EL-108

Teaching and
Assessment
of the

MODULE
Submitted by:
_________________________
STUDENT

Submitted to:
MELANIE G. FELICES
INSTRUCTOR
EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

SECTION 1
Macroskills: An
Overview

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

Developing Listening and Speaking Skills

in a Competence Based Curriculum

When we learn a language, there are four skills that we need for complete
communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then
to speak, then to read, and finally to write. These are called the four "language skills" also
known as "macro skills”. Macro skills are most commonly referred to listening,
speaking, reading, and writing in English language.

What are the four macro-skills?

Language teaching covers four macro-skills needed for communicating –
listening, speaking, reading and writing. Good language teachers plan lessons, and
sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the macro-skills, rather than focusing
on developing only one macro-skill at a time.

Oral skills Literacy skills

Receptive skills Listening Reading

Productive skills Speaking Writing

Listening and speaking are oral skills. Reading and writing are literacy skills.
Each week teachers should include some activities which focus on developing the
students’ oral skills (e.g., pair and group interactions and games) and some activities
which focus on literacy skills (e.g., reading and analyzing texts and then students write
their own).

The four skills can also be grouped another way. Listening and reading
are receptive skills since learners need to process and understand language being
communicated to them in spoken or written form. Speaking and writing are known
as productive skills since learners need to produce language to communicate their ideas
in either speech or text.

It is common for language learners to have stronger receptive than productive

skills, that is they can understand more than they can produce. Teachers often link
activities for developing students’ receptive and productive skills.

How to Develop the Four Macro-skills

The Four Language Skills

When we learn a language, there are four skills that we need for complete
communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then
to speak, then to read, and finally to write. These are called the four "language skills":

 Listening Skill
 Speaking Skill
 Reading Skill
 Writing Skill

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

The four language skills are related to each other in two ways:

 the direction of communication (in or out)

 the method of communication (spoken or written)

Input is sometimes called "reception" and output is sometimes called "production".

Spoken is also known as "oral".

Note that these four language skills are sometimes called the "macro-skills". This is in
contrast to the "micro-skills", which are things like grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation
and spelling.

What is the connection between receptive and productive skills?

It’s important for teaching activities to be designed so that learners receive input
and modeled language (through listening and reading activities) before they are expected
to produce those modeled structures (in their own speaking and writing). Listening and
reading activities prepare students to be able to speak and write their own texts.

To take an example of a speaking activity, to enable students to talk about their

family, a teacher might ask each student to prepare a profile of their family for an oral
presentation to the class:

My family lives in Tagum City. Our house is big. Dad cuts the grass. I
have three brothers. Their names are Tigreal, Chou, and Franko. We have a dog
called Miya. Nana lives with us too. My auntie comes for dinner every night.

To prepare the learners for this speaking activity (demonstrating their productive
skills in the language) it’s important that they first have many opportunities to listen to
and/or read models of family profiles (developing their receptive skills in the language).
The models could be: an audio or video recording of people introducing their family; the
teacher speaking to the class, introducing their family using photos; family profiles
written by students in previous years. Before presenting to the class, the students could
work in pairs to practice introducing their family.

To take an example of a writing activity, to enable students to write about what

they did in the holidays or on the weekend, a teacher might set an activity in which each
student writes a recount of an event.

To prepare students for this writing activity (demonstrating their productive

skills in the language) it’s important that they first have many opportunities to listen to
and/or read model recounts (developing their receptive skills in the language). The
models could be written or told in language by the teacher and/or examples of recounts
written by other students in previous years. The students read those models and answer
questions about them. The teacher uses those models to help the students understand the
meaning of the texts and analyze the language structures.

How do you teach receptive skills?

Both listening and reading are receptive skills. For a teacher to be sure that learners
have understood a spoken or written text, they need to demonstrate their understanding
through a response. The response may be:

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 a verbal response, e.g., answering questions orally when the teacher asks students
one-by-one around the class,
 a physical response, e.g., an action in a Total Physical Response activity,
 a creative response or visual representation, e.g., listening to a talk about local
places and drawing a map of them; reading a description of a person and drawing
them,
 a written response, e.g., listening to or reading a text and writing answers to
multiple choice, true/false, short answer comprehension questions, sentence
completion activities,
 completing a cloze passage.

Receptive skills involve bottom-up and top-down processing. From the bottom up,
teachers ensure that students know the sounds and spelling system, word roots and
suffixes, and build up to phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. If students understand and
can analyze smaller components of language, they can build up to understanding longer
texts in the language.

At the same time, it is important to present students with opportunities to process

spoken and written texts from the top down. The texts will contain a mixture of
vocabulary and language structures which are already familiar to the students, together
with vocabulary and structures which are not familiar. This challenges and develops
students’ ability to work out the meaning, fill in gaps, and develop skills in finding out
about aspects of the language which are new to them.

From the top down, students hear or read a whole text. At first, they may just pick up
the gist of the text, e.g., they take note of the setting, identify the characters, and
understand the general meaning of the text. They use their understanding of the gist of the
text to begin to work out more of the details, e.g., they make informed guesses about
unfamiliar words and phrases in the text.

For students to develop their top-down processing skills, they often need to hear or
read the text a few times. Each time they will process and understand more of the text. So
don’t worry if they don’t understand the whole text the first time they hear/read it. Rather
than immediately translating it into English for them, it’s better to let them listen to or
read the text again and again.

Top-down listening activities often involve a pre-listening exercise before the

students hear the text for the first time. In the pre-listening stage of the activity, the
teacher tells the students that they are about to hear a recording of a boy called Harry who
will introduce his family. As a class or in small groups, the students are asked to predict
the kinds of things Harry will say in the recording. The students brainstorm and guess
some of the vocabulary and structures they will hear in the target language.

In the second stage of the activity, the teacher plays the recording to the students. As
they listen, they draw Harry’s family tree. Their diagrams should show as many of the
details as possible which they have heard in the recording, e.g., relationships between
people, their names, what they look like. The students listen to the recording a few times
in order to be able to add more detail to their diagrams. The teacher might have a
worksheet for the students to complete – it might contain multiple choice, short answer,
true/false questions about the recording, e.g. Where does Harry’s family live? How many

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

people in Harry’s family? How many sisters does Harry have? What’s Harry’s Dad’s
name? Does Harry’s family have a pet?

After the listening activity, the students to share the details they heard in the
recording. The teacher reviews the content of the text the students have heard and may
focus the discussion on any details that the students had trouble understanding.

To develop learners’ listening and reading skills, teachers can be a model. That is,
teachers can speak to their students and write example sentences on the board. But
individual words, phrases and sentences are not enough. Teachers can provide their
students with much more input, if they provide them with opportunities to hear and read
whole texts (such as the one about Harry’s family). Sometimes those spoken and written
texts already exist in the resources available to the teacher but sometimes they need to be
created, developed and recorded.

How do you teach productive skills?

Both speaking and writing are productive skills. To enable learners to produce
language, teachers select the vocabulary and structures, and the spoken or written text
types which will be the focus of a lesson or unit of work.

As summarized in the diagram and example activity below, firstly the selected
language is presented to the learners through listening and/or reading activities. That is,
the teacher provides input and models the vocabulary and structures that the students are
expected to produce. Secondly, students are given opportunities for controlled practice of
that language. Ultimately this supports them to use that language to produce new spoken
and written texts.

The modeled language may be provided by:

• the teacher speaking to the class,

• an audio or audio-visual recording which the teacher has made earlier,

• the teacher presenting text on the (interactive) white board,

• a text for the students to listen to and/or read and analyse,

• in a textbook, workbook or on a teacher-made worksheet.

When students have listened to and/or read various models, teachers provide
controlled practice activities so that the students can begin to rehearse the set vocabulary

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

and structures in their own speaking or writing. Controlled practice may be in the form
sentence substitution activities – the students take the model and substitute similar word
types into each part of a sentence frame. For example:

Example/model: Kangaroos lie in the shade.

Sentence frame: animal name + animal action + place

Controlled practice: The sentence frame allows for many possibilities (e.g. Fish
swim in the river. The dog eats outside the house. Birds fly in the sky. Brolgas stand in
the water. Pipis burrow in the sand). The list of animal names can be long. The actions
can be past, present or future tense. The place can be a number of different locations. The
action and place parts of the sentence frame are an opportunity to teach and rehearse
various verb and noun suffixes.

A series of additional sentence frames could model for the students how to
describe what the animal looks like, how it moves, what it eats, its habitat and so on. In
this way students build up a lot of relevant vocabulary and grammar for this topic.
Controlled practice may also involve the whole class or small groups of students working
together to jointly construct a text. After that, each student chooses an animal and
independently writes a factual text, for example:

Emus are large birds. Their necks and legs are long. They have feathers and small
wings. They don’t fly. They walk and run fast. They live in flat country and near trees.
They eat plants, insects and stones. They see and hear well. They live in pairs and groups.

Controlled practice supports the students to manipulate the learned vocabulary

and structures in new ways. They create series of linked sentences in their own original
spoken or written text. They use the newly introduced language but also incorporate
language they have learned in previous lessons, units of work, school terms and years.
They draw on recently learned language as well as the language skills and knowledge
they have developed over a number of months or years. They can also use resources such
as dictionaries.

Here is an example of a speaking activity in Gumbaynggirr, adapted from a unit

of work about country featured in the Board of Studies NSW (2003) Aboriginal
languages K-10 assessment for learning in a standard referenced framework CD ROM.
At this point in the unit, students have learned vocabulary related to coastal animals,
place and activities. They have been introduced to nouns with ergative (doer to), locative
(in, at, on) and purposive (for) suffixes. They have copied example sentences containing
those suffixes, listened to sentences containing the suffixes and drawn pictures to indicate
their understanding, and used the suffixes in controlled practice written exercises.

In the speaking activity, students are given a picture of a beach scene. They draw
their own additional figures into the picture, e.g., people spending time on the shore.

Students then use the modeled and rehearsed vocabulary and structures, to take
turns in talking with each other (in pairs or small groups) about what is happening in each
of their scenes.

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

The family is down at the beach.

They are sitting on the sand.

The children become hot.

They are running to the sea to swim.

Uncle collects pipis for the family.

The children cook the pipis.

Grandma and grandpa eat the pipis.

The boys are swimming to the island.

The girls catch flathead for the family.

There are birds in the sky.

They are flying to the west.

TASK 1

Instructions: Compare and contrast Receptive skills and Productive skills using a Venn
diagram.

Receptive Skills Productive Skills

Similarities

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

TASK 2

Instructions: Discuss some ideas by answering the following questions. Explain and/or
give examples.

1. There are four main language skills: reading; writing; speaking; listening. In general,
which one do you think is the most important for you?

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2. Among the four skills, what will happen if one skill will be removed?

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3. Why is it important for teaching activities to be designed or planned?

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4. What thing does a teacher needs to consider in teaching the different macroskills?

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

SECTION 2
Listening Skill

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the

communication process. Listening is key to all effective communication, without the
ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood – communication breaks
down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.

Listening is so important that many top employers provide listening skills training
for their employees. This is not surprising when you consider that good listening skills
can lead to: better customer satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes,
increased sharing of information that in turn can lead to more creative and innovative
work.

Remember: Listening is not the same as Hearing!

Hearing refers to the sounds that you hear, whereas listening requires more than
that: it requires focus. Listening means paying attention not only to the story, but how it
is told, the use of language and voice, and how the other person uses his or her body. In
other words, it means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages. Your ability
to listen effectively depends on the degree to which you perceive and understand these
messages.

Methods of Teaching Listening Skills

Effective, modern methods of teaching listening skills encompass everything from
interactive exercises to multimedia resources. Listening skills are best learned through
simple, engaging activities that focus more on the learning process than on the final
product. Whether you are working with a large group of students or a small one, you can
use any of the following examples to develop your own methods for teaching students
how to listen well.

1. Interpersonal Activities

One effective and nonthreatening way for students to develop stronger listening
skills is through interpersonal activities, such as mock interviews and storytelling. Assign
the students to small groups of two or three, and then give them a particular listening
activity to accomplish. For example, you may have one student interview another for a
job with a company or for an article in a newspaper. Even a storytelling activity, such as
one that answers the question "What was your favorite movie from last year?" can give
students the opportunity to ask one another questions and then to practice active listening
skills.

2. Group Activities

Larger group activities also serve as a helpful method for teaching listening skills
to students. You can begin with a simple group activity. For the first part, divide students
into groups of five or larger and instruct them to learn one hobby or interest of at least
two other group members. Encourage them to ask clarifying questions during the activity,
and you may allow them to take notes if helpful. However, as time passes and their skills
grow, you should limit students to only writing notes after the completion of the first part
of the group activity. For the second part, have the students sit in a large circle, and then
have each individual student share the name and the hobby or interest of the group
members that she or he met. This second part of the group activity can also lend itself to

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additional listening exercises. For example, you may ask students to name a number of
the hobbies and interests identified during the sharing session.

3. Audio Segments/songs

You can also teach listening skills through audio segments of radio programs,
online podcast, instructional lectures and other audio messages. You should model this
interactive listening process in class with your students, and then instruct them to repeat
the exercise on their own. First, instruct students to prepare for listening by considering
anything that they will want to learn from the content of the audio segment. Once they
have written down or shared these ideas, then play the audio segment, allowing the
students to take notes if helpful. Once they have gained confidence and experience,
repeat this activity but instruct students to not take notes until the completion of the audio
segment. You can use shorter or longer audio segments, and you can choose more
accessible or more challenging material for this type of exercise.

4. Video Segments

Another helpful resource for teaching listening skills are video segments,
including short sketches, news programs, documentary films, interview segments, and
dramatic and comedic material. As with audio segments, select the portion and length of
the video segment based on the skill level of your students. With your students, first
watch the segment without any sound and discuss it together. Encourage the students to
identify what they think will be the content of the segment. Then, watch the segment
again, this time with sound, allowing students to take notes if helpful for their skill level.
After the completion of the video segment, you can have students write a brief summary
of the segment, or you can take time to discuss as a group how the segment compares
with the students' expectations.

Instructional Tips
Whatever method you use for teaching listening, keep a few key instructional tips
in mind that will help both you and your students navigate the learning process.

 One, keep your expectations simple, as even the most experienced listener would
be unable to completely and accurately recall the entirety of a message.
 Two, keep your directions accessible and build in opportunities for students not
only to ask clarifying questions, but also to make mistakes.
 Three, help students navigate their communication anxiety by developing
activities appropriate to their skill and confidence level, and then strengthen their
confidence by celebrating the ways in which they do improve, no matter how
small.

Good listening lessons go beyond the listening task itself with related activities
before and after the listening. Here is the basic structure:

 Before Listening

Prepare your learners by introducing the topic and finding out what they already
know about it. A good way to do this is to have a brainstorming session and some

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EL-108 – Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills

discussion questions related to the topic. Then provide any necessary background
information and new vocabulary they will need for the listening activity.

 During Listening

Be specific about what students need to listen for. They can listen for selective
details or general content, or for an emotional tone such as happy, surprised, or angry.
If they are not marking answers or otherwise responding while listening, tell them
ahead of time what will be required afterward.

 After Listening

Finish with an activity to extend the topic and help students remember new
vocabulary. This could be a discussion group, craft project, writing task, game, etc.

TASK 3

Instructions: Discuss some ideas by answering the following questions. Explain and/or
give examples.

1. Do you think asking questions help students prepare for listening? Why?

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2. What do we mean by pre-listening? What are the goals of this phase of the listening
activity?

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3. How much information should the teacher provide during pre-listening?

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4. How important is it to provide students with a list of vocabulary included in the

passage before listening or to provide them with a transcription of the text to which
they've listened?

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The following ideas will help make your listening activities successful:

 Noise

Reduce distractions and noise during the listening segment. You may need to
close doors or windows or ask children in the room to be quiet for a few minutes.

 Equipment

If you are using a CD-player, make sure it produces acceptable sound quality.
Bring extra batteries or an extension cord with you.

 Repetition

Read or play the text a total of 2-3 times. Tell students in advance you will repeat
it. This will reduce their anxiety about not catching it all the first time. You can also
ask them to listen for different information each time through.

 Content

Unless your text is merely a list of items, talk about the content as well as specific
language used. The material should be interesting and appropriate for your class level
in topic, speed, and vocabulary. You may need to explain reductions (like 'gonna' for
'going to') and fillers (like 'um' or 'uh-huh').

 Recording Your Own Tape

Write appropriate text (or use something from your textbook) and have another
English speaker read it onto tape. Copy the recording three times so you don't need to
rewind. The reader should not simply read three times, because students want to hear
exact repetition of the pronunciation, intonation, and pace, not just the words.

 Video

You can play a video clip with the sound off and ask students to make predictions
about what dialog is taking place. Then play it again with sound and discuss why they
were right or wrong in their predictions. You can also play the sound without the
video first, and show the video after students have guessed what is going on.

 Homework

Give students a listening task to do between classes. Encourage them to listen to

public in airports, bus stations, supermarkets, etc. and try to write down what they
heard. Tell them the telephone number of a cinema and ask them to write down the
playing times of a specific movie. Give them a tape recording of yourself with
questions, dictation, or a worksheet to complete.

What are some tips to help teachers develop students’ listening skills?

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An effective teacher is aware that students are not always able to develop oral
comprehension skills on their own; without additional supports listening, by itself, is not
enough to develop better listening skills. Here are several activities a teacher can employ
to facilitate the development of listening skills.

1. Promote active listening: giving the students something to listen for ensures that they
are involved in the task. Exercise sheets are another tool that promotes active listening;

2. Identify listening strategies: give the students tools to guide their listening; such as,
looking for specific information, identifying predictable words or phrases, or discussing
what they expect in certain forms of speech; such as, newscasts or advertisements.;

3. Selecting the most appropriate strategy for presenting the lesson; for example,
using a top down (general meaning, summarizing) or bottom up (cognates, specific
words, word order patterns) approach;

4. Allow the students to hear as much of the target language as possible while using
a variety of teaching methods; for example, sometimes using visual cues, at other times
not;

5. Use authentic materials; for example, a lecture or a radio announcement in the target
language, to help students become accustomed to different accents and to a realistic pace
of speech;

6. Ensure the students know the goals of the listening task: is the goal to understand
what’s being said, to decide whether to keep listening or to obtain specific information?

7. Provide opportunities for reflection and discussion. So students can share what was
heard, what was learned and methods they employed to better understand what was said;

8. Organize pre-listening activities, such as providing students with relevant

vocabulary, reading a related text, looking at a related image or clarifying necessary
cultural information etc.;

9. Be sure to check level of the listening exercise beforehand to ensure it is an

appropriate level for the students.

Activities to teach listening skills:

1. Dual dictation

Ask students to get into pairs to write a dialogue. When student A is speaking,
student B should write down what they are saying and vice versa. When they have
finished the conversation, they should check what each other has written and put the two
sides of the conversation together. You could then ask students to perform their dialogues
again to the rest of the class, or to swap with other pairs.

This activity works best if you give students a theme or role-play, e.g.

 A conversation between friends about holidays

 An argument between siblings
 An interview with a famous person
 A scene from a film

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 Class memory quiz

Ask one student at a time to go to the front of the class. Ask the rest of the class to ask
them any questions they like (as long as they are not too personal!), e.g.

 What is your favorite color/food/band?

 What did you have for lunch?
 Which country would you most like to visit?

Try to make a note of some of the answers. When all of the students (or half of the
students, if you have a large group) have been interviewed, explain that you are going to
hold a quiz about the class. Get the students into small teams and ask them to put their
hand up if they know the answer to a question, e.g.

 Which student likes Oasis?

 What is Marie's favorite food?
 Which two students would like to be famous actors?

Award a point to the first team to answer correctly. This game can be a lot of fun, and
encourages students to listen to each other.

2. Listen for lies

Divide the class into two teams A and B. Ask one student at a time to come to the
front of the class and read aloud a passage which you have chosen, e.g., a story or
newspaper article. Then ask them to read it aloud again, but to make some changes. Each
time a lie (or change) is read out, the students must stand up. The first team to stand up
gets a point. This game requires students to listen carefully and encourages them to
remember important information and details.

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TASK 4

Instructions: Discuss some ideas by answering the following questions. Explain and/or
give examples.

1. Some tips to help teachers develop students’ listening skills were introduced above.
Which one do you think is the most useful? Why?

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2. As a future educator, to what extent do you think you can utilize group work in doing
listening activities? How do you envision this? Isn't listening an individual activity?

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3. How important is it to engage students in a discussion of the strategies they or their

classmates utilize while listening? Why?

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4. What will you do with students who still don't get anything from a listening passage
after listening multiple times?

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TASK 10

-----------------------END OF ELT MODULE 1---------------------------

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