Teaching Speaking and Listening

COURSE OUTLINES

EARLY GRADE

UPPER PRIMARY

JHS

COURSE CONTENTS

 

KINDLY SCROLL AND READ, BROADEN, OR DOWNLOAD THE FILES BELOW  

COMPLETE NOTE HANDOUT

COMPLEMENTARY NOTE 1  

COMPLEMENTARY NOTE 2  

TRIALS / PAST QUESTIONS  

(A)

(B)

UNIT ONE

CONCEPT OF SPEAKING AND LISTENING

THE CONCEPT OF LISTENING

According to Lynch (1998), during listening activity, language learners use other skills simultaneously. It, therefore, means that listening does not occur in isolation. Underwood (1989' sees listening as an activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something that one hears.

According to Purdy (1997). listening is the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving interpreting, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns and information offered by another person. Listening is again seen by Rost (2002) as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement and imagination. Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in
communication process.

Effective listening goes beyond the hearing of the word spoken; rather, it involves concentration and the use of other senses of the body. Listening is not just hearing what is said but also effective use of more than just one's ears, In order to listen well, one needs to undergo the following:

i. Ability to decode messages

ii. Ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning

iii. Ability to respond to what is said in diverse ways

White (2008) says that, in order for language learners to sense what they are listening to, most of the time, they refer to three different areas of knowledge which include schemata, context and linguistics. These areas involve activating various types of knowledge and applying what the learner knows to what he/she hears and trying to understand what the speaker means. Listening is linked with speaking; the listener becomes the speaker and vice-versa; it is termed interactive listening.

Rost (1994) indicates that listening is important because it provides input for the learner. Listening can be seen as the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communicative process. Every good listener needs to have the ability to:

i. decode the message

ii. apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning respond to what is said.

Roles of listening in language acquisition

1. Listening is the first important language skill: The reason being that, in acquiring language, learners begin from listening, move on to speaking, reading and finally end up in writing. 

Listening skills begin right from home before the learner is enrolled in school.

 According to Owu-Ewie (2019), among all the skills, listening takes 45% of time spent on communication. 

Young ones acquire language by listening to the way adults speak.

 After this, they begin to copy the words they hear. This gradually develops into sentences of their first language.

2. Listening plays a very important role in learning in general; not only languages but any branch of knowledge: When learners attend classes, they are expected to listen well to the teachings and grasp what is expected of them. Without attentive listening, learners will not be able to comprehend what is taught. 

Any learner that has weak listening skills may have it extremely difficult to understand the language of instruction which result in difficulty in understanding the content. 

Based on this background, it is very important for teachers to find means by sustaining learners' level of listening throughout their entire lessons.

Learners' listening capabilities can be maintained in different ways which include nodes, eye contact and asking appropriate questions.

3. The ultimate role of listening skills in language leaming/acquisition is to help people to communicate with each other without difficulty: It, therefore, means that a person who is good at listening in a particular language may not the basic problem of communicating with others and can easily understand what is communicated. 

Therefore, giving due emphasis towards listening as one of the major skills in the course or teaching language skills is vital. Learners need to be very active in the listening process. Active listening refers to a pattern of listening that keeps one engaged with the conversation partner in a positive way.

 It is therefore a process of listening attentively while someone else speaks.

The diagram below illustrates active listening.

Types of listening

Nunam (2002) classified listening according to:

•Purpose
This involves:

i. Listening for a general idea

ii. Listening for a specific idea

Listening to a sequence of instructions for doing something.

•Role of learner

i. Non- reciprocal

ii. Reciprocal

•The type of text

Besides classifying listening according to purpose, the role of listener and text type, listening can be generally subdivided into many other types but for the purpose of our discussions, we shall concentrate on the following:

•Discriminative Listening.
This is the most basic form of listening and does not involve the understanding of the meaning of words or phrases but merely the different sounds that are produced eg / d/ and /b/

•Comprehensive Listening.
Comprehensive listening involves understanding the message or messages that are being communicated. It is actually fundamental to all listening sub-types.

• Appreciative Listening: The listener seeks certain information from the message to appreciate. That information meets the desire of the listener. E.g. listening to poetry and music
•Emphatie Listening: The listener being attentive and responsive a message that is being delivered.
.Critical Listening: The listener listens to every detail of the message for the purpose of evaluation.

Stages of listening

1. Receiving

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker's message, which happens when we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid the confusing mixture of incoming stimuli. At this stage. we are still only hearing the message. This stage is represented by the car because it is the primary tool involved with this stage of the listening process.

2.  Understanding

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message, which is not always easy. For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may be difficult to tell what the message was Even when we have understood the words in a message, because of the differences in our backgrounds and experience, we sometimes make the mistake of attaching our own meanings to the words of others.
The consequences of ineffective listening in a classroom can be much worse. However, students in your class might misunderstand the instructor's meaning in several ways. So much of the way we understand others is influenced by our own perceptions and experiences. Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening, we should be on the lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker.

3. Remembering

Remembering begins with listening; if you cannot remember something that was said, you might not have been listening effectively. Wolvin and Coakley note that the most common reason for not remembering a message after the fact is because it was not really learned in the first place (Wolvin & Coakley, 1996). However, even when you are listening attentively, some messages are more difficult than others to understand and remember. Highly complex messages that are tilled with detail call for highly developed listening skills. Moreover, if something distracts your attention even for a moment, you could miss out on information that explains other new concepts you hear when you begin to listen fully again
It is also important to know that you can improve your memory of a message by processing it meaningfully—that is, by applying it in ways that are meaningful to you (Gluck, et al., 2008). Instead of simply repeating a new acquaintance's name over and over, for example, you might remember it by associating it with something in your own life. Finally, if understanding has been inaccurate, recollection of the message will be inaccurate too.

4.  Evaluating

The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating or judging the value of the message. We might be thinking, "This makes sense" or, conversely, "This is very odd." Because everyone embodies biases and perspectives learned from widely diverse sets of life experiences, evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to another, even the most open-minded listeners will have opinions of a speaker, and those opinions will influence how the message is evaluated. Unfortunately, personal opinions sometimes result in prejudiced evaluations. People are more likely to evaluate a message positively if the speaker speaks clearly, presents ideas logically, and gives reasons to support the points made.

5,  Responding

Responding—sometimes referred to as feedback—is the fifth and final stage of the listening process. It is the stage at which you indicate your involvement. Almost anything you do at this stage can be interpreted as feedback.

THE CONCEPT OF SPEAKING

Speaking is one of the four language learning skills; the other skills are: listening, reading and writing. Development of speaking begins from home before formal education just as listening skills.
Speaking is very important because it aims at developing learners' abilities in producing oral utterances.  grown (1994), sees speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning, which involves producing, receiving and processing information, According to Chastain (1998), speaking is a productive skill, which involves many components.

 It is more than making the right sounds, choosing the right words or getting the constructions grammatically correct. 

Cameron (2001) also defines speaking as the active use of language to express meaning so that other people can make meaning out of them. It, therefore, implies that speaking is a way of communication that allows a person to express his or her ideas, emotions and feelings to others. 

Also speaking is the skills by which people judge others and form their first impressions.

Types of Speaking

Speaking is a communicative skill that is why Brown (2004) describes six categories of speaking according to the speaker's intention.

i. Imitative Speaking: It is the ability to imitate simply a word or phrase or possibly a
sentence.
ii. Intensive Speaking: It is the production of short stretches of oral language designed
to demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal and lexical phonological relationships. The hearer must be aware of semantic properties to be able to respond.
iii. Responsive Speaking: It includes interaction and text comprehension but a limited
level of a very short conversation.

iv. Extensive speaking or monologue: Monologue speaking includes speeches, oral presentations and storytelling. In this respect, the language style used in this speaking type is more formal and deliberative.

v. Interactive Speaking: This involves face to face and phone calls. It gives the listener
the chance to ask for clarification.

vii. Partially Interactive speaking: This involves the learner giving a speech or presentation. The speaker checks comprehension from the audience's faces.

viii. Non-Interactive Speaking: This involves the learner recording. performing in a play,
singing or reciting a play.

Importance/roles of speaking in the language classroom

Speaking is very important in language learning. No language program would be credited if learners of that language cannot speak it after a year or two. 

After studying a language, native speakers of that language will expect learners to communicate with them orally in order to fulfil human needs. So in communicative language teaching. oral skill development is the focal point in instruction. 

Speaking is used for different purposes and each of these purposes implies knowledge of rules that account for how spoken language reflects the context or situation in which the speech occurs. With this, it has become mandatory for language teachers to help learners develop oral proficiency skills.

A language is a tool for communication that is used between people to express or share information among themselves. Language learners give much more importance to speaking in their learning because anybody that one encounters first, it is the speaking skill that is going to be used first •.before any other skills. That is why speaking reigns more supreme in the language learning classroom.

Speaking helps learners to develop their vocabulary, grammar and be able to express their personal feelings, opinions or ideas. Besides, learners success in language learning is measured by fluency he or she is able to hold a conversation in a different context. Teaching speaking, therefore, means teaching learners how to communicate effectively and easily in the language.

Factors affecting speaking /oral communication

Oral communication can be influenced by certain factors, Some of these factors are as follow:

• Age and maturation: Nature has programmed humans in such a way that, a particular thing has to happen at a particular time in human life. Age and maturity have a great influence on learners' communications. An eight-year-old learner will naturally speak better than a four-year-old learner. Otherwise of it can only happen if there is a peculiar case.

• Aural medium ( listening is key in speaking)

• Socio-cultural factors (knowing how the language is used in a social context, non — verbal communication system.

• Affective factors (emotions, self-esteem, anxiety, attitude and motivation)

COMPONENTS OF SPEAKING AND VIEWS OF LISTENING

The Components of Speaking Skill

Speaking is like a universal set that contains several subsets called components. These components are as follows,

1. Pronunciation

Pronunciation is the way for students to produce clearer language when they are speaking. It means that the student can communicate effectively when they have good pronunciation and intonation even though they have limited vocabulary and grammar. 

Pronunciation refers to the traditional or customary utterance of words. From that statement can be concluded that pronunciation is the way for students to produce the utterance words clearly when they are speaking (Kline, 2001:69). 

English pronunciation does not amount to mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to learning and practising the specifically English way of making a speaker's thoughts easy to follow (Gilbert, 2008:1).

 This has to do with the articulation of words together with their tones, phrases and sentences of a particular language. Every learner is expected to pronounce the words of a particular language as the native speaker when it comes to communication. Failure to do this will negatively affect comprehension.
Moreover, pronunciation includes all those aspects of speech that make for an easily intelligible flow of speech, including segmental articulation, rhythm, intonation and phrasing, and more peripherally even gesture, body language and eye contact (Fraser, 2001:6). Based on the statement above can be concluded that Pronunciation includes many aspects that include articulation, rhythm. intonation and phrasing, and more peripherally even gesture, body language and eye contact.

2.Grammar

Grammar is needed for the students to arrange correct sentences in conversation both in written and oral forms. Grammar is defined as a systematic way of accounting for and predicting an ideal speaker's or hearer's knowledge of the language. This is done by a set of rules or principles that can be used to generate all well-formed or grammatical utterances in the language (Purpura, 2004:6). Moreover, the other definition of grammar stated by Greenbaum and Nelson (2002:1)
argue that Grammar refers to the set of rules that allow us to combine words in our language into larger units.
The grammar of a language is the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in that language (Harmer, 2001:12). Thus, from the statements above can be concluded that the function of grammar is to arrange the correct meaning of sentences based on the context; in addition, it is used to avoid misunderstanding in each communicator.
Moreover, Nelson (2001:1) states that grammar is the study of how words combine to form sentences. Thus from the statement above can be concluded that grammar is a rule that is needed for the students to combine correct sentences in conversation both in written and oral forms. Grammar refers to the fundamental principles and structure of the language, including clear and correct sentence construction and the proper forms of words (Batko, 2004:24).
This component focuses on rules governing the use of a particular language. It has become a must for the learner to master these rules so as to communicate to the understanding of all especially the native speaker.

3. Vocabulary

Vocabulary is essential for successful second language use because, without an extensive vocabulary, we will be unable to use the structure and function we may have learnt for comprehensible communication. It can be said that one key is success in communication, which is the power of words.

Vocabulary means the appropriate diction or the most important thing in a language especially in speaking; furthermore, knowing many vocabularies it will be easier to express our ideas. feeling and thoughts both in oral or written form. In spoken language, the vocabulary tends to be familiar and every day (Turk, 2003:87). 

It means that in spoken language or speaking, the vocabulary used must be very familiar and it is used in everyday conversation in order to understand the spoken discourse. Vocabulary is abask building block of language learning, Students need to know words, their meanings, how they are spelt and how they are pronounced. 

Thus, when teaching vocabulary, the teachers have to make sure that they explain the meaning as well as the spelling and pronunciation, Vocabulary is the knowledge of meanings of words, What complicates this definition is the fact that words come in at least two forms: oral and written.
Oral vocabulary is the set of words for which we know the meanings when we speak or read orally, Written vocabulary consists of those words for which the meaning is known when we write or read silently. These are important distinctions because the set of words that beginning readers know arc mainly oral representations. As they learn to read, written vocabulary comes to play an increasing.!) a larger role in literacy than dies the oral vocabulary (Liebert d. Kamil, 2005:3).
Moreover, vocabulary is a set of lexemes including single words, compound words and idioms (Richards and Schmidt. 2002:580). Every language has its peculiar vocabulary. These vocabularies are used appropriately in different contexts. Speakers who fail to use the right registers during communication, end up distorting facts. Teachers are therefore expected to assist learners to acquire more vocabularies down for use when the time is due.

4. Fluency

Fluency is defined as the ability to speak communicatively, fluently and accurately. Fluency usually refers to express oral language freely without interruption. In the teaching and learning process, if the teacher wants to check students' fluency, the teacher allows students to express themselves freely without interruption. The aim is to help students speak fluently and with ease. 

The teacher does not correct immediately whereas the idea is that too much correction interferes with the flow of conversation (Pollard. 2008:16). This component focuses on how smooth and sequential a learner is when it comes to speaking. The expectation is that learners must speak fluently during communication.

5. Comprehension

Comprehension is an ability to perceive and process stretches of discourse, to formulate
representations the meaning of sentences. Comprehension of a second language is more difficult to study since it is not; directly observable and must be inferred from overt verbal and nonverbal responses,  by artificial instruments, or by the intuition of the teacher or researcher. Comprehension refers to the fact that participants fully understand the nature of the research project, even when procedures are complicated and entail risks (Cohen et al., 2005:51).

This is making meaning out of what a speaker says. Comprehension is key when it comes to communication. Speakers owe it a duty to make themselves explicit when speaking. Learners are to master the above components ahead of communication; this will enable them to speak to the understanding of all.

6. Effective oral instruction

Oral language is one of the most important skills your students can master—both for social and academic success. Learners use this skill throughout the day to process and deliver instructions, make requests, ask questions, receive new information, and interact with peers.

As a teacher, there's a lot you can do during your everyday lessons to support the development of strong oral language skills in your students. 

The following are some of the things you can do:

•   Encourage conversation.
•   Model syntactic structure.
•   Maintain eye contact.
•   Remind students to speak loudly and articulate clearly.
•   Explain the subtleties of tone.
•   Attend to listening skills.
•   Question to boost comprehension.
•   Never assume students understood your instructional talk.

Every communicator needs to follow a particular path when speaking so as to be comprehended by listeners. 

Besides, it is a process of making use of thinking, knowledge and skills in order to speak and listen effectively.

Components underlying speaking effectiveness

The core skills or components underlying effective speaking include the following:

i. Grammatical competence: It is the knowledge of the structure of the language, which
includes the knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and language conventions. It is the learner's ability to use appropriate words and put these words together correctly according to the grammar of the language.

ii. Discourse competence: This involves the knowledge of relationships between sentences, cohesion and coherence among them. That is the learner's ability to
produce coherent speech. ability to put words, phrases and sentences together to
produce contextualized speech.

iii. Sociolinguistic competence: It involves knowing what is expected socially and
culturally; thus rules and norms.

iv. Strategic competence: The knowledge of the techniques and strategies which can be
used to deal with lack of fluency or linguistic knowledge. That is the learner's ability to use appropriate communication strategies according to the context in which the communication takes place.

Teachers are to take note of the following when it comes to teaching speaking: 

-the creation of a conducive learning environment, 

-developing speaking and learning skills, 

-teaching and extension of vocabulary and conceptual knowledge and 

-promotion of auditory memory.

What to teach in oral language

There are certain elements that need to be taught explicitly before embarking on formal instruction of oral language. These are:

i.Awareness of broad rules that govern social interaction

ii. Non-verbal behaviour

iii. Rules of listening

iv. Rules of speaking

Components of Effective Oral Language Instruction

Five basic components of effective oral language instruction are as follow: 

I. Develop listening and speaking skills. 

ii. Teach a variety of spoken texts Create a language learning environment

iii. Teach and extend vocabulary and conceptual knowledge

vi. Promoting auditory memory

Views of Listening

Listening can be viewed from three main perspectives. These are the bottom-up, top-down and eclectic views.

Bottom-up view
Listening is a process of decoding sound one hears in a linear way: from smallest meaning to complete text.

Phonemes -> words ->phrases -> utterances ->text

Top-down view
The listener constructs meaning using incoming sounds as clues. The listener uses prior knowledge of the context and situation.

Eclectic view
It is a combination of bottom-up and bottom-down approaches.

THE SUBSEQUENT UNITS WILL SOON BE LOADED...