Receptive Skills and Challenges in Language Learning:
1) Introduction
Definition of Receptive Skills: Reading, listening, and, more recently, viewing images and audiovisual texts.
Goals: Understanding written and spoken texts, decoding images, connecting text and images (e.g., comics, films, digital texts).
Relevance of Receptive Skills in Modern Communication (place new demands on lannguage learning - 1990)
2) Interactive Processes
Top-Down Processing
Definiton: Interpretation based on prior knowledge, expextations and context (schema, genre,..)
Examples of Activities: Generating questions, making predictions, activating background knowledge.
Bottom-Up Processing
Definition: Constructing meaning through decoding of words, grammar, and symbols.
Examples of Activities: Recognizing details, starting with the text as the main source of information.
3) Challenges
Deficits in Receptive Skills
Lack of top-down processing among less successful learners
Errors in Classroom Practice
Focus on word-by-word comprehension
Combining listening and reading simultaneously, can cause confusion
Difficulties in Listening Comprehension
Speed and variations in language
Multimodal demands in films (language, visual cues, film-specific techniques).
4) Teaching Approaches
Process-Oriented Approach
Pre-Phase activities: such as generating expectations and activating background knowledge.
While-Phase: structure and tasks to support understanding.
Post-Phase: Reflection, personal reactions, and deeper engagement with the text.
Techniques for Reading
Skimming
scanning
intensive reading
Making inferences and contextual guessing
Techniques for Listening
Global listening
specific information
inference
The Role of Emotions
Emotions: Help with memory retention, capture attention, and link content to personal experiences.
Support in Teaching: Emotions in promoting deeper comprehension
Interdependence of Genre, Goal, and Strategy
Genres and Goals in language learning: Using different types of texts and media for everyday situations (brochures, films, news).
Purposes for Reading and Listening in Real Life
Reading purposes
information
instructions
enjoyment
Listening purposes
(public) announcements
media
conversations
gathering...