Benton, Michigan TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit, #11 - Teaching Receptive skills is a good segue to the next lesson: Teaching Productive skills. It is a good tactic to make this unit short, as it concentrates on reading and listening. In the teaching of TESOL, the four components are usually group this way: Listening/Speaking; Reading/Writing. This approach - Receptive skills deferentiates the important of "receiving" information, in order to do something with it. What is important is that teachers have to be aware that listening skills are, "a shot deal" as the student only hears it one time. I notice that to be true of students preparing for IELTS test (they have to develop the skills of capturing the essence of the spokeing statement once). With the component of reading, the teacher has to be aware to present non-authentic texts, to provide pre teaching of vocabulary/structures, and to generate interest in the topic. This will move the student through the components of the lesson (using the straight arrown approach). As all four aspects of 2L acquistion, the teacher has to be mindful of the "intergrating" all four: Listening, Speaking, Reading and writing; in their teaching. It makes it more interesting for both the teacher and student. In some schools the four components are broken into four separate classes e.g. students attend a "speaking" class, and attend the other three classes. The burden on the teacher (and student) is to concentrate on that one aspect - that is - putting more "importance" on speaking over the other three classes. Equally problematic is incorporating all four components in a 55 minute - one hour class. In cases like this, speaking is often neglected, as it takes more time to do.