Article Discussion GroupAn Insight into Communicative Reading & Listening

June 28th, 2016

Sebahat Yılmaz

Introduction What does CLT mean? Activity Types in CLT How do we read? Can reading be communicative? Strategies used for communicative reading Samples activities: NLL Suggestions Conclusion References

Outline

Telling my students "And now we're going to practise listening." elicits looks of dread and fear, and announcing reading practice often elicits yawns, heads descending to desks, or eyes ascending heavenwards..

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/making-reading-communicative

This session and the presentations aim to show a theoretical frame and practical activities to implement Communicative Language Teaching in Listening and Reading classes of English.

The theory taken as a guide was discussed during our article discussion sessions and they were chosen from different books, websites and journals.

Following the discussions, some practical activities to be implemented in language classes were considered and included in the concurrent sessions.

Aim

What does CLT mean?

teaching conversation?

an absence of grammar in a course?

an emphasis on open-ended discussion

activities as the main features of a course?

What does CLT mean? Which of the statements below do you think characterizes

CLT? 1. People learn a language best when using it to do things rather than through studying how language works and practicing rules. 2. People learn a language through communicating in it. 3. Errors are not important in speaking a language. 4. CLT is only concerned with teaching speaking.5. Classroom activities should be meaningful and involve real communication. 6. Both accuracy and fluency are goals in CLT. 7. Grammar is no longer important in language teaching.

What does CLT mean? What is the goal of language teaching?• To develop communicative competence .

«communicative competence»• How sentences are used in communication • Implications for English as an international language • Not necessarily based on native-speaker norms

Jacobs and Farrell (2003) suggest that the CLT has led to major changes in approaches to language teaching.

One of these changes is the thinking skills: Language should serve as a means of developing

higher-order thinking skills, also known as critical and creative thinking.

In language teaching, this means that students do not learn language for its own sake but in order to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that go beyond the language classroom.

What does CLT mean?

Mechanical Practice Meaningful Practice Communicative Practice

Many CLT course books take students from mechanical, to meaningful, to communicative practice (Richards, 2006, p.16).

What does CLT mean?

Opinion-sharing activities:

Activities in which students compare values, opinions, or beliefs, such as a ranking task in which students list six qualities in order of importance that they might consider in choosing a date or spouse.

Activity types in CLT

Information-transfer activities: These require learners to take information that is presented in one form, and represent it in a different form.

Activity types in CLT

A sample for Information – Transfer Activities:

In pairs: A and B. As describe the picture & Bs draw.

Activity types in CLT: A sample

Activity types in CLT

Activity types in CLT

Groups of three: A-B-C

Bs and Cs go out. T pulls up a picture on a slide or give a copy of it to As. As study a picture for 1min. T hides the picture. Bs come in As describe the picture to Bs and Bs take notes. Cs come in Looking at their notes, Bs describe the picture to Cs. Cs draw a picture based on these descriptions.

Activity types in CLT

What does CLT mean? According to CLT, second language learning is...

• Interaction between the learner and users of the language• Collaborative creation of meaning • Creating meaningful and purposeful interaction through language • Attending to the feedback• Paying attention to the input • Incorporating new forms into communicative competence • Experimenting with different ways of saying things

READING

Aim: The aim of this part is to consider a few approaches to

making classroom reading more communicative, by which I mean integrating it with other skills work, so that students can see its value.

Reading

Reading Skills In order to comprehend a passage, we employ various

skills depending on what we are reading. These skills are: (Harmer, 2003, pp. 201-202)

1.  Identifying the topic2.  Predicting and guessing3.  Reading for general understanding4.  Reading for specific information5.  Reading for detailed information

How do we read?

Reading is one of receptive skills. In this section, some reading strategies will be put forward.

1. Skimming and scanning2. Top-down and bottom-up3. Word-attack skills.:

a. Inference meaning of words through the contextb. Inference meaning of words through word-formation

How do we read?

What are your reading classes like?

Is reading, therefore, since it is often a solitary activity, a non-communicative activity?

Just as communicative as any other form of language use

Talking about what we have read is a rich source of classroom possibilities (Howarth, 2006).

Can reading be communicative?

YES!

Purpose is to enhance language and reading comprehension in an engaging, supported environment.

Can reading be communicative?

How is Communicative Reading Different from Typical Reading?

Differs from typical book reading

–  Planned—specific book and objectives –  Read very slowly, allowing time to teach language and content –  Comprehension of language and content are monitored continually –  When construction of meaning breaks, teacher scaffolds source of the breakdown. –  Students re-read the text with confidence and comprehension (Brinkley, 2014).

Can reading be communicative?

Classroom reading is not the same as real reading.

To enable this we plan 'pre-reading', 'while-reading', and 'post-reading' stages. These stages can help us make reading more communicative.

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading

Pre-reading tasks often aim to raise the readers' knowledge of what they are about to read (their schematic knowledge) as this knowledge will help them to understand the text.

Some approaches to use include:◦ Tell your partner what you know about the topic◦ Do a quiz in pairs to find out what you know about the topic◦ Look at some pictures related to the topic◦ Skimming the first paragraph for gist and then predicting.

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading: Pre-reading

When reading in our L1 we are constantly using our schematic and linguistic knowledge to predict content.

In class, predictions can be based upon the following:◦ A title◦ Visuals◦ Knowledge of the author◦ A skim of the first paragraph◦ A set of keywords from the text◦ Reading the end, predicting the beginning.◦ Reading the middle, predicting the beginning and the end.

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading: Pre-reading

A Sample: NLL Elementary p.31

Do a quiz in pairs to find out what they know about the topic.

A Sample: NLL Elementary p.31

http://brightside.me/wonder-quizzes/can-you-guess-the-movie-based-on-the-emojis-184055/A Sample: NLL Elementary p.31

http://brightside.me/wonder-quizzes/test-can-you-name-the-movie-from-a-single-image-183355/A Sample: NLL Elementary p.31

Although reading is often a solitary activity and the idea of 'reading in pairs' seems odd, reading can be collaborative.

Approaches to use include:

Running and Reading Slashed/ Cut up texts Using Websites

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading: While-reading tasks

This approach especially lends itself to scanning as the idea is to encourage the students to read as quickly as possible in a race.

1. Divide the class into student A and student B pairs. Student A sits at one end of the classroom.

2. Stick the text to be read on the wall at the other end of the room.3. Give student A a list of questions.4. Student A reads the first question to student B who has to run down the

classroom to find the answer in the text, and then run back to dictate the answer to student A, who then tells B question 2 and so on.

5. The first pair to answer all the questions wins.

Ask the students to swap roles halfway through so everyone gets a chance to scan.

While-reading tasks: Running and reading

This is a genuinely collaborative reading approach.

1. Photocopy a suitable text and cut it into four.2. Seat students in fours. Give a piece of the text to each

student. They mustn't show their piece to the others.3. Give each group a set of questions.4. The group have to work collaboratively to answer the

questions since no one has the whole of the text.5. Groups can compare answers when they have

finished.

While-reading tasks: Slashed / Cut up texts:

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading: While-reading tasks leading into post-reading tasks

Jigsaw reading is an old favourite but effective.1. Divide a text into two parts or find two (or three)

separate texts on the same topic.2. Students A get one text and a related task, students B

get the other text and task.3. Students A complete their tasks in a group. Students B

likewise. Compare answers in A & B groups.4. Students get into A & B pairs and tell each other about

their tasks.

While-reading tasks leading into post-reading tasks: Jigsaw reading

Telling someone about what we have read is a very natural reaction to a text.

Some ideas to use include:1. Discussions about the text2. Summarising texts3. Reviewing texts4. Using a 'follow-up' speaking task related to the topic5. Looking at the language of the text (e.g. collocations)

(Howarth, 2006).

Strategies to use for Communicative Reading: Post-reading tasks

A Sample: NLL Intermediate p.58 Maria Montessori

In groups, Ss draw a picture of an ideal Montessori classroom, and then they present their pictures to the class.

Yun Zhang introduced an oral language component into intensive reading classes (English Teaching Forum number 1, 2009).

The classroom activities he proposed are adapted as follows:

Sample Activities: NLL

This activity is designed to let students act out a story they read.

The text selected for this activity should contain a plot involving more than one person. (at least two players and one director in each group)

The plot should be represented through dialogues.

To make the activity more interesting, students are encouraged to use their imaginations and make any changes to the plot and dialogues in their performance.

Activity 1: Read to act

NLL Int. p78

This activity requires students to engage in a debate from an article or other source.

A debate can deepen students’ understanding of the issue discussed in the text. In addition, they learn how to view and orally defend a topic from a different perspective.

Activity 2: Read to debate

NLL Intermediate p.54

This activity is more flexible than the previous two. It is organised around texts from different genres.

This activity provides students with opportunities to orally represent ideas from the text they have read. It also helps them learn to ask questions about different issues.

Activity 3: Read to interview

NLL Intermediate p.60

Choosing the text & the book

Contains lesson objectives Genres

– Expository (intended to explain or describe something) – Narrative (describing events or telling a story) Interesting Has pictures that enhance the content Presents challenges to the readers– Content – Vocabulary– Syntax and morphology – Reading level– Text Structure (Brinkley, 2014).

Suggestions

Choosing Objectives Depth vs. Breadth

-Deepen knowledge of a few target objectives -Broaden understanding with more objectives

Focus for the session (allowing for spontaneity)– Vocabulary (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2003) – Text Structure, i.e., expository text or narrative story structure– Inference—reading between the lines– Content—information– Syntactic structures—complex sentences

• Props– Sticky notes on pages– Cards to highlight vocabulary – Story board (Norris)

Suggestions

Communicative reading is taught integratively with the other language skills.

Some classroom activities to teach communicative reading are: read to act, read to debate, read to interview.

These classroom activities make the reading task more interesting for the students.

These activities stimulate the students to practise the four language skills.

Conclusion

Brinkley, S. (2014). Becoming the go-to person for communicative reading. Lecture presented in Arizona State University.

Jacobs, G. M., & Farrell, T. S. (2003). Understanding and Implementtng the Clt (Communicative Language Teaching) Paradigm. RELC Journal, 34(1), 5-30. doi:10.1177/003368820303400102

Maley, A. (2010) Extensive reading: Why it is good for our students and for us. Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/extensive-reading-why-it-good-our-students…-us

Norris, J. A. (1988, March). Using Communication Strategies to Enhance Reading Acquisition. The Reading Teacher, 41(7), 668-673. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20199892.pdf?_=1466926263716

Richards, J. C. (2006). Communicative language teaching today. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rustipa, K. (2010, December). Teaching Communicative Reading. Ragam Jurnal Pengembangan Humaniora, 10(3), 125-130.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/making-reading-communicative

References