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1. What is listening?
In our native language at least, we seem to automatically know “how to listen” and “what we are listening for.” To language learners, listening is far more challenging.  Listening, along with reading, is a receptive skill.
Listening usually happens in real time. That is, people listen and have to comprehend what they hear immediately.

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2. Background to the teaching of listening.

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2. Background to the teaching of listening.

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Listening was virtually ignored. Then, in the late 1800s, interest in using children’s learning of their first language as a model for foreign language teaching grew. One of the results was Gouin’s series method.
a. the audiolingual method came to dominate foreign language teaching. The method, which was heavily influenced by the behavioral
psychology of the day, emphasized M IM /M E M (mimicry/memorization) of new structures.
b. Communicative language -the student learns though the act of communication-increased the role of listening.

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1. Expose students to different ways of processing information: bottom-up vs. top-down:  With bottom-up processing, students start with the component parts: words, grammar, and the like. Top-down processing is the opposite.
2. Expose students to different types of listening. There’s an adage in teaching listening that says: It’s not just what they are listening to. It’s what they are listening for. Listeners need to consider their purpose.
3. Teach a variety of tasks. If learners need experience with different types o f listening texts, they also need to work with a variety of tasks.
4. Consider text, difficulty, and authenticity. In addition to the task, the text itself determines how easy or difficult something is to understand.
5. Teach listening strategies.
Predicting: Effective listeners think about what they will hear.

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1. Dictation with a difference
2. Do-it-yourself: Modifying materials to add “listening for specific information”
3. Do-it-yourself: Adding gist tasks
4. Listening between the lines: Inference tasks
5. Do-it-yourself inference

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Language generated by the learner (in speech or writing) is referred to as productive  Thus, speaking is the productive aural/oral skill. It consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning.

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Audiolingual repetition drills were designed to familiarize students with the sounds and structural patterns o f the target language (the language which learners are aiming to learn). People supposedly learned to speak by practicing grammatical structures and then later using them in conversation. S

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1. Be aware of the differences between second language and foreign language learning contexts.
2. Give students practice with both fluency and accuracy.
3. Provide opportunities for students to talk by using group work or pair work, and limiting teacher talk.
4. Plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning.
5. Design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking

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Information gap is a useful activity in which one person has information that the other lacks
jigsaw activities are a bidirectional or multidirectional information gap. Each person in a pair or group has some information the other persons need. For example, one student could have a timetable for train travel in Canada. Another could have a map of Canada.
Role-plays are also excellent activities for speaking in the relatively safe environment o f the classroom.
Simulations for instance, in a language lesson about the grocery store, a teacher might bring in “products” for the students to buy (a box of crackers, coffee, a jar o f jam) and even play money for making their purchases.
Contact assignments involve sending students out of the classroom with a stated purpose to talk to people in the target language.

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Reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension. Strategic reading is defined as the ability o f the reader to use a wide variety o f reading strategies to accomplish a purpose for reading good readers know what to do when they encounter difficulties. Fluent reading is defined as the ability to read at an appropriate rate with adequate comprehension.

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2. Background to the teaching of reading.

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2. Background to the teaching of reading.

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Silent reading Reading is primarily a silent activity. The majority o f reading that we do will be done silently. In Western cultures oral reading was the primary practice until the nineteenth century. In about 1880 a debate began on the advantages of silent reading versus oral reading (Allington, 1984)
Reading processes Understanding the process of reading has been the focus of much research over the past 125 years.
- Bottom-up models typically consist o f lower-level reading processes.
- A phonics approach to teaching reading supports a bottom-up model. This approach is used in many reading series.

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1. Exploit the reader’s background knowledge: Background knowledge includes all of the experiences that a reader brings to a text: life experiences, educational experiences, knowledge of how texts can be organized rhetorically, knowledge of how one’s first language works, knowledge of how the second language works, and cultural background and knowledge.
2. Build a strong vocabulary base. Recent research emphasized the importance o f vocabulary to successful reading.
3. Teach for comprehension. In many reading instruction programs, more emphasis and time may be placed on testing reading comprehension than on teaching readers how to comprehend.
4. Work on increasing reading rate. One great difficulty in the second language reading classroom is that even when language learners can read, much o f their reading is not fluent.
5. Teach reading strategies. Strategies are “the tools for active, self-directed involvement that is necessary for developing communicative ability. Strategies are not a single event, but rather a creative sequence of events that learners actively use”
6. Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills.  For example, guessing the meaning o f unknown vocabulary from context can be listed as both a strategy and a skill in reading texts.
7. Build assessment and evaluation into your teaching. Assessing growth and development in reading skills from both a formal and an informal perspective requires time and training.

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A: Activate prior knowledge
C: Cultivate vocabulary
T: Teach for comprehension
I: Increase reading rate
V: Verify reading strategies
E: Evaluate progress

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Writing can be defined by a series o f contrasts: It is both a physical and a mental act. At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of committing words or ideas to some medium, whether it is hieroglyphics inked onto parchment or an e-mail message typed into a computer. On the other hand, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader.

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2. Background to the teaching of writing.

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2. Background to the teaching of writing.

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1. Understand your students’ reasons for writing. The greatest dissatisfaction with writing instruction comes when the teacher’s goals do not match the student’s, or when the teacher’s goals do not match those of the school or institution in which the student works.
2. Provide many opportunities for students to write. Writing almost always improves with practice. Evaluate your lesson plans: how much time is spent reading or talking about writing.
3. Make feedback helpful and meaningful. Students crave feedback on their writing, yet it doesn’t always have the intended effect. If you write comments on students’ papers, make sure they understand the vocabulary or symbols you use. Take time to discuss them in class. Be cautious about the tone o f your comments.   4. Clarify for yourself, and for your students, how their writing will be evaluated. Students often feel that the evaluation o f their writing is completely subjective.

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Invention techniques:

1. brainstorming

2. wordmapping

3. quickwriting

Instructors often feel a tension between providing students a topic for writing and allowing students to formulate their own topics.