Defiance, Iowa TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit goes over teaching the receptive skills of reading and listening. Both are equally important. When reading and listening, we have different motives, whether it be for a purpose, for entertainment or a mixture of both. Our motives for reading and listening can affect how we read and listen. Based on our motive, people will employ different tactics such as predictive skills, scanning, skimming, reading for detailed information, or deduction from context. When teaching reading and listening, teachers must keep in mind that listening may be more difficult because there is only chance to listen, as opposed to reading where students can reread the material several times until they understand and gained all the necessary information. In terms of reading and writing, vocabulary and texts that are used during the lesson are very important. Teachers want to carefully select texts that will be suited towards the students' levels while also maintaining their interest. Sometimes there might be vocabulary that is unfamiliar to the students but is necessary to know in order to understand the text. In those cases, teachers might want to pre-teach that vocabulary before diving into the text. However, not all unknown words should be pre-taught as to let students feel comfortable in understanding texts as a whole without knowing every single word. This unit gave a very good overview of how to approach teaching receptive skills and how to prepare for the use of various texts in the classroom.