ENG 029

MODULE 10

Listening comprehension, although vital for communication in English, is

usually the most neglected of the language skills in English programs. Ev-
erything that you say in the classroom can be useful in developing the stu-
dents' listening abilities.

To be effective, however, your spoken communications with the

class must be comprehensible. The language which is not under-
stood is just "noise" and does not lead to student language acqui-
sition.

The cloze exercise is a good way to check your students' listening compre-
hension. Give them a short passage with some words deleted. Read the
passage aloud twice. If they are unable to fill in the missing words, they
are unable to make sense of the passage.

The tape recorder is a valuable asset to the language teacher. If you have
a recorder available, you can tape listening exercises in advance to allow
yourself the freedom to circulate in the classroom as students complete
them.

Give students practice taking notes as they listen. Your students may be
used to writing notes down verbatim, as a dictation exercise, and will
need practice in listening for main points of information. Help them
to recognize clues to meaning introduced by the speaker. Enumerated be-
low are the types of clues you should bring to your students' attention. A
summary of such clues includes:

a) Numerical statements, such as "There are two reasons..."

b) Rhetorical questions.

c) Introductory summaries. "Let me first explain...n; "The topic which I in-

tend to discuss is interesting because...

d) Development of an idea, signaled by statements such as: "Another rea-

son... ";; "On the one hand"; "Therefore... ".; "Since... ".; "In "; etc.

e) Transitions, such as "Let us turn our attention to...n; "If these facts are
true, then...n; etc.
f) Chronology of ideas, signaled by "First...n, "The next... n; "Finally...."; etc.

9) Emphasis of ideas, such as "This is important because...n; "The signifi-

cant results were... ":: "Let me repeat..."; etc.

h) Summary of ideas, signaled by "In conclusion... n; "As I have shown...";

etc.

Use graphics and visuals whenever possible with listening exercises. How
a graph can be used to keep students engaged in active listening. Stu-
dents may also need help in learning to read graphics (maps, charts, etc.)
because they may have had little experience with this skill. Listening com-
prehension activities can help them see how graphic information is read
and analyzed.

Following are general objectives for the teaching of listening comprehen-

sion.
Objectives for Developments of Listening Comprehension

1. Students will understand short lectures in the content area when vocab-
ulary is familiar, as demonstrated by their ability to answer questions
about the lecture.

2. Students will understand spoken numbers, including percentages, frac-

tions, decimals, and other numerical expressions common to the specialty
field, as demonstrated by their ability to write those numbers when they
hear them in context.

3. Students will be able to follow instructions given in class regarding as-

signments and activities, as demonstrated by their correct performance of
such instructions.

Activities for Teaching Listening:

1. Mini-lectures. Give a short lecture every class meeting to provide stu-

dents with opportunities to develop notetaking and other listening skills.

2. Reading aloud to your students. They will enjoy listening to you

read short passages aloud as they read them silently. They can listen to
your intonation patterns and pronunciation and absorb some of the fea-
tures of native speaker spoken language.

3. Number recognition. Any technical field requires that students under-

stand spoken numbers.
From your initial needs assessment, you will have identified certain math
languages that students will need to understand in English. Number recog-
nition exercises give them practice doing so. Such exercises develop lis-
tening comprehension and numeracy in English and can easily be con-
structed in advance of each class period.

4. Dictation exercises. Dictation combines listening and writing practice.

When dictating, read the whole sentence at a normal speed three times,
allowing time for writing between each repetition.

MODULE 11

Reading is the primary channel through which your students will progress
in English after your course is over. A good reading program provides in -
struction in the skills required at various levels of reading, along with
plenty of practice in this skill, which can only be developed through exten-
sive and continual practice.

Two types of skills are needed in reading: simple identification skills,

(decoding) and higher-level cognitive skills such as analyzing,
synthesizing, and predicting. Your reading program should work
on two levels to develop both types of skills.

To do this, your program should incorporate two types of reading tasks: in-
tensive and extensive. Intensive reading is a close analysis of a short
passage and can be used to develop vocabulary, grammar skills, and com-
prehension. Extensive reading is a faster reading of longer passages to
develop an understanding of writers' organizational strategies, to improve
reading speed, and to focus on main ideas.

Fluent reading depends primarily on knowledge of vocabulary and subject

matter, and secondarily on knowledge of grammatical structure and famil-
iarity with the ways that writers organize texts in English. Vocabulary de-
velopment, then, is a vital aspect of reading (and listening) development.

Vocabulary should be taught only in context, never in word lists to be

memorized with dictionary definitions. Use real objects or pictures when-
ever possible to introduce new words. The vocabulary you teach should be
words that are useful for the students in the situations in which they en-
counter English.
Grammar is best taught in connection with writing (see below), but exer-
cises related to the reading and listening passages the students have
worked with can also help them to increase their reading comprehension.
Help students focus on grammatical structures which appear in reading
texts, such as verb forms, possessives, adjectives and adverbs, and com-
parative forms. 8 parts of speech.

Higher-level cognitive skills necessary for good reading depend on knowl-

edge of the subject matter of the texts and knowledge of the way that in-
formation is organized in writing. Previewing is a quick reading for
general familiarity, in which students a) read the introductory
paragraph; b) read the first sentence of each of the body para-
graphs; and c) read the entire concluding paragraph. This should
take students only a few minutes and will enhance their reading
comprehension.

The SQ3R technique is commonly used to help students get the most from
their reading. SQ3R means Survey. Question, Read, Recite, and Review.
Students are asked to complete these five activities:

1) to survey; looking over headings, reading introductory and concluding

paragraphs, and identifying the core ideas of the passage.

2) to formulate questions from text headings.

3) to make a conscious effort to find the answers in the text as they read.

4) Having read the first section, to look away from the book and try to re-
cite the answers to their questions, using their own words and trying to
give an example.

5) to take notes, and, when they have finished reading, to review their
notes.

Training in this procedure will help students to read more effi-

ciently.

Students should receive practice in reading for different purposes, such as

finding main ideas, finding specific information, or discovering the author's
point of view Students should have a clear idea of the purpose of their
reading before they begin. Background information is very helpful in un-
derstariding texts. Students need advanced guidelines for approaching
each assignment.
Use different texts for different reading tasks. Teach the skills of
skimming and scanning. Skimming is quick reading to get the general
drift of a passage. Students can be asked to skim a text to discover the au -
thor's purpose. Scanning is a focused search for specific Information. Stu-
dents can be asked to scan a text to answer a specific question.

Comprehension checks can be built into reading as well as listening exer-

cises.

Use long articles as well as short passages. Students need practice with
long blocks of text which they read for main ideas as well as intensive
work with paragraphs and short passages. Long articles can be read out-
side of class to provide background for the work that will be done during
the class period.

Train students to recognize patterns of organization of texts.

These include the following:

Description: Descriptions include physical descriptions of persons, places,

or objects, or descriptions of processes, such as step-by-step explanations
of how something is done or directions for doing something.

Contrast: In this pattern, the main idea is developed through comparison

and contrast with other things. Often examples are used to illustrate. Defi-
nitions and descriptions are often included in this pattern.

Other patterns of organization of texts include:

Analysis-In this pattern, a topic is broken down into causes, effects, rea-
sons, methods, purposes-, or other categories that support the main idea

Analogy- In this pattern, the main idea is implied by the use of analogy.
This organizing principle is often used to make complex concepts easier to
understand by relating them to better known ones.

Definition- The purpose of a text in this pattern is to define, explain, or

clarify the meaning of something. It may involve analysis, comparison or
contrast, description, or even analogy.

Context clues also include understanding the meaning of the other

words in the sentence and applying such understanding to infer the mean-
ing of an unknown word or phrase. For example, students can be taught to
infer the meaning of the word "drought" in the sentence "Because of the
drought, many communities in the Sahel region of Africa are having to
leave their homes to search for water."

Objectives for Teaching Reading

1. Students will demonstrate their understanding of authentic material in

their content area, including stating the main points of the text and giving
the author's point of view.

2. Students will be able to scan a passage to find specific information.

3. Students will use an increasingly large vocabulary in the subject area

and general academic language.

Activities for Development of Reading Skills

1. Use fill-in-the-blank vocabulary exercises. This type of exercise also dou-

bles as a listening comprehension exercise if you read the sentence aloud
and ask students to write in the missing vocabulary word.

2. Vocabulary can also be developed through instruction about prefixes

and suffixes that carry meaning in English.

3. Have students use what they read to perform a task. Following is an ex-
ample of such an activity from the Nucleus series.

4. Exercises can be developed that help makes explicit the organizational

pattern and/or the main idea of the author.

5. Encourage students to read extensively by asking them to report on the

material they have read outside of class that is relevant to the topic under
consideration.

6. If time permits, incorporate some time for silent reading into your in-
structional program.

MODULE 12

Developing Writing Skills

Although your students will probably place great emphasis on learning

grammar, you should assure them that grammar is not the most important
aspect of language learning. This is easily demonstrated by reference to
the person who knows many grammar rules and yet cannot understand or
express anything in the spoken language.
Students whose language courses have always focused exclusively on
grammar may urge you to spend lots of class time explaining various
points of English grammar and structure.

Understanding and communicating in English is within the stu-

dent's reach even if they don't understand the fine points of
grammar. The ability to function in English is not directly linked to the ac-
curacy of grammatical use or pronunciation. Students rieed to be encour-
aged to use English even if they make mistakes. The main purpose of lan-
guage use, after all, is communication.

Some grammar instruction is necessary, however. Especially in writ-

ten work, learning grammar rules can help students to recognize and cor-
rect their errors. In preparing to teach grammar, be sure you have a good
understanding of the structures that you want to teach, so that your pre-
sentation is clear.

Development of writing ability takes lots of practice. Start with sim-

ple, structured exercises and allow students to develop confidence as writ-
ers before you give them longer free writing tasks. As in other skills, the
development of writing can be enhanced through the use of appropriate
visuals.

Writing assignments should be carefully structured. They should

also be practiced and reviewed often and used as a basis for more com-
plex writing assignments. Paragraph writing exercises can be based on
models which the students first complete, and then expand or build on.
Students first complete a paragraph based on a diagram and then use an-
other diagram to write a paragraph in a similar style.

Following are the structural errors most often found in student composi-
tions:

1. Subject-verb agreement
2. Articles
3. Word order problems: adverbs, win-clauses.
4. Present perfect tense
5. Verb + Verb-ing (gerunds) vs. Verb + to + Verb (infinitive)
6. Passive Voice
7. Spelling
8. Punctuation

"Dialogue journals" have recently become quite popular as a way for

teachers to communicate with students individually in writing without
spending massive amounts of time in correction. The students are encour-
aged to keep a notebook, a dialogue journal, in which they write anything
they want. The teacher collects the journals at regularly scheduled inter-
vals, reads them, and writes notes or comments to the student, hence, a
"dialogue" is created.

If students write during class time, the teacher can circulate among the
students, monitor their progress, and offer suggestions. This can be a use-
ful activity.

Objectives for the Development of Writing Skills

1. Students will be able to summarize material that they have read.
2. Students will be able to take notes on lectures or readings.
3. Students will be able to compose coherent paragraphs on famillar top-
ics.
4. Students will be able to write short letters in a standard format.
5. Students will be able to write for a variety of purposes, depending on
the needs of their specialty area.

Activities for Developing Writing Skills

1. Copying exercises are helpful for beginning learners, especially if their

native language uses a writing system different from English.

2. Writing exercises include dictation and completion of cloze or fill-in-the-

blank exercises.

3. Sentence-combining exercises require students to combine short sen-

tences into longer ones.

4. Re-ordering jumbled sentences helps students build an understanding

of paragraph structure.

5. Note-taking exercises give students practice recording information.

6. Outlining exercises for reading, Program Design, help students to seethe
organizational structure of material they read. In writing, outlining exer-
cises can prepare the students to write by forcing them to make their or-
ganizational patterns explicit.
7. Summarizing exercises can be combined with reading or study skills as-
signments.

8. Writing descriptions can include descriptions of substances, places, and

objects. At more advanced levels this might include interpretations of illus-
trations, graphs, and charts.

9. Writing descriptions of processes, including writing instructions or "how

to" exercises as well as descriptions of how things happen over time.

10. Writing definitions.

MODULE 13

Speaking

Your needs assessment will determine whether the development of speak-

ing skills is a goal in your ESP class. For many ESP situations, the develop -
ment of speaking skills may be beyond the scope of what you can provide.
To provide every student with practice in speaking is an inefficient use of
classroom time.

You and your students should not despair, however, because although in
your situation the direct teaching of speaking may not be practical, studies
have shown that increased listening comprehension leads to increased
ability to speak.

Asking the class to repeat in unison is not teaching speaking. They will not
necessarily repeat correctly, you cannot correct their errors, and repetition
may only reinforce their mistakes. Memorizing and repeating dialogues will
also not improve speaking skills. Speaking is a communication activity and
improves only with communication practice. Therefore you are better off
using class time for activities that will increase overal language proficiency
and ability to comprehend spoken English.

Give students practice in conversation management. Teach them

greetings and closings, and replies to greetings and closings. Teach thern
how to introduce themselves and others. Teach them forms they can use
when they do not understand, such as "Pardon me. What was that again?"
or "What does mean?" or "Please speak more slowly."
Pronunciation is often overstressed in language teaching and should play a
restricted role in your class. Perfect, or native-like, pronunciation need not
be a goal. English is now a world language and different pronunciations
are standard throughout the world.

Role-playing is an effective way to stimulate conversation in the class-

room. You can use flowcharts to outline a situation that you want to use as
a base for developing your students' speaking skills.

Other situations for tourism and hotel management ESP could include trac-
ing lost luggage, renting a car, discussing a hotel bill, visiting a historical
monument, etc.

Objectives for the Development of Speaking Skills

1. Students will be able to carry on a short conversation on a familiar

topic.

2. Students will be able to give a short oral presentation that they have
prepared in advance, fluently, and with few errors.

3. Students will be able to ask for information, using appropriate language

forms.

4. Students will be able to answer a complaint or apologize appropriately.

Debating. You can divide students into teams and have those present op-
posite sides

MODULE 14

Study skills

Your students will probably have had little practice in study skills that we
take for granted. They will need instruction in how to use English dictionar-
ies, grammar, and other reference books. They will also need practice in
basic library skills such as using an index or bibliography. To do effective
research, they will need to know how to look at a book and determine the
author, publisher, date, and place of publication. You should plan to devote
some part of each instructional unit to the development of these skills.

The students will need to practice using good English language dictionar-
ies, not just bilingual dictionaries which translate from their language into
English. Bilingual dictionaries seldom contain the technical terms needed
for the subject-area study.

Objectives for Development of Study Skills

1. Students will be able to identify the parts of a book, including title page,
table of contents, index, glossary, etc.

2. Students will be able to use dictionaries for information about pronunci -

ation and syllable division, to identify the way words are commonly used in
sentences (parts of speech), to find correct meanings, and to determine
whether the word is British or American, formal or informal.

3. Students will be able to use indexes, including being able to use alter -
nate search words when the topic they have in mind is not listed. 7

4. Students will be able to use bibliographies, including being able to iden -

tify titles that might provide additional information on their topic of re-
search.

5. Students will develop note-taking skills, including outlining and para-

phrasing.

6. Students will be able to summarize the information they have heard or

read.

Activities for Developing Study Skills.

1. The efficient use of a dictionary should be a focus of your work on study

skills. One technique for leaming frequently tised words is for students to
make a small dot beside a word every time they look it up in the dictio -
nary. If students find certain words accumulate several dots, they should
make a list of those words for more intensive study.

2. Other activities which develop dictionary skills include:

a) Alphabetizing exercises.
b) Syllable division exercises.
c) Guide word exercises.
d) Pronunciation key exercises.
e) Definition identification exercises.

3. Encyclopedia exercises. If encyclopedias are available in the library, stu-

dents should be shown how they are organized and instructed in the use
of the encyclopedia's index. They can be asked to locate and summarize
or paraphrase information.

4. Yearbooks. Reference books such as the World Almanac and Who's Who,
and other yearbooks can be used to get current information on a wide va-
riety of topics.

5. Atlases. Students can use atlases to get many kinds of information; for
example, about geographical features, population distribution, major re-
sources, and climate.

6. Bibliographies. Students can be asked to use bibliographies to identify

other sources of information about topics of interest to them.

7. Students' abilities to read and understand published research in their

fields of study may depend on their knowledge of such research vocabu-
lary as Hypothesis, Experimental Design, Data Collection, and Compilation,
Interpretation of Results, and Evaluation. It may be helpful to give stu-
dents an example of a research paper that uses an experimental research
process and discuss together the components of the research design.