Receptive Skill Essay

3000 Words12 Pages
What is receptive - productive skill? Listening is the ability to identify and understand spoken language. Listening is a receptive skill. The receptive skills used in language acquisition: listening and reading enable the productive skills: speaking and writing (Saricoban, 1999). Listening is the communication skill used most often in the assimilation of information and the most neglected in foreign language teaching (Norris, 1993). Effective listening is dependent upon the listener?s decoding skills, i.e. the listener?s ability to make sense of the message. For foreign language learners accurate and intelligent listening is a necessity. A good teacher will enable intelligent listening by enhancing her student?s decoding skills. Unlike written and spoken evidence, successful listening is more difficult to measure. The blank stare may signify only partial understanding ? but where are the gaps? Gaps in decoding skills are hard for both the student and teacher to identify and diagnose. The first listening skill taught is the ability to recognize the need for more information. A first speaking skill is to respond appropriately (e.g. Please repeat. Please speak slowly.). Integration with other skills: The building of successful decoding skills requires the teaching and use of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in the foreign language. A good foreign language teacher will break down confusing signals into their parts, show the correctly written words, explain the content and context and allow spoken and written practice. Receptive and productive communication skills are integrated; therefore the teaching of these skills is necessarily integrated. Phases in the acquisition of listening skills: A person immersed in a foreign language, with little or no instruction in the acquisition of the new language (and no functioning decoder) will
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