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Oral skills I: Listening & Speaking

Listening is an active process. Listeners participate actively while they listen for comprehension. Listening is also purposeful which means that listeners have different objectives, such as, listening for gist or overall meaning, listening to hear specific information, as, for example, a flight number or in which gate to board the plane. Listeners may need to listen for detailed information when they have to comprehend instructions that are given orally, for instance. Listening purposes influence the strategies listeners use to construct the meaning of the different genres they deal with in everyday life as, for example, informal conversations, gossips, jokes, radio announcements, TV interviews.

Let us always remember that LISTENING is the basis for good conversation and there are different teaching strategies we can use to improve students’ listening abilities (and also our own), specially through free web resources. Good listening and fluency in speaking are important components of spoken communication.

A word of advice. Listen as much as you can to different genres in English. Listen to conversations, short or long lectures, speeches etc. Try to develop your own listening skills.

Listen to tips on how to be a good listener. For the script, click HERE.