Teach English in XiaosAnjiAng Zhen - Qingyuan Shi

Unit 11 focuses on the receptive skills of reading and listening. These two skills can be categorized into two basic categories: reading or listening for a purpose, and for entertainment. Employing these receptive skills for a purpose takes place because the motive is to achieve some particular motive or goal, whereas employing these skills for entertainment purposes usually entails reading or listening to information for pleasure or enjoyment. However, it is often the case that you find yourself employing these receptive skills for a mixture of purpose and entertainment. Listeners and readers must not only listen and read, but they must also understand and comprehend. Their success in doing so will depend on how skilled they are in the following areas: predictive skills, skimming, scanning, identifying detailed information, and deduction from context. As such - particularly with listening skills - it's easy to see why students learning English as a second language find it so difficult. Pre-teaching essential language and structures, and carefully selecting a mix of authentic and non-authentic texts can help students facing difficulties with the language when developing these skills. It's beneficial to carefully choose topics that will interest the students, find ways to create interest and motivation in the students, and provide comprehension tasks that promote understanding as opposed to simply checking understanding. As with any other skill, the more language we expose the student to and practice we provide them with, the more they will learn. But, as always, it's important to remember not to overwhelm students will extremely difficult or unrealistically achievable language goals.