Reading And Listening

READING AND LISTENING: CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS

Reading is a process by which a reader gives meaning to text. In order to manage this objective…“Reading skills need to be fostered so that learners can cope with more and more sophisticated texts and tasks, and deal with them efficiently: quickly, appropriately and skillfully” (Penny Ur. Page 147, 1996) In fact, some readers rely on a series ofskills which they may already possess in their native tongue. For instance, an adult reader may read a text knowing its purpose and meaning i.e. he will be able to give or request information, persuade, criticize, to give pleasure to or entertain. Further, they can make logical predictions as they read because of pre-existing experience or knowledge. This implies comprehensible language and familiarcontent; but the problem is that a young English language learner may not have these skills or may be developing them at the same time as learning a new language. This will require the adoption of differing texts for reading which should be relevant, useful, interesting and practical for learners. Choosing motivating texts demands the teacher to have developed a rapport with learners and be awareof learner’s social and cultural background, interests and life experiences as a prerequisite for appropriate selection.
 It is then possible to use the selected texts to develop activities addressing skills development in vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, spelling, punctuation and pronunciation. There is a great controversy centered on whether the texts should be authentic or not. The problemis that if we give low level students authentic material it would be very difficult for them to understand, it will be demotivating and frustrating. So, a balance between real English and students´ abilities and interests has to be established. Besides, some linguists have proved that adult learners can develop their reading skills on any type of text created or authentic, the essential requisiteis the exposure to a diversity of text genres in order to keep these learners interested as well as expediting the development of reading fluency. For techniques concerning the teaching of the receptive skills it is possible to propose some recommendations. The teacher’s main task is to get familiar with the different types of reading and listening activities. In the case of reading, it ispossible to mention: skimming, scanning, receptive/intensive reading and extensive reading. Skimming occurs when students examine a text rapidly with occasional periods of close inspection, i. e., quickly running their eyes over the text to get the general idea. In the case of scanning students are locating information (e. g.: a date or a name of a person or place). So, students are quickly searchingfor some particular pieces of information. Receptive/intensive reading means a careful reading aimed to discover exactly what the author seeks to convey; often reading for information; readers need to understand linguistic and semantic detail and pay attention to the text. At last, we speak about extensive reading when readers read for pleasure; readers do not need to understand all details of thetext; speed and skill in getting the general idea are most important. As regards listening, the objective of listening comprehension practice in the classroom is that students should learn to function successfully in real life listening situations. So, it is important to examine what real life listening is and what paths the listener needs to be able to follow in order to comprehend satisfactorilyin a variety of situations. One of the most important characteristics of real-life listening situations is the use of Informal spoken discourse.
Most of the spoken language we listen to is informal and spontaneous: the speaker is making it up as he goes along. Besides, discourse is usually broken into short chunks. In a conversation, for example, people take turns to speak, the vocabulary is...