- •Alexander kamensky
- •4.5. Conclusions 93
- •5.7. Conclusions 108
- •7.8. Conclusions 163
- •8.7. Conclusions 202
- •9.6. Conclusions 205
- •9.2.2. Grammar 209
- •9.4. Aims of teaching reading in a secondary school 219
- •9.5. How to teach reading 224
- •9.6. Conclusions 233
- •Introduction
- •1.1. Reasons for learning languages
- •1.2. Success in language learning
- •1.2.1. Motivation
- •1.2.2. Extrinsic motivation
- •1.2.3. Intrinsic motivation
- •He teaches good pronunciation.
- •He explains clearly.
- •He speaks good English.
- •1.3. Motivational differences
- •1.3.1. Children
- •1.3.2. Adolescents
- •1.3.3. Adult beginners
- •1.3.4. Adult intermediate students
- •1.3.5. Adult advanced students
- •1.4. Conclusions
- •2. Areas of a native speaker knowledge
- •2.1. Pronunciation
- •2.1.1. Sounds
- •2.1.2. Stress
- •2.1.3. Intonation
- •2.2. Grammar
- •2.3. Vocabulary
- •2.4. Discourse
- •2.4.1. Appropriateness
- •2.4.1.1. Communicative competence
- •2.4.1.2. Interaction with context
- •2.4.1.3. Structuring discourse
- •2.4.2. Global communicative competence
- •2.5. Language skills
- •2.5.1. Skills and sub-skills
- •2.6. Conclusions
- •3. What a language student should learn
- •3.1. Pronunciation
- •3.1.1. The importance of listening
- •3.2. Grammar
- •3.2.1. The importance of language awareness
- •3.3. Vocabulary
- •3.3.1. Vocabulary in context
- •3.4. Discourse
- •3.4.1. Language functions
- •3.5. Skills
- •3.6. The syllabus
- •3.6.1. Structures and functions
- •3.6.2. Vocabulary
- •3.6.3. Situation, topic and task
- •3.6.4. The syllabus and student needs
- •3.7. Language varieties
- •3.8. Conclusions
- •4.1. Methods of language teaching
- •4.1.1. Traditional learning theories and approaches
- •4.1.1.1. Grammar-translation method
- •4.1.1.2. Direct method
- •4.1.2. Behaviourism: Audio-lingual method
- •4.1.3. Cognitivism
- •4.1.3.1. Structural approach
- •4.1.3.2. Structural-situational method
- •4.1.3.3. Situational syllabus
- •4.1.4. Communicative approach
- •4.1.5. Functional-notional courses
- •Functions and notions
- •4.1.6. Acquisition and learning
- •Intonation
- •4.1.7. Task-based learning
- •4.1.8. Humanistic approaches
- •4.1.9. Self-directed learning
- •4.1.10. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
- •4.2. Foreign language learning
- •4.3. Input and output
- •4.4. A balanced activities approach
- •4.5. Conclusions
- •5. Teaching the productive skills
- •5.1. The nature of communication
- •5.2. The information gap
- •5.3. The communication continuum
- •Communicative Activities
- •5.4. Stages in language learning/ teaching
- •5.4.1. Introducing new language
- •5.4.2. Practice
- •5.4.3. Communicative activities
- •5.4.4. The relationship between different stages
- •5.5. Integrating skills
- •5.6. Speaking and writing
- •5.7. Conclusions
- •6. Typology of exercises in teaching english
- •6.1. What is an exercise: Psychological and pedagogical background
- •6.1.1. Exercise as an item of teaching
- •6.1.2. Teaching curve
- •6.1.3. Structure of an exercise
- •Exercise
- •1. Instruction
- •2. Model
- •3. Control
- •6.2. Different approaches to the problem of classification of exercises
- •6.3. Criteria of classification of exercises: Types and kinds
- •6.4. System of exercises
- •6.4.1. Basic notions of a system, subsystem, complex, series, cycle, group of exercises
- •4 Skills
- •6.4.2. Characteristics of the system of exercises
- •6.4.3. Basic methodological principles of constructing the system of exercises
- •6.5. Conclusions
- •7.1. Speaking as a skill
- •7.2. Aims of teaching speaking in a secondary school
- •7.3. Linguistic peculiarities of dialogical speech
- •7.3.1. Functional correlation of dialogue replies
- •7.3.2. Structural correlation of replies
- •7.3.3. Kinds of dialogical unit
- •7.3.4. Functional types of dialogue
- •7.4. Stages of teaching dialogue
- •7.4.1. Dialogical unit as an item of teaching
- •7.4.2. Communicative situations
- •7.4.3. Four faces of a situation
- •7.4.4. System of exercises in teaching dialogical speech
- •7.4.4.1. Exercises of group 1
- •7.4.4.2. Exercises of group 2
- •7.4.4.3. Exercises of group 3
- •7.4.4.4. Exercises of group 4
- •7.5. Psychological and linguistic peculiarities of dialogic and monologic speech. Types of monologue
- •7.5.1. Psychological characteristics of dialogue and monologue
- •7.5.2. Linguistic characteristics of dialogue and monologue
- •7.6. Functional types of monologue
- •7.7. System of exercises in teaching monologic speech
- •7.7.1. Exercises of group I
- •7.7.2. Exercises of Group 2
- •Verbal sound and illustrative (visual) aids
- •7.7.3. Exercises of group 3
- •7.8. Conclusions
- •8. Teaching the receptive skills: listening
- •8.7. Conclusions
- •8.1. Role and place of listening in teaching English
- •8.2. Listening as a skill in real-life communication
- •8.3. Typology of listening
- •8.3.1. Kinds of listening
- •8.3.2. Types of listening
- •8.4. Types of text for teaching listening in school
- •8.4.1. Authentic and non-authentic listening
- •8.4.2. Structure of texts for listening
- •8.4.3. Types of text for listening
- •8.5. Major premises and conditions for effective teaching listening
- •8.5.1. Major premises for listening
- •8.5.2. Conditions for effective listening
- •8.6. System of exercises in teaching listening comprehension in school
- •8.6.1. Preparatory exercises: Isolating the listening skill
- •8.6.2. Preparatory exercises: Non-isolated listening skill
- •8.6.2.1. Exercises in finding grammatical cues
- •8.6.2.2. Exercises in guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words
- •8.6.2.3. Exercises in understanding sentences containing unfamiliar words which do not interfere with comprehension
- •8.6.2.4. Exercises in anticipation
- •8.6.2.5. Exercises in eliciting different categories of meaningful information (time, space, cause, effect, etc.)
- •8.6.2.6. Exercises in estimating types of cohesion
- •8.6.2.7. Exercises in telling the main idea in a group of sentences
- •8.6.2.8. Exercises in developing auditive memory and attention
- •8.6.3. Authentic listening material
- •8.6.3.1. Authentic listening material at the early stages
- •8.6.3.2. Communicative exercises: Teaching listening as a skill
- •8.6.4. Using listening comprehension dialogues in class
- •8.6.5. How to justify the use of songs
- •8.7. Conclusions
- •9. Teaching the receptive skills: reading
- •9.2.2. Grammar
- •9.6. Conclusions
- •9.1. Reading as perception of information
- •9.1.1. Vocalisation and verbose
- •9.1.2. Redundancy
- •9.1.2.1. Uncertainty and information
- •9.1.2.2. Sources of redundancy
- •9.2. Reading as interpretation of information
- •9.2.1. Surface and deep structures
- •9.2.2. Grammar
- •9.2.3. Learning: Knowledge
- •9.2.4. Three faces of memory
- •9.3. Reading as a skill
- •9.3.1. Reading in real life: Functions
- •9.3.2. Interest and usefulness
- •9.3.3. Purpose and expectations
- •9.3.4. Specialist skills of reading
- •9.3.4.1. Predictive skills
- •9.3.4.2. Extracting specific information
- •9.3.4.3. Getting the general picture
- •9.3.4.4. Extracting detailed information
- •9.3.4.5. Recognising function and discourse patterns
- •9.3.4.6. Deducing meaning from context
- •9.4. Aims of teaching reading in a secondary school
- •9.4.1. Reading as a vehicle of teaching
- •9.4.2. Aims of teaching reading in school
- •9.4.3. Kinds of reading mastered in school
- •9.4.4. Techniques of reading and stages of teaching
- •9.5. How to teach reading
- •9.5.1. Teaching reading aloud
- •9.5.1.1. Three methods of teaching reading aloud
- •9.5.1.2. Grapheme-phonemic exercises
- •9.5.1.3. Structural information exercises
- •9.5.2. Teaching silent reading
- •9.5.2.1. The twin problem of analysis and synthesis
- •9.5.2.2. Semantic-communicative exercises
- •9.6. Conclusions
8.4.2. Structure of texts for listening
Another aspect of teaching listening concerns the structure of texts. It should be noted that the practical aim of teaching listening in school is regarded as the acquisition of the minimal communicative efficiency level in listening to English. It means that students should be able to cope with oral English at normal speed. The texts should be based on the acquired roughly tuned (comprehensible) input. In other words, a small number of unknown words can be included in the text for listening. The major requirement for the use of unknown words is: their meaning should be easily guessed from the context. Average time duration is within 3 minutes. To cope with this goal, students have to be able to realise a number of intervening tasks. In other words, they should acquire the ability:
to break up a flow of words in order to recognise and identify the familiar elements (morphemes, words, word-combinations, phrases);
to pick up meaningful elements among the familiar ones. To make of these elements meaningful cues and to synthesise such cues into a meaningful whole;
to ignore certain unfamiliar elements in the text. These are the elements, which do not interfere with comprehending the text as a single whole;
to guess the meaning of separate unfamiliar words, making use of dependence: a) on familiar word-building elements (help – helpless, helpful); b) on similarity with words in the mother tongue (revolution, capitalist, decoration, illumination); c) on the context;
to keep the main gist of the received information in memory and to express their understanding of the heard in the required form.
To make all these tasks easier any listening text has a definite compositional structure, let alone its meaning and logical organisation. Unlike written texts, listening texts are correspondingly shaped prosodically. In real life stresses and tunes, rhythm and pauses compose the tempo of speech, which varies greatly from one speaker to another. Another characteristic feature is irreversibility of perception, which comes along with appealability of any text as a product of communication.
8.4.3. Types of text for listening
There are two basic types of listening material used in school. They are descriptive texts and narrative texts.
1) Descriptive texts are regarded as a representation of a complex of certain characteristics possessed by an object. Such features of an object are united by a common topic. In descriptive texts there isn’t any action in its development. In such texts it is not always easy to single out main facts and disjoin them from secondary, minor facts. It’s just because logical connections and causal relations between facts are lessened. Cohesion being slackened becomes possible because of a free rearrangement of facts, sometimes done at random. Description is static by its character. Listening comprehension is composed mainly on the basis of the sum total of the facts understood. The product of comprehension is kept in the listener’s memory while he continues listening. A descriptive text consists chiefly of simple sentences, sometimes including homogeneous parts. Variability of syntactical structures is limited. Complex and compound sentences are used rather seldom. They are used mainly to express adversative and adherence relations. As a rule, only one fact is described in a sentence. E.g.: My Family. – This is my family: my wife, my son, my daughter and me. I’m Mr. Black. My wife is Mrs.Black. I’m Mrs.Black’s husband. I am a man. My wife is a woman. We have two children: a boy and a girl. The boy’s name is John. He is 12 years old. The girl’s name is Mary. She is still quite young. She is only 8. She is 4 years younger than John. John is 4 years older than she is. Etc.
2) Narrative texts differ from descriptive ones in one main thing. It is the dynamism of the events described, actions displayed, characters depicted. Logical elaboration of the plot gives an opportunity to single out a logical centre and to make it noticeable. All minor facts and circumstances are grouped round a logical centre. There exist strong logical connections and causal relations between separate parts in a narrative next. Comprehension of the general picture of a narrative text is impossible without clear understanding of its separate facts. However, comprehension can’t be achieved through pure drawing conclusions from the sum total of facts narrated in the text. The derived facts have to be re-estimated, otherwise the listener will be drawn amiss. The listener has to draw the implications hidden behind the facts. He has to interpret what has been derived.
Narrative texts are notable for:
explicitly marked sense connections and relations between separate facts;
a consequent fact vivid dependence on the previous facts;
main facts dependence on the minor facts.
These connections and dependencies are revealed in syntactical structures of certain complexity and length. They serve to convey one main idea with a number of supporting ones as its specification, its further detailisation. Thus, to be able to comprehend narrative texts our students need to understand complex and compound sentences. Tense forms of Past Simple and Past Perfect are usually used in narration. Teaching listening to a narrative text a teacher should bear in mind that the length of a phrase in oral speech must not exceed 11 words. It is especially vital for elementary level students, for their memory capacity is not excessive. It usually equals not more than 6 notional words in a sentence. E.g. Disappointed
Little Mary ran into the house very excited. ‘Oh, Mother’, she cried, ‘don’t be angry with me for being late to tea, for I’ve had such a disappointment! A horse fell down in the street and they were going to send for a horse doctor. So, of course, I had to stay. And after I had waited and waited, he came. And oh, Mother, what do you think? It wasn’t a horse doctor at all. It was just a man!’
As special surveys and interviews show, schoolchildren are interested rather in narrative than in descriptive texts. They say narrative texts are much easier for comprehension.