This document discusses factors that affect listening and speaking skills. For listening, it identifies personal bias, environmental factors, short attention span, rehearsing a response, daydreaming, hot words, and filtering as things that can negatively impact listening. For speaking, it outlines listening comprehension, understanding pronunciation, grammatical accuracy, accent neutralization, vocabulary, fluency, enthusiasm, confidence, length of answers, and organizing ideas as important factors. It provides examples and explanations for some of these factors.

1. FACTORS
AFFECTING
LISTENING AND
SPEAKING SKILLS

2. LISTENING
What is the factor that affecting the LISTENING
skills??

3. FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING SKILLS
 Listening Skills
Listening is an important part of effective
communication. We need to concentrate on
encouraging not only students, theachers, but
ourselves, to exhibit good listening behaviors and
strategies. Listening is a process that involves
actively hearing what another person is
communicating and attending to that
communication. Listening is how we receive the
verbal portion of a person's message. By listening, we
can show concern and interest in understanding
both the person and the situation.

4. Listening can be affacted by:
 Personal bias
 Environmental factors
 A short attention span
 Rehearsing a response
 Daydreaming
 Hot words
 Through the use of filtering.

5. PERSONAL BIAS
 Bias can take on many forms. Personal prejudice can
affect how well we listen and how we perceive what
the speaker is saying. Anger can also cause distortion
of the message. As good communicators, personal
bias and anger must be put aside in order to
interpret the message. Be willing to listen to new
ideas. Make eye contact with the speaker, use
nonverbal communication, such as nodding your
head or smiling to show that you are interested. Even
if you do not agree with the speaker’s message,
showing acceptance will let the speaker know that
you have received their message

7. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
 Environmental factors such as noise, temperature
and uncomfortable seating can cause us to focus our
attention on other factors beside what the speaker is
saying. Try to control environment factors whenever
possible. Try adjusting the thermostat, finding
another seat, or moving to a quiet place to continue
the conversation. It is hard to focus attention when
we are constantly distracted by outside forces.

8. SHORT ATTENTION SPAN
 As we receive a message, we must attend to it or we will
lose it. Some people have trouble remembering points to
discuss when the speaker is talking. Try taking notes as
the speaker talks, or use a cue to help you remember
what you were going to say. If you find your attention
wondering, concentrate on what the speaker is saying,
and reherse how you will answer, or what you are going
to say to keep in your mind on the task at hand. Ask
questions to clarify and to become involved in the
conversation. Concentration helps you receive accurate
information and indicates that you are interested in what
speaker is saying.

9. Dont be like this!!!

10. REHEARSING A RESPONSE
 Many times we catch the drift of what the speaker is
saying and we begin to reherse a response, thereby
missing parts of the message. Other times we may be
anticipating our turn to speak and will spend time
mentally or physically reviewing notes and will miss
what the speaker has said.

11. DAYDREAMING
 We are capable of receiving and processing
information more rapidly than a speaker can
deliver it. This causes us to have spare time to
think or daydream, and if we don’t concentrate on
the message being delivered, we will find ourselves
drifting or daydreaming.

12. HOT WORDS
 We all have certain words that we react to.
Sometimes when a speaker uses a hot word in his or
her message we will concentrate more on the
meaning or the word, or its implications for us.
Consequently, we tend to lose sight of what is being
said by the speaker.

13. FILTERING
 Many times we will be asked to attend a seminar
where we exhibit little or no interest in the topic. As
listeners, we tend to listen to get an overview of what
is going to be presented and then simply tune out the
rest of message.

14. SPEAKING
 What is the factor that affecting the SPEAKING
skills??

15. FACTORS AFFECTING SPEAKING SKILLS
1. Listening comprehension
2. Understand English pronunciation
3. Grammatical accuracy
4. Accent neutralization
5. Vocabulary
7. English fluency
8. Speak with enthusiasm
9. Self-confidence to being a great English speaker
10. The length of answers
11. Organization Ideas

16. LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Listening comprehension is a very basic skill one must have in order to be a
good English speaker. Why? One of the most common and critical mistakes
non-native speakers of English make is focusing their time and effort in
improving their English speaking skills without first assessing and
practicing their English listening comprehension skills. A lot of them
actually know grammar rules pretty well and can construct even complex
sentences. Surprisingly, just when you thought they can communicate well
in English, they suddenly come to a halt when asked questions. Some nonnative speakers cannot understand the question/s, because the one asking
speaks too fast or because of the speaker’s accent (in case of an Australian
or a British speaker for example). They would often ask the speaker to
repeat the question several times or request the speaker to speak more
slowly, before they finally understand the question. Some, on the other
hand, answer the questions impressively (with not many mistakes in
grammar and pronunciation, good explanations and examples) just to find
out in the end that he or she misunderstood the question, and therefore
gave an in appropriate answer

17. UNDERSTAND ENGLISH
PRONOUNCIATION
It is quite common for non-native speakers of English to mispronounce
English words. However, it is not something we have to be ashamed of, but
something we ought to understand. We have to get to the root/s of the
problems, in order for us to improve our pronunciation. Here are some tips
to understand English pronunciation better.
English is not phonetic
Unlike other languages, English is not phonetic. What does that mean? It
means we don’t always say English words the way we spell them.
Example 1:
The English word “really” is not pronounced as "re-a-li" or "re-a-lai", nor is
the word “really” spelled as “rili”.
Example 2: The English word “read”. At times it is pronounced as [red]
and at times as [ri:d]. Although the spelling may not change, the way it is
pronounced changes depending on the tense you are using.
That’s one of the main reasons non-native speakers of English get confused
in pronouncing many English words, especially if their native tongue is
phonetic.

18. GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY
Common Mistakes in Grammar
• Nouns
Example: There are three sheeps in the meadow.
(Some nouns such as sheep, deer, salmon and trout have the same form in the singular as
in the plural.)
• Pronouns
Example: Everybody have their work to do.
(The indefinite pronouns each, anyone, anybody, , everybody and everyone are referred
to by singular pronouns. The sentence should have read “Everybody has his work to do.)
Example: I watched a movie with my wife last night. He liked it very much.
(He’s talking about his wife and then he used “he” to refer to her afterwards.)
• Adjectives
Example: She is the most fairest girl I have ever seen.
(“Fairest” is already in the superlative degree of comparison, so using “most” before it
makes the meaning redundant.)
Example: He is worst than my ex-husband.
(If only two things/people are being compared, “worse” should be used instead of
“worst”.)

19. • Adjectives
Example: She is the most fairest girl I have ever seen.
(“Fairest” is already in the superlative degree of comparison, so using “most” before it
makes the meaning redundant.)
• Verbs
Ex. Few is expected to fail the test.
(The indefinite pronouns both, many, several and few take a plural verb.)
Ex. I go to school yesterday.
(The word “yesterday” indicates a past event, so the verb used should have been “went”.)
• Two ways of pronouncing “the”
When used before a vowel sound, we say “the” as “thee”. Keep in mind that it is the sound
we should listen to, not the letters themselves.
Example: The apple is pronounced as “thee apple”.
The hour is pronounced as “thee hour”. (hour sounds like our)

20. ACCENT NEUTRALIZATION
What is accent? Who has an accent? What do we do to neutralize our accent?
These questions and more will be answered by this post.
“Everyone has an accent. So, when I hear some people say, “She’s good in
English. She doesn’t have an accent,” I find it a bit amusing. Accent usually
reflects the place where a person comes from, that’s why it’s easy to say if
someone is Korean, American, Filipino, British, Australian, etc., even if they all
speak in English. Accent is also one of the main reasons why people have a hard
time understanding each other, and thus many people strive to change their
accent. I said “change their accent” not “get rid of their accent”, because I think
it’s more appropriate to say the former. People can actually change their accent
by studying another accent and imitating it. When people say “neutralize” or
“remove one’s accent”, what they often mean is to get the standard American
English accent. So, how can we have this kind of accent?”
First, we ought to study our native tongue’s vowel and consonant sounds and
compare it to the Standard American English vowels and sounds. By doing this,
we will know why we’re having difficulty imitating their accent and how we can
succeed on doing it.

21. VOCABULARY
Below are some examples of the most commonly misused words in the English language.
Accept versus Except
1. Accept is a verb which means “to receive”.
Example: I accept your proposal.
2. Except is usually a preposition which means not included.
Example: I eat all kinds of fruits except that one.
3. Except is a verb meaning to exclude.
Example: Please except that vegetable from the grocery list.
Affect versus Effect
Usually, “affect” is a verb meaning to influence. Effect, on the other hand, is usually a
noun meaning result.
Example: Frequent drinking of alcohol affected his health.
Example: One of the effects of illegal logging is flood.
Its versus It’s
“Its” is the possessive case of the pronoun “it”. “It’s”, on the other hand, is the contraction
of the words, “it is”.
Example: The airport changed its policy.
Example: It's a very nice day today.

22. ENGLISH FLUENCY
English fluency means being able to use the language with ease.
How can we assess our English fluency then? Below are questions
that we ought to ask ourselves to gauge our English fluency.
Do I pause a lot when I speak?
Do I say “ahh” or “uuhmm” many times because I can’t remember
the right words that would be suitable for my sentences?
Do I often say “you know” to replace the phrases I can’t remember
or explain myself?
Do I speak so slowly, because I’m too careful not to make mistakes
in my sentences, that my listeners already tend to look drowsy?
Do I make the pronunciation of certain words indistinguishable
intentionally, because I am not sure how those words should be
pronounced?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you do have a
problem in English fluency. In order to be more fluent in the said
language, I suggest you practice speaking English as often as
possible.

23. SPEAK WITH ENTHUSIASM
This guidance teaches how one could speak with enthusiasm and how this would help
one become a great English speaker.
1. Speak up
If you speak too softly, how in the world will people be able to hear clearly what you have
to say? Do not expect the listeners to be the ones to exert effort in trying to understand
you, if you’re the one who wants to convey a message.
2. Be a singer
Listen to songs. A good song has soft and loud parts, slow and fast parts. The changes in
the volume and the rhythm makes the tune catchy, nice to listen to and even easy to
remember at times. We should speak the same way. We should not speak in a
monotonous tone that would put the listeners to sleep. We should sometimes speak fast,
speak slowly, speak softly and speak loudly, depending on the ideas we would like to get
across.
3. Feel it
If you can’t feel what you say, why would you expect the message to have an impact to the
ones listening? Whether you’re giving a speech, or taking an English exam, or answering
a question, you should not sound as if you’re reading something from a very boring
textbook. You should put more feelings into it. It’s not just the content that matters, it’s
the delivery!

24. THE LENGTH OF ANSWERS
How long should one's answers be? The length of one’s
answers depends on the situation. If it’s just a conversation
between friends, where you are telling someone a story
which is very interesting for him/her, going into details and
a long answer is okay. However, when one is in a job
interview or an English examination, wherein the
interviewer does not have much time to speak with you, you
ought to give answers that are brief and detailed. Make sure
you have already answered what has been asked, before
moving on to elaborate on the details of your answer.

25. REFERENCES
 http://ieltsm.blogspot.com/2010/03/factors-
affecting-english-speaking.html
 http://paraelink.org/7s2c/c7s2c_7.html
 http://www.scribd.com/doc/128138484/FactorsAffecting-Listening

26. THANK YOU