If you listen to the meaning not the word

Are you afraid of listening to natives too?

How well do you understand English from listening? I have never met an adult learner in 15 years who would say it’s a walk in the park for them. Really. Never.

‘Boy, this is the hardest part, because you not only need to understand what the other person is talking, which is hard due to all the different accents there is, but you also need to comprehend what they are talking!’

‘But listening, oh boy, that’s the tough one. You have to face native speed of speech, accents, intonation… I always thought English as a “hungry language”, its speakers “eat” a lot of letters we were taught they were pronounced. And you seem to say full sentences without moving your lips. We just hear a mumble.’

These are just some answers I received when I asked which skill is the hardest in learning English.

Listening is a difficult skill to master. We can’t deny that.

In a situation like that, we usually end up blaming ourselves (I am hopeless, I have no language talent, learning languages is not for me) or native speakers (they ‘eat’ words and they speak too fast – crazy language, crazy people).

The thing is English is no exception in that. It’s equally hard for any other foreign language to master. The French speak incredibly fast and so do Spanish speakers. Try to listen to a German native speaker when you are a complete beginner. I will not even mention Chinese with their tonic system.

What you need to know about listening and understanding

As I said, listening is hard to master. But not because there is something wrong with our ears. It happens because people try to learn listening using the same methods they learn reading. But how is it possible? They are so different, reading and listening.

When you read a text, you can see it in front of your eyes. It means two things:

• you can see all the words separately in the page
• you have time to stop, to return to some point and think about it.

What happens when you listen?

• You need to decode a line of sounds, with no breaks, because they are all connected together.
• It’s usually quick, especially in conversations.
• And you have no control over what’s going on (I mean you have less opportunity to ‘rewind’ and to think about it). You rely on your memory.

In fact, a listener very often hear something like:

So, you just can’t learn to listen like you have learnt reading.

Another popular myth: you will learn to understand what people say if you listen a lot. But again, just listening to a lot of stuff in unadapted English is a long (and frustrating) way. It’s not focused learning. Without strategies, it will take you years.

It’s a bit funny how most listening tasks you will find on the Web or in the textbooks are tests.

So, somehow you learnt to listen already (when? where?) and now you check yourself. But when was the actual learning happening? If you just hear a lot of text in English, it doesn’t mean learning. If you don’t understand what’s going on, how would you learn?

Even if you come to a teacher for help, it is not always productive. First of all, teachers try to speak comfortably for you, even native speakers. That’s why many people say they understand their teachers well, but can’t understand people in the streets.

I remember one colleague of mine who just came back from her internship in the USA and started teaching English to adults. She used to be saying: ‘I spent so many years learning English. I don’t want to spoil it by speaking unnaturally. I will show my learners how real English sounds’. Well, intermediate and advanced students loved her. Elementary students hated her. At first. But somehow, after a month or so, each of her students developed a better listening understanding of English than mine, for example. Guilty on the spot. I DO speak too comfortably for my students. I can list you many explanations for this, but I won’t. This is just a reality.

So, the first takeaway from this article: Don’t be afraid of being exposed to original listening material. I also vote for variety. Listen to the texts of different difficulty and of different origin. The more accents (both native and non-native) you hear, the more prepared you will be for real life. Learn which TV series you can start with.

The key thing in this process: LEARN to listen, don’t just wait for a miracle to happen one day.

What kind of strategies could help you improve your listening skills?

I will switch now from general linguistics to English. What exactly do you need to know about English to hear it better?

First of all, ‘what you see is not what you hear’. Don’t expect the words will be separate like you see them in this written text.

Let’s take an example.

You see a phrase: ‘half an hour ago’. If you could hear it the same way it is written, the sound would be something like that:

In reality, even in slow pronunciation, the words won’t have pauses between them.

If this phrase is a part of a longer text, it will be pronounced even faster.

Ok, is it all non-stop stream of speech? No, it isn’t. When we speak, we divide our speech into units, not into words. The words serving one meaning will live together. We call them ‘tone units’. We use them in all languages to organise our speech and put accents on the parts which are most important for our message.

The phrase from the example: ‘half an hour ago’. It means 1 unit of information. All the words here constitute 1 meaning. The speaker will pronounce them together, in 1 unit, to serve the meaning. The non-stop speaking all the time is not possible: we need to breathe. These breathing pauses made between short ideas constituing a bigger one.

So, in the sentence: I came home half an hour ago (7 words) there are actually only 3 tone units: I came // home // half an hour ago. They will say it: /aikeim//heum//havenaueegeu/. Just 2 pauses.

Of course, it is not:

Nobody speaks like that. You don’t speak like that.

Here is your first step in improving listening: your brain should get used to the fact that it hears not words but tone units containing one idea. Train yourself for that.

Some practice.

How many tone units can you identify in these sentences:

– When are you going on holiday this year?

When // are you going // on holiday // this year? (4 tone units)

– What kind of books do you prefer?

What kind of books // do you prefer? (2 tone units)

Practise with this ‘difficult’ piece. This one should be hard:

(video source – 00:27)

Even in this fast talking, we can hear some small pauses the speaker does between the tone units:

‘Thanks // for coming back on//. – How is it going? (one tone unit, that’s why so fast) – It’s going awesome! (again one tone unit – they all seem to be stuck together). We’re gonna // have // some fun today…’

I recommend you to practise this way: listen to some short extracts (up to 1 minute long) with the transcript to hear how sentences are divided into tone units in natural speaking. Let your brain learn to hear it differently from what he reads. Listen to the same extract several times until you can hear which small groups the words are organised into in every sentence.

You can use listening materials from the web or some podcasts.

Here are some example resources I always recommend my students:

English Numbers | Listening Test

Deep English

Listen a minute

6-minute English

It’s crucial that you practise listening to very very short extracts, as I said, not longer than a minute. Also, always practise with the text in front of your eyes. You will need some time to re-wire your brain from trying to listen for single words to listening to tone units. They are logical. After listening to 10 or 15 sentences (not at once, every day or every other day), the whole listening process will become different.

Inside the tone unit, words will be organised hierarchically (what a word, hah), so to say, by their importance. Your next step will be to learn the hierarchy of these words and ways how they are connected together. If it seems like a lot of work, no, it isn’t. It’s, again, quite logical. It’s focused work and it is some work, yes. But it is much better than just ‘listen to as much English as possible for a long time’ without any control of what’s happening with your English skills.

Divide this ‘stream’ you hear into into units and then learn how words work together inside each unit. This way, you will focus and start improving. And you will start understanding English, even the films, quite soon (of course, if your vocabulary is good enough 🙂

So, the key takeaways from the today’s post are:

– listening is a skill to train; you can’t learn to listen the right way just by random listening;

– don’t be afraid to vary the difficulty of your listening material;

– expose yourself to as many accents, both native and non-native, as possible;

– develop a simple short routine to learn listening using short (up to 1 minute long) extracts to train yourself for the right focus;

– learn not to expect to hear single words (like they are written in the page) but tone units where words are grouped around 1 small idea.

In the next post, we will continue re-focusing your brain from what it reads to what hears. Stay tuned!

Please share this article with your friends if you find it useful. 

Learn about the 50 most commonly mispronounced words in English

UNIT 1: IDENTIFYING KEY WORDS & LISTENING FOR SYNONYMS

/ PARAPHRASES & DISTRACTORS

A. IDENTIFYING KEY WORDS

What do you do in the listening exam before you listen? You read the questions. And

as you read the questions you underline the key words. So what are key words?

What are key words?

Key words are names, numbers, negatives, and other important information words like verbs

and nouns. They are words and phrases that seem most important in each question.

Examples

Question: For the speaker, what is the most impressive aspect of a solar eclipse?

A. It’s a supernatural phenomenon.

B. It is extremely beautiful.

C. It is fascinating scientifically.

What words would you underline here? Many people would choose “eclipse” as it is an

unusual word and it is a noun and that might seem like a good starting point. If you thought

that, however, you might be making a bad mistake.

Transript:

If we look through history, the solar eclipse has always had a profound effect on mankind. If

we think for a moment what it means to have the sun blotted out: the source of life eradicated.

In ancient times, people were unaware of its natural cause and were profoundly impressed

and believed it must be supernatural. Today most people know that it is caused by the moon

passing between the sun and the earth and are more impressed by its beauty. SPEAKING AS

AN ASTRONOMER, I FIND it scientifically fascinating.

The key words also include “for the speaker” and “most impressive”. And the best answer is C.

Why is it important to identify key words?

— Key words give clues to the context and may help predict what the listening passage is

about.

— If you select the key word in advance, it will help you focus because the answer is often near

or even next to the key word. However, they don’t always tell what the answer is. This means

that if you hear the word “eclipse” you know that the answer will be coming soon.

— Underlining them helps you to focus your attention on what is most important as you listen.

Tips

— Don’t just concentrate on key words: read the whole question and listen for the meaning, not

words.

— Many mistakes are made in listening by not really reading the question. If you only focus on

key words, you are likely to word match. You see a word in the question and you hear a word

on the cassette and you assume that that must be the right answer. The listening test is not

always that easy: the test is to see if you have understood the meaning, not if you can hear

individual words. If you made a mistake with the previous task, it may be because you did not

focus on the meaning of the question, but just looked at words.

— Only use key words to let you know when to listen. And don’t just listen for key words, be

ready for synonyms and paraphrases as well.

A. Listen, CD (22), and read the texts (1 − 4). Match them with the titles (a − d).

a) We Don’t Use Them All

b) Great−grandfather Languages

c) Very Helpful Books

d) How It All Started
1. We do not really know how languages began. Some believe that languages began when prehistoric people tried to imitate birds and animals. Some think that the first words were the natural sounds that people made when they felt happy or were in shock.
2. What we know about the history of languages is that many of them come from one ancient language. Linguists say that this and all the languages that come from it are a “family” of languages. English and Russian belong to the Indo−European family of languages. French, Italian, German, Norwegian also belong to it.
3. How many words must a language have? For example, there are more than 450,000 words in Webster’s New International Dictionary. Nobody knows all of them, but most people are able to understand about 35,000 and use from 10,000 to 12,000.
4. If you hear or read a new word and want to know what it means, you try to find this word in a dictionary. Modern dictionaries are very different from old ones. Most of them give words alphabetically. Together with the words they give information about how they sound and what meanings they have. A dictionary may also give you information about how to use the word grammatically and gives examples. There are monolingual [ˌmɒnəʊˈlɪŋɡwəl], bilingual [baɪˈlɪŋɡwəl] and multilingual dictionaries. They give information about words in one (mono−), two (bi−) or more than two (multi−) languages.

There are also different kinds of online dictionaries which you may download from the Internet. They can be really very useful.
B. What do the words in italics mean?

1. Selection
   grammar material.

• Grammar
  for recognition.

• Grammar
  for use.

1. Grouping
   grammar phenomena according to their meaning.

2. Modes
   of presenting grammar.

3. Ways
   of explaining grammar.

• Inductive

• Deductive

1. Analysis
   of grammar phenomena.

2. Grammar
   exercises

• Receptive

• Reproductive

• Productive

Acquaintance
with the chief principles of grammar selection can help you to decide
whether this textbook is worth using as a teacher resource or not.
And second, when you deal with the group of slow learners, it will
help you to decide which material is to be used in your students’
own utterances and which they can merely understand to meet the basic
standard.

Grammar

1. Grammar
   for speaking

2. Grammar
   for writing

3. Grammar
   for listening

4. Grammar
   for reading

Principles
of selection:

Grammar
for recognition: polysemy of grammar phenomenon (cf. “should” vs.
ought to);

Grammar
for use (in speaking and writing)

• Ability
  to serve as a pattern (stylistic neutrality)

(“I
knew a women did it every night. She died of it.” “I gonna it”,
“Never have I seen”)

• Removal
  of synonyms. It is good at the opening stage.

• Prevention
  of wrong associations

(Many
a time… If you will do it…(polite), I demand that she
come…(subjunctive), I know not (Сие мне не ведомо),
He is always doing things like that (Подчеркивается
раздражение))

One
of the most important principles of selecting grammar material is
frequency
of occurrence in various types of discourse (writing, reading,
speaking).

An
overlapping issue is the order in which grammar material is
introduced. On one hand we proceed from simple things to more
challenging ones and besides new skills should interfere as little as
possible with the skills already acquired.

Groups
of grammar phenomena

All
grammar phenomena can be classified into several groups according to
the similarity or difference in the meanings of the English
phenomenon and the corresponding Russian phenomena because it tells
on the technique of presentation. Of course the easiest is the case
where the Russian and the English variant are the same.

Groups of grammar phenomena in terms of meaning
1	Russian  English	Plural of nouns, degrees of comparison
2	Doesn’t exist in Russian	There is/are, articles
3	EnglishRussian	Took = взял, брал Would do = сделал бы, частенько делал, бывало
4	RussianEnglish	Делал = did, was doing, has been doing

1. We
   only have differences of form, but not of meaning. In such cases
   presentation need not involve much Russian. It may be based on
   pictures or some other kind of direct demonstration.

2. A
   very difficult case, you have to shape a new concept. You have to
   start with Russian, you need detailed comparison.

3. The
   phenomena in English covers a broader scope of meaning than in
   Russian. This is difficult, but the challenge is that of
   understanding. Understanding is less challenging than using and
   reproduction.

4. Russian
   is broader than English

Group
3 and 4 may overlap. E.g. “In” and “в”. They both mean
inside, in emotional state, a certain period of time, but the English
“in” also means “через какой-нибудь промежуток
времени”. Russian “в” – «где?» and «куда?»

The
procedure of presenting this grammar material is practically the
same. It always involves comparison with the native language.

Group
1 phenomena.

1. We
   offer Russian sentence which must illustrate the difference in
   meaning and the students are to identify this difference. «Профессор
   читает лекцию» (сейчас), «Читаю я как-то
   газету» (прошедшее время), «Пусть отдаст
   книгу, он её уже месяц читает» The
   teacher
   helps
   students
   to
   identify
   each
   meaning.

2. What
   helps you identify the meaning? The general context, or specific
   markers (yet, often)

3. The
   teacher explains that some of these meanings (or one particular
   meaning) are rendered by a new grammar phenomena in English.

4. Нужно
   ли настоящее продолженное при переводе
   следующих предложений. Simulation
   translation. (Make-believe translation) Show you cards for the
   tenses, when you can’t show it, show the red card.

5. Which
   communicative intentions can be performed with the help of the new
   grammar. E.g. when do we need present continuous form? Describe the
   picture. Decline a request.

Group
2. There isare

Look
at the sentences on the blackboard

• Торт
  в холодильнике

• В
  холодильнике торт.

Which
question does each sentence answer. Где
торт? Что в холодильнике?

Что
находится у меня в сумке комнате
классе?

Modes
of presenting grammar.

1. As
   part of the language system, obeying certain grammar rules.

2. As
   a model or sentence pattern (without resorting to any rules) e.g.
   somebody can’t help V-ing: “my sister can’t help laughing at
   my mistakes”

As
the leading model it is a blind valley, because the students’ minds
become overloaded with isolated patterns. And memory fails to
function effectively if there is no general regularity. There are
some grammar phenomena when this model is the only way out. That is
when the rule is too complicated for learners of this age. Or if
there is no rule describing this phenomenon.

1. As
   an inseparable lexical unit (without any substitution of its parts)
   “How do you do?”

Ways
of explaining grammar.

• Inductive
  – from observation to generalization, from examples to rules

• Deductive
  (from rules to testing hoe they work)

The
deductive way has the advantage of saving more time. Besides it is
quite compatible with using various diagrams and charts. The
deductive way is preferable in the upper forms, because very often
there is less time for English in the ordinary classes. It reflects
the mentality of teenagers who are used to all types \\, such as
formulas, periodic tables. Their thinking is abstract and they
respond well to abstract charts.

Induction
is more involving, more connecting with hands-on experience, it
develops guessing, power of observation and it is more concrete
because it starts with example. It corresponds to the mentality of
young learners. But it takes more time.

The
two approaches complement each other. E.g. you may explain the
material inductively in the lesson and then refer the students
deductive summing up in charts, textbooks. They may come together
within the same explanation. Deduction is never reduced to the
teacher’s monologue which must be taken down and learned by heart.
No matter whether you proceed from the rule or separate example the
presentation procedure is subdivided into minimal steps (minimal
study efforts) so that each step is accompanied by some kind of
student involvement.

Analysis
of grammar phenomena.

Tree
different messages: form, usage

• The
  difficult sound or sound clusters “v-w” or “ing+a” or “s+th”

• The
  right rhythm.

• The
  syntactical structure (he readingS)

• Spelling
  problems, e.g. the doubling of short stressed vowels before “ing”
  or “-ed”

• Form-bilding
  problemds: irregular verbs, irregular verbs, irregular plural of
  nouns

Analysis
of meaning

• How
  many meanings are there, all in all?

• How
  many should be introduced at once?

• It
  is necessary to introduce all the meanings at once

• It
  is possible to introduce two or more meanings, but actually one at a
  time is enough

• It
  is wrong to introduce all the meanings, because the nuclear one is
  ruined by another

• ff

5/02/10
Lecture

Grammar
exercises correspond to link 4. They focus on one central grammar
challenge. That is the choice being a crucial difficulty. They often
corresponds to//// Which are based on the same type of structure.

e.g.
fill in the blanks with “some”/”any”/”no” to express your
opinion

• …students
  can learn a foreign language in half a year

• …animal
  can think

• …man
  (men) can live without food for a month

Reconstruct
the auxiliary and have a short dialogue

• …you
  study English? …it difficult? …it take much time?

Complete
the sentence and act out the dialogue

• ….did
  you see? — I…Bill Jones

• … did
  you meet? — We … at the station.

• … did
  you go? — We … to a café

• … did
  you come home — I… home at 11

Finish
the phrases logically

• I
  didn’t go to a dance on Saturday, but I…

• I
  saw Bill three days ago, but I…

Reproach
your imaginary listener: ask why he didn’t do the same

• I
  got up early today. Why didn’t you …?

• I
  had a shower before breakfast. Why didn’t you?

• I
  took a dog for a walk. Why didn’t you …?

Multiple
choice expressing one’s attitude

• It
  is (easier, more difficult, just as easy, just as difficult) to
  write an essay (as, than) a grammar test

• To
  a selfish person it is much more important to …. than to … (to
  love, to have loved, to be loved, to have been loved)

Make
up a short monologue based on the given structures

compare
any two cities you know well. Use the structure

… is
as big (small) as…

… is
as noisy (quiet) as…

… is
as clean (dirty) as …

You
can employ elements of Russian to supply the meaningful choices.
(Link 5)

• I
  want our classes to begin (раньше, позже, в то же
  время)

• I’d
  like you to give us (больше, меньше) reading, listening,
  grammar drills, translation tasks, videotapes.

• I
  want our lessons to be (длиннее, интереснее,
  труднее, легче)

A
substitution table makes it possible to compose a great numbers of
utterances. A substitution table may correspond to link 3, 4 or even
5. Link 3 substitution tables make it possible to construct sentences
rather than utterances. The difference between sentence and utterance
lies in the communicative task or communicative situation.

Частичная
сочетаемость

My father I My friend My parents

Am Is are

Reading Doing Making Writing Watching Washing

Morning exercises Letters Television A book Dishes Supper

It
is god for presentation but not for drills.

Communicative
substitution table. They make it possible to express separate ideas
with listening to or listening or they enable student to compose
dialogues connected utterances

А
какого отношения к себе вы ждете от
окружающих. hoe
do
you
want
others
to
think
about
you

I

Don’t want Always want

People My friend My teachers

To think I am a child To help me with my English To leave me alone To go for a walk with me

Mini
dialogues based on sequence of tenses. Explain why you did not do
somethink the other person expected you to do

Why didn’t you? come in time wake me up phone me do the shopping buy some bread

I thought I hoped I was sure I was afraid I didn’t know

Somebody else (сделает это) You (уже ушел) home You (не работаешь) on Saturday (у нас есть) enough You (занят)

Offer
your listener an alternative

Shall I make tea? Shall we accept the invitation? Shall we go to the movies? Shall we finish it now?

Or would you rather

Give a polite excuse? Have some coffee? Go to a dance? Wait for John?

Sometimes
a substitution table may be based on questions which should be
answered so that later the student asking questions could sum up the
ideas of his desk mates. or a table which requires

There are

Teachers Pupils people

who

Never read books See in the dark Enjoy taking exam Feel happy alone Enjoy to give students bad marks

Answers:

• Oh,
  yes, there are many people

• Oh,
  yes there are very few

• Oh,
  no there are no such people

Some
substitution tables correspond to link 5 task. That is they bring
together antagonistic (conflicting) structure and check how solid the
skill is whether it can withstand the pressure of interference.

Do you Can you Must you Are you

Fond of (dogs, cats, cakes)? Like (skating, swimming)? Often (angry, happy, sad)? Sleep till nine? watch TV every day? Swim well? Afraid of (tests)? Always agree with teachers

And
then people sum up what they have learned about each other.

An
essential part of grammar exercises consist in oral
drills. Stimulus responds drills. The teacher (student) provides the
stimulus and the student gives a respond///

There
are several types of students’ respond exercises. The simpliest
type is imitation.

Listen
and answer the question. Ask similar question in return

• Do
  you mind being criticized?

• No,
  I don’t. Do you mind being criticized?

Listen
and say that you also think or do not think so.

• Girls
  work harder than boys

• I
  don’t think that …

Listen
and agree with the speaker. Or disagree by adding “not”

• April
  is as warm as May, isn’t it?

• Oh,
  no, April is not as warm..

Listen
and say that it was done a day, a year later or earlier

• TV
  was invented in the nineteenth century

• Oh,
  no. TV was invented in 20^th
  century

Transformation

Listen
and say that that you know or do not know the answer. If you do, give
it please

• When
  was Pushkin born? – I know, when was born in 1799!

Listen
and say that you don’t deserve the praise or the critisizm

• What
  a sweet poem you wrote for the wall-newspaper.

• Or,
  but the poem wasn’t written by me

Construction

Teaching
vocabulary

1. Selection
   of vocabulary

2. Analysis
   of vocabulary units

3. Presenting
   the meaning of vocabulary items (семантизация
   вокабуляра)

4. Exercises
   aimed at teaching vocabulary units

A
study-effort
(учебно-лексическая единица) a word as a
paradigm of word-forms following the rules of the language (boy –
boys – boy’s), in one of its meanings (or in more than one if the
other meanings stem naturally and easily from the nuclear one)

Criteria
for selecting (З.М. Цветкова)

• Combinability
  (that of the word “have” is almost unlimited; that of “clench”
  is reduced to “fists” and “teeth”)

• Frequency
  of occurrence in various types of discourse

• Word-building
  power (the most frequently occurred prefixes and suffixes)

• Polysemy

• Conformity
  to the rules of reading (requirements is vital only for the initial
  stage)

• Stylistic
  neutrality (heaven — sky)

• Structural
  value

“Negative
criteria”

• international
  words (football, evolution) and geographical names, which are
  understood without effort;

• derivatives
  (write – writer; enjoy – enjoyable)

• ordinal
  numeral (except “first” or “second” as unidentifiable by
  form)

• compound
  words, when the meaning of the of the whole evidently proceeds from
  the meaning of its parts: “a letter-box”, “a reading-lamp”
  (but not “a hot-bed” or a “river-horse”, “sweetmeat”)

• grammar
  terms (these can simply be avoided unless absolutely necessary, or
  introduced in the mother tongue)

Decrypting
value – the ability of a word to present the meanings of any others
(to do, very, thing, man, person)

Cross
– thematic potential – the ability of a word to be used when
talking practically any topic. (warm – hearted, warm clothes, warm
look, warm weather)

Analysis
of vocabulary items

The
form of a lexical unit
is regarded in the following perspectives

• phonetics(something
  [sʌmmƟiŋ])

• spelling
  (write the word on the blackboard)

• conformity
  to the rules of reading (e.g. there are lots of ways in which the
  letter cluster – “ough” can be pronounced)

• structure:
  word-building morphemes

• grammar:
  irregular verbs, irregular plural nouns, suppletive forms like
  “bad-worse”, “one-first”

Meaning:

• how
  many meanings a word or phrase has

• which
  of them ought to introduce today (if the meanings of a word are too
  divorced from each other, like “get” as “receive” and “get”
  as “become”; one meaning at a time is quite sufficient; if the
  meaning can be brought under the umbrella of the same notion, it is
  advisable to give them all at once. E.g. the word ‘bag’ covers
  such meanings as ‘suitcase’, ‘schoolbag’, ‘purse’,
  ‘plastic bag’, etc., where a Russian learner will use quite
  different words)

• whether
  the word has any equivalent in the mother tongue or whether it
  renders a phenomenon alien to the mother tongue culture and calling
  for an explanation (pudding, beadle)

• whether
  the meaning of the Russian equivalent covers the same scope of
  meaning or is narrower or wider in meaning

• whether
  the learners are familiar with any synonyms or antonyms in the
  target language

The
usage of a lexical unit

• its
  collocability (=combinability with other words)

• its
  cross-thematic potential (illustrate the usage of a word in
  different situations lest it should ‘freeze’ into just one
  context)

• the
  communicative sphere of its usage. E.g. ‘afraid’ may be used to
  characterize someone’s courage or cowardice, to voice someone’s
  premonitions, to correcr someone or refuse to do something in a
  polite form

• the
  peculiarities of its linguistic environment E.g. ‘weather’,
  ‘nature (as a landscape)’ never takes the indefinite article;
  ‘enjoy’ can’t be followed by an infinitive.

1	English  Russian	Pencil, tree
2	No equivalent in the native language (realia)	Exposure, lacunae, muffin
3	English is broader than Russian. Here we often deal with so-called ‘faux amis’ – ложные друзья переводчика	Red, brown, blue
4	Russian is broader than English	***
5	Russian is broader and narrower than English	***

19/02/10

The
main criteria of choosing the strategy of explaining the meaning

1. Precision

2. Involving
   the students’ intellectual ability (show the picture of a cow –
   the big animal that gives us milk)

3. Economy
   (of time, of affords) – a context is a very good technique, but if
   the context is too detailed and too long it violates the requirement
   of economy.

Sometimes
you can use 2 techniques at once. If a word looks like a bit like its
Russian equivalent they may guess the meaning from the form, or they
may failed to guess (tiger – тигр или тайга).
We need a context. The context may be very short. The hunter shoot a
tiger.

The
Russian language is a friend, but a friend you resort to only in
times of dire needs. Presenting the meaning of the vocabulary item

• Can
  the meaning be deduced from the form of the word (international
  words, derivation — friendship or word composition – letter-box)

• Do
  the learners know any synonyms or antonyms of the words? But
  sometimes antonyms can be tricky too (old). In synonyms we can rely
  on the word ‘very’, which describes many words (huge – very
  big, amazing – very strange)

• Can
  the exact meaning can be presented by means of direct demonstration?

• Is
  it possible to use enumeration – it is very useful when you
  present a generic word through words with specific meanings
  (furniture, vegetables)?

• is
  it possible to give a precise and laconic definition (surgeon – a
  doctor, who operates, thrifty – who saves money for a rainy day)?

• can
  the meaning of the word be deducted from the context?

• can
  the meaning be rendered exactly by one or two words in the mother
  tongue? (terms – hydrogen — водород, nitric acid –
  азотная кислота; words with specific meaning –
  видовые понятия: kinds of trees or birds) Sometimes
  you use Russian to show that the word has 2 meanings: man –
  человек, мужчина. We translate words of very abstract
  meaning which are difficult to define (envy)

If
none of these work resort to an explanation in the mother tongue
(e.g. the Russian word is broader than English – кроме как
помимо и за исключением)

Exercises
aimed at retaining the form of a lexical unit

1. read
   the contrasting pairs: fought – thought, feel – fill

2. read
   the following lines of words where the same letters or letter
   combinations may give us different sounds

bread
– read – break; now – know – how — snow

1. listen
   to the words and show your red cards if the word means something
   good and tour blue cards if the word means something bad:

‘homeless’
+- =-, ‘hopeful’ ++=+; ‘fearless’ —=+

1. find
   and read the phrases with the same meaning as that of the first word
   in the line

important
– not very important, not important, far from important, far from
unimportant, hardly important

1. look
   at the line of unfamiliar words and find all those, you can
   understand without using a dictionary

attach,
attack, attention, attract, attempt

1. find
   the words that have the same root

courage,
courageous, carriage, encourage, current, discourage

26/02/10

1. Guess
   the missing word in a native language context.

Посколько
на берегу не было ни лодки ни *** мы не
могли перебраться на другой берег.

we
teach not to be afraid of unfamiliar words (Плот). Actually such
excercises teach to deal with 2 different challenges: to guess the
exact meaning of an unfamiliar word and to irnore the unfamiliar word
to which the cotext gives no /// and to guess the general meaning of
the sentence. Both skills are equally necessary but for diffferent
kinds of reading.

Она
рассердилась и икснула его по голове
тяжелым игриком.

We
guess exactly the “X” (ударила). And in “Y” we ignore
the difficulty because it doesn’t matter.

1. teach
   them to understand derivatives, which do not have exact equivalents
   in Russian.

e.g. ‘-er’.
teach-teacher, sing – singer, but do-doer (человек, который
совершает действие)

1. teach
   them to understand a famikiar word in a number of contexts which
   change the meaning of the word.

e.g.
spot – пятно. His jacket was covered with spots.

He
showed me the exact spot where the accident had happened. (место)

He
answered the question on the spot.

I
soon spotted what the mistake was.

swing
– качаться,

They
were swinging their arms.

The
children were swinging on the gate.

The
door swung shut. (захлопнулась)

He
swung his stick dealing his enemy a mortal blow (замахнулся)

He
will swing for his crime. (повесят)

You
should develop your learners power of observation, showing how the
same vocabulary item changes its meaning in a different linguistic
environment.

e.g.
consist in – consist of,

The
difficulty consists in

this
machine consists of

look
at – look upon, sorry for – sorry about

I’m
sorry for my dog (жалко) – I’m sorry about my dog.

Reproductive
exercises.

Selection
of several words if a larger number (набор)

Make
your learners memorize the vocabulary without cramming

Name
the things that can be difficult, changenble, dangeorous, things that
can develop

Fashions,
languages, emotions, profession, music, weather, adventures, memory,
thinking, grammar, examinations, health, character.

Name
the qualities which arre more or less permanent or appear only from
time to time

intelligent,
happy, angry, lazy, practical,

Working
out analogies.

When
you make analogies for the learners vary the principle of analogy.
Variation of criteria does not only help to retain the vocabulary
items, but has a general educational value. It prevents stereotypes.
It makes thinking more flexible.

Find
the intruder.

a
dog, a cat, a
fox,
a cow, a sheep

a
carpet,
a bookcase, a wardrobe, a cupboard

to
get well, to
be treated,
to recover, to get cured.

Astonished,
unbelievable, surprising, incredible

Grouping
vocabulary items which are relatively synonymous.

Reproduce
the vocabulary items, grouping them according to their meaning “a”
means “b” or “c”

illness,
cure, getting cured, getting well, ailment, disease, remedy,
recovery, malady, medicine, drug, affliction, convalescence.

Matching
vocabulary items.

Match
words and their translations into Russian

Admire Enjoy Invite Envy

Получать удовольствие от Завидовать Восхищаться Приглашать

Read
the English words in the order of their Russian.

Matching
words and their antonyms or matching words and contexts.

Translation
exercises

Translate
the word combinations in the right-hand column using the given
vocabulary

speech,
book, voice, adventure, answer, exam, reader, exam, question,
situation, life, teacher, voice, learner

bored boring surprising surprised interested interesting exciting excited absorbing absorbed

Заинтересованный читатель Удивленный голос Увлекающая книга Пугающая ситуация Скучающий ребенок Гнетущая ситуация Вдохновляющая речь

/////////////////////////

Left-right
asotiations, which develop a sense of colocability

Work Speak dance

Beautifully Coldly Slowly politely

Choose
the colours for the things that look nice together.

a…dress and ….shoes a…coat and a…hat a…blouse and a …skirt a…shirt and …trouses

Black Red Blue yellow

A
lexical – grammatical exercise

finish
the sentence logically

this
jacket is too long for me. Will you show me … one? (покороче)

this
hat is too small for me. Let me try on a … one?

I’m
afraid I can’t afford buying this coat. Do you have … coats of
this sixe?

Lexical
– grammatical phonetic exercises.

Make
up utterances which you can use with the given intention.

Make
up questions that you can ask if you:

are
angry, want to buy some things for your friends, want to see the city

excuse
me, wher is the …? shop, café,

is
there a … near here?

Substitution
table.

I like I don’t like I prefer

Opera Drama Comedy Pop music ballet

because

It is always beautifull It makes me feel happy It makes me feel tired It makes me laugh It is too loud It makes me think

You
can even end a class with the substitution table if it leads a
connected utterance with personal involvement.

Our city Ryazan Moscow	Has needs	(Too) many Few No	Clean Old Green Good Lage Modern	Buildings Squares Parks Hotels Hospitals Clubs Cars
There are

Choose
the right word according to the context. (partial translation)

As
a rule I (избегаю выходить) out in such weather

It
was a miracle that you (избежал) death.

The
origin of the Universe is a riddle that will never be (решена)

12/03/2010

***
with developing your students’ logic.

Rhythm,
pronunciation drill

1. What
   shall I wear& I don’t care

2. You
   may use them, but don’t lose them

3. What
   have you lost? How much did it cost?

4. Shall
   I take my sweater? – Yes, I think you’d better

Pronunce
these words and then use some of them to complete each sentence
below:

Cheese,
cream, jam, orange, lemon, bacon, pastry, porridge

… is
(are) no good to a hungry man

… is
just the right thing for lunch

… is
a delicious thing to make a sandwich with

What
is the good of tea without …?

Intonation
and pronunciation

The
first peculiarity of rhythm is that the stressed syllables come at
regular intervals. No matter, how many unstressed syllables happen to
be between them. The more unstressed syllables we find between the
stressed ones, the more quickly they are pronounced.

If
you teach students to pronounce a sentence “I am goingtothe
cinemawithmy friend”

//////////////////////

Is
the rhythm the same or is it different. You can start with the
Russian example.

Подожди!
– Не за что

Не
забудь покормить кошку! – А где корм?

Ask
the students to think of a Russian response, stimulus, which will
have the same rhythm.

Почему
ты не в школе. – А учитель-то болен. Я
немного простужен.

A
receptive
task.

Find
the sentences with **

Please
help me(4). I need help (1). Read it, please (5). It is easy (3).
Let’s begin (2)

1. oOO
   2) OoO 3) ooOo 4) OOo 5)Ooo

Rhythm
+ grammar + vocabulary — Compare your city and Moscow. (см. ранее)

Rhythm
+ grammar + Logic

Complete
the question transforming them into alternative ones.

How
do you like your soup?

How
do you like you porridge (eggs, potatoes, chicken, tea)

Cold
– hot, strong – weak, thick – thin, with – without sugar,
boiled – fried – roasted – mashed.

Rhythm
is closely connected with the range and the pitch. In fact, both are
presented in the traditional intonation chart of a sentence. That is
why the range and the pitch may first be introduced as a special
challenge, but as we go on developing it, rhythm becomes just as
important. The idea of the range is related to correct breathing.

e.g.
Put out a candle. You teach to divide the process of breathing out
into the equal portions, teac to pronounce some elements of alphabet.

‘Back
reading’ – an extended sentence is pronounce beginning with the
final stressed word and then making it longer and longer

As
to the tones, start with the low fall, and until it becomes truly
good, don’t give them a contrasting pairs. Teach them to
differentiate. The same one-word can occur with both terms.

Intonation
+ logic

Arrange
the alternatives into logically opposed pairs

Is it

Effective Important Enjoyable Impossible Interesting

or

Dull? Unpleasant? Annoying? Unnecessary? Useless?

Only
then introduce the high fall

Shaw
you cards for the tones. Shaw that the speaker’s attitude changes
with the tone. the meaning can be quite difficult.

It
is usefull to give mini-dialogues, consisting of one sentence. Each
dialogue given at least two sets of moods.

—
Again!

—
Again?

—
Yes

—
All right

Logical
stress /// the same sentence into the minimal utterances. A minimal
utterance is the sentence plus speaker’s intension. An utterance
always answers a real questions or an imaginary one. The chief
strategy t develop logical stress.

1. Back
   reading

There
are many factories in the centre of the city

Correct
the teacher

There
are many factories in the suburbs of the city

In
the suburbs? Why, there are many factories in the centre
of the _/city!

There
were many factories in the centre of the city!

Were?
Why, there are many factories in the centre of the city!

1. Answer
   the teacher’ question (after ‘back reading’)

Robinson
Crusoe spent 28 years on an uninhabitated island

(Who
spent.. How long… Where did he…)

1. (For
   beginners) Answer the Russian questions in English, beginning with
   ‘Oh, no’

It
is a big black cat

Кто
это на рисунке– черный котёнок?

Кто
это там во дворе – черный щенок?

Кот
серый, не так ли?

Похоже
на большого черного кота, но может быть
это просто пятно на фотографии.

1. (for
   beginners) Use the same sentence with different logical stresses to
   complete the following utterance.

Help
me
fix
my
bike

Нет,
одному мне ремонт не под силу

С
твоим-то велосипедом всё в порядке …

1. Use
   the same sentence in different situation, adapting the logical
   stress to the speaker’s purpose.

I
thought you would like it

Suppose
you come to your friend’s birthday with a gift. You friend is very
disappointed. How do you react.

You
friend is happy. It is that he wanted.

1. Continue
   the phrase, adapting the syntax to the logical stress which signals
   the meaning.

People
like
him
…(он нравится людям, люди как он)

Work
at phonetics presupposing teaching to read aloud. Don’t give long
passages. Choose the short passage.

19/03/2010

Major
skills

Teaching
listening (=aural comprehension)

1. The
   mechanism of speech and their aural comprehension

2. The
   factors that influence speech perception

3. Adapting
   texts for purposes of listening

4. The
   basic and functional skills of aural comprehension

5. Exercises
   aimed at developing the basic skills of listening

6. Tasks
   aimed at developing the functional skills of listening

Mechanisms
of speech

English terms	Russian terms
Memory: Immediate (IM)	Память Непосредственная (НП)
Operational (OM)	Оперативная (ОП)
Permanent (PM)	Постоянная (ПП)
Inner reproduction	Внутреннее проговаривание
Inner speech	Внутренняя речь
Synthesis of meaning	Осмысление
Anticipation (verbal or logical)	Предвосхищение (вербальное и смысловое)
Anticipation as prognosis (= вероятностное прогнозирование) = guessing what will be written or said next	Anticipatory synthesis (упреждающий синтез) planning what you will say or write next

During
aural comprehension we take in a sequence of sounds rather than
separate words, a sequence from pause to pause and in order to
understand it we have to fix it in our memory while analysis is
taking place. This involves IM or echo-memory. IM is very precise, it
keeps the wording, intonation, but it is very short-lived, just for
seconds. We need it until we will have understood something.

Then
comes the mechanism of inner reproduction. That is we repeat what we
hear without being aware of it. This repetition is very much reduced
phonetically. Actually there are no more than traces of the real
words and phrases. If inner reproduction is inhibited the quality of
comprehension becomes worse.

Due
to this 2 mechanisms the listener is able to identify the patterns he
hears and pronounces *** with the patterns of separate words which
are kept in his permanent memory.

Next
you have to bring this words into one meaningful sentence.

Synthesis
of meaning on the sentence level. In order to comprehend the next
sentence we must delete from our memory the phrase that we have
understood. But for the information not to be forgotten we must
preserve it in a more compact code, to zip it. It is done with the
help of inner speech. Inner speech is an intermediate stage between
thinking and real speech. It violates normal syntax or rather it has
a syntax of its own not grammatical, but logical.

Land
given to vassals

for
lifetime only

then
hereditary

Inner
speech may also be a mixture of verbal and non-verbal signals, e.g.
if you listen to instruction how to get to the railway station you
can keep it in your memory as a picture or the notes kept in your
memory can be half-english and half-russian. Inner speech can be
compared to the text as a telegram. It is also related to very
important written skills, of note-taking in reading and listening and
the skills of note-taking planning your own utterance.

The
memory responsible for preserving the results of inner speech is
operational memory (OM). OM unlike immediate memory (IM) is not word
for word retention but is the most logical kind of memory. It lasts
as long as we need its results (смысловые вехи,
эквивалентная замена – equivalent substitutions,
the guide-line of the inner speech).

The
equivalent substitutions are not stored in the OM as a mechanical
sequence. This memory is related to thinking and it turns a linear
sequence into the hierarchy. The hierarchy may keep getting
rearranged though the whole process of listening; it is a living
structure.

OM
can’t function without a synthesis of meaning on the textual level.
OM and synthesis are greatly helpful in anticipation which at least
works as prognosis, guessing what is going to be said next.

As
to permanent memory it is a kind of store room, but it is not static
either, it is also a process, a dynamic structure. The information,
which is likely to be used is kept nearest, within easy reach. And
the information which was retained but never used again is thrown
out. If you want a structure or a word to be retained they must have
as many links as possible with other language items. Show it
combinability.

Conclusion.

1. The
   importance of establishing

2. The
   importance of regular systematization

3. Even
   if you teach non-professionals pay attention to adequate
   pronunciation in order to ensure the mechanism of inner
   reproduction, otherwise they will never understand the difference
   between ‘then’ and ‘than’, ‘leave’ and ‘live’.
   Besides, adequate pronunciation makes it much easier to determine a
   border line between the words.

4. IM
   should be specially drilled with the help of different techniques
   such as expanding sentences.

5. The
   tempo of their own speech should be normal and not too slow in order
   that their inner reproduction should keep up with the tempo of the
   original speech they are listening to.

6. It
   is extremely important to give a concrete task before listening,
   never say listen to the text and try to understand, because the task
   given is supposed to channel the OM. The same text can be given 2
   times or more, but it is desirable than each time the tasks changes.

7. To
   develop the mechanism of the inner speech pay a lot of attention to
   the skill of paraphrasing, because then you will ensure that the
   equivalent substitution are more likely to be in the target language
   than in Russian. It will also help them to build a hierarchy in the
   OM.

Factors
that influence speech perception

1. linguistic
   – hinder speech perceptions, they are long/short vowels, difficult
   sound clusters, rhythm with the words clinging to each other,
   polysemy, homophony, grammatically homophones (why didn’t you say
   you’d
   let him go)

2. extra-linguistic
   – can also hinder speech perception, such as the speaker’s
   accent, or the noises in the channel of communication (traffic,
   crowd), they may be helpful: pictures, diagrams, directions. The
   timbre of the speaker – it is easier to understand a man than a
   woman.

Adapting
texts for purposes of aural comprehension: links; the length, the
vocabulary, the syntax, the density of information, cultural
adaptation.

Links
– do never give very long stories.

Vocabulary:
there must be several levels of ***

Substitute
the unfamiliar word by a familiar one. The news I heard astounded
me.

Live
out unfamiliar words if they are not important.

Reword
the sentence like “he is not very industrious – he doesn’t like
to work hard”

You
put the text aside and retell it in an entirely new way.

26/03/2010

Adapting
texts for the purposes of listening.

Grammatical
adaptation

1. Substitute
   unfamiliar or barely familiar structures by simpler ones, e.g. “Far
   from averting
   this threat the government”.

2. It
   is advisable to break long sentences into 2 or more shorter ones. It
   concerns complex sentences. You should diminish the depth of
   subordination.

3. Some
   sentences, especially in a summary kind of texts are so compressed,
   that it is difficult to see the natural order of the events. In a
   case of flash backs try to arrange a straight chronology of the
   events.

4. If
   the information is very compressed it is meant for reading, not
   listening. Listener may miss some essential part of the message. To
   prevent it some vital facts might be paraphrased and thus repeated.

5. Weights
   and measures. This may also be adapted, that is translated into the
   recipient’s culture.

E.g.
Frail
and tender,
Tutankhamon died not yet twenty, after a reign
of six years. – He ruled Egypt for 6 years and then he died when he
was 20.

The
river was 5 feet deep.

It
was not until 1990 that I encountered him again, now a university
professor, and we launched a joint project.

The
basic skills of aural comprehension

The
phonetic skills:

1. Indentifying
   the sounds of the foreign language words

2. Differentiation
   between a word and a word combination that sounds similar (She was
   in white – She was invited; their – they are; minute – mean
   it)

3. Understanding
   the message on the basis of differentiating between direct and
   indirect speech.

4. Determining
   the main communicative intention of the speaker by the tones (which
   question is the speaker answering?)

Lexical
skills:

1. The
   skill of identifying the contextual meaning of a polysemantic word.
   (spot)

2. Only
   for listening: differentiating between homophones.

3. Identifying
   the meaning of the unfamiliar word from the context. For reading and
   listening.

4. Understanding
   the meaning of an unfamiliar word on the basis of its familiar root
   and familiar affixes. For listening and reading.

5. Understanding
   the relationship between words or word combinations in an utterance
   as synonymic or antonymic. (sight – vision)

Grammar
skills of listening:

1. Understanding
   the function of unfamiliar words. For reading and listening.

2. Identifying
   the contracted forms of verbs (he’s – he is, he has or his)

3. Identifying
   the subject-predicate relationships in a complex sentence. Finding
   the predicate in a sentence where several words can potentially
   belong to different parts of speech.

4. Elliptical
   questions (Warm enough? Going for a walk?)

Functional
skills:

1. Listening
   to a monologue.

2. Listening
   to a dialogue or to a conversation of several people without taking
   part.

3. Listening
   to your interlocutor when you take part in a dialogue.

Types
of exercises. Monologue:

• Listen
  for the gist of the message

• Listen
  for details.

• Selecting
  facts relating to the specific problems.

• Read
  a short text. Listen to another version of it and find what has been
  added in the aural version.

• Differentiating
  between subjection facts and subjective opinions

• Determining
  the form of discussion (description – narration – exposition –
  argumentation).

• Predicting
  the end of the text (for 3 both)

Dialogue:

• Determining
  the attitude of the speaker to each other

• Determining
  what opinions the interlocutors share and where they differ

• Reconstructing
  the missing lines

• Understand
  whether the fragment of dialogue you hear indicates that it is the
  beginning, the middle or the end of the dialogue.

• Listening
  to your interlocutor as your participate in a dialogue.

• Making
  your interlocutor stick to the point, not letting him digress or if
  he does digress to bring him back to the original issue

• If
  the conversation embarrassing your, you must listen to the
  interlocutor with the purpose of turning the dialogue into the new
  channel. But so smoothing, that your interlocutor can’t notice it

Developing
the phonetic skills of listening.

Listen
to words that sound similar and decide which of them should be used
in the given context.

Он
будет свободен
завтра. free,
tree,
three

Listen
to the words and name the number of the picture:

a
cat, a cup, a cap

a
pen, a pin, a pan

Listen
to the phrases and show your green card if they describe the picture
correctly

It’s
a green cap

It’s
a black cat

Listen
to pairs of sentences and say if they differ or if it is the same
sentence twice.

He
has run home. – He has rung home.

He
fought very hard. – He thought very hard

Listen
to pairs of sentences and decide which of the, the first or the
second suits the context given in the handout.

He
has run home. – He has rung home. But nobody answered the phone

He
fought very hard. – He thought very hard And soon the plan was
ready

The
doctor didn’t test (taste) the new medicine

He
was traveling in far (four) countries

He
will get a good price (prize)

We
shall work (walk) in the fields

His
wife found (phoned) him at the office.

Look
at the sentence given in 2 variants and tick the variant that you
hear.

They
bought new (shorts/shirts) for the team.

(I
reckon/ Erick and) I need a good holiday.

Do
you know she’s (Finnish/ finished)?

We’ll
be letting them have a (newer system/ new assistant) if they want
one.

Intonation.

Logical
stress.

Listen
and repeat the most important word:

There
are two big armchairs in the corner

In
the corner? I see

There
are two
big armchairs in the corner

Two?
I see

Determining
the main purpose of the speaker by intonation.

Listen
to a complex sentence and respond with «вот как».

I came here by bus| because my car needs to be repaired	Does it? I’m sorry to hear that
I didn’t go for a walk | because I was feeling sick	Were you? I’m sorry to hear that
I feel better now | because I am in the open all day long	Do you? I’m sorry to hear that
They are very upset | because their dog has disappeared	Has it? I’m sorry to hear that

Listen
to the following sentences and choose a response which will be
rhythmically the same.

/Nancy is ill	/Give her a pill /Phone her /brother Bill
He /likes to /play with /other boys	He has /many ex/pensive toys. They /always /make an /awful noise

Listen
to some ideas. Express your agreement end choose how to respond. С
такими людьми обычно так и происходит,
именно поэтому так оно и получается.

/Students who are still quite young, usually have a good memory	I agree with you. That’s why they usually have good memories.
/Students who /miss /many /lectures often fail their examinations.	That’s true. Such students often fail their examinations

Listen
to statements and ask a question of surprise (вот как)

He says I have to help them.	Do you really?
He says, “I am quite sure of it”	Is he really?
She says I am a wonderful singer.	Are you really?

Listen
to sentences with direct or indirect speech and answer the following
question.

“The elder of the two sisters” said the young man “was very attractive”	Who was very attractive? The elder sister
The elder of the two sisters said the young man was very attractive	The man

Differentiation
between alternative questions and general questions with the
conjunction or.

Do
you keep a cat or a dog? – Yes I do, I keep a cat.

Do
you Danish or Swedish? – Yes I do, I know Swedish. No I don’t

Grammar
skills.

The
difficulty lies in the structure, ******