Studies on English teaching in listening and speaking: An

introduction

Raung-fu Chung

Southern Taiwan University

rfchung@mail.nsysu.edu.tw

Aspects of language teaching:

1. Listening

2. Speaking

3. Reading

4. Writing

One more added: translating

Question:

1. Which aspect goes first?

a. First language acquisition

b. Second language acquisition

L1 acquisition

1. A baby recognizes the difference between its mother tongue and a strange language when it is three months old.

2. A child fails to produce the fricative /s/ in words like spoon, stick, scream etc

3. Now consider the following conversation:

Daddy: Is that your [fis] (fish)?

Child: No. It is my [fis].

Daddy: Oh, so it is your fis.

Child: (feeling bad) I mean it is my fis, not fis.

Daddy: Ya! I got it. It’s your fis.

Child: (crying out). Not my fis. My FIS.

Daddy: Oh, your fish.

Child: (Smiling.)

So, from the basis of L1 acquisition, it seems quite reasonable to take the theory that listening goes before producing or pronunciation.

L2 perspective

1. There have been a lot of studies on the acquisition of English /r/ and /l/ for Japanese students.

2. Backgrounds:

There is no /l/ in Japanese inventories, which causes the difficulty for Japanese students to perceive the difference between /r/ and /l/ in English.

Teaching GoalsThe essential goal of this course is twofold.

1.On the one hand, students are armed with basic knowledge and capabilities of understanding how to pronounce and listen to spoken English.

2.On the other hand, the methodology of how to do research on speaking and listening English will be one of the main concerns, because you are graduates, having to do some research in the near future.

Spech Chain

Coming back to the issue:

Listening or speaking

Which goes first?

1. Listening, on the basis of L1 acquisition

2. Speaking: no phoneme in mind, no listening distinction

English sounds: To [j] or not to [j]

1. Ear vs. year

2. East vs. yeast

Sound spectrographs

Question 2:

Now that the difference is there, why do most of us fail to make such a distinction? This might be one of the significant issues worth further exploring in this class.

Contents to be taught

• To achieve the previous goals, this course is divided into four parts.

1.The first part will introduce the backgrounds of techniques in teaching or learning English production (pronunciation), including how to control muscles for the production of English sounds, segments, and prosody

Contents to be taught(2)

2. The second part will be concerned with the methodology of how to do research on English sounds.

3. The third part is focused on how to listen better to the production of English sounds or conversation.

Contents to be taught (3)

4. Finally, the main concern of the fourth part is with the methodology of doing related research on English listening comprehension.

Student’s duties:

1. To attend the class punctually

2. To read the assigned materials in advance

3. To write down your questions or problems when you are reading

4. To do the assignments accordingly

5. To feel happy in and after the class

Some Nos:

1. No cell phone in class

2. No absence from the class

3. No skipping any assignment

Reading materials:

1. A package

2. Articles or printed matters to be provided one week before the class

Evaluation

1. Class participation

2. Assignments required

3. Oral report

4. Essay report (if needed)

Text Books

Fries, Charles C. and Robert Lado. 1958. Introduction to

English Pronunciation. University of Michigan Press.

Prator, Chifford H. Jr. and Betty Wallace. 1985. Manual of American English Prounciation (4th edition).

Thomason and Heinle.

Brown, Gillian. 1990. Listening to spoken English (2nd

edition). Longman.

Bond, Zinny S. 1999. Slips of the ear. Academic Press.

Hart, Johan’t, Rene Collier and Antonie Cohen. 1990. A perceptual study of intonation. Cambridge

University Press.

Rost, Michael. 1990. Listening in Language Learning. Longman.

Tatham Mark and Katherine Morton. 2006. Speech production and perception. Palgrave.

Questions?