Promoting Academic Listening and Speaking Skills with Adult
ESL Learners
Betsy Parrish
Hamline University
NCTN Conference
November 2012

Objectives
• Explore the impact of integrating language and content to challenge and engage students in listening, speaking, and pronunciation instruction.
• Experience parts of lessons and classroom activities.
• Assess activities for their value in teaching academic listening and speaking strategies.
• Reflect on their use in your own settings.
2

Benefits of integrating language and content
• Multiple options proposed (Snow et al., 1989; updated 2003)
• Benefits of collaborative tasks in content-based instruction (Swain, 2001)
• Gains in both accuracy and fluency (Burger &
Chrétien, 2001)
• Represents most closely what mainstream/content courses demand (Early, 2001)
3

Challenges/Obstacles
• Many programs don’t have resources to teach content-based courses.
• Many ESL programs are not co-located with contentbased courses.
• Students in ESL classes have very different backgrounds, interested and experiences with content areas.
4

Possible Solution
• Create content-based units.
• Choose content that would appeal to a variety of learners.
• Integrate both content and language objectives.
• Include practice in skills and strategies needed for academic success.
5

Some identified gaps between ABE/ESL and Post-secondary instruction:



Language skills/strategies development
Note-taking
Higher-order thinking/Critical thinking
Others identified- see Johnson & Parrish (2010)
6

ABE/ESL transitions-level instructors
 ABE teachers rated the frequency at which a particular skill was included in classroom instruction

College instructors: developmental education, Health care and technical/trades
• College faculty rated the importance of particular skills needed for students to be successful in their classes
8

The disconnect between ABE/ESL and post secondary instruction
9

Listening/Higher-order Thinking:
Ability to synthesize information from lectures with other sources
 82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed.
 While 44.7% of college faculty report it is very or extremely important.
10

Note Taking During Lectures

82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed .
 While 44.7% of college faculty indicate it is very or extremely important .
11

Group/collaborative work
 Emphasis on group projects in college.
 Limited use of group projects in ABE/ESL

Teaching Listening Skills

Purposes for Listening
•
•
•
Academic
Directions
Lectures
Interaction with classmates
•
•
•
Workplace
Directions
Meetings
Interaction with customers

Strategies that play an important role in listening
• Anticipating content
• Listening to confirm predictions
• Listening for gist
• Listening for specific information
• Listening for details-intensive listening
• Making inferences
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 93 15

Interactive top-down and bottom-up processing
“In top-down processing, the listener’s background knowledge (of the topic, general world knowledge, and of how texts “work”) interacts with the linguistic knowledge drawn upon in bottom-up processing…”
(Graham and Macaro 2008, p. 748)
16

What we can do in class
• Make students aware of strategies they are using;
• model selected strategies;
• provide guided and structured practice of the new strategies;
• include action planning, goal setting and evaluation.
(Graham and Macaro, 2008)
17

Teaching Oral Communication Skills

Purposes for Speaking
Academic
• Oral presentations
• Classroom participation
• Small group work e.g., team projects
Workplace
• Train new workers
• Clarification questions
• Work in teams
• Social interaction

Nature of communicative speaking tasks
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 101
20

Why do we need to integrate pronunciation instruction?
• Meet the demands of jobs (Parrish, 2004)
• Face the reality of NS’ attitudes (Munro, M.J., and
Derwing, T.M.,1995).
• Learners perceived need to become intelligible
(Derwing, T.M., and Rossiter, M.J.,2002).
21

The Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC 1995)Guidelines
• How frequently is English needed in the job?
• How complex is the language that is needed for the job?
• Would miscommunication have grave results?
• Is communication done under high-stress conditions?
• Is communication with one-time listeners, or would a listener have to time to become accustomed to the speaker’s accent?

Ask yourself those questions for each of the jobs below and see what you notice.
• Restaurant server
• Nursing assistant
• Manufacturing line operator
• Supervisor in manufacturing
• Doctor
• Nurse
• Dental Hygienist
• Dishwasher
• Housekeeper
• Teacher
• Landscaper
• Truck Driver
• Receptionist
Teaching Adult ESL p. 109

A focus on suprasegmentals
(Field,2005; Hahn, 2004; Levis, 1999)
• Question intonation
• Word stress
• Sentence stress-Emphatic and contrastive
• Reduced speech
• Thought groups
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Who is Muhammad Yunus ?

The Nobel Peace Prize
• What is the Nobel Peace Prize?
• Why do you think the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to someone for an economic development project?

What do I k now?
KWL Charts
Micro-financing
What do I w ant to learn?
What did I l earn?
27

Research on empowerment of women
Professor Fahima Aziz at Hamline University has been conducting research on the ways in which membership in the Grameen Bank has affected the lifestyles and well-being of women in rural
Bangladesh.

These are some of the hypotheses she tested:
Participation by women in Grameen bank will lead to:
• greater decision-making power
• more control over fertility decisions
• decision making for children’s marriages

Group A Fertility Decision: Number of Children
Husband decides
Wife decides
Both decide
God decides
Don’t know
Row
Total
Grameen Bank
Loan Recipients
1
Non-Grameen members
28
19
6
57
33
2
11
79
78

Groups presentations
Create new groups of 4 (one member from each of the original groups). Present your findings and your graph to your classmates.

Summarize the findings
Considering ALL of the information you have gathered from your classmates…
1. In which area was there the greatest improvement in the lives of women as a result of membership in the
Grameen Bank?
2. How do these results compare to your own predictions?
3. Were there any developments that surprised you? If so, what?

Sentence stress
Table 4.3
Content Words
These are the words that carry the most meaning in the sentences. We stress these in natural discourse
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Conjunctions (however, therefore)
Function Words
These are the small words that are the glue of the sentences. We tend not to stress these words.
Articles
Prepositions
Short conjunctions ( and, but)
Auxiliary verbs
Pronouns
Teaching Adult ESL p. 113

Integrate note-taking
Ventures
Transitions p. 3

Combine listening and critical thinking
Ventures 4 , p. 97

Use listening grid activities
Group A
History/origin of holiday
Special Food
Activities
Clothes
Group B
History/origin of holiday
Special Food
Activities
Clothes
Nowrouz in Iran Bastille Day in France
Freeing of Bastille Prison
French Revolution 1789
Fresh fruit
White Fish
Marches
Military marches
Dances and music
New clothes
Nowrouz in Iran
Celebrates start of spring
Bastille Day in France
Eating outside
Visiting Family
Going on picnics
Jumping over fire
Anything red, white and blue
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 96
Teaching Adult ESL Task 4.4
37

Mingles
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 105
38

Graphic Organizers
 Give learners tools/templates for organizing information
 Help learners recognize text types or genres
 Act as precursor to formal note-taking
 Promote deeper listening, thinking
 Provide tools for building autonomy
Use them for
 Pre-listening
 While -listening tasks
 Note taking while listening
 Sorting and categorizing ideas, concepts, words
 Preparing for speaking to organize ideas
(Parrish and Johnson; 2010)
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• the impact of integrating language and content to challenge and engage students in listening, speaking, and pronunciation instruction.
40

REFLECT
• In what ways did the activities promote critical thinking and prepare students academically?
• What did you hear about that you hadn’t tried before?
• Which activities/topics would be appropriate for the learners you serve?