Language Skills and Aspects Related Questions

Today, in this post you will learn about language skills and aspects related questions answers. So read this post until ends.

What is so special about the present English curriculum of primary level?

The primary level English curriculum is….

  1. Skilled-based
  2. Activity oriented
  3. Student oriented
  4. Communicative
  5. Fun to teach and learn

What is the role of English language in Nepalese context?

  • To make learners able to speak in English for general purposes with a good degree of precision.
  • To use English language to think creatively, critically and to solve problems that cope up in the real life and to promote tolerance and maintain socio-cultural harmony.
  • To make learners be one of the members of this global village.
  • For successful career and personality development.
  • To keep one updated with knowledge in different fields.
  • To participate in international program, conferences and to study in an English speaking country.
  • To communicate with foreigners and for other emotional, personal, intellectual and social purposes.
  • Interact, communicate and collaborate effectively with others orally in pairs, groups and whole class discussion.
  • To know more about the culture of target language group.

What is language teaching?

Language teaching is the teaching of language skills and aspects. It means…

  1. Teaching listening
  2. Teaching speaking
  3. Teaching reading
  4. Teaching writing

Teaching grammar, vocabulary, language functions

What are the skills of language?

There are four language skills. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing

Listening skill

    • Listening skills is the first gate way of input process in language teaching and learning.
    • It is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process.
    • Listening, on the other hand, is the ability to understand and identify what others are saying.
    • This involves understanding a speaker’s accent and pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary and grasping his meaning.
    • Listening is key to all effective communication, without the ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood-communication breaks down and the senders of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.

What are the problems in listening comprehension in our Nepalese context?

  • Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak.
  • Not being able to get things being repeated
  • The learner’s limited vocabulary
  • Problems of interpretation
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Established learning habits
  • Inherent difficulty of the listening text.

Some listening activities

1. Listen and repeat

The teacher produces the sounds or says a word/phrase and asks students to repeat him/her.

2. Distinction between key sounds and intonation

  • Ear training with spoken practice is essential to build up students’ pronunciation. Find out some troublesome sounds for your students. Say following pairs and ask students to say “same” or “different”.
  • g.
  • /p/-/b/ 2. /t/- /d/          3. /k/-/k/
  • He has a gun- He has gone

3. Listen and follow instructions

Teachers can give commands and instructions to individual students or in a group like stand up, sit down, etc and he/she can see or check whether the students have followed the commands correctly or not.

4. Listen and match

  • The teacher reads a short and interesting text. Then, he/she makes two columns on the board and assign his/her students to match according to the information. E.g.
  • Ram lives in Pokhara. Hari lives in Chitwan. Seeta lives in Damuli. Gopal lives in Kathmandu.
  • Column A Column B
  • Ram Chitwan
  • Hari Kathmandu
  • Seeta Pokhara
  • Gopal Damuli

5. Listen and classify

The teacher collects 10-15 words of three families or groups. Then, he/she gives the heading and says the words. The students listen the words carefully and classify them according to the category. E.g.

Jacket, banana, apple, curd, milk, shirt, egg, grape, mango, sweater

Food Clothes Fruits

6. Listen and Guess/Predict

The teacher starts telling a simple or short story and stops before an end and asks his/her students “ What will happen next?”

7. Dictation

The teacher reads out a text at normal speed and students are supposed to write what they listen.

Describe the listening activities that can be used to teach listening skill in primary level briefly.

Or

What are the listening games that can be used to teach listening skill in primary level?

1. Simon Says

The teacher gives commands and the students follow the commands e.g. ‘sit down’ ‘hands up’ only if followed by the phrase simon says. Those who follow the commands whithout simon says, are out or dead. The last remaining player will be the winner of the game.

2. Do this Do that

All students stand up. The teacher does different actions such as touching nose, pulling own air, etc. If the teacher says ‘do this’, students must do or perform the same action done by the teacher. If the teacher says ‘do that’, students mustn’t do. If any one of them does he/she is out. The last remaining player win the game.

3. Listen and transfer

The teacher whispers a word, or sentence into one student’s ear. That student whispers it to the next. It continues to the last students who says the word loudly. The class evaluates whether the word/sentence is correctly relayed or not.

4. Telephone numbers:

The teacher reads out a few numbers and the students write them down. They are immediately checked at the whiteboard

5. Which picture:

The teacher displays various pictures; makes or statement about one of them and students identify the picture.

6. True or False:

The teacher may make any statement using the situational context and the students say ‘True’ or ‘False’.

7. Listen and respond:

The teacher gives various commands and the students give response or perform the activity. E.g.

Open the window

Close the door

Teaching Speaking skill

  • With regard to English language teaching in Nepalese context, the speaking ability, that has to be developed in the students, is not focused much.
  • Consequently, the students are unable to speak it well.
  • So, teaching of speaking is essential because the main purpose of learning a foreign language is to communicate with the speakers of that language, and communication is done mainly through speaking.

What are the problems that English teachers face while teaching speaking in Nepalese context?

  • Lack of native like proficiency on the part of teachers.
  • Another major problem is that our secondary l curriculum has allocated only less percent of its weightage while reading and writing are heavily emphasized.
  • Teachers do not encourage their students in speaking due to which they hesitate to speak.
  • Teachers complain that students do not understand what they say if they speak in English. So, they teach in their mother tongue.
  • Because of the large and heterogeneous class, the teachers are unable to manage classroom sizes which prevent students from speaking activities.
  • Learners are worried about mistakes, afraid of criticism and/or feel shy so that they can’t speak English language.
  • Testing speaking is just for formality. So, Examination system also creates problems.
  • Students feel difficulty in pronouncing the words that do not exist in their own language. (i.e. for many Nepalese learners the consonant |f | and |v| are difficult.
  • Inability to read pronunciation dictionaries and lack of practices are another concern that Nepalese learner faces.

Ways to overcome the problems of teaching speaking skill

  • Using pair or group work
  • Using easy language (i.e. Simple classroom language)
  • Making a careful choice of topic and task
  • Giving some instruction or training in discussion skill
  • Encouraging students to speak in the target language
  • Providing appropriate feedback
  • Avoiding immediate correction.
  • Equal emphasis should be given to speaking skill.
  • Speaking skill should be tested effectively.
  • Different learner centered techniques should be used
  • Teachers and school administration should try to create English speaking environment.
  • Students should be made clear about the importance of English due to which they will be self-motivated to speak English.

What are the speaking activities that can be used to teach speaking skill in primary level?

  • Hello
  • Listen and repeat
  • Repetition drill
  • Chain drill
  • Inflection drill
  • Chain story
  • Memory games
  • Retelling story
  • Mime

Reading Skill

  • Teaching of reading, an important aspect of teaching / learning a foreign language, opens the gate of knowledge.
  • In other words, reading generally means understanding or making sense of a given text.
  • Thus, readings is the cheapest and best way of getting information, increasing one’s professional knowledge and keep one self-update with the things happening around him/her. Reading is a receptive skill because we receive message by reading something.

Some reading activities

  1. Odd one out
  2. Reading with flash cards/picture cards
  3. Read in chorus (after the teacher)
  4. Read and recall
  5. changing sentences
  6. mime

Writing Skill

  • Writing or written from of language use visual symbols (or graphic symbols) to represent the sounds used in speaking. These graphic symbols can be seen and read.
  • Writing is, therefore, producing these graphic symbols. But it is not only confined to forming or producing them but to arrange and re-arrange them in larger units, say words and sentences.

Some writing activities

  1. Copying words
  2. Delayed writing
  3. Anagram
  4. Gap filling
  5. Look-cover-write-check
  6. What’s missing
  7. Labeling

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