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| How should I teach the macro skills? Oh la la la.. |
Theories in teaching :
a. Listening
The theory in teaching listening was not explicitly discussed, but I will just simply
present what I remembered and learned on this matter.
In real-world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing generally occur together. The extent to which one or the other dominates depends on the listener’s familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the density of information in a text, the text type, and the listener’s purpose in listening. Thus I believe that in teaching listening, we must combine the two processes by outlining activities consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening that link bottom-up and top-down listening (Field, 1998). The pre-listening phase prepares learners for both top-down and bottom-up processing through activities involving activating prior knowledge, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary. The while-listening phase focuses on comprehension through exercises that require selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, etc. The post-listening phase typically involves a response to comprehension and may require students to give opinions about a topic. However, it can also include a bottom-up focus if the teacher and the listeners examine the texts or parts of the text in detail, focusing on sections that students could not follow. This may involve a microanalysis of sections of the text to enable students to recognize such features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken discourse that they were unable to process or recognize. Through these activities, successful listening among students can be attained.
b. Speaking
The mastery of speaking skills in English is a priority for many second-language or foreign-language learners. Consequently, learners often evaluate their success in language learning as well as the effectiveness of their English course on the basis of how much they feel they have improved in their spoken language proficiency. But, the question is, what are the things that we need to consider teaching listening? Tsang and Wong (2002) shared that the first is to determine what kinds of speaking skills the class will focus on. Informal needs analysis is the starting point here. Procedures for determining needs include observation of learners carrying out different kinds of communicative tasks, questionnaires, interviews, and diagnostic testing . The second issue is to identify teaching strategies to “teach” (i.e., provide opportunities for learners to acquire) each kind of talk. With this, I believe that one should teach speaking as transaction. According to Richards (1990), talk as transaction is more easily planned since current communicative materials are a rich resource of group activities, information-gap activities, and role plays that can provide a source for practicing how to use talk for sharing and obtaining information, as well as for carrying out real-world transactions. These activities include ranking, values clarification, brainstorming, and simulations. Group discussion activities can be initiated by having students work in groups to prepare a short list of controversial statements for others to think about. In this approach, talk is associated with other activities. For example, students may be engaged in hands-on activities. In this type of spoken language students and teachers usually focus on meaning or on talking their way to understanding .
c. Reading
Reading is not a simple task to teach as it involves a series of activities such as
perception, thought, and word recognition. One of the theoretical approaches that I learned in our class discussion is problem solving method.
One of the roles of the teachers is to equip students with problem solving skills they can use in their day to day interactions. In this regard, Pearson and Taylor (2002) suggested that students should acquire the necessary reading skills to help them boldly confront the challenges facing them. In this case, it is the responsibility of the teacher to guide the learner to identify specific issues to solve. Teachers must present issues wherein the students can relate, and will use their problem solving skills. I can still recall when Dr. Catherine M. Roble gave us activities on how to solve a crime by just reading the situations given to us. We read, evaluate the situations, and judge, and come up with a solution on how to solve the problem at hand.
Moreover, the teacher should guide them on how to use reading skills to solve specific problems. He can either choose for them the appropriate topic and the best texts to read in order to get the required information. For instance, when teaching reading skills, a teacher can decide to ask learners to do a research on a selected topic from a large volume of text such as encyclopedia. If the learners respond to the question correctly, then it means that the learning objectives are achieved.
This particular theoretical approach is indeed helpful since it is very useful in their daily transactions, and in life in general.
d. Writing
“A simplistic view of writing would assume that written language is simply the graphic representation of spoken language…” (Brown, 2001:335). Writing is more complex than this; hence writing pedagogy is important, as Brown states by claiming that writing is “as different from speaking as swimming is from walking” .This is supported and developed by Hedge, who states that writing is more than producing accurate and complete sentences and phrases. She states that writing is about guiding students to: “produce whole pieces of communication, to link and develop information, ideas, or arguments for a particular reader or a group of readers…”
With this, I believe that a teacher should teach writing using the genre approach (Hylands, 2004). The ideas started in Australia and are now prominent in English teaching in Australia, New Zealand and countries nearby. This approach-model is situated away from naturalistic ways of learning language, theory-wise. It is more of a functionalistic approach; “genre based approaches to writing are based on a functional model of language; that is, a theoretical perspective that emphasizes the social constructedness of language” (Knapp & Watkins, 2005:9).
In genre approach, text is seen as a social process, which is further supported by Unger and Fleishman, who bring up a quote from Sperling and Freedman: "We now see writing not just as a process taking place inside an author’s head, but as a collaborative act influenced by complex and interrelated social factors" (2004: 90). The proponents of this theory often claim that genre-writing is the most efficient and modern way of teaching writing, since it creates awareness of both culture and ways of writing. The structure of a text is partly linked to the culture it is produced in; “…genre teaching as a means of helping learners to gain access to the dominant genres of our culture…” (Hyland, 2004:18). Besides this, the genre approach usually is presented with advantages such as being systematic, empowering and consciousness-raising. It is systematic since it “incorporates both discourse and contextual aspects of language use” (Hyland, 2004:12) and makes the student aware of audience, textual variation and structuring of writing.
The teaching is therefore “based on the ways language is actually used”. It is not just a matter of training students in reproducing forms of texts, but offering students “a way of seeing how different texts are created in distinct and recognizable ways in terms of their purpose, audience and message.
e. Viewing
Viewing is one of the skills that a student must develop, and enhance. But the question is
how to teach this skill? I believe that discipline-centered approach must be observed in this case. To get the attention of the students, the teacher must give viewing activities related to the field of the students. For example, if you are teaching English to Engineering students, the teachers must have look for films in the field of Engineering. But the teacher must still take into consideration the communication functions that students must develop in order not to deviate from the goal in language learning. This activity then creates awareness on their discipline, and at the same time developing the viewing skill.
The theories discussed are of paramount importance in teaching effectively the skills
namely : listening, speaking, reading, writing, and viewing.
In teaching listening, we must combine the two processes, bottom-up and top-down, as shared by Field (1998) by outlining activities consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening that link bottom-up and top-down listening.
In teaching speaking, one must carry out this skill as a transaction (Richards, 1990). Talk as transaction is more easily planned since current communicative materials are a rich resource of group activities, information-gap activities, and role plays that can provide a source for practicing how to use talk for sharing and obtaining information, as well as for carrying out real-world transactions.
In teaching reading, problem solving method should be one of the options to use ( Pearson and Taylor, 2002). Students should acquire the necessary reading skills to help them boldly confront the challenges facing them. In this case, it is the responsibility of the teacher to guide the learner to identify specific issues to solve . Teachers must present issues wherein the students can relate, and will use their problem solving skills.
In teaching writing, a teacher should teach it using the genre approach (Hylands, 2004). The teaching is based on the ways language is actually used. It is not just a matter of training students in reproducing forms of texts, but offering students “a way of seeing how different texts are created in distinct and recognizable ways in terms of their purpose, audience and message.
In teaching viewing, discipline-centered approach must be observed in this case. To get the attention of the students, the teacher must give viewing activities related to the field of the students. But the teacher must still take into consideration the communication functions that students must develop in order not to deviate from the goal in language learning.
With all these theories, I believe that one must teach a skill by taking into account the language and communication functions that students need to use in their daily transactions and professional lives. The teacher must use authentic materials representing how people typically use language. In teaching these skills, I believe that it is more than just learning the grammar or linguistic structure, instead, it focuses on context and audience. In this manner, the teachers will look beyond content, and composing process to better understand language patterns.
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