Teach English in ShAtian Zhen - Maoming Shi

There are four basic skills in any language; receptive skills - reading and listening, and productive skills - speaking and writing. Teachers should try to incorporate all of them into lessons to keep balanced approach. There are two categories of reasons and motives for reading and listening: for a purpose and for entertainment. Quite often reading and listening may be a mix of the above two motives. Reading and listening are not simply matters for eyes and ears, but also a matter of using our minds to literally understand words and process them in our \"pre-existent knowledge\" to gain true understanding. Sudents' expertise in areas such as productive skills, scanning, skimming, detailed information and deduction from context will influence on reading/listening and understanding of the context by the students. Problems with reading and listening are mainly in connection with the language contained in the text, the topic and the tasks the students will perfom. Sentence length, word length and a number of unfamiliar words can also present problems to the students. There are two ways of approaching language difficulty: pre-teach vocabulary (it helps to remove some of the obstacles. Teachers should to pre-teach the words that are essential to understanding and leaving other vocabulary work until later) and careful selection of texts (teachers should present to the students a variety of authentic and non-authentic texts). The topic of the text or dialogue can also help to motivate the students. Knowing the students and their interests is important for selecting topics and tasks that would be interesting for them. Teachers can get students engaged by showing pictures, discussing the topics and other \"engage\" phase activities. An important feature in the teaching of receptive skills concerns comprehension tasks. A good task should be achievable.