Developing reading and listening tasks

When developing good reading task, we talked about scaffolding the task, making the purpose of reading clear for L2 learners, develop different reading skills such as reading for gist vs reading for specific information, prepare learners linguistic knowledge for the task, recycle the new language etc.

I would like to stop on raising the awareness of language chunks in reading tasks. There has been a lot of research recently on formulaic expressions in language and its implications on L2 learning and teaching. The literature says

• Opaque multiword expressions could pose comprehension problems, but are so rare they generally dont. (Grant & Nation 2006)
• Metacognition can often help learners decode opaque multiword expressions (Cooper 1999, Liontas 2002)
• However, there is evidence that around 10% of naturally occuring text contains formulaic sequences that are not easily decoded if focusing only on individual words (by and large, when it comes to, take place) (Martinez &Shmitt, under review)
• It is difficult to impossible to predict the interpretability of a multiword item simply as a function of its semantic properties (Spottl & McCarthy 2003)
• Learners may not even notice or have higher perception of comprehension by focusing on individual words and making the wrong guess (Bishop 2004)

One awareness raising technique could be the following. Teacher will present a reading text that contains high number of idioms and formulaic expressions. Learners will read the text for general gist. T then asks Ss to underlie the words that they dont know. Very often, Ss only underlie part of the idioms or dont underlie them at all if all the words in the idiom are familiar to them. When asked what certain expressions mean, they often have the wrong assumption about the meaning. This task will raise awareness within Ss that the language contains some language chunks that always come together and mean certain things that could be completely different to semantic meaning of individual words in it.

When it comes to Listening skills, again, there has to be pre-listening activity that prepares learners for the listening tasks. Pre-listening should introduce the following information: how many speakers, who are the speakers, gender/age, context- how are the speakers related- friends, mother-daughter etc, situation- in which situation the listening taking place etc. Listening task always has to have a purpose, as we always listen for a purpose in real life. Scaffolding is really important. Majority of listening tasks in most coursebooks are based on listening comprehension approach. Typically, pre-listening, then listening followed by a task, i.e Listen and fill in the gaps in the dialogue, Listen and answer the following questions, Listen and discuss this etc.

I would like to stop on segmenting in listening skills. John Field (2003) promotes the idea of lexical segmentation in L2 listening, to develop Ss' accurately detecting lexical words and segmenting short extracts occuring in natural speech (might vs might as well). How do we raise awareness?
Awareness raising techniques for segmenting words

•  Dictations. Dictation is good for developing all the skills combined together- listening, reading, writing and speaking (Montalvan 1990)
• Have a gap-fill in listening tasks for Ss to anticipate 
• Teaching listening strategies
• Repetition- listen to multiple times
• Listening comprehension approach integrated but not dominating all listening tasks

For more information please refer to Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field, CUP, 2009.