Davisboro, Georgia TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

In this unit I learned that the two receptive skills are reading and listening. There are generally two broad reasons for reading and listening: for a purpose and for entertainment. We read and listen not only with our eyes and ears but also with our minds to literally understand words and to process them within our 'pre-existent knowledge' to gain true understanding. There are a number of specialist skills that readers and listeners use to better understand context. These specialist skills include predictive skills, scanning, skimming, detailed information, and deduction from content. I also learned that a teacher's choice of topic is very important because it can determine how interested and motivated the students will be to learn. Knowing your students and what they're interested in is crucial. Covering a variety of topics, over a period of time, will see that all students find an interesting topic. A teacher, too, can help get students interested in a topic by talking about the topic, showing pictures, and predicting what the text will be about. I learned that there are authentic texts and non-authentic texts. Only non-authentic texts are designed for language students. Non-authentic texts are texts that more closely mirror the students' abilities, whereas authentic texts give students more confidence in their skills. A teacher should select authentic texts based on what their students know, rather than on how much they don't know. One last important point of teaching receptive skills involves comprehension tasks. Teachers need to give students comprehension tasks that promote understanding rather than just checking on how much the students know. A good comprehension task shouldn't be too easy or too hard; it needs to be a task that can be realistically achieved by the student.