Name : Rezki
Firdaus
Student’s ID : 1407335
Topic : Summary-Strategies in
ELT Teaching and Learning (Teaching
Pronunciation, Teaching
the four language skills –integrating the four languageskill , teaching reading,
teaching
listening)
the four language skills –integrating the four language
listening)
Date : November 4th ,
2014
Teaching Pronunciation
Pronunciation is one of the essential noun
based in an oral form and the basic ability of speaking English as well as
other languages. The correct pronunciation of English is to help the students
to pronounce correctly. Clear pronunciation makes the students easy to
understand and produce intelligible sound. The study of pronunciation has
become an important aspect in teaching English as a foreign Language. In
learning process , student may face difficulty which is crucial to be described
and analyzed. One of them is difficulty in pronouncing English words.
Pronunciation has become a dilemma for students. As a result, making errors in
pronouncing English as foreign language is common. It is natural in the early stage
of second/foreign language learning process.
In most languanges , including Indonesian
language, pronunciation follows predictable rules but not in English. Spelling
is not a reliable guide to know how a word is pronounced. English must surely
rank among the most irritating language when it comes to pronunciation.
Certainly, it has caused so much trouble for the learners to students.
Particularly at beginner level, some students may be happy to spend some time
on sounds which are easy for them, deriving some encouragement in the relief of
finding an English sound which they can pronounce. However, time is usually
precious and if some of it is to be spent in this way, teachers must be aware
of how relevant this practice is to the students’ real pronunciation needs. the
students usually reading in whisper because they felt worried if they made
errors in pronouncing. They get difficulties especially in English vowel sound.
In producing different sounds, the learners are sometimes influenced by the
native language process which is used frequently. The interference of native
language process influences the lerners’ imitation.
Almost
all English language teachers get students to study grammar and vocabulary,
practice functional dialogues, take part in productive skill activities and try
to become competent in listening and reading. Yet some of these same teachers
make little attempt to teach pronunciation in any overt way and only give
attention to it in passing. It is possible that they are nervous of dealing with
sounds and intonation; perhaps they feel they have too much to do already and
pronunciation teaching will only make things worse. They may claim that even
without a formal pronunciation syllabus, and without specific pronunciation
teaching , many students seem to acquire serviceable pronunciation in the course
of their studies anyway.
However,
the fact that some students are able to acquire reasonable pronunciation
without overt pronunciation teaching should not blind us to the benefits of a
focus on pronunciation in our lessons. Pronunciation teaching not only makes
students aware of differents sounds and sound features (and what these mean),
but can also improve their speaking immeasurably. Concentrating on sounds,
showing where they are made in the mouth, making students aware of where words
should be stressed-all these things give them extra information about spoken
English and help them achieve the goal of improved comprehension and
intelligibility.
To measure the
students pronunciation ability, the teachers may determine it by their sound or
by their understandable. Because the degree to which students acquire ‘perfect’
pronunciation seems to depend very much on their attitude to how they speak and
how well they hear. Some students want to exposed to a ‘native speaker’
variety, and will strive to achieve pronunciation which is indistinguishable from that of a first
language. Other students, however, do not especially want to sound like ‘inner
circle’ speakers. They wish to be speakers of English as an international or
global language.
It has become
customary for language teachers to consider intelligibility as the prime goal
of pronunciation teaching. This implies that the students should be able to use
pronunciation which is good enough for them to be always understood. If their
pronunciation is not up to this standard, then clearly there is a serious
danger that they will fail to communicate effectively. If intelligibility is
the goal, then it suggest that some pronunciation
features are more important than others. In the case of individual sounds, a
lot depends on the context of the uterance , which frequently helps the listener
to hear what the speaker intends. However, stressing words and phrases
correctly is vital if emphasis is to be given to the important parts of
messages and if words are to be understood correctly.
There are some
problem face by students to learn pronunciation, What students can hear; Some
students have great difficulty hearing pronunciation features which we want
them to reproduce. Frequently, speakers of different first languages have
problems with different sounds. So, there are two ways of dealing with this.
First, we can show studetns how sounds are made through demonstration, diagrams
and explanation. Second, we can draw the sounds to their attention every time
they appear on a recording or in our own convesation. What students can say; Learning
a foreign language often presents us with the problem of physical
unfamiliarity. To counter this problem, we need to be able to show and explain
exactly where sounds are produced (e.g. where is the tounge in relation to the
teeth? What is the shape of the lips when making a certain vowel?) etc. The
intonation problem; For many teachers the most problematic area of
pronunciation is intonation. However, the fact that we may have difficulty
recognising specific intonation tunes does not mean that we should abandon
intonation teaching altogether. One of our tasks, then, is to give students
oppotunitis to recognise such moods and intentions either on an audio track or
through the way we ourselves model them.
The key to
successful pronunciation teaching, however, is not so much getting students to
produce correct sounds or intonation tunes, but rather to have them listen and
notice how English is spoken-either on audio or video or by their teachers
themselves. the more aware they are, the greater the chance that their own
intelligibility levels will rise.
There are many
ways to help our students in learning pronunciation. For example, identify
their own individual pronunciation difficulties by revising a list of words
which words they find easy to pronounce and which words they find difficult. It
is vitally important when correcting students to make sure that we offer help in
a constructive and useful way.
Working with sounds; Related to the
sound, the teachers need to demonstrate how it is made and show how it can be
spelt-a major concern with English since there is far less one-to-one
correspondence between sound and spelling than there is in some others
languages. We can have students identify which word have the sound, /з:/, /A/,
/,/ etc. They are then asked to identify which one consonant the consonant. We
could also show or demonstrate the position of the lips when this sound is made
and get studetns to make the sound and say words which include it. for example,
contrasting two sounds which are very similar and often confused is a popular
way of getting students to concentrate on specific aspects of pronunciation.
Working with stress; Stress is
important in individual words, in phrases and sentences. By shifting it around
in a phrase or a sentence. Common way of drawing our students’ attention to
stress issues is to show where the weak vowel sounds occur in words (rather
than focusing on the stressed syllables themselves). However, we can also focus
on stress issues in longer phrases and in sentences. There are many other ways
of teaching and demonstrating stress. Some teachers like to choose appropriate
texts and have students read them aloud after they have done some work on which
bits of phrases and sentences take the main stress. We can also use this method
developed by some experts. For example, The teachers can give them a copy of
game board by M Hancock (Cambridge University Press), headway Elementary
Pronunciation by S Cunningham and O Moor (Oxford University Press) etc.
Working with intonation; One simple
way of doing intonation is to show how many different meanings can be squeezed
out of just one word, such as yes.
Students can be asked to identify what we mean each time by using words for
emotions or matching our intonation to pictures of faces with different
expressions based on the questions, sentence or text which we have got to them.
There are many other ways of teaching intonation. For example, Gerald Kelly
method (interjection mmm), falling and rising tones by M Hewings (cambridge
University Press), sound waves, etc.
Sounds and spelling: Although there are
many regularities in English spelling (such as word roots and grammatical
endings), the fact that there is no one-to-one correspondence between letters
and phonemes causes many problems for leraners. The method which can we apply
in teaching activities for example (sounds of ou), sounds English by Fletcher and J D O’connor (Pearson Eduaction Ltd).
Connected speech and fluency; Good
pronunciation does not just mean saying individual words or even individual
sounds correctly. The sounds of words change when they come into contact with
each other. This is something we need to draw student’s attention to in our
pronunciation teaching. We can adopt a three-stage procedure for teaching
students about features such as elision and assimilation. Stage 1 / comparing: we
can start by showing students sentences and phrases and having them pronounce
the words correctly in isolation, e.g. I am going to see him tomorrow. Stage 2 /
identifying: we have students
listen to recording of connected speech (or we say the phrases ourselves), and
they have to write out a full grammatical equivalent of what they hear. e.g. Do
you want a coffee? or I would have come before. Stage 3 / production: in
our modelling and teaching of phrases and sentences we will give students the
connected version, including contractions where necessary, and get them to say
the phrases and sentences.
Teaching
the Four Language Skills-Integrating the Four Language Skills
Actually, teacher
tend to use four terms language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening).
These skills are divided into two types; receptive skills, a term used for
reading ang listening, skills where meaning is extracted from the discourse;
productive skills, a term for speaking and writing, skills where students
actually have to produce language themselves.
Some concern appears
over separating language skills, reading, listening, speaking, and writing, in
English learning and teaching (ELT) process, especially since they are seldom
separated in real life. Hinkel (in Harmer 2007:265) mentioned that in
meaningful communication, people employ incremental language skills not in
isolation, but in tandem. What people say or write is heavily influenced by
what they hear and see. In other words, receptive skills, or reading and
listening, influence productive skills, speaking and writing.
In ELT, the more
students see and listen to comprehensible input, the more English they acquire,
notice, or learn. This input takes many forms; teachers’ utterances, audio
materials, textbooks, podcasts, video, etc., and moves in a circle in which
one’s output will return to be an input after exposed by some processes of
evaluation, modification, and feedback from teachers, other students, and the
student himself or herself. To replicate the natural processes of skill-mixing,
it makes sense to integrate different skills, for example, by having speaking
activity as preparation and stimulus, using text as models or as preparation
and stimulus, or running integrated tasks. Work on language skills is often a
precursor to work on various aspects of language construction. The ideal
learning sequence, then, will offer both skill integration and language study
based around a topic or other thematic thread. In general, the sequence can be
designed on the basis of top-down or bottom up processing. In the former
processing, readers or listeners get a general view of the passage by some
means of absorbing the overall picture. In the other one, they focus on such
detailed things and achieve understanding by stringing the details together.
However, sometimes it is the individual details that help them understand the
whole; sometimes it is the overview that allows them to process the details.
Harmer’s basic
methodological model for teaching receptive skills employs top-down processing
in the first task and bottom-up processing in the second task. This sequence
works because it allows students to get a feel for what they are coming across
before they have to attack the text in detail, which is actually more
difficult. The procedure itself starts with a lead in where students are
engaged with the topic and their schema or pre-existent knowledge is activated.
When students are ready, teacher sets some kind of comprehension task to guide
them read or listen for general understanding. After students read or listen to
the materials, teacher directs feedback, individually, in pairs, or in group.
After the first task is completed, a text-related task can be directed as a
kind of follow-up activity dealing with the content or the aspects of language
in the text. Nevertheless, it is more common to get students to look at the
text again for the second task involving more detailed examination. The comprehension
cycle is repeated and then teacher involves students in text-related tasks.
In implementing this
basic model, there should be much consideration on the length of words and
sentences and the number of unfamiliar words in the text. If the text can provide
a comprehensible input, it will aid language acquisition. However, if the text
is beyond students’ comprehensible level, it may demotivate students, instead.
To address such condition, teacher can pre-teach some or all vocabularies that
may hold back students in interesting and enhancing activity, direct extensive
reading and listening activity, or make use of carefully-selected authentic
materials. Another consideration is related to the choice of comprehension
tasks. Instead of testing students, the task should be able to raise their
expectations, help them tease out meanings, and provoke text examination. The
choice will depend on the conditions in which students are asked to perform the
task. Sometimes, a formal test-like task can be used to encourage the students
to improve their receptive skills. Alternatively, teacher should get the right
level by matching the text and the task. If a text is difficult, teacher may
still be able to use it, but only if the task is appropriately achievable.
For teaching
productive skills, on the other hand, Harmer designed a model whose success
relies on the way teacher organizes the tasks and how to respond the students’
work. In the lead in stage, students are engaged with the topic, and in task
setting stage, students are told about what they are going to do. At the later
stage, teacher may need to demonstrate the activity and make sure that students
are given all information necessary to complete the tasks. Once students have
started, teacher will monitor the task. Afterward, teacher will give feedback
and move on to a task-related follow up. If repetition is necessary, teacher
may re-set the task and go through the sequence again.
To obtain a successful
communication, teacher needs to pay attention to the structure of the discourse
and the audience. Consideration should be made about the genre of the writing,
coherence and cohesion of ideas and expressions, sociocultural rules, and
audience-based adjustment. During the process, students may find difficulties
with grammar or vocabularies to express their ideas. Therefore, teacher can
supply the key language and even plan the activities in advance. In addition,
when students do not know a word or cannot remember it, they may improvise it
by using any possible words or phrases, discard the idea, foreignise or
pronounce an L1 word as if it was an L2 word, or paraphrase it. However,
teacher should encourage paraphrasing and improvising as a practice for
communicative task.
The integration of the
four language skills can also be implemented through a project that is usually
longer or takes more time than traditional tasks because students will look at
books, consult websites, watch videos, or perhaps conduct their own
mini-research. This kind of project may appear in various written forms, such
as class newspaper, portfolio booklets, historical or cultural guides, or
service brochure, and in spoken forms, such as a debate. An example of project
that shows how technology can be utilized to enhance a successful project is
webquest, a specific kind of web-based learning activity. In general, a project
is started by having a briefing or making a choice about its topic, aim, data
collection, stages, schedule, and necessary supports. After that, teacher or
students themselves can decide how directed the project is and start to gather
data. Then, students can plan the final outcome and make some drafts with some
editing going on, especially if they will have a final written project. After
all, they can publish or present their work. During the project, teacher should
consider the role as a tutor, advising, helping, and prompting students to help
them progress.
Teaching Reading
To get maximum
benefit from their reading, students need to be involved in both extensive and
intensive reading.
Students should be developed specific receptive skills
such as reading for gist (or general understanding – often called skimming),
reading for specific information (often called scanning), reading for detailed
comprehension or reading for inference and attitude.
One of the fundamental conditions of a success extensive
reading program is that students should be reading material which they can
understand. If they are struggling to understand every word, they can hardly be
reading for pleasure-the main goal of this activity. We
also need to promote reading and by our own espousal of reading as a valid
occupation, persuade students of its benefits. Then, to help students keep
reading, we should encourage them report back on their reading in a number of
ways.
In order to get students to read enthusiastically in
class, creating interest in the topic and task is needed. However, there
are three different roles that could be played by us as teachers. Those are
organizer, observer, feedback organizer, and prompter. As organizer, we need to tell
students exactly what their reading purpose. Give them clear instructions about
how to achieve it and explain how long they have to do this. As observer, we
need to give them space to do so when we ask students to read on their own. It
means that restraining ourselves from interrupting that reading. We can also
lead a feedback session to check that they have completed it successfully. As
prompter, we can prompt them to notice language features within it.
Spoken and written language is very different. Students
already literate in their languages will of course be familiar with the broad,
basic characteristics of written language. Knowing about the characteristics
help for diagnosing certain reading difficulties arising from the
idiosyncrasies of written language, pointing your techniques toward specific
objectives and reminding students of some of the advantages of the written
language. There are; permanence, processing time, distance, orthography,
complexity, vocabulary, formality.
Here are the principles in teaching reading. First, reading is not a passive skill.
Reading is an incredibility active occupation. To do it successfully, we have
to understand what the words mean, see the pictures the words are painting,
understand the arguments, and work out
if wee agree with them. Second,
students need to be engaged with what they are reading. Student who are not
engaged with the reading text, were not actively interested in what they are
doing. Third, students should be
encouraged to respond the content of a reading text, not just to the language.
It is important to study reading text for the way the use language, the number
of paragraphs they contain and how many times they use relative clause. Fourth, prediction is a major factor in
reading. When we read text in our own language, we frequently have a good idea
of the content before we actually read. Fifth,
match the task to the topic. The most interesting text can be undermined by
asking boring and inappropriate questions; the most commonplace passage can be
made really exciting with imaginative and challenging task. Sixth, good
teachers exploit reading text to full. Any reading text is full of sentences,
words ideas descriptions etc. it does not make sense just to get students to
read it and then drop it to move on to something else.
Here are three examples of reading sequence. First is sunscreen. In this example for
pre-intermediate students, the students look at the picture of people
sunbathing and say whether it is a positive, safe and attractive image-or whether
it is the opposite. The teacher then asks students to read the text and
identify where they think it comes from. Second
is campaigns, this example is for intermediate level. After doing comprehension
work on the reading text, students are involved in a role play which follows on
from the reading they have done. Third
is webquest, it is for intermediate to advance level. In a webquest, students
visit various website in order to find information to use in class project.
In line with this, here are more reading suggestions. First is jigsaw reading. Students read a
short text which sets up a problem and then, in three groups, they read three
different text, all of which are about the same thing. When they have read
their text, they come together in groups where each student has read a
different text, and they try to work out the whole story, or describe the whole
situation. Second is reading puzzles.
It is apart from jigsaw reading, there are many other kinds of puzzle which
involve students in motivating reading tasks. Third is using newspaper. There is almost no limit to the kinds of
activity which can be done with newspaper. We can do all kinds of matching
exercise, such as ones where students have to match articles with their
headlines or with relevant pictures. Fourth
is following instructions. Students read instructions for a simple operation
and have to put the instructions in the correct order. Fifth is poetry. In groups, students are each given a line from a
poem. They can not show the line to the other members of the group, though they
can read it out loud. They have to reassemble the poem by putting the lines in
order. Sixth is play extracts.
Students read an extract from a play or film and, after ensuring that they
understand it and analyzing its constructions, they have to work on acting it
out. Seventh is predicting from words
and pictures. Students are given a number of words from a text. Working in
groups, they have to predict what kind of text they are going to read-or what
story the text tells. Eighth is
different response. There are many things students can do with a reading text
apart fro answering comprehension question with sentences, saying whether
something is true or false or finding particular words in the text.
Teaching
Listening
Students can
improve their listening skill and gain valuable language input by combining
extensive and intensive listening material procedure. Listening to both kind
listening types are important since it provides the perfect opportunity to hear
voices other than the teacher. It enables students to acquire good speaking
habits as a result of the spoken English, they absorb and help improving their
pronunciation. As Carter and Nunan (2001: 7) stated that the teaching listening
involves the selection of input sources (which may be live or be recorded on
audio or video).
The importance of
listening in language learning can hardly be overestimated. Listening
comprehension has not always drawn the attention of educators to the extent
that it now has. Students can improve their listening skills – and gain
valuable language input – through a combination of extensive and intensive
listening material and procedures. As same as extensive reading, extensive
listening encourages students to choose for themselves what they listen to and
do so for pleasure, can also have a dramatic effect on a student’s language
learning. Material
for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of sources. One example
of authentic extensive listening material is radio broadcasts. Different
students have different attitude towards the activity of extensive listening
and it is the duty of the teacher to explain the benefits of listening
extensively and come to some kind of agreement about how much and what kind of
listening they should do.
Many teachers use audio material on tape, CD or hard disk
when they want their students to practice listening skills. Actually, both of
them have advantage and disadvantage. The advantage recorded material allows
students to hear a variety of different voices apart from just their own
teacher’s. it gives them an opportunity to meet a range of different
characters, especially where real people are talking. Audio material is
portable and readily available. Tapes and CDs are extremely cheap, and machine
to play them are relatively inexpensive. In contrast, the disadvantage from it
is when in big classroom with poor acoustics, the audibility of recorded
material often gives cause for concern. It is sometimes difficult to ensure
that all the students in a room can hear equally well. Another problem with
recorded material in the classroom is that everyone has to listen at the same
speed, a speed dictated by the recording, not by the listener. It means that
there are things we can do about this. Firs, some teachers get students to
control the speed of recorded listening. Second, we have the space or
resources, it is a very good idea to have students listen to different machines
in small groups. Third, students work I a language laboratory or listening
centre.
In intensive listening, a popular way of ensuring genuine
communication is live listening. Live listening can take the following forms.
First is reading aloud. An enjoyable activity, when done with conviction and
style, is for the teacher to read aloud to a class. Second is storytelling.
Teachers are ideally placed to tell stories which, in turn, provide excellent
listening material. At any stage of the
story, the students can be asked to predict what is coming next, to describe
people in the story or pass comment on it in some other way. Third is
interview. One of the most motivating listening activities is the live in the
interview, especially where students themselves think up the questions. The
last is conversation, if we persuade a colleague to come to our class, we can
hold conversations with them about English or any other subject.
Teacher need to create student engagement through the way
we set up listening tasks. Here are the roles of teacher to acknowledge the
students’ difficulties and suggest ways out of them. Teachers play as
organizer, machine operator, feedback organizer, and prompter. Having students
to listen while they watch film clips on video or DVD is good for them. There
are many good reasons for encouraging students to watch while they listen.
First, they get to see language in use. For example, they can see how
intonation matches facial expression and what gestures accompany certain
phrases. Finally, it is worth remembering that students can watch a huge range
of film clips on the internet.
Students curiosity is important to awaken through
prediction when the finally watch the film sequence in its entirety. So, here are viewing technique are designed.
There are; fast forward, silent viewing (for language), silent viewing (for
music), freeze frame, partial viewing. Listening routines, based on the same
principles as those for viewing, are similarly designed to provoke engagement
and expectations. Listening routines, based on the same principles as those for
viewing, are similarly designed to provoke engagement and expectations. They
are; pictureless listening (language), pictureless listening (music),
pictureless listening (sound effect), picture or speech, subtitles.
Here are some types of performances are embedded in
abrader technique or task, and sometimes they are themselves the sum total of
the activity of a technique. First is reactive. It means that sometimes you
want a learner simply to listen to the surface structure of an utterance for
the sole purpose of repeating it back to you. Second is intensive. Techniques
whose only purpose is to focus on components of discourse may be considered to
be intensive-as opposed to extensive – in their requirement that students
single out certain of spoken. Third is responsive. A significant proportion of
classroom listening activity consist of short stretches of teacher language
designed to elicit immediate responses. Fourth is selective. Te task of the
students is not to process everything that was said, but rather to scan the
material selectively for certain information. Fifth is extensive. Extensive
performance could range from listening to lengthy lectures, to listening to a
conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose.
Finally, here are principles for designing listening
techniques. They are; in an interactive, for skills curriculum, make sure that
you do not overlook the importance of techniques that specifically develop
listening comprehension competence. Use techniques that are intrinsically
motivating. Utilize authentic language and context. Carefully consider the form
or listeners’ responses. Encourage the development of listening strategies.
A. Bibliography
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The Practice of English Language Teaching.
Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007b. How to Teach English. China: Pearson
Education Limited.
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