Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

Jonathan M. Newton, I.S.P. Nation

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429515125
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This guide for teachers and teacher trainees provides a wealth of suggestions for helping learners at all levels of proficiency develop their listening and speaking skills and fluency, using a framework based on principles of teaching and learning. By following these suggestions, which are organised around four strands—meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development—teachers will be able to design and present a balanced programme for their students.

Updated with cutting-edge research and theory, the second edition of Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking retains its hands-on focus and engaging format, and features new activities and information on emerging topics, including:

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• Two new chapters on Extensive Listening and Teaching Using a Course Book

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• Expanded coverage of key topics, including assessment, pronunciation, and using the internet to develop listening and speaking skills

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• Easy-to-implement tasks and suggestions for further reading in every chapter

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• More tools for preservice teachers and teacher trainers, such as a sample unit, a "survival syllabus", and topic prompts

The second edition of this bestselling book is an essential text for all Certificate, Diploma, Masters, and Doctoral courses for teachers of English as a second or foreign language.

1 Parts and Goals of a Listening and Speaking Course

This book uses research and theory on second language acquisition in classrooms as the basis for planning a listening and speaking programme for learners of English as a second or foreign language. As we shall see, the principles underlying the listening and speaking parts of a course are not essentially different from those underlying the reading and writing parts.

The Four Strands

The basic argument of the book is that a well-balanced language course should consist of four roughly equal strands:

1. Learning through meaning-focused input; that is, learning through listening and reading where the learner’s attention is on the ideas and messages conveyed by the language.
2. Learning through meaning-focused output; that is, learning through speaking and writing where the learner’s attention is on conveying ideas and messages to another person.
3. Learning through deliberate attention to language items and language features; that is, learning through direct vocabulary study, through grammar exercises and explanation, through attention to the sounds and spelling of the language, through attention to discourse features, and through the deliberate learning and practice of language learning strategies and language use strategies.
4. Developing fluent use of known language items and features over the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing; that is, becoming fluent with what is already known.

These four strands are called meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development. A well-planned language course has an appropriate balance of these four strands. It is through these four strands that learners achieve the learning goals of a language course, namely fluent control of the sounds, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse features of the language, so that they can be used to communicate effectively. The opportunities for learning language are called strands because they can be seen as long, continuous sets of learning conditions that run through the whole language course. Every activity in a language course fits into one of these strands.

This chapter does not limit itself to listening and speaking, but, because it aims at describing what a well-balanced course is like, it also includes the skills of reading and writing. Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing is a companion text to this text on listening and speaking.

There is a tendency for language courses not to balance the four strands and, indeed, to pay almost no attention to some of them. Courses that have a very strong communicative focus often actively discourage formal language-focused learning. There is no justification for this, as second language acquisition research shows that appropriately focused attention to language items can make a very positive contribution to learning (Elgort, 2011; Nassaji, 2017). At the other extreme, there are courses that seem to do little else but focus on formal features of the language, with little or no opportunity to use what has been learned to receive and produce real messages. Perhaps even more commonly, there are courses that provide opportunities to receive and produce messages and pay useful attention to language features, but do not provide opportunities for the learners to become truly fluent in using what they know.

A common-sense justification of the four strands is the time-on-task principle. How can you learn to do something if you don’t do that during learning? How can you learn to speak if you don’t do speaking? How can you learn to write without writing? The time-on-task principle simply says that, the more time you spend doing something, the better you are likely to be at doing it. This is a very robust principle, and there is no shortage of evidence, for example, that those who read a lot are better readers (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991), and that those who write a lot usually become better writers. However, it is a simplistic principle and it can be rightfully criticised for ignoring the quality of the activity in favour of the quantity of the activity, and for not taking account of the ways in which language learning differs from other kinds of learning. Nevertheless, as one of a set of principles that do take account of these factors, the time-on-task principle is an important and essential one. Another idea underlying a common-sense approach is that there is something about each of the language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing that makes it different from the others. It is, thus, necessary to pay attention to each skill to make sure that these unique features are learned. It is also not difficult to argue that each of these four skills can be broken down even further—for example, that a formal spoken monologue has features that differ from those of friendly conversation, and so on (Biber, 1989). It is also possible to distinguish accuracy from fluency and so see the necessity for providing fluency practice for each of the skills. There are, thus, common-sense justifications for including the four strands in a language course.

The evidence for the strands draws on a large and growing body of research into the roles of input, output, and form-focused instruction in second language learning, and in the development of speaking and reading fluency. In this chapter, we will look at each of the four strands, the research evidence for them, their justification, and how they can be put into practice. The chapter concludes with a set of pedagogical principles based on the strands that can be used to guide the teaching of a language course.

Meaning-focused Input: Learning through Listening and Reading

The meaning-focused input strand involves learning through listening and reading—using language receptively. It is called “meaning-focused” because, in all the work done in this strand, the learners’ main focus and interest should be on understanding and gaining knowledge or enjoyment, or both, from what they listen to and read. Typical activities in this strand include extensive listening, extensive reading, shared reading, listening to stories, watching TV or films, and being a listener in a conversation (see Newton (2016) for a chapter-length survey of the four skills, and Newton et al. (2018) for a detailed guide to teaching the four skills in academic contexts).

This strand only exists if certain conditions are present:

1. Most of what the learners are listening to or reading is already familiar to them.
2. The learners are interested in the input and want to understand it.
3. Only a small proportion of the language features are unknown to the learners. In terms of vocabulary, 95–98 per cent of the running words should be within the learners’ previous knowledge, and so only five, or preferably only one or two, words per hundred should be unknown to them (Hu & Nation, 2000).
4. The learners can gain some knowledge of the unknown language items through context clues and background knowledge.
5. There are large quantities of input.

If these conditions are not present, then the meaning-focused input strand does not exist in that course. Learning from meaning-focused input is fragile, because there are usually only small gains from each meeting with a word, and because learning is dependent on the quality of reading and listening skills and is affected by background knowledge. Because of this, large quantities of input are needed for this strand to work well. An extensive listening programme is one way of providing this quantity.

Although many researchers criticise Krashen’s (1985) input theory, none would disagree with the idea that meaningful, comprehensible input is an important source of language learning. Dupuy (1999) investigated “narrow listening”, an approach based on Krashen’s ideas. This involved learners listening as many times as they wished to a range of 1–2-minute aural texts on a range of familiar and interesting topics of their choice. The learners in the study reported improvements in their listening comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary, as well as increased confidence in French (the target language). Webb, Newton, and Chang (2013) found that meeting unfamiliar collocations (e.g., buy time, lose touch) during extensive listening to graded readers while reading along led to incidental learning. It was necessary for the young adult Taiwanese EFL learners in the study to meet a collocation more than five times for effective incidental learning, and, as the number of encounters increased, so did their knowledge of the collocations. Among the best-controlled studies of second language extensive reading is Waring and Takaki’s (2003) study of vocabulary learning from a graded reader. This study showed that small amounts of vocabulary learning of various strengths occurred incidentally as a result of meaning-focused reading. Elley and Mangubhai’s (1981) classic study of the book flood (a programme that encouraged wide reading for pleasure) showed a range of language learning benefits compared with a programme that was largely dominated by language-focused learning (or perhaps more accurately, language-focused teaching).

Compared with well-planned deliberate learning, incidental learning through input is fragile and is dependent on large quantities of input to gain sufficient repetition. Nation and Wang (1999) calculated that second language learners needed to read at least one graded reader every week in order to get enough repetitions to establish substantial vocabulary growth through incidental learning. The gains from meaning-focused input, however, become substantial gains if there are large quantities of input.

Meaning-focused Output: Learning through Speaking and Writing

The meaning-focused output strand involves learning through speaking and writing—using language productively. Typical activities in this strand include talking in conversations, giving a speech or lecture, writing a letter, writing a note to someone, keeping a diary, telling a story, and telling someone how to do something.

The same kinds of condition apply to meaning-focused output as apply to meaning-focused input:

1. The learners write and talk about things that are largely familiar to them.
2. The learners’ main goal is to convey their message to someone else.
3. Only a small proportion of the language they need to use is not familiar to them.
4. The learners can use communication strategies, dictionaries, or previous input to make up for gaps in their productive knowledge.
5. There are plenty of opportunities to produce.

Many spoken activities will include a mixture of meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output. One person’s output can be another person’s input.

Swain’s (1985) output hypothesis has been influential in clarifying the role of speaking and writing in second language learning. The output hypothesis was initially formulated to highlight limitations in Krashen’s (1985) input hypothesis. Put simply, it claims that, “the act of producing language (speaking and writing) constitutes, under certain circumstances, part of the process of second language learning” (Swain, 2005: 471). The opportunities that output provides for learning are not the same as those provided by input. Swain (1995) suggests three functions for output: (1) the noticing/triggering function, (2) the hypothesis-testing function, and (3) the metalinguistic (reflective) function.

The noticing/triggering function occurs when learners become consciously aware of a gap in their knowledge as they attempt to construct a message in the second language—that is, they do not know how to say what they want to say. Izumi’s (2002) research indicates that the effect on acquisition of noticing a gap through output was significantly greater than the effect of noticing through input. This effect can be explained in two ways. First, productive learning involves having to search for and produce a grammatical structure or a word form (including pronouncing a word accurately), whereas receptive learning involves having to find a meaning for a structure or word form. Productive learning typically results in more, stronger knowledge than receptive learning (Griffin & Harley, 1996). Second, varied use involves meeting or using previously met language items in ways that they have not been used or met before and produces deeper learning than the simple retrieval of previously met items (Joe, 1998). Izumi (2002) suggests that the grammatical encoding that is required by output forces learners to integrate the new items into a more cohesive structure. Decoding items from input does not require this same kind of integration. That is, output sets up learning conditions that are qualitatively different from those of input. This is not to say that input is inferior, simply that it is different and, thus, an important part of a balanced set of opportunities for learning.

The full effect of the noticing/triggering function is not complete until a learner has had the chance to make up for the gap that he/she has noticed. This can occur in several ways. First, having noticed a gap during output, the learner is likely to be more alert to language items in input that match the gap. For example, if the learner has difficulty expressing a particular meaning when writing, they later “read like a writer”, paying attention to how others say what they wanted to say. This is referred to as moving from semantic to syntactic processing. It is similar to an amateur guitar player not just enjoying a performance by a top-class guitarist of a tune he or she has struggled to play, but also noticing the techniques and chord voicings the performer uses to play it. Second, having noticed a gap during output, learners may successfully fill that gap through a lucky guess, trial and error, the use of analogy, first language transfer, or problem-solving. Webb (2002) found that learners were able to demonstrate aspects of vocabulary knowledge of previously unknown words even though they had not had the opportunity to learn those aspects of knowledge, because they were able to work them out through analogy and first language parallels. Third, having noticed a gap during output, learners may deliberately seek to find the item by reference to outside sources such as teachers, peers, or dictionaries.

Swain’s second function of output is the hypothesis-testing function. This involves the learner “having a go” at constructing a message using language they are not sure about. For example, when asked to make a prediction about the future, a learner said, “In the future will be robot working in house” (Newton, personal classroom data). This learner’s partial understanding of the will + main verb structure allowed him to express his meaning but also revealed a gap in his knowledge. If he then hears other learners using the correct structure, he may become aware of his gap. Or the teacher may give corrective feedback to prompt him to notice and fix the error. Corrective feedback during communicative classroom interaction has been shown to aid language development (Leeman, 2007; Lyster, Saito, & Sato, 2013). However, there are many ways of giving feedback, and not all are equally effective, a point we discuss in a later chapter.

The third function of output is the metalinguistic (reflective) function. This involves learners working collaboratively to talk about and solve language problems during classroom interaction. Common classroom applications of this idea include activities such as the strip story (Gibson, 1975), dictogloss (Wajnryb, 1988, 1989), where learners work together to reconstruct a text they have listened to, and what Fotos (2002) refers to as structure-based interactive activities in which learners are given grammar problems to solve interactively. In these tasks, grammar structures are...