Macro-skills

What do Receptive Skills have in common?

• Time management is the same in both skills.

• Time management in listening comprehension is more difficult than in reading comprehension.

• Top-down processes are involved in both skills.

• Both skills are necessary to get input.

Top-down processes:

• are post reading / listening activities.

• activate previous knowlegde.

• activate schema or schemata in order to be better ready for what is coming.

• can involve analysing pictures, titles, discussing pre reading / listening questions and scanning.

• involve communicative situations.

Botton-up processes

• involve while and post reading / listening activities.

• involve skimming.

• activate previous knowledge.

• are communicative.

• are involved with comprehension.

What do speaking and writing have in common?

• Both skills are receptive.

• Both skills are productive.

• Time mangement is the same in both.

• Both skills proffit from communicative situations.

• There may be information gap activities in both.

Speaking is successful

• when there is even participation.

• if there is no drilling in class.

• only if there is negotiation of meaning

• only if there is a communictive situation.

• when the speakers share the information beforehand.

Which of the following problems and solutions are appropriate when dealing with speaking?

• Inhibition- Pair and Group work

• Debates and Discussions participation- Controversy on the topic

• Lack of language- Silent period

• Lack of language-provide pseudo-controlled phrases.

• Many local mistakes / errors - Teachers delay correction and choose what to comment on later.

How can you best teach different kinds of writing formats?

• By reading models of different kinds of writings.

• By lecturing about different kinds of writings.

• By discussing the purposes of different kinds of writings.

• By providing a clear communicative situation.

• By keeping portfolios with different kinds of writing.

Why are communicative situations important to work with any of the skills?

• To contextualize the task.

• To clariy the communicative purpose of the task.

• To define the audience, context and task.

• To Facilitate the flow of tasks among skills.

• To resemble a real life situation

Using videos in class

• has the advantage of contextualizing listening comprehension better.

• should always be of the same linguistic level as that of students.

• can be useful even if there is no audio.

• should never be done with subtitles

• should be done based on the listening content.

TheCommunicative Principle :"The whole is more than the sum of its parts" in reference to skills implies:

• Paying attention to general understanding (listening / reading for gist)

• Integrating skills in class (pre- while and post skills tasks)

• no grammar or vocabulary work.

• Using the content of one skill for the others (talking about the content of a listening activity, writing about what was discussed in a speaking act, etc.)