ENG514 Final Term Preparation by Paragon

Teaching Listening and Speaking Skills (ENG514) · Spring2021 · Final subjective · Q. Process approach

Because formal speaking is usually a planned activity, it is possible to take a process approach to it. This means dividing the task into parts such as taking account of the goals and the audience, gathering ideas, organizing ideas, making a set of speaking notes, and presenting and monitoring the talk. An important part of the formal speaking process is taking account of the audience and the suitability of the information that is to be conveyed to them. The following table relates activities and supports to the various parts of the formal speaking process. Taking a process approach is effectively encouraging learners to develop a strategy for dealing with formal speaking. Thus, when a teacher takes this approach learners should be made aware of the parts of the process and how they can take control of them.

Q. Define speaking

Speaking is one of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking). It is the means through which learners can communicate with others to achieve certain goals or to express their opinions, intentions, hopes and viewpoints. In addition, people who know a language are referred to as ‘speakers’ of that language. Furthermore, in almost any setting, speaking is the most frequently used language skill. As Rivers (1981) argues, speaking is used twice as much as reading and writing in our communication.

Q. Discourse analysis & Conversational analysis.

Both discourse analysis and conversation analysis have links to sociolinguistics in that they prefer not to deal with samples of language in isolation, and conversation analysis in particular is interested in the relations between interlocutors. Discourse analysis, however, has traditionally tended to concentrate on longer sections of language and focused on interrelations between different sections of text. Within this, the discourse analyst is interested in how speakers carry out functions of language and the choices made by them in different contexts. During the 1990s and beyond there was increasing interest in the telecommunications and computing world that discourse analysis would solve problems of automation of human– computer understanding. This area has not achieved the early promise – humans are still constrained to limited lexical choices and clear talk in these contexts rather than the system being able to adjust to spontaneous talk. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what twenty first century discourse and conversation analysis can offer other disciplines and users wanting to apply the insights of linguistics to real-world applications.

Q. Syllable and stressed timed languages

Languages can be classified according to whether they are stress-timed or syllable-timed. It used to be thought that in a stress-timed language (like English) the stresses were equal distances apart even though the number of syllables between each stress was not the same. This would mean that some syllables would have to be said very quickly if there were several between two stresses, and some would be said slowly if there were few between two stresses. In syllable-timed languages, the syllables occur at regular intervals (as in Spanish and Indonesian). Research indicates that the spacing of stresses is by no means equal in stress-timed languages although there is a tendency towards regularity (Dauer, 1983). The main differences between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages lie in syllable structure (syllable length varies more in stress-timed languages than in syllable-timed languages), vowel reduction (stresstimed languages are more likely to use centralized vowels in unstressed syllables and vowels may be shortened or omitted), and lexical stress (stress-timed languages usually have word level stress).

Q. define channels

Channel is a term used to describe the physical means by which communication takes place. In terms of speaking there is the oral/aural channel and in terms of writing the visual/motoric channel. Discourse can be studied in terms of the effects of channel on the language. These include the constraints of speech processing in real time versus the capacity to reflect and edit that the written channel allows.

Q. Write a note on speaking and new technologies

A fast-moving area in recent years has been the development of new technologies that blur or alter the traditional boundaries between the spoken and written mode. There are several strands to this, ranging from text to speech software, speech recognition, to robotics, to mobile computing and telephony. The aim of much work is for the user to be able to speak to a computer in much the same way as they would to another person, and for the machine to be capable of carrying out the instruction.

Q. Write a note on audio lingual approaches to language teaching.

The language learner in a 1950s and 1960s classroom would have had a very high chance of being exposed to the spoken form. Indeed the influence of early British applied led to a strong emphasis on the oral mode. What emerged as ‘The Natural Method’ relied on introducing language items systematically and almost entirely through speech, and then on the very accurate (in phonetic terms) oral practice of explicitly taught language rules and features. In the United States, ethnographic approaches which depended on close and careful scrutiny of the oral form were also influential and these were superseded by what eventually became known as ‘The Audio-lingual Method’.

Q. one-on-one

Talking one-on-one gives the provider a chance to repeat (say back), extend (add to), and revise (recast or restate) what children say. Children have a chance to hear their own ideas reflected back. In addition, one-on-one conversations provide opportunities to either contextualize the conversation according to the individual child’s understanding or tap children’s understanding of abstract concepts. Caregivers should try to hold individual conversations with children each day.

Q. What are the qualities of a practical test?

Practicality can be looked at from several aspects: (1) economy of time, money, and labour; (2) ease of administration and scoring; and (3) ease of interpretation.

Q. Note on KOL test.

The KOL test consists of 24 multiple choice format questions based on general knowledge of British life and culture. Taking and passing it assumes language knowledge at Entry Level 3. Those who do not reach this level can continue to retake the KOL test until they pass, or can opt to take an ‘ESOL with citizenship materials’ qualification through an approved body.

Q. write note on TOEFL

The format and the rating process in the speaking element of the ‘iBT/ New Generation TOEFL’ (hereafter ‘TOEFL’ or ‘TOEFL speaking’) are deliberately impersonal. This is in order to sidestep a number of the issues concerning bias that can affect face-to-face assessments of speaking. Six tasks in TOEFL are designed to test different aspects of speaking. Two (‘independent’) call on the candidate to express an opinion on a familiar topic and four others (‘integrated’) ask the candidate to speak in response to written or spoken material that provides input.

Q. Formal speaking.

Formal speaking helps language learning in the following ways. It represents a new use of English for most learners and thus requires them to focus on language items that are not as well represented in other uses of the language (Biber, 1989). Formal speaking requires control of content, awareness of a largely passive audience, and being the focus of attention (a rather unsettling experience). It thus requires learners to use language under difficult and demanding circumstances, which will stretch the boundaries of skill development

Q. Qualities of practical test

A practical test is short (notice that this may conflict with reliability), does not require lots of paper and equipment, does not require many people to administer it, is easy to understand, is easy to mark, has scores or results which are easy to interpret, and can be used over and over again without upsetting its validity.

Q. Will learner have accent if he or she starts to speak in L2 before age of six?

Usually, if the learner began to speak in the second language before the age of six there will be little or no accent.

Q. Write note discover the answer activity

Discover the answer is another technique to encourage learners to question the speaker. The teacher asks the learners a question that she is sure that they cannot answer. This is an amusing technique because at last by listening to what the teacher says about the answers the learners are