Learning and Teaching of the Four Language Skills

Extended tasks provide further opportunities for students to practise various language skills and use the language items and structures, vocabulary and text types they have learnt in the unit or module. Students of different ability levels can be encouraged to complete the extended tasks at their own pace within a certain period of time. Teachers need to design extended tasks that are suited to students’ abilities and adjust their expectations according to the competence of individual students.

Alternatively, teachers might like to engage students in project work. Projects have various advantages as they:

 provide an effective framework for more extensive language use and language learning:

Through the process of planning, information search, note-taking, interviewing, data analysis, discussion, drafting and re-drafting, editing, presentation and other steps that are often involved in project work, students are able to use language skills and language learning strategies purposefully, extensively and in an integrated way.

 help students develop independence and a sense of responsibility: Projects allow students to pursue a topic of interest to themselves, set their own learning targets, and plan and reflect on their course of action. Personal involvement of this sort enables students to become more responsible for their own learning.

 facilitate lifelong and life-wide learning: Projects may encourage students to move out of the classroom into the community, allowing them to connect what they learn at school with the world at large. Through planning, organising and participating in real-life investigations, which involve exploring problems from various perspectives and presenting information in various modes, students develop not only language knowledge and skills but also the generic skills, positive values and attitudes that are conducive to lifelong development.

Co-ordination across Key Learning Areas (KLAs) may be necessary not only for interdisciplinary projects, but also for ensuring that students are given a manageable number of projects at the same time. Before assigning project work, teachers need to plan and make appropriate arrangements, taking into consideration the theme or topic, the learning targets and objectives, the generic skills, values and attitudes, the resources, the amount of time required, the parties involved and the products.

For projects to be genuinely student-centred, teachers need to be flexible and open-minded when working with students, and provide appropriate support.

communication. However, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, the four language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing – are presented separately in this section.

Listening

To help students develop the various skills required in listening, teachers need to expose them to a broad range of listening experiences and to make use of a wide selection of authentic listening materials such as advertisements, announcements, telephone conversations, speeches, films, poems, songs and rhymes. It is important to draw students’ attention to the use of spoken English in their daily lives and encourage them to make use of available resources such as English language programmes on TV and the radio, and to build their confidence by providing them with learning experiences and activities in which they can be successful. Teachers are encouraged to consider the following activities to help students develop listening skills and strategies effectively.

 Skills of anticipation

The activities suggested below are mostly conducted at the pre-listening stage to motivate students, set the scene and give them clear purposes for the listening tasks.

- Students share knowledge and opinions on the given topic and use them as the basis for prediction and comprehension.

- Students are given the title or background information on what they are about to hear and they guess what the content of the text is going to be.

- Students listen to a short extract of what they are about to hear and predict what they will hear in the main text.

- Students read through questions in advance so that they know what to listen for (focused listening). This will train them to select and pay attention to the key points in what they hear.

 Sound processing and sound discrimination

These activities are related to recognition of words; sentence and clause boundaries;

contracted forms; stress and intonation patterns and their significance; speech rhythm;

changes in pitch, tone and speed of delivery; and discrimination between similar speech sounds, homonyms, etc.

- Students are given sentences containing minimal pairs of words set in context for discrimination practice.

- Students identify the meanings of different stress and intonation patterns and interpret the speaker’s intent and the real meaning of the message. For example, a simple sentence such as “Ms Smith teaches Geography.” can be spoken with stress on different words to indicate that Ms Smith, not someone else, teaches Geography, or that Ms Smith teaches, not studies Geography, or that Ms Smith teaches Geography, not another subject.

 Understanding instructions and following directions

- Students follow directions given and trace routes or locate specific facilities on maps or floor plans.

- Students carry out various tasks based on oral instructions.

 Understanding the main idea or theme

- Students match descriptions they hear with non-verbal forms such as a picture or diagram.

- Students listen to radio or TV news bulletins and identify the main points, paying attention to the headlines which are normally given at the beginning of news broadcasts.

- Students write down the most important words or phrases they hear in a passage.

- Students supply a title for a passage they have heard or summarise the main points of the passage.

 Understanding the use of supporting ideas or details

- Students write down details in support of the main ideas.

- Students identify illustrations or examples for each main idea.

 Processing meaning

- Students organise the materials into meaningful sections as they listen (e.g. making notes under different headings as they listen, using a mind map to organise information, picking out particular facts, evidence or cause-and-effect relationships).

- Students make use of contextual clues to deduce word meanings or implied meanings.

 Critical listening

- Students listen to others’ ideas in group discussions and evaluate them in the light of their own knowledge, experience and ideas, and make critical judgements.

 Understanding the speaker’s intent or attitudes

- Students interpret the speaker’s intent or attitudes as well as the underlying meaning of what the speaker says by examining:

 the language used (e.g. choice of words, use of repetition, use of hyperboles); and

 the manner of speech (e.g. choice of intonation and stress, volume, pitch, pace).

Speaking

For effective oral communication, students need to acquire a range of speaking skills and strategies.

These include:

 Accuracy: the skill of using pronunciation (e.g. speech sounds, stress, rhythm, intonation), grammar and vocabulary correctly to communicate ideas and express feelings;

 Fluency: the skill of linking what one says together and producing it at a reasonably “normal”

speed;

 Appropriateness: the skill of using the right sort of language (e.g. formal or informal language) to suit particular situations;

 Cohesion: the skill of producing spoken utterances which “hang together” grammatically;

 Coherence: the skill of producing spoken utterances which “hang together” semantically and logically; and

 Interaction strategies, such as seeking further information, asking for clarification, negotiating meaning, and taking turns appropriately at relevant points in an oral interaction.

A wide range of activities should be used to help students develop the ability to present information and feelings clearly and coherently, as well as to participate effectively in oral interactions. Some activities are suggested as follows:

 Conveying ideas and information in conversations

- Students look at a painting, listen to a song, read a book or view a film/TV programme and share their thoughts and feelings in a group or with the class.

- Students engage in role-plays and carry out various social transactions or informal chats.

 Using correct pronunciation and intonation for different purposes

- Students listen to recordings of speeches or dramatic episodes to identify the use of different intonation patterns to convey meaning. They try to imitate the stress, rhythm and intonation used, record their own performance for self, peer and teacher feedback and make improvements on their accuracy.

- Students make presentations on a topic of their choice or a book they would like to introduce to the class, taking note of the use of voice, stress and intonation to achieve the desired effect.

 Using words and expressions appropriate to the context

- Students listen to recorded materials and decide on the degree of formality, and the relationship between the speakers, setting, etc. Then they improvise for similar situations.

- Students practise conveying the same information in different roles and contexts, paying attention to whether their choice of words and language is at the appropriate level of formality.

 Using strategies in leading or participating in discussions and negotiations

- Students listen to recordings and identify useful expressions that encourage people to say more, or identify the use of conversational fillers such as “Really?” and “I see” to sustain interaction. They then apply these strategies in discussions or conversations.

- Students engage in discussions where they use communication and negotiation skills to solve problems or reach a consensus. Students can take turns to be the chairperson or group leader and ensure that each group member contributes to the discussion. Another group of students may play the role of observers and carry out peer assessment by taking note of the interaction strategies used by each participant and giving feedback to the group on its effectiveness at the end of the discussion.

Reading

Promotion of Reading

Reading is a means to help students seek information, develop thinking skills, enrich knowledge, enhance language proficiency and broaden perspectives. Reading should be promoted in schools and integrated into regular English Language lessons with the other language skills of listening, speaking and writing. It should also be promoted across all KLAs and in the whole-school curriculum. Emphasis has to be placed on motivating students and providing them with proper guidance and opportunities to enhance their enjoyment, learning capacity and personal growth through reading.

Language teachers can help promote a reading culture through designing reading programmes that encourage students to read a wide range of text types with different subject content and to share their personal responses with peers. Teachers select or develop appropriate learning activities based on texts that interest students, so that they will learn to appreciate the value of reading and become motivated to make reading a lifelong pleasure. For more information on the resources that can be used to promote reading to learn, please refer to Section 6.3.2.

Schools can help students develop the habit of reading by encouraging them to read outside class time, such as during morning assembly and recess, and after school.

Students can be encouraged to notice and read the signs, display boards, notices and advertisements in their immediate environment. These materials can promote the development of functional reading skills and help students relate English Language learning to daily life.

Suggestions for Enhancing Reading Skills and Strategies

To help students become effective readers, the following activities can be adopted:

 Pre-reading activities

- Creating a purpose for reading

 The teacher helps set a clear purpose by asking students to consider a question or

problem before they read. Students can then judge which parts of the text to ignore, what to skim over and what to attend to in detail.

- Building background knowledge

 The teacher gives students some information on what they are going to read to build their background knowledge.

 Students share what they know about the topic. They then compare the points raised with those found in the text.

- Activating students’ schemas

To develop and activate students’ schemas, the teacher guides students to:

 predict the content of a text from information such as the title, headings, sub-headings, pictures, table of contents, preface and appendix; and

 use semantic maps to categorise ideas and concepts and visually illustrate the relationship between ideas and concepts.

 While-reading activities

- Tackling unfamiliar lexical items and structures

 Students use structural information, such as the position of a lexical item, the morphology of a word (e.g. affixation) and the various devices used to create textual cohesion (e.g. reference, connectives) to decode the meaning of unfamiliar words and structures.

 Students infer the meaning of unfamiliar words from context.

 Students use a dictionary with discretion, deciding which words to look up and which ones to bypass.

- Scanning

 Students look through a text rapidly to search for specific details (e.g. a name, a date), looking for clue words or phrases that may indicate the location of the information they are seeking, without attempting to deal with the content as a whole.

- Skimming

 Students examine headings and sub-headings, look at pictures, and locate topic sentences to get a general impression of the content and structure of a text.

- Prediction

 While reading a story of some length, students can, under the teacher’s guidance, stop at critical points to make predictions about what may happen next to a certain character, or what may happen as a result of a certain turn of events. They can explain their predictions briefly by pointing to story clues.

- Understanding main ideas

 Students identify the key phrases or sentences in a text.

 Students select from a list the main ideas most relevant to the text they read.

 Students summarise orally or in writing the main points of a text.

 Students identify cause-and-effect relationships presented in the text.

- Identifying supporting ideas or details

 Students list the supporting details under each main idea in the text.

 Students find one illustration or example for each main idea provided.

 Students read strips of paper containing sentences or paraphrases from the text they read and put these strips under the categories of “main ideas” or “supporting details”.

- Recognising the writer’s intent and attitude

 Students consider the use of figures of speech, cohesive devices, rhetorical devices and contextual clues which help bring out the underlying meaning.

 Students discuss with one another the writer’s points of view and attitude towards specific events or issues.

- Critical reading

 Students express opinions on certain ideas developed in the reading text. They then invite comments from peers.

 Students initiate and formulate questions. They then discuss the questions among themselves, with the teacher giving feedback on their interpretations.

 Post-reading activities

- Students record personal responses to the reading text(s) in a reading journal.

- Students hold discussions on issues raised in the reading text(s).

- Students do further reading on the topic(s) or issue(s) discussed in the reading text(s).

Writing

In the English Language curriculum, a process approach to writing is recommended. This approach focuses on students exploring and being aware of what they do, and the choices they make, during writing. The following are some suggested strategies and activities which teachers can use to develop students’ skills at the various stages of the writing process, which include pre-writing, drafting and revising. Teachers should be aware that the process writing approach is not a mechanical sequencing of techniques and that they do not need to use the suggested activities in the order presented below. To handle time constraints, teachers may identify a focus in each process writing task, selecting a specific part of the writing or an aspect of the writing process (e.g. idea

generation, planning, drafting or revising) to work on each time to facilitate more focused learning and teaching and avoid excessive rewriting and remarking of the whole piece time and again.

Students should be encouraged to apply the whole process progressively to review and improve longer pieces of writing over successive drafts when they have mastered more strategies along the way.

 Pre-writing

In the pre-writing stage, students are mainly involved in generating and planning ideas.

- Idea generation helps students get started. Students may do the following to develop the skill of idea generation:

 brainstorm in small groups;

 practise free writing by writing as quickly as possible;

 make use of questions to stimulate thinking and develop ideas;

 interview one another to collect information and ideas; and

 read or listen to texts on the topic and use the ideas obtained to think of new ideas.

- Planning involves consideration of the purpose, audience and overall structure of a piece of writing. To develop the skills in identifying writing purposes and audience, students may:

 examine sample texts to consider the writer’s purposes and the intended audience;

 examine how a single event or issue has been reported from a variety of angles;

 consider an event or a situation from the various points of view presented in the text;

 rewrite an argumentative text from the perspective of the opposing viewpoint; and

 assess whether a thesis needs refining, and write a brief and flexible outline which can be reshaped as they discover new ideas.

 Drafting

When writing the first draft, students should focus on content and meaning and leave matters like grammar, punctuation and spelling until later. Teachers should prepare students for this stage of writing by developing their skills in the following areas:

- Beginning and ending

 Students examine and discuss the characteristics of the beginnings and endings of different text types in terms of the level of interest they generate, the form they take, their relationships to other parts of the text and their relationships to each other.

They then apply this knowledge to evaluate the opening and ending of their own drafts.

 Students compare examples of effective and less effective beginnings and endings of texts and discuss what makes some beginnings and endings more effective than others.

 Students match the beginnings and endings of texts to see the ways in which the

endings reflect and relate to the openings.

 Students write a beginning and an ending to suit the body of a given text.

- Developing and structuring content

 Students engage in reading tasks, which will allow them to develop their thinking, build vocabulary, develop insights into the structures of various text types and appreciate what makes an effective piece of writing in terms of cohesion within and across sentences, coherence in the logic of the writing and the overall organisation of the text.

 Students work on cohesion exercises focusing on one or more aspects of written discourse in order to enhance their power of structuring writing before engaging in freer writing activities.

 Students practise writing a broad range of text types, so as to deepen their understanding and experience of the use of different methods of organisation in different types of discourse.

 Revising

- When revising, students review and make changes to their draft at the text level (e.g.

content, cohesion, coherence, organisation) and check the surface aspects of the text (e.g.

grammar, spelling) to make sure that the text is suitable for presentation to the reader.

- The revising process can be supported by the following activities:

 Peer and self-review

Students work interactively in pairs or small groups to review each other’s draft through questions, suggestions or comments, with the help of a feedback sheet like the one below to guide them through the review process, if necessary. Alternatively, students can be encouraged to respond critically to their own work by practising self-feedback, using the same feedback sheet.

Feedback Sheet

(1 = needs improvement, 2 = satisfactory, 3 = well done) 1 2 3 Content

Is the content clear?   

Is the content relevant?   

Organisation

Are the ideas put in paragraphs?   

Are the ideas presented in a logical way?    Language use

Are the grammatical structures appropriately used?   

Is the choice of words suitable?   

Additional comments:

在文檔中 English Language Education Key Learning Area (頁 41-50)