Teaching listening and speaking to primary learners

According to a logical development, listening and speaking are taught together as in real life we need to understand other people and to respond

To help leaners to become better communicators, we need to provide patterns of language

To help them to become more confident contributors, we also need to help them to listen for meaning

"If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well." source: Molière

Children become better at planning what to say and how to express their thoughts. However, they often blame themselves for not having understood the interlocutor, rather than thinking that it was the latter who was unclear. To help our learners to be more confident in both speaking and listening, we need to understand the demands of both skills.

Listening	Speaking
Can use clues to aid understanding (e.g. intonation, voice pitch)  No need to produce language  Only need to select main points for understanding	Need to find and organise the most appropriate words  Need to share understanding with others  Need to produce language

How can a teacher help their learners?

1) Provide support

• Introduce the theme before listening.
• Ask pairs to compare answers to listening activities.
• Give opportunities to listen again.
• Do an open-class demonstration of speaking tasks.
• Monitor during speaking tasks to provide support.
• Allow time for learners to practise before open-class presentations.

2) Give them strategies to use that will enable them to develop both skills:

• Listen carefully to discriminate sounds or identify meaning.
• Use context and clues to help interpret meaning.
• Ask and answer questions to get a better understanding.
• Discuss ideas with a partner.
• Watch and listen to the demonstration carefully.
• Before you start, think about vocabulary related to the theme.

Speaking 

Learning to speak is a long process. First, your students resort to mime and gestures; then they start using set phrases and finally they create independent language and fuller contributions and their language becomes more accurate.

To help our primary learners, who are just beginning to learn English and don’t have much vocabulary or language they can use, a teacher can use this advice:

• Speak with your learners. Give them an opportunity to hear real talk. Although TTT will be increased, but later this will help your learners to understand their interlocutors and to produce their sentences;
• Give your learners chances to speak, to express themselves. They will use gestures, mime, isolated words - but they are making steps, and they are making progress. This will result in creating complete sentences. 

So, a teacher should speak with their learners. But how can they do it in a proper way?

1.                  Use language chunks every day so that your learners hear and use them as much as possible

2.                  Use simple short phrases;

3.                  Use simple words (perhaps the vocabulary they already know);

4.                  Use gestures and mime;

5.                  Use pictures and always show them or point at them illustrating your speech;

6.                  Repeat what you are say so that your learners could have an opportunity to understand you better;

7.                  Have short, simple conversations with your students in order to increase talk time;

Listening

The most widespread activities for listening:

• true/false comprehension
• identifying pictures
• sequencing a story

If you are going to incorporate a listening, don't forget about pre-listening activities. 

It's also a good idea to divide the task into several stages (there is already a post about it)

Imagine that you want to do a listening about animals.

• Stage 1 (Preparation stage) 

Learners predict the animals they might hear.

• Stage 2 (Main task stage, part 1)

Learners listen and circle the animals they hear.

• Stage 3 (Main task stage, part 2)

Learners compare their predictions with what they heard.

• Stage 4 (Main task stage, part 3)

Learners listen again to check their information.

• Stage 5 (Post-task stage)

Whole-class feedback

You can do a listing for understanding (the example above illustrates it ) or for noticing some structures, some language. In this case, you are to emphasize what you would like your students to pay attention to. For instance, the language you want to stress is the Present Simple with "he, she, it". So, when you read a small text, stress this ending - "She likeS playing football", "She DOESn't eat ice-creams" etc. You can prolong the sounds and raise your voice. 

Repeat if it is necessary for your students, especially for your weaker learners so that they felt more confident. 

Extend such listening activities by asking them questions or asking to speak about themselves. This will enable them to use the language from listening in their speaking (to restructure).

Restructuring

For restructuring, we need to provide opportunities for learners to use that language area through a supportive step-by-step approach. One way of providing support is by using controlled practice with drills.

The benefits:

• they give intensive practice in hearing and saying particular words or phrases;
• they help learners get their tongues around difficult sounds and imitate intonation;
• they provide a safe environment for learners to experiment with producing language;
• they help build confidence, especially among learners who are not risk-takers;
• provide opportunities for learners to get immediate feedback on their accuracy;
• help learners memorise language patterns and chunks;

Different kinds of drills:

• In an individual drill, each learner repeats a piece of language on their own;
• In a chorus drill, all the learners repeat a word or phrase together. This can be very useful for focusing on intonation patterns;
• In a substitution drill, learners repeat a sentence, changing one word. Substitution drills can be used to practise different structures or vocabulary;

E.g.: He is a postman. - He is a doctor.

• In a question and answer drill, learners practise asking and answering questions. This kind of drill provides an opportunity for pair work;

E.g.: What is the weather today?
- It's sunny today. 

• In a back chaining drill, learners build a complete sentence but starting with the last word and working back. By getting learners to remember the words, this kind of drill integrates a fun element, especially if the teacher joins in.

E.g.: Yet/ the floor/ haven't cleaned/ I - I haven't cleaned the floor yet

Integrating listening and speaking skills communicatively

If we want our learners to talk meaningfully, we need to create a reason for talking – a communicative goal. This can be achieved through a choice of topic, activity and by giving our learners an opportunity to choose what they would like to speak about in this topic. 

Listening and speaking activities:

• Listen and identify

The teacher says the name of a piece of furniture and the learners point to the item in the classroom or a picture of the item. 

• Listen and do

Learners listen to the name of an animal and then mime its characteristics. 

• Listen and put

Learners draw a picture of a house and then follow the teacher’s instruction of where to place something in the picture. 

• Guess what it is

The teacher chooses a type of fruit and learners ask questions to find out what it is. 

• Word tennis

Learners are divided into teams. Teams take turns to name a colour. The team that knows the most different colours wins.

It's essential to motivate our learners to speak. To do this, it is important to create a special atmosphere in class and to ensure your students that there is nothing to be afraid of. 

Freer and creative speaking is also highly motivating and encourages students to speak. For such activities you can:

• Use pictures - You can put three or four pictures of animals on the board and ask the children to think of adjectives for each one. Then you can ask them to use the animal name and the adjectives to create a sentence;

• Use poems or chants - Give your children three words with the same sounds and ask them to make a chant (for example: "The cat is on the mat, it sees a bat, it eats the bat on the mat!’);

• Give learners an opportunity to create their own sentences as learners remember their own sentences better;

Links:

http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/courses/details/18777/teaching-primary-learners-communicatively