Teaching of Listening and Speaking in ESL

Running head: TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
PART 1:
Response to Question a:
Listening and pronunciation skills are basic forms in the teaching of oral
communication. In the 19th century, writing was one of the most important skill and steadily
listening and pronunciation gained the importance in the context of oral communication.
With the development of new strategies in regards with effective listening and pronunciation,
the challenges in the context of pronunciation and listening is understood. The language
learners are supported by the availability of advanced technology in learning the skills of
pronunciation and listening. The skills of listening and pronunciation plays a crucial role in
the process of learning because of its importance in language acquisition.
Listening and pronunciation helps in developing awareness of a specific language and
improves the ability of learning the language. These skills enables the adaptability of the
rhythm, sound, stress and intonation of the language and contributes in the understanding of
the offerings of learning a particular language (Ahmad, 2019). The development of these
skills in the context of oral communication can help build confidence in an individual for
social interaction (Ahmad, 2019). The understanding of the context of a particular language
increases with the information regarding words and sounds.
There are two approaches of skill development, which should be taught, to the
learners, top-down approach and bottom up approach. The bottom up approach enables a
learner to take cues from the smallest elements of sound for the motive of completing a
sensible text. The process includes various steps like decoding the elements of sound and
linking them to construct words and then words are transformed as phrases. Phrases are
converted to utterances and finally to a sensible content (Ganapathy, Shuib & Azizan, 2016).
The skills of listening to the small fragments of words and practicing pronunciation helps in
building the knowledge for a specific language. The Top down approach presents a

2TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
contrasting idea of the implication of these skills (Darcy, 2018). Utilizing prior understanding
of text and reconstructing the actual meaning with the help of the incoming fragments of
sound is known as the top-down approach of skill development (Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2016).
A student should be taught through both the approaches in the context of improving oral
communication (Murphy, 2017).
The skills of pronunciation helps an individual to be understood by the specific
listener. It is crucial to learn the skill of pronunciation for a specific language as the
pronunciation in different regions portrays various meanings (Shah, Othman & Senom,
2017). Listening should be taught by adopting various strategies like predicting, inferring,
assessing, clarifying, responding and evaluating. According to Murphy, the practice of
pronunciation must be linked with the process of listening for better communicative speaking
tasks (Murphy, 2017). The skills of listening and pronunciation should be taught to an extent
where a learner becomes competent in terms of the understanding and knowledge of a
specific language and develop confidence and respect in the process of learning oral
communication (Murphy, 2017).
Response to Question b:
An example from the context of ESL in regards with the listening and pronunciation
skills can be of a cross-cultural scenario in class where the learner will attempt to develop the
skills of listening and pronunciation of the host country language to be able to sustain in the
social or cultural setting. A student from Malaysia wanted to pursue master’s degree from
America in the early 1990s (Ganapathy, Shuib & Azizan, 2016). The student had English as a
compulsory language in his secondary school in Indonesia but it was majorly based on the
writing skills for the purpose of test. After arriving at America, the student found difficulties
in understanding and communicating in the host language for which the student had to enrol
himself in a course, which included the process of developing listening and pronunciation
skills for the achieving the academic and social goal of the student. His experiences from

3TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
learning English at his school did not help him in understanding the sound fragments of the
language for constructing meaningful texts (Ismail & Yusof, 2016). The student was also
unable to make the teachers and fellow students understand the context of his texts as an
integrated form of listening and pronunciation skills helps in oral communication (Newton et
al., 2018). Lack of listening and pronunciation skills resulted in the low confidence level for
communicating in a social setting.
Teaching of communicative language for the English language was proposed by the
Malaysian Curriculum Development Centre (Ganapathy, Shuib & Azizan, 2016). The
curriculum involved encouraging students for the participation in the process of learning the
language, which can help in the development of competencies and confidence in the context
of oral communication.
The curriculum will involve various activities in classroom in regards with the
theories of bottom-up and top-down processing (Thomson, 2017). The bottom up processing
theory helps in the skills of understanding sound units following the process of constructing
sensible texts and top-down approach involves a prior knowledge of the context followed
with the reconstruction of words into meaningful texts (Levis, 2016). Although Malay is the
first language of the people living in Malaysia, which helps in, uniting the society with a
cultural backing but the competencies in English language plays a functional role because of
the acceptance of the language as an international language (Trofimovich & Foote, 2017).
Skills developed through listening and pronunciation activities in learning English language
will help in developing employment and educational opportunities in the business world.
Part: 2
Response to question a:
According to Murphy (2017), accuracy versus Fluency is a debate, which can present
challenges for the local ESL teachers in the process of integrating listening, speaking and