Techniques to improve macro skills of language Though Language Lab

Techniques to improve macro skills of language Though Language Lab

Among the four macro skills of language learning, listening and reading are receptive skills whereas speaking and writing are the productive skills. These skills can be improved effectively, when the learner learns at his own pace. With the help of the functional tool- Language Lab with Teacher’s Console, language skills can be learnt, practiced and evaluated through the techniques followed.

I) Techniques to improve listening

The primary form of linguistic communication is speech and so listening is the most important receptive (and learning) skill for foreign language students. An ability to listen and interpret many shades of meaning from what is heard, is a fundamental communicative ability.

Teaching listening involves training in some ‘enabling skills’ — perception of sounds, stress, intonation patterns, accents, attitudes and so on, as well as ‘practice’ in various styles of listening comprehension.

a) Perception / Pronunciation

Accurate perception of the sounds of the language is the first stage which leads to interpretation and comprehension. When listening to a foreign language, we need to know the sounds, rhythms, tunes and stress patterns of that language. All the pronunciation work which we do will benefit the students’ listening ability.

1) Phonetics: The sounds of the English language can be written down using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is used in all Longman dictionaries. Use of minimal pair perception exercises (ship/sheep, ten /then) helps students learn the sounds of English. It can be well practiced on pronunciation exercises with the help of software or by using CDs in language lab.

2) Interpretation: We listen to interpret meaning. Most of the exercises which students will do focus on listening comprehension, which is, interpreting meaning from spoken language.

3) Listening to words: In written language, there are convenient white spaces between words. Whereas spoken language is a continuous stream of sound. The learner has to pay attention to understand the meaning of words spoken.

b) Tools for Listening

1) Acoustics: Our ability to hear is essential to our ability to listen. The first set of ideas concerns the production, corruption, transmission and reception of spoken language.

2) Usage of language laboratory: Earphones and headphones deliver undistorted sound directly to the ears. It is better practiced in a language laboratory with the help of head phones and earphones; this provides ideal conditions for intensive listening.

c) Organizing listening comprehension activities

As in reading comprehension, there should always be a ‘purpose’ in listening. In most cases, this will be some form of comprehension. We should establish regular ‘procedures’ for listening activities in which students will develop from general (gist) to specific comprehension through repeated listening and a specific activity at each stage.

1) Understanding the setting: After the first listening, students should be able to understand the setting of the recording — where the speakers are from, how many speakers there are, the ages, roles, professions, moods of the speakers, etc., and what they are talking about. This encourages students to think about the setting so that they can go on to speculate about the content of what the speakers will say. This first listening allows the students to get accustomed to the voices.

2) Pre-teach difficult vocabulary: Teaching isolated and meaningless lists of words and phrases is probably not a good idea. Teachers may choose to introduce the setting before the students listen. This provides an opportunity to elicit or introduce and explain the sort of language we might hear in that setting. This language is listed on the board and students listen and mark what they actually heard.

3) Focused listening: Listening tasks should give the students a reason for listening and focus their attention. These listening tasks should be set before the students listen. This intense listening requires intense concentration. Therefore the listening task can be limited for ten to fifteen minutes.

4) Comprehending: In large classes we will probably have different levels of competence. There is no reason why all the students need to work on the same task. Equally, if we have more than 6 questions, groups of students can be given questions 1-5, questions 6-10 and so on. After listening students share their answers.

5) Analysis: After students have understood the gist and some important details of a recording, it can be analyzed in more detail and investigate the way in which the speakers have expressed the ideas. How much have they revealed their mood, their opinions and so on? Analysis of the speed and style of speech, the use of hesitation, repetition, false starts, paraphrasing and so on can also be practiced.

6) Graded Listening tasks: We teach listening by building up comprehension from general understanding to identifying specific information. We can also grade the listening tasks from easy to more difficult by the form of questions we use and it can be evaluated based on the kind of out put by the learners in the form of writing or speaking.