V. Listening, Oral, Writing, and Reading Work

 Listening, oral work, reading and writing

• What are your challenges when teaching the listening, speaking, reading, writing skills? In what ways can the ideas presented in chapters 3 to 6 help you to teach the four skills better?

         One of the problems that teachers face when teaching different language skills is that in listening activities children can lose concentration since they are at a very young age. At that age, their concentration level is very low. Besides that, they do not understand anything because their hearing is not clear enough or because we do not repeat it the necessary number of times. On the other hand, speaking skills in a new language is usually a bit difficult and the one most demanded by teachers to teach. Teachers can face certain problems when teaching the speaking skill if the teacher does not create the necessary environment for the child to develop. On the contrary, with the ability to read, one of the main problems is that children are not familiar with books or reading, and they have to get used to reading in order to solve questions at the end of the reading. A solution to this problem could be using the method "whole sentence reading" in which the teacher develops the recognition of phrases and complete sentences that have meaning by themselves. Regarding the writing skill, we face a problem: “Pupils do not even know how to use pencils or pens”. Moreover, they do not know anything about grammar, punctuation, or spelling of the words, so what we can do to solve this problem is to use "matching". This method consists of the teacher giving a page with some images and simple sentences; then, the teacher will read the statement and the children will match the drawing with the sentence.

• Which of the activities featured on chapters 3 to 6 would you try in your classes?  Think of a possible scenario where they do not work and suggest changes or adaptations.  How might they affect the way you run the activity?

            We would like to try the listening and color activity. Children love coloring, and they do it most of the time because they express their creativity, so this is the perfect activity for them. Sometimes, it can be difficult to do this activity because kids tend to color in the way they want and not to go by the directions. Therefore, in order to avoid that problem, something that we can do is to divide the kids in groups according to their number. After that, we are going to put all the colors that we are going to use in a table, so we are going to explain to them that every group is going to have one color, and they will be changing their position when the whole group finishes coloring the image.

            In this way, the image that kids are going to color is a landscape. In the picture, there is the sun, clouds, the sky, hills, and some houses on the hills. The teacher will say, “Group number 1, put some yellow in the beautiful and big sun please”. The students are going to stand up and will get their yellow colors. “Group 2, you are going to color the hills that you see there. What color? Green!” When all groups have their colors, the teacher will say, “Listen to me! Everybody starts coloring!”

            When one group finishes their part of the drawing, they will change to another group’s table with a different color, and they will paint another part of the landscape until every group finishes. You can have 15 minutes for each group to color their part of the drawing. The way to run the activity changes; nonetheless, the objective is the same, and you add to the activity order and patience to the kids to wait for their turns.

        Another activity we would try is called “reading texts based on the child’s language” in which pupils must have her or his own written text. Teachers can do this activity in the classroom or a kindergarten hallway because it does not work outdoors. It consists to show the children an image (the image may be from an event that already happened) and ask them to tell what they remember from that day or what they see in the image.

            The teacher can use a book about objects that the children already know. In addition, the teacher can make some changes with the scenario you chose, decorating it with balloons and some other images about what the book is reading. This change will not affect the activity because it does not interfere with the objectives. Besides that, another exercise to try is “look and say.”

           The teacher cannot do the activity in the schoolyard or outdoors because the pupils can be distracted, so you must do it in the classroom. In this activity, the teacher has to use many flashcards and images with phrases that the pupils know such as books, the blackboard, and pages. Besides, the teacher can change the images for objects related to the phrases to make them more attractive to the pupils. For instance, with the phrase “a book”, you can show a physical book to the children. Thus, the children have to read the flashcard taking the object as a clue. This change will not affect the activity because it has the same purpose.

• Mention 8 activities from chapters 3 to 6 that may work in your teaching context. Which of the 8 activities may not work in your teaching context? Explain why they may or may not work.

Main circumstances taken into account: Students´ age, English level and material access.

Activities that may work: 

1. Mime stories: The teacher tells the story, and the pupils and the teacher do the actions. Through movement, we keep our pupils concentrated in the class. Mimics explain the connection between what they hear and what they are doing. This exercise will help children to relate to the second language.
2. Rhymes: The teacher teaches repetitive and natural rhymes. Children will recognize the similarities and differences between some sounds that will help them to identify and acquire more words.
3. What is he/she doing: The teacher shows a picture, and students tell what is on the image. Children use simple and short sentences, and these sentences are easy to remember.
4. Using a mascot: The teacher uses a mascot (it can be a teddy bear or another) to ask questions to students. Pupils feel comfortable when the teacher is using an object to explain the content. This activity is attractive for little kids.
5. Look and say: The teacher shows the children the word and says it while pointing at the object. This activity will teach them simple words using all the objects that surround them.
6. Reading familiar nursery rhymes or songs: The children “read” what they already know. The students will use the rhymes and songs that they already know but now applying them to written language.
7. Matching: Teacher asks the children to match pictures and text. The usage of a picture to illustrate the action will make it easier to identify the sentence between the image. Then, the children will know about what the statements are.
8. Vocabulary charts: The children use picture dictionaries to try a sentence labeled drawings. This activity will not only increase their vocabulary but also help to create sentences upon simple structures.

Activities that may not work:

1. Listen for the mistakes: Students listen to the teacher reading a text related to a picture. The students identify the intended faults from the teacher and correct him or her. Students have to be very conscious about how the reading should be and notice when the patterns or guides are not followed, not to mention that the teacher is not someone supposed to make faults in children's eyes and that could affect the level of awareness of mistakes.
2. Putting things in order: The students organize a series of pictures according to the order they are mentioned in reading by the teacher text. It needs both a great level of listening, comprehension, and memory, which might complicate things for our students when the time comes to organize the events in the pictures.
3. Matching cards activity: The teacher gives a set of pictures to the students, and each student has to find a classmate that has the same picture card by asking questions and talking. This activity requires the students to have full comprehension of the questions they make and the responses they get.
4. Asking questionnaires: The students have each a questionnaire (the topic might be told by the teacher, or free) and go asking and talking to his or her classmates to fill up the blanks in the questionnaire. This activity presents the same problem as the previous activity.
5. Silent reading: The students have time to read on their path. Students might lose the thread or motivation while doing the activity.
6. Organizing and copying: The students must place sentences or fragments into a given half-written text, so these sentences match correctly. Students might get confused and mistaken without even noticing because of low language comprehension.
7. Freewriting: Students write on a free topic. This activity presents the same problem as activity N° 5.
8. Delayed copying: The teacher shows a sentence or fragment on the board (or similar), gives some time for the students to watch and memorize it and then, hides the sentence. Then, students have to rewrite the sentence only based on their memory. In young students, short-term memory might not be fully developed for this activity.