WORKSHOP 1.

Practices to develop listening _________________________12/02/2020

Active Listening is a capacity than involves more skills than just hearing. Hearing is done in a
physical and unintentional way and most of the people develop this skill. The sense of
hearing develops when we are in the mother’s womb, by the 6th month and it is not until the
first – second year when children start to express themselves with sounds and words. But
hearing is different to listen. Listening is a more complex skill that not all individuals develop.
Listening in pre-borned children consists in the ability to understand all the sounds of all the
languages that they are presented for then restrict those sound to their mother tongue.

Listening is one of the most important skill when learning a language and if we are not able
to develop it, we will perform badly in the rest of the skills, as listening is the foundation or
support of the other skills
No reading, writing or talking unless you know how to listen

Listening is the process of taking information through the sense of hearing and making
meaning from what it heard.

HOW TO TEACH LISTENING?

- Giving instructions
- Paying attention Dictations

Objecties of the activity

Expand the attentional span of children

Increase the auditory attention
Develop phonological attention and awareness
Develop gross-motor development

SOME INTERESTING ACTIVITIES

- Game of the keys/pencil Who has my pencil?
- Game of the forms. Dictation using forms. Sequence activity for pre-reading
- Number game. Assign a number. Say your number and other of your peer
LISTENING SKILLS _______________________________________________24/02/2020

Listening is the basis of the learning process because it is the first skill that we use when
dealing with any kind of language. Language is learned through a process of several stages,
which start when we are born. When we are born, we are able to pick up every word no
matter the language that it is, because we have the ability to pick them and as we get older
and older, we only take those ones who suit the language that we have chosen as our
mother tongue.
The older we get, the less sounds that we pick

As teachers, we should not oblige young language learners to speak, we must leave them
the time that they need in order to begin speaking when they feel ready to do so.

Regarding other skills, speaking and writing are more praised because you can see the
outcome at the end, while listening is more difficult to see the outcome, that is why we say
that listening is invisible to teachers, because you cannot see any evidences about their
listening comprehension while in the other skills yes. We also say that it is ignored because
it was thought that the students would pick up the language in the process of learning the
foreign language, but the teacher usually addresses the students in a simplified way, that we
give the name of Foreign talk (talking slowly so that people understand you) and students
are exposed to one accent.

But the ability to understand the spoken form of the foreign language is not acquired
naturally. Comprehensible input is needed. Listening to the class is not a good way of
learning the FL we need to take part in the conversation and negotiate its meaning, which
will be useful for students as they will receive input and they will be more likely to participate.
_________________________________________________________________________
COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
(i+1) → The amount of input that we give to students, needs to be a bit more difficult than what they
are expected to know so that it is comprehensible for them

We only acquire knowledge when we understand it, that is why the input that we receive
needs to be comprehensible. We learn more when we are exposed to lots of C.I in an
atmosphere with very low anxiety.
_________________________________________________________________________
Early schooling ensures that the students have interaction with many individuals, so that
when they grow up, they are not left behind. For the students whose parents do not pay
them the attention that they need, early schooling allows them to keep on with the level that
is required, so that they do not feel different to the ones whose parents have more time and
are more caring. ↓ C.I → ↓ Development

MOBILITY is making listening an important skill. As people are travelling more, listening is
required to understand the foreign speakers.

↗ ACTIVE PROCESS: active interpretation and negotiation of the meaning

LISTENING
↘ CREATIVE PROCESS: Having the ability to create different meanings depending
on the context and the sounds that we perceive (Background knowledge)

(PARTIAL UNDERSTANDING) Understanding depends on what we hear and its agreement

or not with our own knowledge, or whatsmore, it depends on what we hear and our own
experiences of having or not heard what we are hearing.
SLA → Second Language Acquisition
Interiorizing knowledge → Talk when ready
↖
↗ Comprehension develops ahead production (silent period)
Studies in MT
↘ Understand and process language that is above his level of production

The main conditions that we need for an interactive comprehension are:

- Have a relaxed atmosphere: + relaxed + talkative
- Give the brain time (silent periods)
- Provide Comprehensive Input (i+1)
- Provide more listening activities → sufficient quantity

Talking is not a way of practising what you have listened or trained your speaking skills, your
speaking skills will emerge gradually as you grow up, as a result of the comprehensible input
that the students have received during their learning process. Other conditions that are
important when acquiring a language are: (If they are not acquired, they may affect the
process of passing the input to the L.A.D.) (Filter Hypothesis)

- ↑ Motivation ↑ Language Acq ↓ Motivation ↓ Language Acq

 - ↑ Self-esteem ↑ Language Acq ↓ Self-esteem↓ Language Acq
- Anxiety

Relationship between L1 and L2

1) Separated: the acquisition of both languages is independent one form each other.
2) Overlapped: One depends on the other.
3) The same, but with some problems in L2
↓
Restricted vocabulary, Grammar, Intonation…

What happens when we listen?

The native speaker encounters spoken language in a context or situation. To this situation
he applies:
- A set of stereotypical knowledge
- Constructs expectations based on the stereotypical knowledge
- He/she uses other sources of information to help him to decode the message and
produce an appropriate response
________________________________________________________________26/02/2020

Situation, expectations about the situation and other sources of information that are
important or key for developing a message.

WHAT HAPPENS IN DECODING?

2 principles that are important when understanding a message (decoding). According to
Widdson, there are two main principal sources of information entering into play:
- Schematic knowledge or non-linguistic. The term schematic comes from the concept
schema (bartlett, 1932). (frames of reference or background)
- The schema theory says that the knowledge that we carry out in our heads
is organized into interrelated patterns, constructed from previous experiences
and the new ones that we overcome.
- A schema is a pre-existing mental structure that we have in our minds which
consists of relevant individual knowledge, memory and experiences which
allow us to incorporate what we learn into what we already knew.

- Systemic knowledge that is the linguistic knowledge

- Background knowledge (factual, sociocultural settings)
- procedural knowledge (how language is used in a discourse)
- knowledge of the situation: (Physical setting, participants…)
- Context and systemic knowledge allows us to create a framework in which we
can evaluate what we hear to see whether or not it fits with our knowledge of
the world and our experience. in this way we can not only recognise the
message but integrated with experience.
- Systematic knowledge includes the knowledge of phonological, syntactic and
semantic components of the language system
- It allows to recognize and select significant elements of the message at
different levels and their retention in the short-term memory

CONTEXT + SOURCES OF LANGUAGE + EXPECTATIONS = COMPREHENSION

ANOTHER IMPORTANT FACTORS
a) Prediction and selection
The ability to predict and select information is possible because of redundancy,
because normally, the speaker tends to repeat the things over and over (it is
important to teach students to see redundancy). Thanks to this ability (ability to
understand redundancy):
- Can relax more, because we can see that he/she is going to say something
similar to what he/she just said.
- There is less strain on STM (strain-presión)
- less material to process and more time to process it

EXAMPLES OF PREDICTION AND SELECTION

1. Specific items, which are the ones that we already know
2. Less specific ones:
a. Things that something is going to happen or that the person is going to tell
something. there are present connective words that allow us to know that
something is going to happen. If students are aware of these connectors, they
will predict what is to come.
i. because
ii. so, therefore
iii. also, not only that
iv. in other words, that is to say (rephrasing-repeating things)
3. Cues from intonation and stress
a. I would like to help you but …. (excuse) You can know that it is an excuse
from the intonation of the sentence.

LISTENING STRATEGIES IN L2 AND COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS

The steps of recognition, selection of input and prediction take longer than in L1 because at
each stage we might make mistakes and we fail to discriminate, fail to see the grammatical
relationships. We have to work out meaning from context.

- SYSTEMIC KNOWLEDGE PROBLEMS:

- Difficulty on selecting and retaining information, they are really important
because they are actively involved in the process of decoding a message.
- Difficulty with discourse markers and cohesives (crucial for understanding and
aural comprehension)
- EXAMPLES:
- Not hearing the sounds
- Short or long vowels, as in Spanish we don't have that, we may face
difficulties differencing words (sheep-ship)
- sounds that are new to us (dz) (George)
- consonant groupings
- S when a word begins (Spain)
- Endings (asks)
- Contractions (He’s)
- Intonation, accent and rhythm
- Vocabulary
- Fail to recognise familiar words because of the speed or the informal
register (cause-because)
- Unable to recognise unstressed function words (determinants,
prepositions, conjunctions)
- Glottal stop. Sound that you make when you close your vocal cords (I
can't come, flight, light…)
- Words that are pronounced different than expected. When the
pronunciation is not said as the spelling of the word. (Vegetable)
- Sound assimilation
- Colloquial collocations/ contractions (students need to get used to
these phenomena) (I don't know- do nou)
- Discourse markers

- SCHEMATIC KNOWLEDGE PROBLEMS:

- Non-native listeners lack of associations and references available to the
native speaker
- Lack of the background knowledge of the L2 culture, things that you don't
know while the rest of the people know.
- Context: in class, students lack many contextual clues (they cannot see the
speaker when listening to a DVD. If they do not see the things face to face, it
is difficult for them to learn). Important: provide students with the context
- Other factors affecting the listening comprehension of L2 are:
- Noise
- Different accents
 - Topic. If you do not know the topic, you cannot even have predictions
of what they could talk about.
- Listening time-memory problems (problems in retaining info)
- Presentation of the speech

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
How can we improve listening comprehension?
We must differentiate between basic strategies (predictive skills, extracting information,
getting the general picture) and more advanced strategies (inferring, deducing meaning from
context) depending on the level and age of the students
- Predicting skill. Activate the students experience before starting. Use visual
information that can be useful to relate knowledge. Activating the scripts that we all
have (for example what it would happen in a restaurant)
- Discourse.
- sensitise students about the importance of the discourse markers
- Three main skills emerge for the L2 listener:
- ability to recognise topics from the native speakers’ initial remarks
- ability to recognise and signal when he has not understood all the
input to make suggestions
- Pauses
- Gives time for the short-term memory to retain, select and predict information
- They use them as a processing time, especially native speakers use pauses
to understand and process the contexts
- How can we do this? Analyse the difference between spoken and written
language

What can students do to improve their systemic knowledge-linguistic?

1) Sounds, intonation, accent and rhythm (Ear training)
2) Ask students to identify their problems in recognising sounds and show or help them
how to solve them
3) Self-help/ self-instruction

Improving listening comprehension requires a lot of personal work on the part of the students
WORKSHOP 2. Activities for improving oracy in the young learner´s classroom______
09/03/2020
FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE WAY IN WHICH WE SPEAK:
- Age
- Context
- Amount and quality of input that we get (We are much more exposed to L1 than L2)

EVOLUTION OF THE ACQUISITION OF A LANGUAGE

6 months – learning a L2 becomes more difficult
12 months of exposure to the language - first words
Onwards, we develop complex relations of words, vocabulary syntax…. Until we are able to
speak, write, listen and read fluently in the language

L2 – MEISEL
There are 3 ways of acquiring a language
- 0-1 week, they learn through simultaneous bilingualism
- Before 5 years of age with regular exposure to the language they become
successive/sequential bilingualism, which means that one language comes after the
other
- After 5 y/o – L2 acquisition

FOUNDATION SKILLS
Caroline Linse summarises how the skills should be learned with the following sentences:
You need to hear words before you can say it
You need to say a word before reading it
You need to read a word before writing it

ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE SPEAKING

- Show and tell: show an object that is personal to you and describe it to the people
- Encourages to speak,
- To help students to grow in confidence in public speaking,
- To stimulate students to ask questions
- Develop vocabulary
- To overcome shyness
- To get to know the student’s feelings, emotions….
- Sharing rhymes: they are very important to learn, although it is better to invent a
rhyme.
- Haikus: Japanese poems that do not rhyme, the only requirement is that they need to
have five syllables, 7 and five. They need to be about the seasons or about nature
Yellow mimosa (5) Pink chrysanthemum
Paints the colour of the sky (7) You always come in Spring
Spring is in the air (5) All happy we´ll be
- Talking dice: they can be used to develop vocabulary, build up sentences, invent
stories and practice grammar
- Fishbowl discussion:
- To stimulate discussion
- To provide class interaction
- To allow students to learn from peers
- To improve oracy
- To foster critical thinking
- To provide a break from routine
- ELA (English learning Area)
- To speak in English among the students. We can do it with flashcards,
games, large dices, posters….
- Hot seating
- To ask questions
- To foster creativity and imagination
- To develop the thinking, listening, speaking and social skills

Children learn how to talk by talking