Listening and Speaking

Description

Comprehend language delivered at varying rates of speed. discriminate between phonemes, (un)stress patterns/words, intonation contours, registers of speech and tones of voice and their role in signaling information. identify meaning of unfamiliar words by using the context. understand the organizational structure of a talk. follow an argument or the sequence of events in a story, by focusing on common logical connectors (e.g. however, because) and temporal connectors. assign literal and intended meanings to text(s). initiate, maintain and close simple face-to-face conversation on (un)familiar topics. accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals. interact with an interlocutor(s), showing interest and asking pertinent questions, clarifications, etc. produce fluent speech chunks of language at rates of delivery and lengths. use politeness strategies to give advice or make suggestions. recognize the topic, speaker, cohesive devices, utterances’ communicative functions according to situations, participants and goals. identify main intent, main idea and word cues. identify situations, relationships between participants and speaker’s purpose. use context to build listening expectations. make inferences and deduce links such causes and effects, problem-solution, evaluate emotional tone, themes, and motives. Apply interaction rules: negotiation (to give feedback, to ask for clarification, to maintain a topic), clarification, attending signals, turn taking and topic nomination, maintenance and termination. process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections and other performance variables at different rates of delivery. use effective presentation skills. listen and respond to reduced forms (phonological, morphological and pragmatic) and fragments. listen for meaning in the midst of distracting performance variables (hesitations, false starts, pauses, corrections and ungrammatical forms) in everyday casual speech. assimilate the prosodic features of language to interpret questions, statements, and emphasis to understand sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation or praise. identify facts, opinions and attitudes about abstract and complex ideas. identify the component parts of a conversation, i.e. beginning, body, and ending. Use a battery of strategic competence (compensation strategies) in speaking (paraphrase, key-words, nonverbal cues and gestures) to make meaning. use metacognitive strategies of self-evaluation, speech planning, and goal setting. use the time and extra information available in spoken language (such as redundancy, rephrasing, repetitions, elaboration and insertions) to process meaning. build a semantic network of word associations. develop a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, guessing the meaning of words from context, appealing for help, and signaling comprehension or lack thereof. develop a battery of speaking strategies (topic control and/or shifting, repair, turn0taking, pause fillers use, rephrasing, key-words emphasis, non-verbal cues use, intonation patterns for pragmatic effect, etc.)

Program

Humanities Department

Objectives

• This course is designed to develop students’ English listening and speaking competences. It should benefit students’ listening comprehension and overall spoken production individually and/or in interaction in academic and social contexts as well as in day-to-day situations. This course incorporates level-appropriate listening and speaking materials, strategies and practice to aid in students' comprehension and oral communication. Students will develop their listening skills through the use of authentic listening tasks in a wide range of academic situations. They will listen actively to talks on a variety of lengths and at different rates of delivery. They will listen to synthesize information received from specific listening tasks and discussions. They will also identify and develop their note-taking abilities and enlarge their vocabulary repertoire. Students will improve their speaking ability in terms of fluency, accuracy and comprehensibility. Students’ presentation skills will be honed and they will be able to give an effective presentation and receive feedback on their performance.