Receptive Skills Essay

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Cambridge ESOL CELTA Written Assignment 1 Language Skills Assignment – Clive Elsmore Part 1 In English language teaching, the four main skills tend to be classified as of two types: receptive (reading and listening skills) where language is acquired and meaning is extracted, and productive (writing and speaking skills) where language is produced. Note that extracting meaning is an active process requiring a degree of engagement (Harmer, 2007: 265). This assignment tasks us to identify the receptive skills which can be practised during a reading lesson. The division between the four skills is useful for language analysis and for focusing teaching where certain aspects are lacking. However, in everyday or classroom use, language skills are not used in isolation. For example a lesson may involve listening to a tutor, reading a text, speaking with a neighbour and writing notes. A discussion of a TV programme will involve both speaking and listening skills, and writing a letter will, hopefully, involve reading of what has just been written to check for mistakes. Receptive skills are further categorised into sub skills in Harmer, 2001: 201-202. Applying equally to listening, amongst them are: • identifying the topic (by activating students' schemata – relating topic to preexisting knowledge) • reading for general understanding (skimming for gist - reading quickly to establish key topics, ideas, theme and structure) • reading for specific information (scanning - reading quickly to establish facts, figures, dates, names etc) • reading for detailed information (reading carefully and intensely to extract understanding of all details - such as when carefully completing a tax form) • extensive reading (reading widely) • predicting (including speculating, inferring, deducing) • interpreting text (takes us beyond the literal meaning - depends on shared schemata) Listening has
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