Marijana Ivančić, Anakatarina Mandić

English Department

English Language Teaching Methodology

Maja Balić Motušić, Research Assistant

Receptive and productive language skills in language teaching

Seminar paper

July, 20th 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................2

2. RECEPTIVE SKILLS..........................................................................................................2

2.1. LISTENING....................................................................................................................4

2.1.1. THE TEACHING OF LISTENING......................................................................4

2.2. READING.......................................................................................................................6

2.2.1. THE TEACHING OF READING.......................................................................8

3. PRODUCTIVE SKILLS.......................................................................................................9

3.1. WRITING......................................................................................................................10

3.1.1. THE TEACHING OF WRITING.....................................................................11

3.2. SPEAKING...................................................................................................................12

3.2.1. THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING...................................................................12

4. CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................13

5. WORKS CITED.................................................................................................................14
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1. INTRODUCTION

Being competent in a language implies having the following four basic language skills:

reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Reading and listening belong to the receptive

language skills, since the learners receive an input, while speaking and writing belong to the

productive language skills, because the students produce an output.

In this seminar paper, we will discuss each of the four essential language skills and also

provide an insight into the strategies of teaching each individual skill.

2. RECEPTIVE SKILLS

As already mentioned in the introduction, receptive language skills consist of the

abilities to successfully read and listen, and consequently comprehend a foreign language.

Since nobody is born with these abilities, these skills have to be learned and mastered. Even

listening, which seems an obvious inborn ability, must be learned too. An act of listening

cannot be compared merely to “tape-recording”, as Nunan nicely portrays, but has to be

actively engaged and aimed to comprehension and storing of meaning (Designing Tasks for

the Communicative Classroom, 23). At this point, we need to stress the importance of

comprehensible input. Comprehensible input, whether it is oral or written, cannot be just any

stream of sounds we hear or words we read, it is an input we clearly understand and are able

to reproduce. Then is when real learning takes place.

When we talk about the teaching of receptive skills, we have to point out that there is a

basic methodology for teaching both listening and reading (Harmer, 270). For both types of

input, students have a choice between listening or reading superficially, with the aim of

comprehending a general idea of the text, and listening or reading carefully, with the focus on

the search for the specifically required information. These are two different skills and need to
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be equally practiced. Teachers hence have a responsibility to develop both of the skills of

their students. Harmer further on suggests a few basic steps related to teaching practice, which

can be seen in Figure 1. The steps for teaching receptive skills are as following:

- leading-in (which means introducing students to the topic of the text, activating their

background knowledge, and asking them to predict what the text is going to be

about),

- directing comprehension tasks (which means asking students to try to comprehend

the general idea)

- providing text or tape for students to read/listen,

- directing feedback (which means e.g. dividing students in pairs or smaller groups to

go through answers together; the teacher informs them about the level of their

accomplishment while focusing on the positive things)

- directing text-related task (which means questioning students about the content or

some language aspects of the text)

- repeating of the process (this step is optional, but welcome, and includes more

detailed and focused reading/listening of the text before doing text-related task).

Figure 1.
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(The Practice of English Language Teaching, 271)

2.1.LISTENING

Listening, as well as reading, is the basic and indispensable input for a foreign language

learner. Whether it is in natural surroundings, during a random conversation between two

native speakers in a foreign country, or in more formal environment, such as classroom during

a lecture, listening is of utmost importance and relevance for language learners. It provides

them with countless new words, phrases, and interjections, which appear in their original

pronunciation and stress pattern.

In language learning there are different types of listening, which often appear as pairs of

opposites, that is, in form of a dichotomy. Nunan introduces one such dichotomy: the

reciprocal and non-reciprocal listening (Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom,

23). Reciprocal listening refers to listening from both sides, that is, a conversation. Here a

listener not only listens, but responds to a message, participates in a conversation and

interacts, which further stimulates his learning process. Non-reciprocal listening, on the other

hand, refers to the listening as a sole activity, deprived of any interaction. Here a learner
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listens in a situation where he is unable to respond, such as during formal lecture, or a radio

transmission (Nunan, 23).

Another listening dichotomy is introduced by Cook: bottom-up and top-down

processing. According to Cook, top-down implies “starting from the sentence as a whole and

working down to its smallest parts”, while bottom-up means, on the contrary, “starting from

the smallest parts and working up” (Second Language Learning and Language Teaching,

125). She further on introduces another term, parsing, which is closely connected to the

previously mentioned terms. Parsing is, namely, “the process through which the mind works

out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentence” (Cook, 125). Hence, bottom-up

parsing involves listener’s focus on analysing the smallest constituents of a sentence first, and

then combining them and reaching the entire sentence structure and the final meaning of the

utterance. Meanwhile, top down process suggests that the listener concentrates on the search

for meaning of an entire utterance, listening to the intonation and stress of the utterance and

using his background knowledge and the context in which the utterance was pronounced.

Cook maintains that successful learners use both listening strategies, while unsuccessful ones

rely solely on the bottom-up strategy (128). As can be noticed, the same dichotomy can be

applied to the process of reading.

2.1.1. THE TEACHING OF LISTENING

One of the most common teaching strategies is a task-based approach. Tasked-based

approach is a strategy that consists of giving specific tasks to students to solve, which are

closely connected to language acquisition. The usual task is listening to a tape which contains

a conversation between two or more native speakers, and answering questions from a task

sheet about the conversation they heard. Questions may be very different in style and seek

different mental activities.

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In her book, Cook is refering to Underwood's Teaching Listening when speaking about

three stages of teaching:

- Pre-listening (serves to acivate students' background knowledge and to get the

general idea of the listening material)

- While-listening (improving their ability to ineterpet the message)

- Post-listening (includes task sheets and possibly a second listening) (Seconda

Language Learning and Language Teaching, 129).

In the pre-listening stage, it is good to have printed copies of the scripts so the students

could follow the conversation more easily, especially if it is the case of beginner

language learners.

2.2.READING

There are two types of reading: extensive and intensive, and according to Harmer,

students need to be engaged in both types of reading if they want to get maximum benefit

(The Practice of English Language Teaching, 283). Extensive reading refers to the reading of

books a student chooses for himself and his own pleasure, while intensive reading refers to

the reading of special literature assigned by the professor. When a learner is reading, he can

focus on different things: reading for gist or so called skimming (i.e., the goal is general

understanding of the text), reading for specific information or so called scanning, and reading

for profound comprehension, inference and attitude (the goal is to interpret the message

“between the lines”) (Harmer, 283).

2.2.1. THE TEACHING OF READING

Since active and consistent reading can be very beneficial and enriching for the

students’ minds, teachers’ crucial role is to encourage them to keep on reading. It is not

enough to simply urge them to read a lot, their responsibility is to provide them with

guidance, selection of appropriate books, to offer them to choose their own favourite genre, to
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give them a task to report regularly on their reading, or keep a reading journal. It would also

be a good idea to organize reading clubs or events of the sort. Some of the Hermer’s

suggestions are very useful, such as: setting up a library with specialised “language learner

literature”. This specialised literature is specifically designed for beginner, intermediate and

advanced language learners, and can be either a simplified version of classic works of

literature or a completely new fiction or non-fiction novel composed within a restricted range

of available vocabulary.

When giving reading tasks in the classroom (and that involves intensive reading),

teachers should set clear rules from the beginning, so as to save time and achieve better

outcomes. Some of the rules should include:

- time limit: teacher should give students an exact amount of time to read a passage and

then answer to questions. Time frame can be extended only if most of students are struggling

with the task.

- meaning of words: since students are often eager to find out the meaning of every

single word they encounter, the search for unknown vocabulary in the dictionaries or multiple

questions can take a lot of time. Teachers should make a compromise with the students – they

could answer a certain number of inquiries, but the students need to comprehend the rest of

the text from the context

- goals: it is important to set a goal before the actual reading. Teachers should specify

what they expect from the students, whether it be skimming through the text to get some

general comprehension of the subject of the text, be it scanning the text for some specific

information. That way student can mentally prepare for the task and do it more efficiently.

- including students: a very good strategy to engage students in reading is to ask them

what they feel or think about the subject of the text they are about to read, what are their
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expectations and is the topic already familiar or not. That way a teacher can prepare the

students for the task and provoke their interest in reading (Harmer, 287,288).

3. PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

Productive language skills consist of the learner’s abilities to efficiently write and speak

in a foreign language. It seems a great deal more difficult to accurately produce language

forms, whether in oral or written form, than simply to understand a language. While

producing a language, learners must be simultaneously aware of the message they are

conveying, of the style and vocabulary they are using, and ultimately of the correct

grammatical construction. These are all the reasons why so many advanced learners still feel

inhibited when they speak in front of native speakers or their teachers. They are self-

conscious about all the mistakes they can say or write, which can significantly slow down

their improvement. To prevent this unnecessary impediment, it is a teachers’ job to make their

students practice speaking and writing as much as possible. The more they practice, the easier

it becomes to express themselves freely and without fear.

As for the teaching of productive skills, there is a basic methodology for teaching both

writing and speaking (Harmer, 275). Since the students’ task is to produce sentences in

foreign language, which includes premeditating both the content and grammatical structures,

they may hesitate to express themselves. That is why teachers need to mentally prepare them

for speaking/writing by introducing the topic of discussion. The basic steps for teaching

productive skills are proposed by Harmer (summarized in Figure 2):

- leading-in (which means introducing students to the topic of the text, activating their

background knowledge, and asking them to predict what the text is going to be

about),
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- setting the task (at this point students are already familiar with the topic of, the

teacher explains exactly what they need to do and demonstrates an activity if

necessary, e.g. a role-play)

- monitoring the task (the teacher is actively involved, walking around the class,

helping or directing the assignment)

- directing feedback (the teacher responds to the outcome of the task, helps students

realize what they did right and what they need to improve)

- repeating the process (the meaning of repetition is to ensure the student’s learning

progress, the same or similar exercise may follow the previous one).

Figure 2.

(Harmer, 275).

3.1.WRITING

Ur points out that the purpose of writing is “to express ideas, the conveying of a

message to the reader” (A Course in Language Teaching, 70). Besides expressing ideas, a

writer should also pay attention to his style and form of writing, especially to correct

vocabulary, grammar, spelling and punctuation (Ur, 70). Many authors point out the
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substantial difference between the spoken and the written language. Not only is the written

language more complex and has more methodically arranged sentences, but it also lacks

immediate response or correction from the recipient. A similar conclusion can be find in

Richards, who maintains that the “written language needs to be explicit because the audience

for written text may be unknown to the writer, particularly with writing intended for

publishing” (The Language Teaching Matrix, 100).

To fully master good writing is difficult even to some native speakers, not to mention to

the language learners. It is a skill required for both personal and professional life. In academic

framework, writing presents a perfect evidence of the level of language learning progress, and

is useful both to the teacher and the students (Richards, The Language Teaching Matrix, 100).

3.1.1. THE TEACHING OF WRITING

The teaching of writing is an extremely demanding task for teachers. Ur split the

teaching of writing into several activities that need to be completed:

- Classifying writing activities and giving instructions

- Choosing the criteria for the evaluation of textbook writing activities

- (Supervising the process of composition)

- Giving feedback on writing (A Course in Language Teaching, 70-75)

We will now elaborate on the steps which Ur has suggested. Before the teacher begins

their instruction, it is important to know whether the students write as a means, as an end, or

both as a mean and as an end. It is the most beneficial to include both types of writing, so as

the students would pay attention simultaneous at the form (grammar, vocabulary, paragraphs

organization) and content (the message of their writing). The next step for teacher to do is to

choose between different writing tasks form the textbook. Their criteria should be composed

of the following questions:

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- Is the task motivating and engaging enough to the students?

- Is the task on the appropriate level of difficulty (not to easy, not to hard)?

- Will the students benefit from this type of writing activity?

- Will if be necessary give additional instructions for this type of activity?

- Is it part of my teaching style?

After these criteria have been met, the teacher chooses a task. Some of the frequently given

tasks include instances like these:

a) Write a report on the book you have read

b) Write an instruction sheet explaining how to come to a certain place in a city

c) Write a letter applying to a certain job

d) Write a letter to a friend

e) Write a newspaper article reporting on some recent event

f) Give a description of your ideal holiday, etc. (Ur, 71)

While students are doing the assignment, the teacher can supervise their progress,

helping them with their form and organisation of paragraphs, giving ideas or encouraging

brainstorming in the class. After the students have finished with their essay/report/paper, the

teacher should give them feedback on their accomplishment. The teacher should, first of all,

decide what to grade, content of the paper or the language that they use. If the students are

complete beginners, their assignments could be full of grammatical mistakes. Teachers should

certainly correct them for the sake of learning; however, they should not concentrate solely on

correcting grammatical mistakes. They should give feedback on the content and style of their

writing, so they would be aware that the grammar is not all that matters. One of two

interesting questions worth considering are whether to ask students to rewrite their corrected

papers, and should teachers allow students to correct each other papers. There are certainly
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pros and cons to each of methods (concerning time consumption and learning improvement),

and teachers could individually whether to employ them or not (Ur, 74).

As it’s the case with speaking, teacher’s job is to encourage their students to frequently

practice their writing for their continuous improvement. Practicing different styles (formal,

informal, semiformal) and forms of writing (reports, essays, seminar papers, presentations,

letters, etc.) the students produce more coherent, and more reader-based (Richards, 103).

3.2.SPEAKING

The ability to speak in a foreign language is divided in two large categories: spoken

interaction and spoken production. The former one refers to a student’s ability to interact with

other interlocutors, whether native speakers or other learners. It includes the ability to listen,

comprehend, interpret the message using the background knowledge, producing response or

message relevant to the topic and grammatically correct. It is usually spontaneous and

requires quick reaction and ability to adapt to the stream of conversation. Spoken production,

on the other hand, does not include other interlocutors, but only a single person who is doing

the talking. It usually refers to giving a presentation in front of a group of people, a classroom

lecture, or any form of public speech. It could be spontaneous, but it is more often

premeditated and organized. According to Nunan, a dialogue has both the “transactual

function” which is primarily concerned with “the transfer of information”, and the

“interactional function” which aims at “the maintenance of social relationships” (Designing

Tasks for the Communicative Classrooms, 27).

3.2.1. THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING

When authors talk about teaching of speaking, they first make a distinction between oral

and written text. While written language consists of “well-formed sentences which are

structured in highly structured paragraphs”, spoken language consists of “short, often

fragmentary utterances, in a range of pronunciations” (Nunan, Designing Tasks for the

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Communicative Classrooms, 26). Spoken language contains as well many interjections,

overlapping with the other speaker, non-specific words and repetitions, conversation fillers

etc. Bearing the complexity of spoken language in mind, Nunan suggests the following

questions that teachers need to consider:

- What is the appropriate form of spoken language to teach?

- What is the appropriate pronunciation to teach?

- How important the pronunciation really is?

- Should spoken language be taught like written language only with few

conversational phrases thrown in?

- Is it appropriate to teach the same structure to the learners of different levels of

language progress, etc. (Nunan, 27).

4. CONCLUSION

To be rightly called advanced language learners, the students need to have a good

command of each of the four basic language skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

None of these should be neglected and all of them should be equally practiced and

interactively used. It is a teacher’s job to prepare textbooks, scripts of the listening tapes, task

sheets and other materials, to provoke interest and motivation of learners to consistently read

and listen in the foreign language, and to encourage them to freely express themselves

through speaking and writing.

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5. WORKS CITED:

Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. Hodder Education:

London. 2008. PDF

Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English language Teaching. London: Pearson Longman.

2001. PDF

Nunan, David. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. 2001. PDF

Nunan, David. Language Teaching Methodology. London: Pretice Hall. 1991. PDF

Richards, Jack C. The Language Teaching Matrix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1995. PDF

Ur, Penny. A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012. PDF