TKT Unit 2

Section 1 : Receptive Skills - Overview

1. Terminology

2. Receptive Skills Tasks

3. Sub-Skills

 Reflection

What is the difference between receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills
(writing and speaking)?

Receptive skills involve responding to texts, whereas productive skills involve producing
texts (N.B. we use text to talk about both spoken and written language).  Language learners
often have better receptive skills than productive ones (i.e. they can understand more than
they can say or write).

 1. Terminology

What do native speakers do when they listen or read? 

2. Different kinds of reading and listening

Here we discuss different kinds of reading, for convenience, but the same distinctions can be
applied to listening.

Refer back to Core Unit 3 (Section 1 page 4) for a review on the different types of reading
skills, such as skimming and scanning, and then look at the examples of reading given below
and the types of reading that would be involved. 

 skimming 4 newspaper articles to decide which one looks the most interesting to read
in more detail - reading for gist / skimming
 looking through an encyclopaedia article about the inventor of ‘post-it-notes’ to find
out his/her name, age, nationality and the date of the invention, to put that information
(and only that information) in a high-school report - reading to pick out specific
information / scanning
 as a senior manager, reading a detailed report from a junior manager about a situation
that lead to three employees being forced to resign, to ensure the junior manager
responded appropriately to the situation - reading for a detailed understanding
 carefully reading through and following a recipe while baking a cake  - reading for a
detailed understanding
 reading a 5 page magazine article while sunbathing by the beach - extensive reading
for pleasure

Note that the first 4 are different types of intensive reading, which usually involves reading a
short passage with a clear and specific aim, as opposed to the last one, extensive reading
which is reading longer texts for enjoyment (an example of extensive listening is ‘watching a
movie’).

As illustrated in Core Unit 3 (Section 1 page 4), there is a fundamental difference between
reading for gist and for specific information. Reading for gist or skim reading (skimming) is
the kind of reading that we do to get a general idea of the content of a text. A reader of a novel
may skim read if they feel they have come to a boring part such as a description of the
countryside which they feel is not relevant to the story.

In class, sometimes we want to use a reading text either for language work, such as exploiting
grammar points or new vocabulary, or for developing reading skills themselves. Before we
expect our students to deal with the language points in the text, it is important that they have a
general idea of the meaning of the text itself. For example, teachers often find articles which
have some good vocabulary or some good examples of a grammar point. They may decide to
use these in class to exploit this language. This is a good way to introduce new language but it
is essential that students have a general idea of the content of the text before working on the
language points.

One way of assessing whether students have a general idea of a text is to give them a text
accompanied by 4 pictures. Only one picture is relevant to the text. Ask the students to
quickly read the text (skim it) and match it to the corresponding picture. In this way, we can
see that although they may not have understood every word of the text, they at least have a
general understanding of it. Another example is to give students a range of possible titles for
an article, where only one title is correct. Here, they need to select which title is most
appropriate. We can also ask students to identify the main topics that are mentioned in the
text. Alternatively, we can ask students to identify the general tone of the text, which may
include asking the students if the writer is positive or negative about something. We can also
assess general understanding by ask students to skim the text to identify the type of text by
asking them if the text is a newspaper article, a recipe, a formal letter etc. 

As discussed in Core Unit 3, scanning is essentially looking for information. We do this when
we want to find specific information in a text, such as a person's name, a time, a date, a place,
a statistic, a synonym for a another word, an example of a tense etc. 

It must be said that students will already be able to practise these reading skills (skimming
and scanning) in their own languages, but it’s important that we help our students to apply
these skills in English. One of the reasons why this is important is so that they do not get
frustrated about not understanding every word in a text. They need to be able to read for a
general understanding (skim) without being overly dependent on a dictionary. They also need
to be able to filter through information to find something they are looking for (scanning).

 
There are some tasks which require that students have a general idea accompanied with some
specific information. For example, if we ask our students to write a summary of a text, they
will need to have a general understanding of it, while also being able to include specific facts,
if relevant.

Review - Receptive Skills

 For the TKT Test it is important that you know the following terms:

 receptive skills
 productive skills
 sub-skills
 cohesion
 coherence
 gist
 skim
 specific information
 scan
 deduce
 extensive
 intensive

Section 2: Receptive Skills - Listening

A) Listening to English in Different Environments 

 B) Kinds of Listening 

      i) Real-life listening – listening to a real person

     ii)  Classroom listening 

C) Top – down and Bottom – up Processing 

D) Helping Learners to develop Listening Skills 

    1. The stages of a listening skills lesson

         a) The standard sequence

         b) Reasons for stages of a listening skills lesson

   2. Varieties of listening material

1. Sub-skills of listening

TKT Exam Practice Test

 Reflection & Review

A) Listening to English in Different Environments 

These three students are learning English in Britain. They have lessons at a private language
school in the morning and in the afternoon they relax, do homework and go sightseeing. In the
evening one works in a bar, one is a waiter in an Italian restaurant and the other works in a
petrol station. 

Who, or what, might they listen to in English in the course of their studies, their work and
their free time?

Think of your own ideas then check with the list in the box.

Listening in an English-speaking environment

 the school secretary         CD/tape recordings in class

 their teacher                    train announcements

 classmates                      television

 shop assistants                the radio

 ticket clerks                    songs  

 bank clerks                     films

 waiters

 the landlord

 neighbours

 people in the street

 friends
 colleagues

 the boss

 customers

 the police

How many of these might a student studying in their own country be able to listen to?

B) KINDS OF LISTENING

Did you notice the difference between the sources of listening on the right and those on the
left?

Those on the right do not require a verbal response from the listener while those on the left
usually do. With the exception of train announcements, those on the right could be listened to
in the student’s own country.

Many students say that they find the listening skill the hardest. We will consider why this
might be firstly in real life when listening to a real live person - that is, in the situations in the
left-hand column of our list.

i) Real-life listening – listening to a real person

Do your students think they will ever have to do real-life listening in English? Or do they see
it as part of academic study? As English does have a role as a world language, especially in
technology, it seems safe to assume that we should prepare our learners for listening to real
live people as much as possible, even if learners, particularly younger learners, cannot see that
they may need it in the future.

So what are the features of real-life listening?

We will consider these and then see what we can do to make classroom listening more like
real-life listening.  Of course, these features will not apply only to real-life listening to
English. See how many of these you can recognise in listening in your own language.

Speed

Native speakers normally speak at a speed which learners find difficult to follow (there is no
evidence that any language is spoken any faster than any other, but for learners it seems like
it).

Spontaneity

Speakers are usually deciding what to say as they go along (of course, songs, films, television,
radio and announcements are different, and sometimes people have time to mentally prepare
what to say). This also leads to ‘mistakes’ as speakers start to say one thing then change to
another, which sounds like the grammar is ‘wrong’ (examples: “He’s more…more…happier
than he was”; “What we need to do is… no, first we should…”)
Incomplete forms

In contrast with written English, spoken English is full of partial forms (examples: “You
sure?” instead of “Are you sure?”; “Yes, done that” instead of “Yes, I’ve done that”). The
technical term for this missing out of words is ellipsis and it is a standard feature of informal
spoken English.

Informal language

Many situations will be informal which means that the listener will hear colloquial
vocabulary and expressions that they would not have seen in writing (e.g. guy or bloke rather
than man; cheers not thank you). Expressions such as What’s up? are also colloquial and this
particular one has the added difficulty that in Britain it means What is wrong? but in America
means How are you?

Colloquial vocabulary will include slang such as booze for alcohol and may even include
swear words (see Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage for examples.) A particular
difficulty for foreign listeners in an English-speaking environment is the speed with which
colloquial and slang words are created, change and then go out of fashion. A student who
visits England one summer may find different slang being used the next.

Hesitations and fillers

Speakers sometimes need a little time to think while they decide what they want to express. In
English, speakers do not leave pauses, though (or the listener will think they have finished),
so English speakers say things like well, sort of, I mean or make a noise such as er, um, hmm
while they are thinking. These can be distracting for a learner.

Connected Speech

When native speakers are speaking rapidly words become linked together and sometimes
sounds change or are missed out so that the words do not sound as the learner would expect
from the written form. This includes the weak forms, word linking, elision (sounds left out),
assimilation (sounds changed) and intrusion (sounds added) mentioned in the Module on
phonology.

Intonation

A great deal of meaning is conveyed through intonation and the listener will need to interpret
the differences in pitch.

Accents and voices

It seems all languages have regional variations and English is no exception; you will no doubt
be aware that Americans, Australians, Scottish people, Irish people and people from the north
of England can all sound very different. Listeners have to adapt to quite large differences in
sound, even within a relatively small area such as a single city.  Listeners will also hear male
and female, old and young, deep and high-pitched voices.

Listeners hear only once

In real life the listener usually only gets one chance to hear the message (and while people can
ask for clarification or repetition in many circumstances, this is not always possible).

The listener has a reason to listen

We often listen for a reason, for example, to find some information, or to find out what
someone wants (note that we rarely need to remember every single detail of what we hear).

The listener understands the situation

In real life the listener almost always has some idea about what is going to be said because
they can see the context. They usually know who is speaking and where they are, and they
know or can predict the basic topic. Listeners will also bring their knowledge of the world to
the situation.

Looking as well as listening

The listener can usually see the person who is speaking (telephoning is an exception, of
course). The listener can see the facial expressions and gestures that the speaker makes. If you
have ever watched the television with the sound turned off, you will know how much this
visual information helps. You can understand quite a lot with no sound at all.

The speaker tries to help the listener

Generally the speaker wants the listener to understand. The speaker can usually see the
listener and may adapt to the listener and speak more slowly or paraphrase (say the same
thing in different words) if they think it necessary.

The listener responds

In English, the listener usually has to show that they are listening by making attention signals,
such as nods, or saying yes, mmm, of course, etc. This helps the speaker to see how much the
listener understands and lets them know to adapt what they are saying if necessary.

ii)  Classroom listening

Now we have looked at listening in life what about listening in the classroom?

Reasons for listening in the classroom can be quite different and lessons with listening often
have one of the following 4 main aims:

 As part of phonology work, for example, listening to distinguish sounds, or focus on

the word or sentence stress.

 As a grammar, functions, or lexis presentation via a listening tape. For example the
students do some listening practice to get to know the context and situation, then look
at examples of the grammar in the audio script.

 As practice of grammar, functions or lexis. Any new language should be practised in

all four skills so that students can say the language, write the language, recognise it
 when they read it and recognise it when they hear it. Good course books will provide
practice of grammar with a focus on all four skills.

 As a skill in itself.  In all of the three above, the focus is on language.  However,
students sometimes need to practise extracting information through their ears, drawing
on all the language they know. They need to practise their listening skills. This kind
of lesson will be very different in aim from the other three but is essential because, as
we have seen and you probably know from your own experience, learners find
listening very difficult.  Often listening skills lessons will focus on 2 or more of the
sub-skills mentioned in the introduction to receptive skills.

C) Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing 

What is the listener actually doing as they listen? How do they extract information from the
sounds that the speaker makes? If we can understand this, perhaps we can better help our
learners with listening comprehension.

One theory is that the listener first recognises sounds and then builds the sounds up into words
and then the words up into sentences and then the sentences into longer stretches of text.
Here, the focus is on starting with words in isolation and building these up to form some kind
of meaning.This is sometimes called ‘the building-brick approach’ and can be applied to
reading too. It is also known as bottom-up processing.

However, as the stream of sound in speaking is so fast it seems very unlikely that bottom-up
processing is what listeners actually do as a general approach. Instead, they get a general
overall impression of the message, and to help them to do this they predict both structure and
content. In other words, they start from big, general ideas and fill in gaps in understanding
later. For example, if a student is listening to an English speaker give his/her account of a bad
flight, the student will subconsciously use his/her pre-existing knowledge of this topic to aid
understanding. This is why in most reading/listening activities lead-ins are important so as to
familiarise students with the topic at hand and activate their pre-existing knowledge enabling
them to (sometimes unwittingly) predict what they are going to deal with. This starting from
the bigger picture and moving on to details is called top-down processing.

It seems that listeners do a combination of top-down and bottom-up processing when they
listen. They get the general idea of what is said by top-down processing and then fill in any
gaps by bottom-up processing. Students should have the opportunity to develop both kinds
of processing during their listening lessons.

D) Helping Learners to develop Listening Skills 

1. The stages of a listening skills lesson

a) The standard sequence

The stages of listening and reading lessons are usually very similar. Here is a typical set of
stages for a listening lesson.  Look at the stages in the boxes below and put them in the right
order.

Set a gist listening

task
A follow on activity in which Pre-teach
students discuss or write about the
Play the tape
ideas they have heard in the listening essential lexis
Check the answers
 

Very close listening Lead in to the topic /

for specific Students predict the topic or Establishing the
language items context
the content or both

 
Set a detailed
listening task

Give learners time

to read the
questions

Play the tape (twice

   
if necessary)

Students check
their answers in
pairs

Check the answers

as a class

Answers

1. Lead in to the topic / Establishing the context

2. Pre-teach essential lexis
 3. Students predict the topic or the content or both
4. Set a gist listening task for comprehension of general meaning
Play the tape and students listen for a general understanding
Check the answers (they can check in pairs and then as a class, or just as a class)
5. Set a detailed listening task for thorough comprehension of meaning
Give learners time to read the questions
Play the tape (twice if necessary) and students listen for answers
Students check their answers in pairs
Check the answers as a class
6. Very close listening for specific language items: Here the focus is less on
comprehension of the material, but more on actual analysis of language
(vocab/grammar) within the listening material.
7. A follow on activity in which students discuss or write about the ideas they have heard
in the listening

* Remember that listening, or reading, for ‘gist’ is for the general overall idea of the passage. 
Examples of gist tasks might be : Where are the people? What are they talking about?

b) Reasons for stages of a listening skills lesson

For practical reasons most listening skills lessons will probably be centred around students
listening to a tape or CD from their course book. There are some advantages to this as the
materials are easy for the teacher to obtain, the students can listen to the same thing several
times if they need to and it can provide different voices and accents.

However, it will be obvious that many of the features of real life listening in our list above
will not be there. What can we do to make our artificial classroom listening lesson more like a
real life listening? Answer the questions below yourself then check with the answers.

1. Why do we start with a lead in to the topic and set the context?
2. Why do we pre-teach lexis?
3. Why do students listen for gist first?
4. Why do students listen more than once?
5. Why do students need to know what the task is before they start listening?
6. Why do we do a follow on activity?

  Answers

1. In real-life listeners usually have some idea about the situation, who the speakers are
and what the basic topic is likely to be.  If we do not give them similar information in
class before they listen, it makes the task unnecessarily difficult and is less like most
real-life listening.
2. This will, of course, not happen in real-life listening but we want to give our learners
confidence in listening so we want them to be able to do the tasks set.  Sometimes for
this we need to be sure they understand lexis essential to the tasks. However, we
should not pre-teach all the lexis, as developing strategies for dealing with unknown
lexis and deducing from context are skills which are extremely important.
3. This attempts to replicate the top-down processing that we do in real-life. On many
occasions in real-life listening, listeners do not listen in order to notice every detail,
but to get the general picture. In addition to this, in the classroom setting, it gives
 students a chance to get familiar with the speaker’s voice, accent, speed of delivery,
etc., making additional listening more productive.
4. This of course is where the classroom listening sequence differs markedly from the
real-life listening situation, where students usually get to hear only once. However, as
we have seen, the nature of English pronunciation in which streams of words sound so
different from what a student may expect from the words in isolation, together with
the speed of delivery, mean that learners need to develop the skill of ‘de-coding’ what
they hear and need to hear exactly the same thing more than once.
5. In real-life listening the listener nearly always has a reason to listen so setting the task
first attempts to replicate this. Further, if learners are given a question after they have
listened, the task becomes a memory task not a listening comprehension task.
6. In real-life listening the listener usually responds. It is very difficult to replicate this in
class but if learners can at least use the information they have learned while listening,
it makes the task a little more realistic.

2. Varieties of listening material 

Variety generally makes lessons more interesting so what could the learners listen to other
than course book audio? Think of some ideas yourself and then compare with the list below.

Video

This could be either a commercially produced video which accompanies the course book or a
short extract from an authentic film or TV series. In either case, the lesson should follow the
same stages as an audio tape based lesson and learners should have clear tasks to complete.
(Note: care should be taken in designing the tasks so that students actually have to listen
rather than just see the answer).

Songs   

Learners of all ages find listening to songs very enjoyable but there are some difficulties. You
need to: choose music that the students will appreciate (not too noisy, not too slow, etc.);
ensure they lyrics are sensible (appropriate lyrics; meaningful language used); ensure the
lyrics are clear (not mumbled, etc.); design tasks; etc.

The teacher

Students will of course listen to their teacher giving instructions and explanations throughout
the lesson but they could also do specific listening lessons listening to the teacher.  The
teacher may want to do some reading aloud and/or other prepared or formal speaking, as well
as some more spontaneous and informal speaking - anecdotes, personal opinions, etc, for the
students to listen to.

Other students

At higher levels (intermediate and above) individual students can be encouraged to give talks
(choosing something they know a lot about, like a hobby or a trip they have been on or their
family, for example) for the other students to listen to. This can be engaging and enjoyable
both for the speaker and the listeners if the speaker is given time to prepare, can make notes
(but they should not read aloud from a script), can bring in pictures or realia to help, and at
the end lets the other students ask questions.

Guest speakers or guest ‘celebrities’

If you have the opportunity, invite a speaker into your class and get the learners to interview
him or her. This works best if the students know roughly who is coming and write questions
in advance to ask and the teacher checks that the questions are comprehensible (and not
impolite in the speaker’s culture).  If no guest speakers are available to take into class the
teacher can pretend to be a celebrity or someone famous. Talk about your life and interests ‘in
character’, while students take notes (perhaps guessing who you are).  

Jigsaw listenings

This is usually done by splitting the class in two, and is only really possible if you have two
separate classrooms available.  Half the students listen to Speaker A and the other half listen
to Speaker B.  They then form A + B pairs and tell each other what they have heard. The
teacher can ask group A the questions for B and vice versa to see if the students have
communicated successfully. 

3. Sub-skills of listening  

Listening comprehension is a complex process and one which learners often find challenging,
particularly if they do not get much practice. The listening development lessons we give them
should help learners to build on their listening sub-skills, that is, skills which contribute
towards their general listening comprehension. Make a list of as many listening sub-skills as
you can and then check with the list below.

Here, in no particular order, are some listening sub-skills:

 identifying sounds
 identifying word boundaries in the stream of sound
 decoding connected speech
 identifying sentence stress
 interpreting intonation
 identifying the gist
 identifying main ideas
 following the thread
 predicting what might come next
 picking out specific items of information
 understanding detailed information
 deducing meaning from context
 interpreting body language
 interpreting visual cues
 identifying speakers’ attitudes

With so many things to do, and to do them at considerable speed, it is no wonder that learners
find listening difficult!
Review, Reflection and Test - Listening

For the TKT Test it is important that you know the following terms:

 predicting
 listening for gist
 top-down processing
 listening for specific information
 listening for detailed information
 bottom-up processing
 listening sub-skills

 Reflection

1. How do your students feel about listening - Do they see listening as an academic
exercise, perhaps to pass an examination, or do they think they will one day need to
have effective listening skills in an English-speaking environment?
2. Does your course book give you the traditional stages of a listening lesson?
Do you often have to add a gist task yourself?
Does it give a variety of ‘while listening’ tasks?
Are they all information questions? Do you think this is satisfactory?
3. For the next 3 listening lessons that you do, note down a brief outline of each lesson
and which listening sub-skills it developed.
Which ones helped with top-down and which helped with bottom-up processing?
4. What do your students listen to in the classroom? Is it all tapes?
Do you have the opportunity to do the other kinds of listening mentioned in this
section/ (video, telling stories, songs, guest speakers, other students etc.).
5. How often do you do listening skills lessons?
Do you choose or does the school tell you?
Do you think your students get enough listening development?

Section 3 : Receptive Skills - Reading

1.What do people read in their daily lives?

2. Stages of a reading lesson.

    Task : Stages of a reading lesson

3. Reading strategies: effective or not?

Task: Reading skills

TKT Examination practice: Reading skills

Section 3:  Receptive Skills - Reading

In daily life people read:

 newspaper articles
 websites
 e-mails
 novels
 bus timetables
 food packets
 leaflets
 brochures
 poems
 and more.

As with listening, we read these texts differently, depending on why we are reading them. 
You might read a long magazine article, for pleasure (extensive reading), by skipping over the
parts that do not interest you, and in other parts you might concentrate on every detail
(intensive reading).

Here are some points worth remembering:

A. Students need to read extensively and intensively (both in class and out of class).
B. Students have reading skills from their L1 (first language), but they are not easily
transferred  to an L2 (second language), so they need help with these - different
reading tasks need to be designed to develop specific reading skills.
C. Young learners need help in learning how to form letters and join them to make words
(especially if they are still learning basic literacy in their L1 too).
D. Students whose L2 has a different script from English must learn the alphabet and may
need to learn how to read from left to right and from the top of the page to the bottom.
E. Texts should be interesting in order to motivate learners.  A text is both less interesting
and more difficult to read if the students don’t know very much about the topic or the
cultural concepts contained in it.
F. It is important to choose texts of the right level of difficulty, to a certain extent (see 7
and 8 below).  If they contain too much over-complex language students will lose
motivation.
G. The more difficult the text, the easier the task should be.  A good task can help
learners get something out of even a difficult text.
H. Learners need to be given a mixture of authentic texts (ones not designed for the
English language classroom, to expose them to a wider variety of language and give
practise in reading real texts) and graded texts (ones designed or simplified for
learners of English, with specific language or sub-skills in mind).  
I. It is important for teachers to know which sub-skills different reading tasks are
designed to develop.

2. Stages of a reading skills lesson

The stages of a reading lesson are pretty much the same as the stages in a listening lesson.
 Pre-Reading

1. Lead-in. 
This is usually a speaking activity.
2. Set the context. 
Elicit/tell students the text type (e.g. a magazine article), and audience (e.g. for men
interested in modern technology), and a bit about the topic - as long as it doesn’t give
away specific answers to the reading tasks.
3. Pre-teach vocabulary.
Specifically lexis that might prevent students from being able to complete the tasks
(but not lexis that is of little relevance to the task or that can easily be inferred from
the context).

Reading

4. Set a gist task.

Students read the text (skim read for overall understanding).
Pair or group feedback, students compare their answers in pairs or groups.
Whole class feedback. This can be put on the board.
5. Set specific information or detailed task(s).
Students read the text again (scan or read in more detail).
Pair or group feedback, students compare their answers in pairs or groups.
Whole class feedback. This can be put on the board.

Post-Reading

6. Set follow on tasks.

This/these are usually productive tasks (speaking or writing) with a focus on
communicative ability and fluency (as opposed to grammatical accuracy).

3. Reading strategies: effective or not?

The following are useful strategies for reading:

 Practising reading lightly and quickly, moving past unfamiliar words, in order to
understand the main ideas.
 Identifying and highlighting key words in a bright colour (by key words, that means
words that are particularly relevant to and help convey the main ideas in the text).
 Reading a wide variety of things to increase vocabulary and improve general
comprehension.

The following strategies are not particularly effective, and can actually cause problems.  For
each one, why might it cause problems?

a)     Reading each word very carefully to try to understand the entire text.

b)    Underlining all the unknown words or phrases.

c)     Stopping at each unknown word or phrase to look it up in a dictionary or ask what it
means.
d)    Writing the meaning of the new words in L1 in the margin of the page, or recording them
next to the meaning in a notebook.

Suggested Answers

a)     Reading is usually much more effective if people skim for a general idea first, then go
back and read just key sections in more detail.  Reading every word is very time-consuming
and it usually leads to the reader forgetting earlier information that is key to understanding
what they are reading 4 or 5 lines later (resulting in less understanding).

b)    This focuses on what the students don’t know.  This can be extremely demotivating. 
They can often draw a lot of information out of a text (which is usually exactly the
information the writer intended people to get out of it) despite a large number of unknown
words and phrases - better to focus their attention on that.

c)     As with (a), this is extremely time-consuming and interrupts the reader’s train of
thought, leading to less understanding than if they moved on.  It is also important that students
practise predicting the meaning of words and phrases from context, in order to build up
coping skills for when they are reading outside the classroom.

d)    This really depends on the word.  First of all, is it actually a useful word for them to learn
- or is it rare/technical/old-fashioned/limited in use?  Secondly, is the L1 an accurate enough
representation - or does the English word have subtle connotations that aren’t fully conveyed
in translation or a simple definition?  And finally, what is a more valuable use of time at that
particular stage - learning that word, or developing reading skills?  (This is a question for
lesson and stage aims when you are planning the lesson).

Preparation for task

The task below focuses on different ways of reading and different reading skills. Remember that reading can be
done intensively or extensively. Refer to page 2 of this section for more detail. When teaching with the purpose
of developing reading skills, we can focus on the skills of reading a text for gist (skimming), looking for and
finding specific information in a text (scanning) and also reading a text for detailed comprehension. Refer to
Core Unit 3 Section 1 Page 4 to revise this. We must also train learners in the skill of deducing meaning of
unfamiliar words by using the context of the text. This will help learners to be less dependent on dictionaries
and will give them more confidence when faced with unfamilar words.

TKT Examination practice task                                       Reading Skills

Match 1-5 with the ways of reading (intensive/extensive) or the reading skills being
developed.

There is one extra option which you do not need to use.

Ways of reading and reading skills

A reading for gist

B reading for detail

C reading for specific information

D extensive reading

E deducing meaning from context

F intensive reading

Review and Reflection - Reading

For the TKT Test it is important that you know the following terms:

 text format
 intensive reading
 extensive reading
 strategy
 graded text/ reader
 authentic text
 text structure
 topic sentence
 deduce meaning from context
 highlight
 underline
 reading sub-skills

Reflection

1.Next time you are doing a reading skills lesson from your course book, examine the reading
activities and decide which sub-skills are focused on and if they are to be done before reading,
while reading or after reading.  Make sure you are clear about the aim of each activity. Does it
follow the traditional stages?

2. What types of reading texts are included in your course book?  Are the topics interesting
and at the right level for your students?  Why/why not? 

3.Teach a reading lesson, and try out one or more of the reading strategies with your students. 
What worked well?  Why?  What didn't work so well?  What have you learned about teaching
reading?  How could you improve in the future?
 

4. How often do you take authentic texts into class for your students? If you do, do you write
the comprehension questions, or do you get the students to write them?

Section 4 : Productive Skills - Speaking

 1. What does speaking involve?

 2. Accuracy and Fluency

 3. Speaking sub-skills

      a) making the right choices

      b) pronunciation

      c) interactive strategies

      d) communication strategies

      Task: Speaking sub-skills

 4. Materials for teaching speaking skills

     Task:  Materials for teaching speaking skills

     TKT Examination practice: Speaking skills

Section 4:  Productive Skills - Speaking

1. What does speaking involve?

Many students learn grammar and vocabulary very well and can use both competently in
written exercises. However, teachers will agree that there are students who are good at
exercises but still not able to use their knowledge to actually speak. Students like these have
knowledge about the language but do not have the skill to use it.

The skill of speaking can be broken into two main abilities:

 Fluency - the ability to produce language clearly and at a natural speed (quickly
retrieving the language from memory and producing it without hesitation).
 Interaction - the ability to interact with other people and to convey meaningful
messages.

Of course, speaking involves accurate language use in addition to these two abilities.  As
such, we often make a contrast between accuracy and fluency. 
2. Accuracy and fluency

Accuracy is the ability to use the correct grammatical and lexical forms. Accurate language is
easier to understand and can smooth communication, but it is not necessary to speak
accurately to be understood: Yesterday I go cinema is inaccurate but easily understood.

 Fluency, as mentioned above, is the ability to express the meaning that you want to at about
normal speed, without hesitation - being able to get out what you want to say without long
pauses to think.

Students will need help with both accuracy and fluency if they are to speak well. 

 a) Helping students to be accurate in speaking

One of the key ways to help learners develop spoken accuracy is through controlled oral
practice.  Various types of drills can establish patterns in the learner’s memory, so that they
automatically say, for example, the right preposition e.g. in the morning but on Friday
morning. This is particularly important because English is an idiomatic language, which
means that lots of patterns do not follow rules but have to be memorised.

b) Helping students to be fluent in speaking

Learners will only learn to express themselves fluently in English if they practise conveying a
message to someone else in English. This can be quite difficult to arrange in a class where all
the students speak the same language but we can use the techniques of the Communicative
Approach such as pairwork and group work where students must exchange information with
each other. These can be difficult to arrange in large classes and learners may tend to want to
use their own language, which can be a challenge for the teacher.  If students do not learn to
speak in English in class, however, they will not be able to speak in English when they get
outside the class.

3. Speaking sub-skills

Speaking is a complex skill and is composed of many smaller skills. These are called the sub-
skills of speaking. Some will be relevant to the kind of speaking we referred to as fluency,
some to interaction, and some to both. These sub-skills include:

a) making the right choices

 Choosing the right (meaningful) grammar

 Getting the form (e.g. the sentence structure) of the grammar right
 Choosing the right lexis
 Choosing the right functional language
 Choosing the right level of formality (for example, whether to say your kids or your
children)

b) pronunciation

 Making sounds clearly enough for them to be recognised by the listener

 Saying words with correct word stress
  Stressing the right words in a sentence
 Using appropriate intonation (particularly in communication with native speakers)

c) Interaction strategies

 asking checking questions (e.g. “Do you see what I mean?”; “You’ve never met him,
have you?”)
 confirming understanding (e.g. “Oh”, “Really”, “Uh-huh”, “Why was that?”, “So what
did you do?” etc.), which is important to demonstrate when listening and important to
pay attention to when speaking 
 maintaining appropriate eye contact (not staring, of course)
 using facial expressions (raising eyebrows, frowning, smiling, etc; and use of

‘an open face’, not too smiley).

 using body language (gestures - nodding; bodily position - no folded arms, etc.)

d) Communication strategies

 conveying the message a different way when you don’t know the exact word/phrase
for what you mean
 using circumlocutions like, “He’s a person who likes meeting people and talking to
people” when you don’t know the word “sociable”
 miming
 guessing the word based on an L1 word if there’s a chance they are similar - usually in
European languages which share a lot of similarities with English, but possible with
other languages too when it comes to names of places and brands, or modern technical
terms
 paraphrasing the message in a simpler way if it seems the listener hasn’t understood
(e.g. “He didn’t get the job” instead of “He was turned down for the job”)
 conveying a  slightly different message
 when certain you can’t get the exact message across, giving a very near message or the
same message but with less information, etc.
Categories of aspects of speaking

1  interaction - This covers elements of speaking related to taking account of and responding
to other speakers e.g.  responding, asking follow-up questions.

2. grammar and vocabulary - This covers use of new grammar and vocabulary in speaking
exercises.

3. body language - Non-verbal elements of speech. Body language can differ from culture to
culture and is something students can forget about entirely when they're pre-occupied with
working out what someone else is saying and how to form their response.

4. appropriacy - Using appropriate vocabulary and grammar. Different social situations can
call for very different language and students need to be aware that what is correct to use in a
formal letter can sound artificial and stilted in an informal chat.

5. functional language - Elements of language that play a functional rather than semantic role
e.g. greetings and goodbyes, complaining, apologising, requesting permission,
agreeing/disagreeing, inviting and so on c.f. TKT Unit 1 Section 4

6. connected speech features - This refers to natural pronunciation of words as part of

sentences and everyday speech. Native speakers never pronounce every syllable and will
sometimes omit portions of words or run together separate words into a single entity e.g.
'donchaknow'. Learners must be familiar with this to understand speakers in real-life
situations and be able to use connected speech to produce natural-sounding language.

Review & Reflection - Speaking Skills

For the TKT Test it is important that you know the following terms:

 interactive strategies    communication strategies     circumlocutions      paraphrase

 facial expressions        eye contact       body language    accuracy            fluency            

appropriacy

Reflection

 1. How much of your teaching of speaking is based on accuracy and how much on   

    fluency? Is this the same as in your course book?

2. Do your students readily speak in English? Do you have any problems? Do students use  

    their L1 when you give them speaking tasks?  Do they perceive a need to speak in   

    English in their future lives?

3. Do you have any ideas to get students to speak in English?

4. Do you have any solutions to problems with speaking lessons?

Section 5 : Productive Skills - Writing

  Introduction

 1.Text types

 a) Text types for personal writing

 b) Work-related text types

 c) Text types for learners at different levels

 2. Writing sub-skills

 3. Approaches to teaching writing

 a) Practice of language in all 4 skills

 b) Practice of writing sub-skills

 c) Producing a whole text (= writing as a skill in itself)

     i) Giving a guide to form and a guide to content

     ii) A Product Approach

    iii) A Process Approach

 d)  Responding to students’ writing

Section 5: Productive Skills - Writing

Introduction

If we are talking about writing skills, we usually mean composing a text, conveying a
message. Actually forming the letters and being able to write words will be part of this, but
true writing is more than that.  Here we are not looking at writing letters, words or isolated
sentences, we are looking at the skill of producing a proper, communicative text.

Keeping this in mind, do you think people write more now than, say, 30 years ago? Make a
quick note of all the things you have written in the past week. If this includes electronic
writing such as texts and emails, as it probably does, you may well find that you write more
than your parents did.

1.Text types

a) Text types for personal writing

Look again at the list of what you have written in the past week. Which of the following did
you list?

Formal letters (e.g. to the bank or landlord)

Personal letters

Postcards

Greeting cards (e.g. birthdays, Christmas or other festivals)

Invitations

Text messages

Emails

Blogs (a personal diary on the internet which anyone can read)

Other online communication (e.g. on Facebook, a social networking site on the internet)

Internet chat rooms

Diaries

Poems

Shopping lists

Notes to flatmates

Notes to yourself (e.g. reminder to collect your dry cleaning)

A resume / CV

A covering letter for a resume / CV

b) Work-related text types

Look at the three people below. What kind of things do they write in the course of their jobs?
What kind of texts do they have to create?

     
A manager  A nurse A postman

Compare your lists with these:

business letters reports office memos notices faxes references for employees
advertisements order forms the company website

reports on patients

 ???

Some people need to write in the course of their work far more than others. In fact, some
people write very little in their jobs, if at all. They may also choose not to write in their
personal lives; if you look back at the list of personal text types you will see that many could
be avoided.
This leads us to an important distinction that can be made between writing and the other three
skills: adult students may not be able to do it confidently in their own language. They will
certainly be able to speak their L1 and listen in it, and they will probably also be able to read,
at the very least to get around, but they may not have written anything substantial since they
were at school if their work does not require it.

For this reason, learners can be more insecure about producing writing and may need even
more support and encouragement than for the other skills. 

c) Text types for learners at different levels

What kind of text types do you think learners normally write at different levels during the
course of their English studies?  It is not possible to say exactly, but here is a guide, based on
what is found in course books and what is required in international examinations.

Beginner / Elementary

Filling in forms

Sentences at first, building into short paragraphs

Simple personal letters or emails, giving personal information about themselves or their
families (as in a letter to a pen friend or an internet chat room)

Postcards

Simple narratives

Invitations and replies (e.g. to a birthday party)

Intermediate

Personal letters or emails

Simple formal letters (e.g. requesting information)

Narratives

Simple discursive compositions (e.g. on the advantages and disadvantages of living in a city)

Descriptions of national festivals

Upper Intermediate

Personal letters or emails

Formal letters (e.g. of complaint)

Job applications and resumes/CVs

Narratives

Discursive compositions

Simple reports

Descriptions of national festivals

University applications/personal statements

Advanced

All text types! All the above, plus film reviews, brochures, posters, etc.

Note: In modern English language teaching there is usually an attempt to make writing tasks
as natural as possible, that is to make them tasks that native speakers might possibly write or
that foreign students in an English-speaking environment might write. For this reason,
students are not usually asked to write, for example, poems. However, it does mean that
sometimes discursive compositions come disguised as “write an article for the school
magazine” or narratives as “write a story for a competition”.

How many of the text types for learners above are really natural in the sense that native
speakers might write them?

2. Writing sub-skills

In the introduction at the start of this section we defined “writing” as the composing of text.

This skill of writing is made up of many smaller skills. These are called the sub-skills of
writing.

Here are some of the sub-skills students need in order to write effectively:

Forming letters correctly

Spelling correctly

Writing legibly

Punctuating correctly

Using correct layouts (placing the text in the correct place on the page)

Choosing the right vocabulary (including formal and informal varieties)

Using grammar correctly

Using reference words and avoiding repetition

Joining sentences correctly

Using paragraphs correctly

These sub-skills are related to accuracy and will build up to a correct piece of writing. In
addition, students will need to learn to check their written work for mistakes. This is called
proof-reading and can be considered as an additional sub-skill of writing.

The sub-skills that we teach will vary a lot, depending on the age and needs of our learners.

At primary level we may spend a lot a time teaching learners how to form letters and write
words and short texts. At secondary level we may need to focus more on the skills needed to
write longer texts such as letters, emails and compositions.

Note: Adults in private language schools are usually assumed to be able already able to read
and write the Roman script. In Britain, if they cannot do this they may be in literacy classes in
colleges of further education. Teaching literacy to adults is a separate topic and will not be
considered here.

3. Teaching writing skills

Lessons on writing skills should certainly be included in the timetable and some writing
should be done in class where the teacher can offer some guidance, even if the class is very
large. There are three main reasons for focusing on writing in class:

a)  Written practice of language (i.e. as part of the practice of grammar, lexis and functions)

b)  Practice of writing sub-skills

c)  Producing a whole text (i.e. writing as a skill in itself)

We will consider each of these in turn.

a) Written practice of language in all 4 skills

When students learn new language they need to practise it in all four skills: that is, they need
to be able to say it (speaking), to recognise it when they read it (reading) or hear it (listening),
and to know when it should be used in writing. Consequently, some writing lessons can be
based around a language point and have the dual purpose of consolidating the grammar and
practising the skill of writing.

What kind of writing tasks do you think would be appropriate for practising the following
language? What sort of text types would students produce? What sort of topic would naturally
use the language?

To practise past simple and past continuous

To practise the passive

To practise comparative adjectives

To practise the function of giving advice

To practise future perfect and future continuous

To practise present perfect and present perfect continuous

To practise modals of obligation and permission

To practise lexis for food and containers for food

Suggested answers

 To practise past simple and past continuous – any kind of narrative, perhaps a
traditional story or fairy tale from their country
 To practise comparative adjectives – a composition comparing two cities or two parts
of the student’s own country
 To practise future perfect and future continuous – an article making predictions about
the environment (we will have destroyed the rainforest; we will be visiting the moon
for holidays, etc.)
 To practise present perfect and present perfect continuous – a letter giving personal
news (I’ve been working very hard, I’ve bought a new car, etc.)
 To practise modals of obligation and permission – an information sheet on the rules of
various sports, or a place, e.g. a library (You must be quiet, etc.)
 To practise lexis for food and containers for food – weekly shopping lists for different
kinds of people e.g.  an old person living alone (one packet of biscuits), a family of
six, etc.
 To practise the passive – newspaper reports
 To practise the function of giving advice – a letter to their teacher (or a friend from
another country) about a holiday to their country or city (when to go, what to bring,
what to see, etc.)

b) Practice of sub-skills

Many course books have sections on writing in which students do not write a whole text but
practise one aspect of writing, one of the sub-skills. One would hope that shortly after doing
one of these tasks on sub-skills students would go on to write a whole text using them.

What kind of writing task(s) do you think would be appropriate for practising the following
sub-skills? Would any particular text types or topics be particularly relevant? How could it
develop into the writing of a full text?

1. Punctuating correctly
2. Using correct layouts (placing the text in the correct place on the page)
3. Using reference words and avoiding repetition
4. Joining sentences correctly
5. Using paragraphs correctly

Suggested answers

1. Students could re-write a short paragraph of text that has no punctuation.  This will
work with most types of text and topic.  To expand into the writing of a full text, the
 short paragraph could be an introduction of some kind, and once the punctuation task
has been checked the students complete a text based on that introduction. 
2. A letter with the main body of the text is given to the students but particular items like
the address of the sender, the date, the ‘dear X’ and ‘best regards’, etc., are left out. 
Those items are on small cut-out slips and the students glue them onto the letters in the
right place.  Ideal with business writing, which often has specific layouts.  After the
layout task, students can imagine they were the receiver of that letter and now they
have to write a formal reply. 
3. A short text is given that has no use of pronouns and regularly repeated vocabulary. 
For example, students are given the text: “Tom was walking along the street.  Then
Tom walked into a shop.  The shop was a hairdresser’s.  In the shop Tom saw his
wife.  His wife had had her haircut.  His wife paid, and then Tom and his wife walked
out of the shop.  Tom and his wife walked home.”  They have to use ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’,
‘they’, ‘went’, ‘headed’, and ‘strolled’ to replace the repetitive instances of ‘Tom’,
‘his wife’, ‘the shop’, ‘Tom and his wife’, and ‘walk’.  As with number 1, students can
continue the story to produce a longer text.
4. Similar to number 3, a short text is given that students have to re-write, this time the
text is made up of pairs or groups of clauses that should be linked (e.g. in the Tom
text, the first two sentences could be joined to create “Tom was walking along the
street and then he went into a shop”.  Any text type.  Students can continue the text for
additional writing practice.
5. Students are given several texts, each made up of two paragraphs that have been
joined together.  They predict where the break between paragraphs, for each text, was
in the original.  Any kind of text or topic.  After checking the answers students write
their own two paragraph texts twice - once with a break, and once without.  The texts
without breaks are photocopied and students read each other’s texts to predict where
the breaks are in the originals.

1. c) Producing a text

i) Giving a guide to the form and a guide to content

When students write a whole text, they will need help with a guide to the form and a guide to
content. What do you think each of these will involve?

A GUIDE TO FORM

This means that students will need to know:

 How long the piece of writing should be.

        Beginners may write only about 50 words, while higher levels will usually write   

        around 150 – 250 words.

 How many paragraphs there should be.

 What, in general terms, should be in each paragraph.

              For example, a story may have three paragraphs: a beginning, the main narrative
              and an end; a composition about whether it is right to eat meat might have four  

              paragraphs: an introduction, reasons for, reasons against, and a conclusion giving  

              the writer’s own opinion; a letter inviting an English speaking friend to stay might   

              have an introduction, the invitation itself, a paragraph giving the writer’s news

              and some concluding phrases.

 How the writing should be laid out on the page (i.e. the layout).

 How wide the margins should be; whether the paragraphs should be identified by leaving a
space, indenting, or both; the position and format of address(es), date, signature, etc.

A GUIDE TO CONTENT

For students to be able to do a writing task confidently, they will need to:

 Have some ideas about what to write about.

    These could come from: brainstorming the topic in pairs or groups

                                                       a reading text

                                                       a listening tape 

 Know any grammar needed to express their ideas.

          For example, for a discursive composition on the death penalty, learners need to   

          be able to use conditional sentences or for a job application they need present  

          perfect (to describe their previous experience).   

 Know vocabulary connected to the subject.

    For example, to write about crime you need crime words, or for a discursive  

    composition you need linkers.

THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO GIVE STUDENTS A GUIDE TO FORM AND

A GUIDE TO CONTENT. HERE ARE TWO POSSIBILITIES:

A Product Approach

The teacher shows the learners a model (i.e. an example) of what he wants them to produce.
They analyse how the text is constructed and then write one of their own with a similar form.
Here is an example.
 1. How does it give students a guide to form?
2. Does it also give them a guide to content?

Read the post card. 

(A) Where is the holiday and is Lynn
enjoying it?

1. a) a beach resort     b) a ski resort

Dear Mum and Dad,
c) a city-centre hotel
2. a) she’s having a great time
Hi!  How are you?  We’re having a wonderful
b) the holiday is okay
time.  We’re staying in a nice little hotel that
c) it’s been a terrible holiday so far
is right next to the sea.
(B) What does Lynn talk about:
We’ve been here for 2 days now and haven’t
travelled anywhere else yet.  We’ve just been
1. Things they did and
swimming and sunbathing at the beach, and
don’t plan to do again.
playing tennis at the hotel.  This postcard is
2. Things they do every day.
from our hotel, so you can see it and the
3. Their plans.
beach on the back.
(C) Which paragraph has:
Well, tomorrow we’re going to the city centre
to do some shopping (we really need some
1. plans
sunscreen!) 
2. greetings
3. recent activities
Hope all’s well with you. 
4. feelings about the holiday
Love Andy and Lynn
5. where they are

(D) It is 1 year later.  You are Lynn.

      Now you are on holiday at a ski resort. 
Write a postcard.

Exercise A has students first read for gist - it is always a good idea to read for meaning before
for language.  Exercise B can be used for further reading practice with a focus on meaning
and/or can be used to draw attention to the grammatical structures used.

Exercise C directs students to the three paragraphs and the content of each so that they have a
guide to the structure of the letter, that is, the form. They also get some ideas about what to
write in their own letters from the content of the paragraphs given.

Many course books provide models (examples) of texts for students to follow, or the teacher
can write one if they feel confident enough.  A product approach is often very effective for
examination classes where the text types for the examination are very predictable.

A Process Approach

The process approach is more modern in nature than the previously discussed product
approach. In the process approach, the students do not see a model (i.e. final product) of the
kind of text they are going to write. They will be informed of what kind of text they will be
producing (e.g. an essay, an article, a letter etc.), they just don't see an actual model of that
text. Instead they build up a text of their own by following these stages:

1. Brainstorm ideas in pairs or groups or as a class

2. Make some notes of the ideas
3. Organise the ideas into paragraphs (plan the writing)
4. Write a first draft (a piece of writing that is not yet finished and may be changed)
5. Edit the draft (correct and improve it)
6. Write a final version
7. Final proof reading (checking for mistakes, editing again)

This still gives students a guide to content in the brainstorming at the beginning but it is less
clear about form, that is, how many words, the number of paragraphs and the content of each
paragraph.

This approach can work really nicely in class where students can brainstorm their ideas
together and there is a lot of focus on the actual process of constructing a piece of writing
together. By working together on the process of writing (brainstorming ideas, vocabulary etc.)
students have more opportunity to communicate with each other, thereby making the most of
class time. A key feature in the process approach is that of drafting. Class time is very
valuable to allow the teacher to monitor and help with students' drafting. Here, the teacher
plays a central role in helping the learners with the language they need to express their
ideas. Of course, the final piece of writing will be a 'product', but here, in the process
approach, there is more attention to the communicative process involved in arriving at that
final product. Where there is a lot of focus on the process of writing (including drafting,
editing, redrafting and further editing), it may be that students do their final version for
homework as they normally would in the previously discussed product approach. This ensures
that valuable class time is not spent on something that students can finish up on in their own
time.

Of course, students will still need to draft, edit and proof-read their work if they are writing
from a model in a product approach but there tends to be more of an emphasis on drafting
and editing in the process approach. Indeed, drafting and editing may well be repeated in the
process approach to further improve on a piece of writing and for the teacher to exploit
teaching opportunities that arise out of students' mistakes or gaps in vocabulary and so on. 

d) Responding to learners’ writing

The usual response of teachers to students’ written work is to mark it and in doing so to show
the student where the errors are and, we hope, where good language is too. Correcting written
work by marking errors will be covered in detail in a later Module.

However, when writing the learner should have an idea of who they are writing to, and should
take account this, considering how the reader might respond to the piece of writing.
Therefore, the teacher can help the student by responding as a reader might and should
comment on the ideas and content as well as the language.           

Here is an example of a teacher responding to a student’s writing rather than marking it. How
do you think the student would feel on receiving the response?
Mitsuo's first draft: Shopping

      Reather and food is very prise down.

      Shop’s man is careful.

      Always very prise down.

      I went to shopping for three days. I want to buy sheet.

      If my room is very cold in the morning.

      Japanese hop don’t understand and impossible.

      I bought the bicycle on Saturday.

      It’s 120£ and black colour.

      It’s very nice.

      But it was stolen on Sunday.

      I have to the o’clock.

      Because it was broken.

      Only shopping may not speak English.

The teacher’s response

Dear Mitsuo,

I am interested to learn that you think leather goods and food

are cheap in England. Are they expensive in Japan? Can you
give examples of the differences in price?

I am not surprised that you found it necessary to buy a

blanket (not a sheet – sheets are made of cotton and are not
warm) because of the cold weather.

I was very sorry indeed to learn that your new bicycle was
stolen. Unfortunately, you have to be very careful with
bicycles and other things. Did you lock your bicycle? If you
don’t lock your bicycle with a good chain and lock, it will be
stolen, as you have discovered.

Did you ride your bicycle before it was stolen? Did you go
anywhere on your bicycle?

What do you mean by: I have to the o’clock? And you say:
Because it was broken. What was broken? Do you mean that
your alarm clock was broken?

You also say:  Only shopping may not speak English.

I am not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain?

Can you rewrite your essay on shopping, answering some of

my questions? Also, refer to  your English Grammar in Use
Unit 61.4, for the correct pattern for the verb shop.

Yours,
(the teacher)

The student may find this very supportive and helpful, but it would probably be quite time-
consuming for the teacher, who would also have to either mark or respond to Mitsuo’s next
draft.  Busy teachers with large classes might like to compromise and mark the errors in the
traditional way but also add a comment or two about content or respond to the student’s
feelings.

We have discussed the teacher’s response; what about other students? Should students read
each others’ pieces of written work? This is certainly an option and can work well, say if
students write invitations to each other and then reply. Putting students' work around the
classroom walls for others to read is also motivating. Students can also help each other with
drafts in pairs. However, not all students are supportive of each other and so care should be
taken.

Review & Reflection - Writing Skills

For the TKT Test it is important that you know the following terms:

 a productive skill        sub-skills of writing     a draft       to edit    to proofread

product writing           process writing      to brainstorm ideas        text types

paragraph         punctuation         layout      note-taking     introduction        conclusion

 Reflection

1. Look at your current course book. What sort of writing activities does it have? Do they focus
on accuracy or fluency? Are there enough of them and are they suitable for your learners? 
2. Are there any activities for specific sub-skills? If so, which ones?
3. If you have a large class, do your learners produce entire texts or do they only practise
writing sub-skills? If they write texts, how do you deal with the marking?
4. When you mark, do you only indicate the errors or do you also comment on the
content/ideas? Do you mark as a teacher only or also respond as a reader? Try both to see
what differences there are.
5. How many different text types do you ask your learners to write? Is this influenced by the
text types they have to produce in examinations?
6. If your teaching schedule will allow, do a product writing lesson and a process writing lesson.
(Choose times where they fit in with your timetable.) Which one was more successful? Which
one did your students prefer?
7. Make a list of the ways in which you have given students ideas for writing (e.g. pictures,
brainstorming, reading). Which worked best?
8. How much writing do your learners do in class and how much for homework?
If they do both, which is more successful?