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UNIT 7 This Unit explains how to teach students to harness their receptive skills. Receptive skills encompass reading and listening skills; and are part of the four basic skills, i.e. reading, listening; and speaking and writing (known collectively as productive skills), which are all necessary for effective language learning. For a balanced approach to teaching language development, teachers incorporate both receptive and productive skills on equal levels, attach equal importance to all four by incorporating them in lesson planning. There are two main reasons known where teaching receptive skills is concerned: a. For a specific purpose – could be reading a manual or listening to an audio version for instructions about how to use a gadget. b. For entertainment – reading a novel, a travel guide, and listening to a joke or music. Essentially, reading and listening go beyond the use of the eyes and the ears. It also entails the use of the mind which helps in processing what is seen and heard. A person’s pre-existing knowledge of a concept of a word/words directly comes into play once he/she sees or hears them. The mind refers to the pre-existing knowledge in relation with what is seen and/or heard, processes them, then determines the meaning. This is what informs the different ways in which the person reads and listens. Now during reading and listening, an individual applies the following skills and they are what determines their understanding in the end: Predictive skills, Specific information(Scanning), General Idea (Skimming), Detailed Information, and Deduction from context. Nonetheless, there are some problems associated with teaching and learning receptive skills. These may be brought up by how the language is expressed by a given text, the topic and the tasks it requires to be performed. These are: Language – the length of words and sentences; and unknown vocabulary are some of the potential problems which may vary when it comes to reading and listening. However, they can be dealt with by applying the following: Pre-teaching of new/unknown vocabulary Careful selection of texts, focusing on non-authentic texts which allows students to explore language that is suited to their level, and careful selection of authentic texts which would promote independent application/performance among students, thus boosting their confidence level. Topics – choosing topics that would attract the attention of students, with focus on students’ preferences and variety of topics. Creation of Interest – sparking students’ interest in a topic/lesson through discussions, pictures, etc. Tasks – facilitating tasks that enhance students’ understanding of topic/lesson By principle, the ESA techniques come into play again and are actually indispensable in teaching all aspects of new language. Particularly in the case of receptive skills, a Patchwork ESA lesson is required, and an outline featuring a ESESASA format. Here, students are to read and listen to the story of Elvis Presley with the objective of being conversant enough to write about him. The lesson starts with a Question Sentence to initiate the first Engage stage, followed the first Study stage that entails a teaching and some practice through exercises of difficult vocabulary to be encountered in the text, next is another Engage stage where other songs of Elvis Presley is played to the students to test their knowledge through listening and discussion, then comes a second Study stage where the students are expected to read the text and complete a comprehension task, do correction in pairs and receive feedback from the teacher, subsequent is an Activation stage where students are required to write a short review of Elvis’ life based on their own their own understanding without referring the text. This activity is also checked in pairs and feedback given; then comes the third Study stage where students are encouraged to refer to the text again to find the meaning of five new words; and lastly, a final Activation stage which requires students to write a brief story about a famous person they know. The name of the person is not revealed but is to be guessed by students upon hearing the story read. Here, Pairwork is expected. In conclusion, the above teaching format is just an example. Other ESA formats can equally suit the topic or lesson. However, to achieve an effective delivery of a lesson focused on developing receptive still, the following must be considered and be evident I the lesson: ? Materials that motivates or invokes the interest of students must be selected ? An activity that ignites students’ interest must be initiated before the introduction to the reading or listening of the text at hand ? Pre-teaching of difficult/new vocabulary or structures must be done before introduction to the given text ? Variety of teaching/learning materials must be introduced ? The learning materials must be used to practice the different skills ? Simple and practical comprehension that enhance understanding must be used ? Include activate phrases that feature the theme of the text In this Unit, I have learnt the features of receptive skills, their importance to basic language learning and how to incorporate the ESA technique to effectively teach students the ways to develop them.