Research Article
Exploring Receptive Skills
Ahmad Fardin Zahedi
Junior student of the English Department of Language and Literature Faculty,
Al-Beroni University, Kapisa, Afghanistan
Abstract
2.1. Receptive Skills
This study used qualitative research method to
investigate receptive sills which are playing
important roles in language acquisition and
communication. The purpose of this study is to
explore receptive skills, somethings to know
about listening and reading, the ways we
should follow to be a good listener and reader,
to know about those areas cause us to read and
listen, and why we should work on our
receptive skills. The data collection relied on
academic journals, articles, and notions.
Receptive skills are the ability to listen
and understand a language. Reading and
listening are receptive skills. Language is
received and meaning is decoded for the easy
understanding of the message. Imagination is
increased through listening and reading.
Receptive skills are meant to be used for
receiving a language. It is how you unpack the
information given to you by the one you’re
speaking with. It can also be from
understanding what someone is reading.
Key words: receptive skills, listening and
speaking, how to read and listen, top-down
and bottom-down strategies, reasons for
reading and listening, needs of receptive skills.
2.2. How to read and listen?
1.Introduction
Nowadays the perception or finding
that students are dealing with on which they
are reading or listening is very important
because if they do not find anything during
perceptive actions, it may make the area too
bound for them to be understood. The
significance of receptive skills can be realized
when students face some challenges while
reading or listening. Therefore, I as a junior
student of department of English know well
about the importance of good implementation
of receptive skills for students to improve their
language acquisition.
2. Literature review
In order to make sense of any text we
need to have 'pre-existent knowledge of the
world' (Cook 1989: 69). we recognize a letter
of rejection or a letter offering a job within the
first couple of lines (Tribble 1997: 35).
“Listening is stage one of responding act of a
communicating event. Listening is a sustained
effort to receive sound and make meaning. It
opens up possibilities for continuing
interaction” (Lakshminarayanan, 57).
When we read a story or a newspaper,
listen to the news, or take part in conversation
we employ our previous knowledge as we
approach the process of comprehension, and
we deploy a range of receptive skills; which
ones we use will be determined by our reading
or listening purpose. What a reader will bring
to understand a piece of discourse is much
more than just knowing the language. Such
knowledge is often referred to as schema
(plural schemata). Each of us carries in our
heads mental representations of typical
situations that we come across. When we are
stimulated by particular words, discourse
patterns, or contexts, such schematic
knowledge is activated and we are able to
recognize what we see or hear because it fits
into patterns that we already know. We have to
work doubly hard to understand what they see
or hear when we see a written text our
schematic knowledge may first tell us what
kind of text genre we are dealing with. Thus if
we recognize an extract as coming from a
novel we will have expectations about the kind
of text we are going to read. These will be
different from the expectations aroused if we
recognize a piece of text as coming from an
instruction manual. Knowing what kind of a
text we are dealing with allows us to predict
the form it may take at the text; paragraph, and
sentence level. Key words and phrases alert us
to the subject of a text, and this again allows
us, as we read, to predict what is coming next.
In conversation knowledge of typical
interactions helps participants to communicate
efficiently. As the conversation continues, the
speakers and listeners draw upon various
schemata -including genre, topic, discourse
patterning, and the use of specific language
features - to help them make sense of what
they are hearing. As with readers, such
schemata arouse expectations which allow
listeners to predict what will happen in the
conversation. Such predictions give the
interaction a far greater chance of success than
if the participants did not have such preexisting knowledge to draw upon. Shared
schemata make spoken and written
communication efficient. Without the right
kind of pre-existing knowledge,
comprehension becomes much more difficult.
And that is the problem for some foreign
language learners who, because they have a
different shared knowledge of cultural
reference and discourse patterning in their own
language and culture from that in the English
variety they are dealing with, have to work
doubly hard to understand what they see or
hear.
2.3. Top-down and bottom-up strategies
A frequent distinction is made especially in the analysis of reading - between
top-down and bottom-up processing. In
metaphorical terms this can be likened to the
difference between looking down on
something from above - getting an overview and, on the contrary, being in the middle of
something and understanding where we are by
concentrating on all the individual features. It
is the difference between looking at a forest, or
studying the individual trees within it. It has
been said that in top-down processing the
reader or listener gets a general view of the
reading or listening passage by, in some way,
absorbing the overall picture: This is greatly
helped if the reader or listener's schemata
allow them to have appropriate expectations of
what they are going to come across. In bottomup processing, on the other hand, the reader or
listener focuses on individual words and
phrases, and achieves understanding by
stringing these detailed elements together to
build up a whole. It is probably most useful to
see acts of reading and listening as interactions
between top-down and bottom-up processing.
Sometimes it is the individual details that help
us understand the whole; sometimes it is our
overview that allows us to process the details.
Without a good understanding of a reasonable
proportion - of the details gained through some
bottom-up processing we will be unable to get
any clear general picture of what the text is
about. A non-scientist attempting to read a
specialist science journal finds this to be the
case almost immediately. A person listening to
a conversation in a foreign language with
many words he or she does not know finds
bottom-up and top-down processing almost
impossible.
2.4. Reasons for reading and listening
When we read a sign on the motorway
our motives are different from when we read a
detective novel; when we take an audiotape
guide round a museum we have a different
purpose in mind from when we listen to a
stranger giving us directions on a street corner.
We can divide reasons for reading and
listening into four broad categories:
1. For maintaining good social relations,
we often hear people say they spent a
whole afternoon or whole weekend
chatting with someone else but when
they are asked what they talked about,
they say things like, 'Nothing much!'
or 'I can't really remember.' In this
kind of talk, the information content or
message is not important. What is
important is the goodwill that is
maintained or established through the
talk. The communication here is
listener-oriented and not messageoriented. A great deal of conversation
and casual talk is of this nature.
2. For entertainment People listen to
jokes, stories, songs, plays, TV; radio
broadcasts, etc. mainly for
entertainment. The outcome of such
listening is not usually measured in
terms of how useful it was but in
terms of personal satisfaction.
3. For obtaining information necessary
for day-to-day living a large amount
of reading and listening takes place
because it will help us to achieve some
clear aim. Thus, for example, we read
a road sign so that we know where to
go. People listen to news broadcasts,
directions on how to get to different
places, weather forecasts and travel:
information-airport, bus- and train
terminal announcements-because
listening to these enables them to get
the information necessary for day-today living: to learning. know when to
board the plane, whether it is 'safe' to
plan a picnic, etc.
4. For academic purposes People listen
to lectures, seminars and talks as a
way of extending their knowledge and
skills. Listening is a central part of all
learning. A pupil who cannot
understand what the teacher is saying
in a class is seriously hampered in his
listening.
2.5. Needs of receptive skills
A large amount of reading and
listening takes place because it helps the
students achieve the clear aim. For example, if
someone reads a roads sign so that they know
where to go. Students listen to lectures,
seminars and talks for extending their
knowledge and skills. Listening is a hub of all
learning. A student who cannot understand
what the teacher says in a class is seriously
slowdown in the learning. Development of
Receptive Skills The receptive skills are to be
improved through the improvement of
listening and reading. A student is a good
listener and careful reader as well. Through
the interest and search of knowledge, the
learner may earn maximum receptive skills.
The ability to make out something remain
questionable until it reaches perfection. A
student may understand a well written essay
but he cannot produce it perfectly without
practice. For a good output, an input is
necessary. Absorption and concentration is
important for listening. The reading needs an
extensive study to improve it. The best
selection of materials for reading, different
ideas on the same subject also help to improve
these skills. English Movies Help Stimulate
Students’ Thirst for Knowledge and Improve
Their Learning Enthusiasm Interest is the best
teacher. When a person is interested in
something, he will have a huge power to
understand it, and further grasp it. So we must
take all possible means to stimulate students’
interest in learning, so as to improve their
listening by mobilizing their enthusiasm.
Interest of study includes two kinds, namely
direct interest and indirect interest. Among
them, direct interest comes from the learning
process, while the indirect interest from the
study purpose. Direct interest will reinforce
the interest of learning, and reduce the burden
of learning and psychological pressure of
students; indirect interest is to enhance the
students’ learning perseverance and
confidence in their learning. Both direct
interest and indirect interest are not born, but
are formed by the cultivation of the day after
tomorrow. Interest arises from the emotion; it
is difficult to produce a strong interest in
something in the lack of real environment of
the emotional development. Art is the best
bridge of emotional communication, especially
in English listening learning. English movies
is the creation of life, which has an obvious
effect on the emotional change. The story,
rich, colorful pictures, and actor’s emotion in
the English movie can stimulate students’
learning enthusiasm than the boring English
teaching materials, as well as improve their
learning enthusiasm. When students have a
strong interest in English movies, they will be
interested in the language in movies, which
further stimulate students to imitate and pursue
the passion for film language.
2.6. Listening and reading
Listening is a receptive skill because
students receive new knowledge or
information. Many tools which trigger listening
can be used to improve it. Teachers can use
digital stories, video presentations, podcasts
and other CALL features. Assigning a task to
students, such as listening to a story from a
video and asking them to memorize and grasp
the meaning of it, using their own words, would
enhance their listening skills. The features that
can be useful for teaching listening skills are as
follows: Repeated audio delivery; slowed audio
text delivery; accompanying texts; captioned
video; translation bots and listening
comprehension; and voice chat and interactive
native speaker practice (Robin, 2007). These
listening tasks should be in compliance with
students’ level of English, unlike in the past
when “the determination of levels of difficulty
was often arbitrary or subjective” (Lynch,
1988, p. 178). Activities should also be in
compliance with students’ knowledge and their
learning styles and strategies. In terms of
reading, teachers can implement Internet-based
reading materials in their curriculum and design
appropriate materials and authentic texts that
help students improve their reading (Brandl,
2002). According to Brandl (2002), “Internetbased reading activities that have gained [the]
most widespread attention and popularity
among language teachers and students are those
in which the instructor provides a set of
learning tasks that engage the learners in
exploring reading materials in their authentic
environments” (p.91).
3. Conclusion
According to the researches that scholars have
done, it is proved that receptive skills are
effective for both our better understanding and
communication. Students can implement some
strategies that affect their skills to be able to
improve these skills. Moreover, it is a must for
students to work on these skills not to face any
specific challenge during their studies. At last,
if there is not good reception, there is not good
production, communication, understanding,
perception, and realization.
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