Techniques to Develop your Oral Skills
Ways of Listening and Practicing Speaking
Becoming a life-long language learner/user
by michelle (2007)

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Every day, listen to English using some of these techniques:

1. Listen-n-Repeat (L&R) for fluency and correction (F&C) – any text
2. Listen-n-Repeat while Visualizing grammar – reviewing grammar
3. Listen to learn by heart useful language + F&C
4. Listen-n-Visualize – named objects/actions
5. Listen to identify the theme
6. Listen to identify the main points
7. Listen to scan for specific information
8. Listen to summarize / paraphrase
9. Listen to take notes in class
10. Listen to jot down language from an audiovisual
11. Listen to take notes from an audio
12. Listen to taking dictations & Self-dictations (in class and elsewhere)
13. Listen to improve your Reading Aloud (use short stories, poems, news items and dialogues)
14. Listen to imitate (textual structure) – e.g. listen to a photo description to get inspiration to describe your own photo
15. Listen to get the lyrics of a song
16. Bring to mind – try to remember and repeat the language you worked on before
17. Bring to mind – try to remember and write down dialogues or other texts using that language, while you read aloud what you write.

Tip: don’t skip words/language, even if you think you already know it – in order to learn something really well, we need to have used it hundreds of times!

Natural Techniques to decipher meaning
CONTEXT – PEOPLE INVOLVED * KIND OF TEXT - TOPIC

1. Listen and Predict: very often, we know before we hear! We imagine something because of experience.
2. Listen and Infer: very often, based on data from text and context, we deduce something, part of the meaning
3. Skimming/Getting the gist of what’s being said: this is only possible if you step back and contemplate the complete scene, not if you focus in a word-by-word approach, because you are likely to encounter a word you don’t know and then you’ll panic, and because in order to understand a situation, we just need to understand a few words -- just think of conversations at discos!
4. Scanning/Looking for specific information: sometimes we just need to understand specific words, so we don’t pay attention to the rest. How do we know when the info we need is going to appear? Because we know about textual structure; because we know what we are looking for.

So, when you listen, use your...

Life knowledge, sociocultural knowledge. Notice:

The sounds in the situation – what’s happening – cars moving slowly, horns sounding
The tone of people’s voices – moods, atmosphere – conversations at a party
What you recognize from the situation because of your experience - someone hailing a taxi, a crowd cheering, a baby crying
The “problem” / theme

Linguistic knowledge

Textual knowledge

The topic
Textual format (layout)
Textual structure and the distribution of contents

Before: brainstorming for ideas

1. brainstorming for useful language: tenses, modals, sequencers, expressions, vocabulary…
2. organizing main points (outline; textual structure)
3. practicing monologue/dialogue (no time limit) + communicative strategies

Doing monologue, timing yourself or dialogue, using communicative strategies & being aware of structure

After: Jotting down ideas and info on mistakes, difficulties, strong points…