Teaching listening and speaking skills and strategies in Grade 6


Oxford Successful Englishprovides a range of activities to help learners acquire skills in listening comprehension and in different forms of social communication (like dialogue and language games, for example). The teaching plans provide ideas and advice for teaching listening comprehension and for daily practice.


Daily activities


CAPS recommends that you spend 5–10 minutes every day on activities like learning rhymes, responding to instructions and playing language games. These activities can be informal and varied and will give the learners opportunities to use English in a fun and relaxed situation. We have provided suggestions for these activities at the beginning of each week of the teaching guidelines in this Teacher’s Guide.


Listening comprehension


Listening comprehension is a skill, which learners acquire through practice and by learning listening strategies. In Oxford Successful Englishwe provide opportunities for learners to recall details about information they have heard, to retell stories, and to discuss the characters and setting in stories. We also encourage them to offer their own opinions and analyses of what they have heard. We give the learners questions, tips and strategies to help them learn these skills. For example, we encourage learners to make notes or mindmaps as they listen and then ask questions. We also provide questions to help them understand what they have heard. You can help them further by telling them


what they should listen for (in other words, tell them what the purpose of the listening activity is). When you read a text, you should always read it at least twice: once for them to understand the main idea of the text, and then a second time so that they can listen for detail. You should also stop and ask questions during your reading or storytelling.


Communication for social purposes


Individual work is very important, but learners will also be assessed on their ability to participate in discussions in the classroom. Learners will need to learn how to start and maintain a conversation and how to take turns and share ideas.Oxford Successful Englishwill help the learners to acquire the vocabulary and language structures that they will need to use in order to communicate successfully inside and outside of the classroom.


Prepared short talks


Prepared short talks involve a series of steps or processes similar to steps that are recommended for the process of writing. Teach the learners to follow these steps when they prepare a short talk: • Do research. • Organise research material. • Select main ideas and then support the main ideas.


• Think of a strong introduction and conclusion. • Plan to include some visual aids. • Use appropriate (usually formal) language. • Edit and revise. Learners will then also need to learn the art of presentation. They will need to learn appropriate gestures and posture, how to project and change their tone of voice, how to speak clearly and how to pace themselves so that they don’t speak too slowly or too quickly. Oxford Successful English provides specific guidance for learners and teachers about how to prepare and present short talks.


Reading aloud: prepared and unprepared


Learners will be assessed on their ability to read prepared and unprepared texts aloud. You will need to help them to use the appropriate tone of voice for each text that they read. They will also need to learn to read at an appropriate speed (pace) and to use eye contact when reading. Clear pronunciation is also important. (There are more notes about this in the Teaching reading and viewingsection that follows.)


Teaching reading and viewing: content, skills and strategies in Grade 6


To become good readers, learners need to develop a wide vocabulary and be exposed to a text-rich environment.Oxford Successful Englishprovides a wide range of different types of texts to inspire young learners to become good readers. The series teaches learners to recognise and read different types of texts (genres) so that they can understand everything from stories and cartoons to diagrams and encyclopedia extracts. To do this, we guide learners through every step of the reading process. The Learner’s Book and core Reading Book provide a variety of texts and activities to stimulate interest and develop a love of reading.


The process of reading


Oxford Successful Englishtreats reading as a process, which consists of three different types of activities. (See activities on page 12.)


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