etc
Set task: 'Why is the old lady worried?' (this involves listening to a longer section of the
recording and interpreting information in it))
Introduce the topic (long-distance buses) and discuss a little. Ask students if they've ever been
on a long distance bus, especially in the UK or US.)
Lead into a communicative activity based around the topic of travel problems.
Students compare answers in pairs and give answers. If correct, continue, if not, play recording
again.
Play recording.
Set task: 'How many people are speaking?' , 'Where are they?'
Play recording
Students compare answers in pairs and give answers. If correct, continue, if not, play recording
again.
Check answer
Remember this: You have learned enough so far in this course to ensure you can plan a good
listening lesson.
However, if you are like some of our other students who want to study more about lesson
planning and have a lesson-planning template that you can use for every lesson, then it would
be wise to explore our Module 16: Lesson Planning Plus in our 150-hour course.
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Effective Strategies/Activities
Effective Strategies/Activities for Developing Students’ Listening Skills
If your students are going to be able to operate effectively, they need to be exposed to a wide
variety of different listening strategies and activities. Your goal is to make these listening events
interesting, productive, enjoyable and fun (but not too much fun with adults).
Here are some of the most practical approaches:
1. Strategies
Questions and answers
Very short exchanges can be used to provide elementary or lower intermediate students with
practice in listening and understanding. Exchanges like this can later be practised by the
students themselves, and preferably recorded.
Recording the students on tape is almost always universally enjoyed by students even when
they laughingly protest a little at the beginning because they are shy about hearing their own
voice on tape.
Short dialogues
The way in which the dialogue is recorded will affect its authenticity; traffic noise or café noise in
the background adds a further degree of authenticity.
Short passages
Unlike dialogues, it's not so easy to make the language authentic in a short passage; however, a
story with a touch of humour always appeals to learners. A wide range of factual questions
could be prepared together with one or two deductive questions.
Reordering information
The students are given a number of items on paper, written out in the wrong order: actions,
description, events and so on. They are also given one or more specific tasks, and then they
listen to the text. The task(s) may involve categorising information, reordering actions in the
correct order, classifying events and so on.
Information transfer
Information transfer activities involve students translating part of the spoken message into a
new format, such as a table, chart, picture, map and so on. They may then use this new format
to carry out a further activity, such as working in pairs with a friend to solve a related problem.
Note that information transfer activities involve any transfer of any information in a text or
utterance to a new format: a listening passage to a table; a reading text to a dialogue; a
telephone conversation to a map and so on.
Using humour to develop listening skills
Language learning is much less painful if the students have something to smile about from time
to time, and a bit of humour can do this.
Dictation
Dictation went out of fashion in language teaching for a long time, but it can be a valuable form
of listening practice and it has now returned in revised forms. The important thing is that the
dictation passage should normally be one which the students have met already.
It would normally be inappropriate with English language students to give them a dictation
passage that they have never met before. This would be tantamount to a test, which is very
different from practice.
Jigsaw listening
This involves students listening to different parts of a passage or a conversation (or different
passages and different conversations), and then coming together in pairs to try to complete a
particular task. Each person has a different piece of information.
The task might, for example, involve completing another dialogue or filling in a table or drawing
a map. With a large class, the students can first be divided into two different groups so that
they listen to two different tapes.
Then they get together in pairs with one person from each group. It is possible to prepare such
materials yourself, but you will occasionally find that jigsaw listening and reading tasks are
provided in your coursebook.
2. Some activities
Choose passages, topics and exercises that are participative, interesting and good fun.
Here are some tried and tested suggestions:
Add on
One student starts off with I went to the market and I bought some apples. The next student
adds to this: I went to the market and I bought some apples and a spoon. This continues until
the sentence is unmanageably long and the students start to get a bit confused.
This could be a competitive game with teams but would be better as a co-operative activity. It’
s good fun and you can change the model sentence to anything you like so that you can do this
again and again in future classes.
Pass the message
This activity can be used to emphasise the importance of listening. One student thinks of a
'message' and writes it down. The student then whispers this to another student, swiftly, and so
on. The message can only be said once, but it must be spoken clearly.
Nevertheless, however clearly the message is spoken, it will almost always be distorted in some
way or other which often produces a comical sentence. It can then be compared with the
original sentence.
Think of a verb
Each group writes a short passage of about 3-4 sentences. The verbs (excluding the verb to
be) are removed from the passage. One member of, say, group A, then reads out the passage
and the other groups suggest appropriate verbs to fit the space.
The final version of the newly constructed passage can then be read in full and is then
compared to the original passage. This will often provide a lot of laughs. It can be done again in
future classes by changing the verb to a noun or adverb, i.e. linked hopefully to whatever else
they are studying.
What’s the word?
You spell out words quickly, and the students have to shout out the word.
Hands up!
You write up 5-10 words relating to what the students have been currently studying. You then
incorporate these words into a passage. You read out the passage. Students put their hands up
as soon as they hear each of the words.
Missing word
You write up 5 words relating to what the students have been currently studying. You read out a
short passage – incorporating 4 of the words. After the passage has been read out, students
suggest the missing word.
That’s not right
You speak out an incorrect sentence-nothing too difficult, e.g. An elephant big is. Students have
to decide what the correct version should be.
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Unit 2: Questions
Which of the following is NOT an example of a feature of spoken language?

Check answer

Recording the students on tape is almost always universally enjoyed by students.

Check answer

Unlike dialogues, it's easy to make the language authentic in a short passage.

Check answer

It would normally be appropriate with English language students to give them a dictation
passage that they have never met before.

Check answer

In jigsaw listening, each person has a different piece of information.

Check answer

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