How to Teach Listening and Speaking in Mandarin
Certificate in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language
SOAS Language Centre
2009 – 2010
Assessment: Module Three
Student 's Number: 26706
Topic / Title: How to teach listening and speaking
File Name: LiXuanJinWang – Assessment 3 – YanHua
Module Three Assessment Topic: How to teach listening and speaking
Design a listening – speaking task. You need to clarify the level of the students (e.g. how many hours they have learnt Chinese, how many characters they have mastered, etc.), the purposes of the exercises, how you are going to operate these exercises and the reasons why you design and operate the task like this.
In the teaching of spoken language, the views of listening went through different phases. Earlier views considered listening as the mastery of discrete skills such as recognizing cohesive structure in texts or identifying key words in a text etc. Later views introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and emphasized the importance of prior knowledge and schema in comprehension. At the same time, the understanding of the role of the listener developed into current views which encourages his/her active participation in listening, applying strategies to assist, monitor and evaluate his/her own listening. (J. C. Richards, 2008)
Speaking takes place in real time, it’s produced in response to the speech of the person we talk to. This shows its contingent nature. In language teaching, speaking ability increases along with the learner’s other abilities in the foreign/second language such as vocabulary, listening skill, knowledge of culture etc.
Mandarin is a spoken language, so its learning process is also in line with general rules of language learning/teaching. However, as Mandarin has unique features as a language system, which includes five tones and changing tones in certain circumstances, it’s important to take these features into consideration while designing a listening – speaking task. The following
SOAS Language Centre
2009 – 2010
Assessment: Module Three
Student 's Number: 26706
Topic / Title: How to teach listening and speaking
File Name: LiXuanJinWang – Assessment 3 – YanHua
Module Three Assessment Topic: How to teach listening and speaking
Design a listening – speaking task. You need to clarify the level of the students (e.g. how many hours they have learnt Chinese, how many characters they have mastered, etc.), the purposes of the exercises, how you are going to operate these exercises and the reasons why you design and operate the task like this.
In the teaching of spoken language, the views of listening went through different phases. Earlier views considered listening as the mastery of discrete skills such as recognizing cohesive structure in texts or identifying key words in a text etc. Later views introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and emphasized the importance of prior knowledge and schema in comprehension. At the same time, the understanding of the role of the listener developed into current views which encourages his/her active participation in listening, applying strategies to assist, monitor and evaluate his/her own listening. (J. C. Richards, 2008)
Speaking takes place in real time, it’s produced in response to the speech of the person we talk to. This shows its contingent nature. In language teaching, speaking ability increases along with the learner’s other abilities in the foreign/second language such as vocabulary, listening skill, knowledge of culture etc.
Mandarin is a spoken language, so its learning process is also in line with general rules of language learning/teaching. However, as Mandarin has unique features as a language system, which includes five tones and changing tones in certain circumstances, it’s important to take these features into consideration while designing a listening – speaking task. The following
References: J C Richards (2008), Teaching Listening and Speaking From Theory to Practice, Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/elt/teacher-support/pdf/Richards-Teaching-Listening-Speaking.pdf G. White (1998) Listening, Oxford University Press Zhongwei Wu (2003) Contemporary Chinese I, Sinolingua