This document discusses key aspects of teaching listening and speaking skills to language learners. It addresses what makes these skills difficult, different types of listening and speaking, principles for teaching them, and sample activities. Some of the main points covered include the various factors that can impact listening comprehension, such as rate of delivery and colloquial language. Both bottom-up and top-down listening strategies are recommended for instruction. Speaking activities should focus on fluency and accuracy as well as use authentic contexts. Pronunciation teaching may focus more on prosody than individual sounds.

1. Teaching Listening &
Speaking
Latricia Trites, Ph.D.
Academic Advisor
Fulbright Yilan Project
2008-2009

2. Key Questions about Listening
• What are listeners doing when they listen?
• What factors affect good listening?
• What are characteristics of “real life” listening?
• What are the many things listeners listen for?
• What are some principles for designing listening
techniques?
• How can listening techniques be interactive?
• What are some common techniques for teaching
listening?

3. What makes listening difficult?
• Clustering
• Redundancy
• Reduced forms
• Performance variables
• Colloquial language
• Rate of delivery
• Stress, rhythm, and intonation
• Interaction

4. What types of listening skills are
developed?
• Microskills
• Macroskills
(see handout)

5. What kinds of listening skills are
taught?
• Reactive (listen and repeat)
• Intensive (listen on a focused sound)
• Responsive (listen and respond – briefly)
• Selective (listen for particular items in a
longer passage)
• Extensive (listen for interactive/responsive
purposes)
• Interactive (listen to discuss, respond,
debate)

6. Principles for teaching listening
• Integrate listening into the course
• Appeal to students’ personal goals
• Use authentic language and contexts
• Consider how students will respond
• Teach listening strategies
• Include both bottom-up AND top-down
listening

7. Common listening strategies
• Looking for key words
• Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
• Predicting a speaker’s purpose by the context
• Activating background knowledge
• Guessing at meanings
• Seeking clarification
• Listening for the gist
• Developing test-taking strategies for listening

8. Break-out Activity
• With a partner/group, look at the strategies
given on the handout to you. Briefly plan
how you might teach these strategies to
students.
• Report back to the whole group on at least
two of the activities.

9. Current issues in teaching oral
skills
• Conversational discourse
• Teaching pronunciation
• Accuracy and fluency
• Affective factors
• Interaction effect
• Questions about intelligibility
• Questions about what is “correct” speech

10. What makes speaking difficult?
The same things that make listening difficult:
• Clustering
• Redundancy
• Reduced forms
• Performance variables
• Colloquial language
• Rate of delivery
• Stress, rhythm, and intonation
• Interaction

11. Types of classroom performance
• Imitative (this should be limited) –
repetition drill
• Intensive – practice a
grammatical/phonological feature
• Responsive – to respond to a question
• Transactional (dialogue) – to convey
information
• Interpersonal (dialogue) – to interact
socially
• Extensive – monologue
(intermediate/advanced)

12. Do drills have a place?
• Yes, BUT….

13. Guidelines for Drills
• Keep them short
• Keep them simple
• Keep them snappy
• Ensure that students know WHY they are
doing the drill
• Limit the drill to phonological/grammatical
points
• Ensure that they lead to a communicative
goal
• DON’T OVERUSE THEM

14. Principles for Teaching Speaking
• Focus on fluency and accuracy (depending on
objective)
• Use intrinsically motivating techniques
• Use authentic language in meaningful contexts
• Provide appropriate feedback and correction
• Optimize the natural link between listening and
speaking (and other skills)
• Give students the opportunity to initiate oral
communication.
• Develop speaking strategies.

15. Sample activities for teaching
conversation
• See handouts
• Interviews
• Guessing games
• Jigsaw tasks
• Ranking exercises
• Discussions
• Values clarification
• Problem-solving activities
• Role plays
• Simulations

16. Should we teach pronunciation?
• According to Wong (1987), “sounds are
less crucial for understanding than the
way they are organized” (as cited in
Brown, 2008, p. 339).
• Native speakers rely more on stress and
intonation than accurate articulation of a
particular sound.

17. Factors that affect pronunciation
• Native language
• Age
• Exposure
• Innate phonetic ability
• Identity and language ego
• Motivation/concern for good pronunciation

18. When and how should I correct
errors?
• Global and local errors
• Performance slip or competence error

19. Common speaking strategies
• Asking for clarification (what?)
• Asking someone to repeat something
• Using fillers
• Using conversation maintenance cues (uh-huh,
right, yeah, okay, hm)
• Getting someone’s attention
• Using paraphrases for structures one can’t
produce
• Appealing for assistance from the interlocutor
• Using formulaic expressions
• Using mime and nonverbal expressions

20. Break-out Activity

21. References
• Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by
principles: An interactive approach to
language pedagogy (3rd
ed). White Plains,
NY: Pearson Education.
• Richard-Amato, P.A. (2003). Making it
happen: From interactive to participatory
language teaching theory and practice (3rd
ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson
Education.