TOPIC 7
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TOPIC 7:
SPOKEN LANGUAGE. LISTENING COMPREHENSION: FROM
HEARING TO ACTIVE AND SELECTIVE LISTENING.
SPEAKING: FROM IMITATION TO FREE PRODUCTION.
I.- INTRODUCTION
II.- SPOKEN LANGUAGE
1.- Characteristics
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The need for accuracy
Addressee in mind
Same situational context
Spontaneity and the speed
Linguistic features
Grammar and vocabulary
III.- LISTENING
1.- Definition of the process
2.- Stages of the process
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Identify the phonic and syntactic patterning
Identify and select them without retention
Identification and guided selection with short term retention
Identification and selection with long term retention
3.- Planning a listening lesson
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What to be learnt
How to teach
What material to use
What activities will be done
4.- Guidelines to develop the listening skill
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5.- Listening subskills
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Listening to confirm expectations
Listening to extract specific information
Listening for general understanding
Inferring the speaker’s attitude
6.- Listening materials
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Songs
Video recordings
Tapes
The teacher
7.- Listening activities
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Pre-listening activities
 Prediction exercises
 Vocabulary exercises
 Grammar exercises
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While-listening activities
 Ear training activities
 Global-listening exercises
- Completing diagrams
- Problem solving
 Selective-listening activities
- Answering display questions
- Following instructions
- Completion-type activities
- Identifying mistakes or contradictions
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Post-listening activities
IV.- SPEAKING
1.- Definition of the process
2.- Planning a speaking lesson
3.- Speaking activities
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Activities based on repetition and imitation
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Controlled activities
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Repetition drills
Substitution drills
Transformation drills
Guessing drills
Question and answer
Right / wrong statements and corrections
Stating consequences
Model dialogue and key words
Gapped dialogues
Cuewords
Picture cards
Language games
Decision-making activities
Questionnaires
Autonomous interaction
 Functional communication
 Social interaction
V.- SUMMARY
VI.- REFERENCES
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I.- INTRODUCTION
In this topic, we’ll start from the idea that the Foreign Language Area
Curriculum mentions a sequence which must be followed when teaching the
different skills: the oral skills (listening and speaking) are stressed over written
skills (reading and writing). That's because learning to speak and to understand
means learning the language, whereas reading and writing implies that the
language is already known and that we are using its graphic representation.
Although it's better to teach a FL following this sequence, teachers have to
take into account that every skill should be reinforced by the rest and none of
them can be taught in isolation.
In this topic we'll concentrate on the oral language, analysing in the first
part the main characteristics of it and the differences with the written language.
In the second part of the topic, we'll go into detail about both types of oral
language, listening and speaking skills, examining some of the activities we can
do in order to improve them. We’ll take into account that listening is a receptive
skill, while speaking is a productive skill.
II.- SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Let us concentrate on the spoken language. We'll explain its characteristics
analysing, at the same time, its differences with the written language.
1.- Characteristics
 Perhaps, the most important difference between writing and speaking is
related to the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make mistakes
when they are speaking: they change the subject in the middle of a sentence,
hesitate an say the same thing in different ways,… These mistakes, except in
extremely formal situations, are considered as normal. However, it's expected
that writing should be "correct".
 Another characteristic is that speech is time-bound, dynamic and transient. It's
a part of an interaction in which both participants are present, and the speaker
has a specific addressee in mind. Meanwhile, in most of the cases, the writer
doesn't know who the addressee is, so that there is a little expectation of a
reply.
 In this regard, participants are in a face-to-face interaction and share the same
situational context; as a result, they can rely on non-verbal devices, as body
language, facial expression and gesture, as well as rely on the context, in
order to help make clear what they mean. This does not happen in speech.
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 Another characteristic is that speakers do at least three things at once:
planning what to say next, saying what they have planned, and monitoring
what they are saying in order to check that it is what they meant to say. On
the other hand, in the speech prevails the spontaneity and the speed, so it's
more difficult to engage in complex advanced planning. Whereas, writers can
be more precise and organised about what they have to say, and also because
they have more time for planning and revision.
 Talking about the linguistic features, a speaker has a great range of
expressive possibilities, since he can vary his intonation and stress. The
writing system cannot directly represent the prosodic features of speech. Only
a very few graphic conventions relate to prosody, such as question marks.
 As grammar and vocabulary regards, the syntax of speech is much simpler
than the syntax of writing. The lexicon of speech is also often vague, using
words which refer directly to the situation (deictic expressions, such as that
one, in here, right now). In written language these expressions are very
unusual.
III.- LISTENING
1.- Definition of the process
Let us concentrate on the listening skill. It is a receptive skill and it wasn't
until the development of the Communicative Approach in the 70's when the
listening skill took importance in the language acquisition. Some previous
methods, such as the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual Method, put
emphasis in the oral comprehension, but listening was concentrated on the lower
levels.
The Communicative Approach postulated the use of realistic and authentic
language and learners were trained to match what they heard into a context; the
context helped them to understand the meaning.
Nowadays it is accepted that listening plays an important role in Foreign
Language Teaching because it provides a great input for the learner, it allows
introducing new language and it can provide enjoyment.
2.- Stages of the process
The process of writing goes on through different stages, which we'll
analyse as follows.
 Firstly, the pupils have to identify the phonic and syntactic patterning, that
is, to recognise the familiar elements in the mass of speech without being able
to recognise the interrelationships within the whole system.
 Then, the pupils must identify and select them without retention, that is,
listening for pleasure with no questions to be answered.
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 After that, SS must do an identification and guided selection with short
term retention, that is, they are giver a prior indication of what they are
going to listen. They demonstrate their comprehension immediately in some
sort of exercise.
 An the last stage is the identification and selection with long term
retention, that is, SS demonstrate their comprehension developing activities
which require the use of the material previously learnt.
3.- Planning a listening lesson
In order to achieve a successful development of the listening skill, it is
essential to plan it very carefully. A listening lesson involves considering five
aspects:
 What to be learnt; we have to decide the listening skills to be developed. In
the early stages we should concentrate on listening at the level of recognition.
 How to teach; the procedure to follow.
 What material to use; we have to make a choice regarding materials, and it
has to be made according to two criteria:
- The linguistic difficulty of the listening text; the text should be
within the students language proficiency range.
- The learners’ motivation; the materials used should be motivating
for the students.
We should remember that the teacher can also be a source of spoken
language, he / she can also provide input.
 What activities will be done; they should also be motivating and relevant to
the students needs.
4.- Guidelines to develop the listening skill
There are some guidelines that may be useful when planning how to
develop pupils' listening skill, which we’ll mention as follows:
 Firstly, we must try to give children the confidence; the SS should be told that
they cannot always be expected to understand every word.
 Secondly, we must help the SS to develop the strategies for listening; the
most important strategy is the use of "intelligent guesswork", that is, they can
use their background knowledge to work out the meaning of a word. They
can also use other strategies such as predicting, working out the meaning
from the context,… The SS should be encouraged to notice the body language
or the way the speaker use his/her voice.
 Finally, we must explain them why they have to listen; this means spelling
out which part of the message they need to focus on and what they are going
to do before listening, while they listening or after listening.
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We will now focus on two of the aspects when planning a lesson, the
listening subskills and the listening materials.
5.- Listening subskills
The listening subskills are: listening to confirm expectations, listening to
extract specific information, listening for general understanding and inferring the
speaker’s attitude.
 Listening to confirm expectations. We can ask students to predict what they
are going to listen and then, listen to it to confirm their expectations. In this
way, the students’ interest is aroused and they have a definite purpose for
listening.
 Listening to extract specific information. Extracting specific information
when listening is a major subskill since a great deal of what is said in
conversation in redundant and unnecessary.
 Listening for general understanding. Students listen to conversations in
order to get a general idea of what the main points are. The students’ task is
fairly simple but it is a vital skill (because they listen to authentic spoken
language) that they must develop.
 Inferring the speaker’s attitude. An awareness of stress, intonation or any
body language, such as facial expression or gestures, will help the children to
work out meaning.
6.- Listening materials
Talking about the listening materials, the most useful ones are the songs,
the video recordings, the tapes and the teacher.
 Songs are an important source of motivation. They may be used to change the
pace of the lesson or to introduce cultural aspects. They reinforce the learning
process since they are very useful to review and learn vocabulary,
pronunciation, grammatical structures and patterns.
 Video recordings: When using the video it is essential to choose the right
technique depending on the purpose: recognition, production or a
combination of both. There are several reasons for using video to develop
listening skills:
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It is a motivating type of material.
The pupils’ imagination is fostered.
This sort of communication has an image context.
Paralinguistic features help comprehension.
 Tapes: We can use tapes adjusting the level to the pupils’ needs.
 The teacher: as a matter of fact, can also provide input. The pupils listen to
the teacher most of the time, so he / she must have a good pronunciation.
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7.- Listening activities
The listening activities can be divided into pre-listening, while-listening
and post-listening activities. Let us see each one separately.
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Pre-listening activities
These activities aim to warm SS up and prepare them to achieve the most
from the passage and to arouse their interest. We can distinguish three types of
pre-listening activities: prediction activities, vocabulary exercises and grammar
exercises.
Prediction exercises encourage the SS to draw inferences and increase the
amount of language recognised at first hearing, for instance:
 The SS are told the topic of the listening passage and are asked to guess some
of the words or phrases they think they might hear.
 The teacher plays the first few sentences of the recording and challenges the
SS to work out what is going on. The SS call out their ideas, which are
discussed.
Vocabulary exercises, for example:
 The SS are given a list of words that might occur in the listening text and are
asked to listen for which ones occur and which do not.
 The pupils do a picture and word matching exercise. This has two advantages.
Firstly you can bring certain words into the forefront of the SS’ minds, and
secondly, you can ensure that they know the meaning of new words. It is not
necessary that all the words which appear in the exercise should appear on the
tape.
Grammar exercises, such as gap-filling exercises, involving grammatical
structures. The sentences will be taken from the listening passage. The SS will
check the answers from the tape.
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While-listening activities
While-listening activities aim to guide the pupils to handle the information
in the passage. Three types of exercises are to be distinguished:
Ear training activities help SS in distinguishing between key sounds,
stress and intonation patterns. They are most suitable in the early stages.
Global-listening exercises are aimed at helping SS to construct an overall
sense of a text and they include:
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 Completing diagrams
 Problem solving activities in which SS match or recognise information in a
text, for example:
- The SS compare what they hear with the information given to them
in a picture. They listen to see how far the information the speaker
provides agrees with, or contradicts, the information they were
originally given.
- Another problem-solving activity is storyline pictures sets: the SS
listen to a story or set of instructions referring to a number of
pictures and are asked to recognise the pictures described and to put
them in the correct order according to the passage.
Selective-listening activities are designed to help SS derive specific
information from a text, for instance:
 Answering display questions; questions testing understanding of detail. The
questions can be answered individually or in groups and may take various
forms: open-ended questions, multiple choice questions, true/false statements.
The questions should be read and understood in the pre-listening stage.
 Following instructions, that is, listen-and-do exercises in which they must
listen to what someone says, understand it and complete a task. They include
picture dictation, where SS have to draw a picture which the teacher or
another S talks about without showing it; completing a map or picture; tracing
a route on a map in order to arrive at a particular place. These activities
involve careful listening without requiring a verbal response.
 In completion-type activities SS have to complete a version of a story, a
description or a song while they listen.
 Another kind of while-listening activity is Identifying mistakes or
contradictions: SS hear two versions of a story or two accounts of an event
and have to identify the points of difference.
Many games depend for their success on SS listening carefully to each
other, e.g. Simon says, in which a S in front of the class gives commands,
some preceded by the words Simon says and others not. The class obeys the
former only.
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Post-listening activities
In post-listening activities SS take the information they have gained from
the listening passage and use it for another purpose (composition, discussion).
Some extension work can also be done based on the content of the passage.
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IV.- SPEAKING
1.- Definition of the process
As follows, we'll concentrate on the speaking skill. During the first half of
this century, this skill was neglected, since in the FL teaching, the emphasis was
on the written skills. Moreover, speaking has received more attention in the last
twenty years.
Although in the Direct and the Audio-Lingual method the emphasis was
on oral communication, students could not do free activities until they have
mastered the new language in controlled exercises, in drills. Now it is accepted
that some sort of dynamic and meaningful exercises should be included in
speaking lessons from the beginning.
When SS are learning a FL, they want prompt results and speaking is the
aim when they come to class. They want to speak and that's the most important
thing to them. When listening, the input received can be in a higher lever than
expected; in contrast, when speaking, the speaker choose the language according
to his/her level and that's an easy aspect in comparison with listening.
Although the speaker can choose the level, speaking is one of the most
problematical skills since successful oral communication involves many things:
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To know some grammar and vocabulary.
Ability to make the foreign sounds correctly.
To master the suprasegmental features.
Fluency.
Some listening skills.
When a child is learning a FL, he usually makes mistakes. A solution
would be to guide oral practice to avoid the SS' mistakes, or at least to try that
they make as few as possible. Then, the psychological aspect is important,
because when children realise that they can speak without mistakes, they'll be
motivated to go on speaking properly.
The main goal of speaking will be fluency, which can be defined as the
ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too
much hesitation.
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2.- Planning a speaking lesson
When planning a speaking lesson, we must bear in mind that speaking
activities should fulfill certain requirements:
 Activities must provide opportunities for language practice.
 They must be interesting.
 As regard to the subject matter, it must be within the students' experience; it
must be close to their lives.
3.- Speaking activities
Speaking activities fall into the following three categories: activities based
on repetition and imitation, controlled activities and autonomous interaction.
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Activities based on repetition and imitation
Littlewood’s structural and quasi-communicative activities belong to this
group. They are preparatory activities, intended to prepare learners for
communicative activities. The former focus on the grammatical system and on
ways in which items can be combined. The latter consist of two or more
conversational exchanges.
Drills are an example of this type of structure-orientated exercises. They
help to assimilate facts about new language and enable the student to produce the
new language for the first time by helping him master the basic structural
patterns of the language. They are usually very controlled and have a fairly
limited potential. They shouldn't be used either too frequently or for too long.
The teacher will insist on accuracy, correcting where SS make mistakes.
In addition, the SS' talking time can be notably increased in large groups. There
are different kinds of drills:
 Repetition drills; SS have to repeat the sample pattern accurately and
quickly; e.g. "I went to the market and I bought…"
 Substitution drills; SS are required to replace a word or phrase of the model
sentence by the cue word/phrase provided by the teacher.
 Transformation drills; e.g. putting affirmative sentences in the negative or
active sentences in the passive.
 Guessing drills; they get SS to try to find out through guessing. They are
thus based on the information gap principle. Some examples are:
- SS think of something they did the previous weekend and then they
take turns to find out what it is by asking.
- SS imagine that they have been ill and they take turns to find out
each other’s illness by asking.
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Controlled activities
Controlled activities help SS develop confidence and the ability to
participate in simple conversations. Texts (dialogues and prose passages) can be
exploited for oral practice. The advantage of the activities based on them over the
drills we have looked at is that they offer a well-defined context for practice.
 Question and answer practice is one of the commonest ways of giving
language practice in the classroom.
 Other techniques are right / wrong statements and corrections. SS are asked
to say whether a statement is right or wrong within the context of the text and,
if it is wrong, they give the correct version; or they are asked to correct
statements.
 A third technique can be stating consequences, in which the SS have to say
what happened as a result of an event or action described.
T: Columbus discovered America.
S1: Other people followed him.
S2: It changes the story of the world.
Pairwork activities provide SS with a greater amount of meaningful
practice. There are various types of pairwork activities: model dialogue and key
words, gapped dialogues, cue words, picture cards, language games, decisionmaking activities and questionnaires. Let us outline each one of them:
 Model dialogue and key words: SS work with a set of 4-5 dialogues related
to the same theme together with a list of key words which they can use to
produce different dialogues.
 In gapped dialogues one of the speakers has to supply the missing utterances.
The speaker’s missing words may also be cued by indicating what functions
he has to express, e.g.
A.- .......... (invite somebody to go out with you).
B.- Sorry, I’m busy.
A.- .......... (suggest another day).
B.- Yes, that would be fine.
A.- .......... ( suggest a time).
B.- All right. See you then.
 Cuewords: SS are given cards with a number of cuewords on them, around
which a dialogue can be modelled, and a model dialogue to work with.
 Picture cards can be used for a range of activities:
- Finding uses; SS have to find uses for an object within a particular
environment, to compare the uses for an object in two environments,
or to find two uses for an object, one normal use, the other absurd.
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Association activities; SS have to link two objects e.g. in terms of
use, material, etc.
 Language games also help to improve speaking skills, e.g. Hide and seek,
where SS “hide” and object somewhere in a picture. They then take turns to
find out where the object has been hidden by asking questions like Is it on the
bookcase? Is it under the TV?
 Decision-making activities require SS to make certain decisions. They
employ the information gap principle, that is, SS have to try to find out what
each has decided. For instance, they are given a set of numbered places and
they write the numbers on a street plan to indicate their positions, which their
partners have to guess.
Non-pictorial aids such as maps, menus, radio and TV programmes are
another way of getting SS to interact using fairly controlled language. For
example, with maps SS can practise giving directions. With menus they can
decide what they are going to eat and drink. With TV and radio programmes
they can discuss what they are going to watch or listen.
 Questionnaires with mixed structures are effective ways of getting SS to
draw on all their linguistic resources. They involve identifying somebody
who corresponds to a requirement of the questionnaire. For example, the
questionnaire may read:
Find someone who:
NAME
- is wearing black socks
- likes flying
- can’t swim
- has never been abroad
- would like to go to the moon
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Autonomous interaction
The last type of speaking activities is related to the autonomous
interaction, that aims to get from the students a free production of language.
Communicative activities provide the learners opportunities to use the
language for themselves. The opportunity to say something has to be given to
them, so that they can see for themselves the value and use of what they are
learning. The activities must be geared to the learners’ needs and the teacher
should formulate the tasks in terms that SS can understand and ensure that the
instructions are clear. If the task is very complex, it is advisable to set up a
rehearsal before asking SS to start. Moreover, the teacher should:
 make sure that everybody speaks English and that everything runs smoothly.
 set up mixed ability pairs/groups because SS learn from one another.
 elicit or pre-teach the language SS will need during the activity.
 monitor the task discreetly. H / S should intervene only if he/she is quite
certain that learners cannot manage on their own.
 should not keep correcting and demand too high a standard of accuracy.
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Littlewood distinguishes two types of communicative activities: functional
communication and social interaction.
a) Functional communication activities involve the communication of
information. They have to overcome an information gap or solve a problem.
By ‘information gap’ Littlewood means a type of activity in which one or
more of the SS has to get information from someone else. Some examples of
these activities are the following:
 Discovering identical pairs: one S has to find which of four other has the
same picture as his.
 Discovering missing information: two SS each have an incomplete table
and each has to get missing information from other.
 Discovering secrets (guessing games). These games are accuracyfocussed games chose purpose is to reinforce what has already been
taught. For example “Twenty questions” (one player thinks of a famous
person or place and the others try to find out what by asking no more
than twenty questions).
b) Social interaction activities involve simulation and role-play. In a simulation
SS act as themselves (giving directions to a passer-by outside the school),
while in a role-play they act as someone else. For role play the class is
usually divided into small groups who are given situations and roles to act
out.
They are different ways of providing a framework for role-play practice:
 Open-ended dialogues, e.g. dialogues which leave the learners free to
decide how to develop them.
 Mapped dialogues: SS are given functional cues on separate cards. We
may define the relationship between the two speakers, e.g. they are
friends.
1 Invite B to go out with you
1 Decline
2 Suggest another possibility
2 Accept
3 Confirm arrangements
3 Agree
 Role instructions describe the situation and tell the participants how they
should interact. Example: you go into a bookshop to buy a book
(describe author and title). Ask the bookseller is he has the book. If the
book is not available, decide whether to order it.
Other activities are discussions and fluency-focussed games, i.e. games in
which SS use language rather than simply practise it, for example in a debate to
choose the SS that will controll the class library.
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V.- SUMMARY
To summarise, in this topic we have dealt with the oral skills (listening
and speaking), which, in the Foreign Language Area curriculum, are stressed
over the written skills (reading and writing). We've given some guidelines in
order to make a proper planning and we've suggest some of the activities we can
do when teaching both skills.
VI.- REFERENCES
 The techniques of Language Teaching by Billows, F.L.
 Teaching Language as communication by Widdowson, H.G. Oxford
University Press.
 Teaching Oral English by Byrne, D. Published in 1986.
 Getting Students to Talk by Golewiowska, A. Published in 1990.
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