    Combine listening with other skills
    Focus on comprehension of meaning (traditional textbook test on students’ memory)
    Grade and difficulty level appropriately:
    Type of language used
    Task or purpose in listening
    Context in which the listening occurs.

5.    Models for teaching listening:
    Bottom-up model: listening comprehension is believed to start with sound and meaning recognitions. Listeners construct meaning of what they hear based on the sound they hear.
    Top-down model: listening for the gist and making use of the contextual clues and background knowledge to construct meaning are emphasized.
    Listening involves both bottom-up model and top-down model. Comprehension is the result of integrate of the information conveyed by the text with information and concepts already known by the listener.

6.    Three listening stages:
    Pre-listening:
    Predicting
    Setting the scene (getting background information)
    Listening for the gist (ask students one or two questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage.)
    Listening for specific information
    Most of the time, we would only use only one pre-reading task. It couldn’t take much time.
    While listening:
    No specific responses: giving students any task the first time they listening to a passage. It can take anxiety out of listening.
    Listen and tick: the task would be much easier.
    Listen and sequence: can be completed without understanding every word they hear. It can build confidence.
    Listen and act: total physical response
    Listen and draw: it works very well when there is an information gap between pairs. Related vocabulary should be pre-taught.
    Listen and fill: do not overdo this task because it may make students feel that they have to understand every word.
    It is helpful to provide a task for the students to do while they are listening. This gives the students a purpose to listen and helps them focus on the listening.
    Post-listening:
    Multiple-choice questions: the teacher should balance his/her teaching in preparing students for traditional multiple-choice tests and preparing them for using English in the real world.
    Answering questions: some types might lend themselves nicely to discuss in small groups.
    Note-taking and gap filling: while-listening and post-listening is combined.
    Dictogloss
    Preparation: teachers introduces the topic and key words or asking general questions about the text.
    Dictation: three times
    Reconstruction
    Analysis and correction
    There are many opportunities to integrate post-listening with other language style.

 
Unit 10 teaching speaking:
1.    Four common features of spoken language:
    Using less complex syntax
    Taking short cuts, e.g. incomplete sentences
    Using fixed conventional phrase/chunks
    Using devices such as fillers, hesitation device to give time before speaking.

2.    Principles for teaching speaking:
    Balancing accuracy-based with fluency-based practices
    Contextualizing practice: people use language differently in different context, so it’s important to give students chance to experience language in meaningful contexts.
    Personalizing practice: learn something that is close to students’ life
    Building up confidence: only when students feel confident to express themselves, will they participate actively in the activities.
    Maximizing meaningful interactions: (students practice in small groups and pairs)
    Helping students develop speaking strategies
    Making the best use of classroom learning environment to provide sufficient language input and practice for the students.

3.    Other factors to consider when design speaking activities
    Maximum foreign talk
    Even participation
    High motivation ( interesting topic/clear objective )
    Right language level

4.    Types of speaking tasks: ( by Littlewood)
Pre-communication activities: (controlled and semi-controlled)
    Structural activities: pay attention to certain structures or functions so that these can be accurately produces.
    Quasi-communication activities: focus more on meaning and communication
Communicative activities: (communicative and more contextualization)
    Functional communication activities
    Social interaction activities
Students are more concerned on meaning.

5.    Example activities:
    Information-gap activities
    Dialogues and role-plays (
    Perform the dialogue in different moods.
    Success of role-play: the teachers’ enthusiasm; careful instruction; clear situations and roles; making sure students have the language they need.
    Cue cards
    Activities using pictures (work well with beginning level teachers for its clear objective and a short time limit)
    Problem solving activities (productive: there is a clear objective to be reached or problem to be solved)
    Find someone who
    Human scramble.

6.    Organizing speaking tasks:
    Students talk a lot in foreign language
    Designing small group speaking tasks (students are often feel shy speaking a foreign language in front the whole class)
    Different groups can work at different levels. (Modify a given task to make it easier for slower students and more challenging for more advanced students.)
 
Unit 11 teaching writing
1.    What do effective readers do?
    Have a clear purpose in reading
    Read silently
    Read phrase by phrase, rather than word by word
    Concentrate on the important bits, skim the rest, and skip the insignificant parts
    Use different speeds and strategies for different reading tasks
    Perceive the information in the target language rather than mentally translate
    Guess the meaning of new words from the context, or ignore them
    Have and use background information to help understand the text

2.    What do we read:
    If students have never had the experience of reading a particular type of text, how can they read it with ease in real life
    We believe ESL/EFL reading textbook should have a variety of authentic materials, as much as the coverage allows

3.    There are two broad levels in the act of reading:
    A recognition task of perceiving visual signal from the printed page through eyes
    A cognitive task of interpreting the visual information, relating the received information with the reader’s own general knowledge, and reconstructing the meaning that the writer had meant to convey.

4.    Reading strategies:
    specifying a purpose for reading
    planning what to do / what steps to take
    previewing the text
    checking the predictions
    skimming the text for the main ideas
    scanning the text for specific information
……

5.    the role of vocabulary
    sight vocabulary: words that one is able to recognize immediately are often referred to as sight vocabulary
    The best and easiest way to develop vocabulary to read a great deal. Only when an individual word is met and understood again and again in different contexts can it become a part of the learner’s sight vocabulary.