Module 3.2.

Listening and Reading

At the end of this module you will:

 be familiar with the four primary language skills

 understand why learners have difficulty with listening
 be able to identify a range of skills needed for successful listening and reading
 know ways of training learners to develop those skills
 be able to plan a receptive skills lesson
Lesson 1. The Four Skills -
Introduction
Part 1. The Four 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 sufficient
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!
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.

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 or reader is actively involved in
the process.

In this module our focus will be on the two receptive skills: listening and reading.
Lesson 2. Listening Skills
Part 2. 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 be 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.
Different Kinds of Listening
Different Kinds of Listening (Listening Sub-skills)
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 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. They will listen with
the question in mind and then give their answer.
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

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.
Students often find listening exercises to be one of the most stressful parts of any
lesson. The most stress is aroused when students are asked to listen ‘cold’ (ie they are
not prepared) and then perform an exercise. Therefore, it is important to activate
schemata before they listen. That means discuss the general topic of the text and make
students aware of what they already know about it, so that the new information they
hear will be laid on some sort of a foundation. That, in turn, will improve understanding.
Self-check 2
Self-check 2
Identify the type of listening in the following activities:

1. listening to a group discussing the Royal Family and deciding whether the general
feeling is pro- or anti- Royalists
2. listening to the travel news for motorway hold-up information
Lesson 3. Reading Skills
It does not necessarily follow that because a student can read, he/she is an efficient
reader. Training in the skills involved in reading must be given as reading is not an
inbuilt skill. Reading is not a passive process, either. It is an active process in which
practice in all the sub-skills is vital as no improvement can be effected without guided
practice.

Different Kinds of Reading (Reading Sub-skills)

A student needs to master different ways of reading a text. The purpose for which the
student requires the language determines the particular sub-skills of reading which will
be needed.
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 common types, or sub-skills, of intensive reading in the classroom,
are skimming (or 'reading for gist') and scanning (or 'reading for detail').
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.
Scanning may also be in the form of looking for specific language items or structures,
eg “find all instances of the present perfect” or “find all descriptive adjectives in the text”.

In addition to these two common sub-skills, four other sub-skills are often identified. The
three later techniques are more intensive.
 1. 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 is going on?' ‘why are they doing what
they are doing?’ or 'how will it all end?' This is quite similar to what happens during
extensive reading, where you read large amounts of text for pleasure.
2. 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?
3. The third sub-skill is referred to as 'precise understanding' and it involves thorough
comprehension of a text or parts 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).
4. 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?

Depending on your answers to these questions, you will select the reading text and the
reading tasks. Your choice 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?
Similarly to listening, begin a lesson by activating schemata, ie discussing with students
what they already know about the general subject of the text, thus building the
foundation for the new information they are going to read.
 Self-check 3
Self-check 3
Here are two texts and some examples of exercises which have been written to improve
students' reading skills. Study them carefully and answer:

 Which sub-skills are being taught?

 Who are they suitable for?

EXAMPLE TEXT 1
(The student would have a diagram to go with this text)
Exercise 1
Read through the text quickly and say whether it

o describes what a typical English house looks like

o describes how a typical English house has changed in the recent decades
o 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.
1. [diagram] Put in the dimensions which you know.
2. [diagram] Mark with a cross the location of the attached "semi".
3. [picture] - which room is this?

Exercise 3
Fill in the blanks based on the diagram.

1.
1. Figure 1 marks the position of a ..........
2. Figure 2 marks the position of a ..........
3. Figure 3 marks the position of a ..........
4. The two figures 4 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 ..........

EXAMPLE TEXT 2
Pre-reading 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 your guesses are correct.
[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 on the previous part].
 From http://www.eslfast.com/eslread/ss/s052.htmLinks to an external site.
Now read the notes you made before you read the text. Were any of your initial
guesses about the text correct?
Exercise 2
Make notes of the expressions and structures used in the text to

 warn somebody
 reply to a warning

Exercise 3
Are the following statements true or false?

1.
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 4
2. it – line 9
3. they – line 10
4. it – line 15
5. there – line 18
Lesson 4. Planning a Receptive
Skills Lesson (Part 1)
Part 4. Planning a Receptive Skills Lesson
The main stages of a receptive skills lesson, ie a lesson in which reading or listening
skills are practised, are as follows:
1. Before Reading / Listening
In real life, we bring a level of knowledge, our expectations and purpose, ie why we are
reading / listening, what we already know, the knowledge and expectations of the topic
and the text etc. This needs to be replicated in the classroom. Activate schemata, don't
make them listen or read 'cold'.
2. While Reading / Listening
This also needs to resemble real life reading. We ‘process’ the texts we read in different
ways depending on the type of text and the aims of reading. We can read for the main
idea, specific facts, for practical use of the information, etc, ie use different strategies or
sub-skills of reading.
3. After Reading / Listening
What do we do after we have processed the text? Depending on purpose we respond in
different ways, eg tell someone about it, fill in a form, summarise the information etc.

Breaking these main stages down into smaller stages, your lesson plan could be like
this:

1. Before Reading / Listening

1. Arouse interest in the general topic. Find out what students already know and
what their experience with the topic/text type is.
Rationale: To activate the knowledge that will assist learners in understanding the text.
To provide motivation to read / listen.
2. Set the scene. Give any essential background information. This context will vary
according to the nature of the text, but may include such information as who is
writing/speaking, to whom, about what topic, why? where?
Rationale: To provide students with a context to help them decode meaning. To activate
students’ knowledge and enable them to make predictions about the type and nature of
the text they are about to read / hear.
3. Teach or elicit any essential vocabulary. Only focus on vocabulary which is
essential to the understanding of the text.
Rationale: To avoid students ‘blocking’ when they don’t understand a key vocabulary
item.
4. Set an achievable task for the first reading / listening. This will usually be a gist
comprehension task.
Rationale: To provide learners with a reason to read / listen.
To motivate students and develop confidence that the text is manageable.

2. While Reading / Listening

1. Give students time to complete the task, listening / reading again if necessary,
then check answers with the whole class. If reading, they need to be encourage to skip-
read, ie read quickly to get the gist.
Rationale: To ensure that everyone has completed the first task and has a general
understanding of the text. This could be identifying the main idea, the writer's attitude, or
follow the general organisation of the text.
2. Set further tasks to guide more detailed comprehension of the text, and give
students time to do this. The nature of the task will depend on the text and should be
determined by how the text would be processed in real life.
Rationale: To help students to identify specific information, infer opinion etc. depending
on the nature of the text.
3. Get learners to check their answers in pairs.
Rationale: To focus students on problem areas and to provide support for individuals.
4. Check the answers with the class and refer back to the text as necessary.
Rationale: To ensure that everyone understands the text and understands how the
answers have been arrived at.

3. After Reading / Listening

There is a range of options here and what you decide to do depends on the text type
and the aims of the lesson. Here are some possibilities:
1. Select some useful vocabulary of grammar items from the text and develop
understanding of these through formal exercises or oral use.
Rationale: To expand students’ vocabulary and grammar.
2. Initiate a discussion or stage a role-play based on the subject of the text.
Rationale: To develop speaking skills and enable students to use the language of the
text in other contexts.
3. Set a writing task (eg write a letter to someone in the text, fill in a form or write a for-
and-against essay about the topic in the text).
Rationale: To develop writing skills and enable students to use the language of the text
in other contexts.
Lesson 4. Planning a Receptive
Skills Lesson (Part 2)
Pre-reading/listening:
1. Predicting: Ask students to look at the title and / or pictures and try to identify the
topic.
2. Lead-in Questions: Ask students to ask each other questions about the topic.
3. Brainstorm: Ask students to brainstorm and list everything they can think of related
to the topic within a set time-limit.
4. Pre-Reading / Listening Questions: Ask students to write three or four questions
about the topic. As they read / hear the text, they should see if their questions were
answered.
5. Speed Read: Ask students to read the first paragraph, the first sentence of
subsequent paragraphs, and the last paragraph. The students then make predictions
about the passage, or answer comprehension questions.
6. Word Clouds:
Version 1 (Brainstorming): Write the topic on the board and draw a cloud shape
beneath it. Elicit any words that students associate with the topic and write them in the
cloud. Assign pairs or small groups and ask students to connect the words in sentences
related to the topic. Follow up with a class check.
Version 2 (Predicting): Select several words from the reading or listening, directly
related to the topic. Try to make the connections a little obscure. Draw a cloud shape
and write in the words one at a time. Students should try to guess the topic as you write
up the words. Then in pairs or groups students should try to make predictions about the
text based on the words, and try to guess in what ways the words are related to the
topic. Elicit the predictions from the students without giving away the correct answers.
With reading texts you could follow up with a scan reading where the students check
their predictions.
7. Mind Maps (Nuclear notes - see the Study Skills unit for an example): This allows
students, in pairs or small groups, to brainstorm the topic by starting with one word and
linking it to new words to create word fields.
8. Mix and Match: Make up and write a headline for every paragraph in the article.
Make enough copies for each pair/small group. Cut and separate each headline and
mix them up. Students then have to place the headlines in the correct order and try to
speculate about the text in detail.
While Reading/Listening:
1. Comprehension Race: This can be carried out individually or in teams. With the
reading texts closed, the teacher asks the first comprehension question and the
students open their books and try to find the answers as quickly as possible. The first
person or team gets a point for each correct answer.
2. Information Sharing: Assign pairs. ‘A’ students receive a number of general
comprehension questions, and ‘B’ students receive an equal number of different
questions. Check vocabulary. Set a time limit of two or three minutes and have students
read for the answers to their questions. Then place students into A and B pairs and
have them exchange information.
3. Do-It-Yourself Quiz: Students individually scan the reading text. Each student then
writes three of four questions about the text. Then, in pairs, students ask each other
their questions. This can be done with books open or closed.
4. Co-operative Reading: Elicit / teach vocabulary and assign pairs. Allocate one or
two paragraphs of the text to each pair. The pairs should then read and summarise their
paragraphs. Regroup the students so that each student in the group represents a
different paragraph. Each student should then summarise their paragraph to the group
in the correct sequence.
5. Read and Listen: Elicit / teach vocabulary. In pairs, student A reads the first
paragraph while student B listens and takes notes. After student A has finished reading
they should ask student B a few general comprehension questions. Change roles after
each paragraph. Model with the first paragraph.
6. Scanning to find information: Prepare several factual questions or tasks that can
be answered from the text and write them on the board. Assign pairs. Students discuss
these and guess an answer to each question. Students then scan the passage to check
their answers. Class check.
7. Cloze Reading: Make two copies of a reading text with different words blanked out
for A and B students. Assign pairs. Each student then asks their partner questions to
elicit the missing words, eg if a student has the sentence ‘I had a ………….day’,
student A must ask student B, ’What kind of a day did you have?’ Student B would then
answer according to their text, ’You had a terrible day.’
8. Find the mistakes: Choose a student to read the first paragraph of a text. Then
model summarising the text. However, you must change some of the details, and the
students should try to identify your ‘mistakes’. Avoid changing words by using
synonyms; you want students to think about meaning, not just words. Students can then
practise this format in pairs with the remaining paragraphs.
9. Pair Conference: Assign pairs. Student A reads the first paragraph aloud. Together
students A and B check vocabulary and their understanding of the paragraph. Student B
 reads the next paragraph and they confer again. Pairs alternate reading. Class check.
Elicit remaining problems, allowing the class to answer if possible. Clarify final
vocabulary and comprehension questions.

Dealing with Vocabulary:

When preparing a reading or listening activity, decide which items of vocabulary are
essential to the understanding of the activity and thus need to be pre-taught. Do not try
pre-teaching all the new vocabulary.
First try to activate and elicit prior knowledge:

 Brainstorm in pairs / small groups vocabulary related to the topic. A competitive element and
time limit can be used.
 Use mind maps to introduce key words from the text; elicit their meaning from students
 Give students short lists of vocabulary. Ask them to work together in small groups to look up or
describe to each other the meaning of the words.
 Give students lists of mixed up words and definitions. They can work individually or in pairs to
try to match the words to the correct definitions.
 Give students a list of words with example sentences of the words used in context. In pairs or
individually ask the students to guess the meaning of the words and formulate their own
example sentences using those words.

Avoid translating the words for students; instead define, give example sentences, use
gestures and modelling or pictures, or encourage students to look up the words in their
dictionaries.
When carrying out reading and listening tasks, always remind students that they
do not need to know every word; encourage them to initially ignore the unknown words
and focus on understanding the overall topic. Still ignoring the unknown words, move on
to identifying specific details. Continue analysing the texts, showing students how far
they are able to understand a text even when they do not know all the words. Once the
text has been analysed as far as possible, then you can follow up with vocabulary work.
You can prepare quick controlled practice exercises, such as matching, gap-fill or
multiple choice. After that, students should be encouraged to use the words from the
text in context, such as talking about themselves, acting out a role-play or discussing
their opinions.