ESL Teaching: Integrating Listening, Speaking & Pronunciation Skills

This essay explores the teaching of listening and speaking skills in English as a Second Language (ESL), with a specific focus on the challenges and strategies in a Malaysian context. It highlights the importance of both bottom-up and top-down approaches to language acquisition, emphasizing the role of pronunciation in effective communication. The essay discusses the accuracy versus fluency debate, technological resource limitations, and cultural differences as key challenges faced by ESL teachers in Malaysia. It also presents an example of a teacher struggling to connect with students from diverse backgrounds, underscoring the need for culturally sensitive teaching methods and a balanced approach to accuracy and fluency in oral communication.

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

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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

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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

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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

4TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
pronunciation for developing skills in oral communication. It is being considered that
constant approach in correcting errors can cause a hindrance in the improvement of fluency.
In the local context of Malaysia, the challenge may occur if a teacher is asking for
clarification rather than a fellow student in regards with a misunderstanding. If a teacher in
Malaysia start correcting a student’s error while the student is speaking will result in a failed
scenario of practicing pronunciation and listening (Thomson, 2017). The teacher dedicated to
pronunciation teaching would find it challenging in avoiding errors of the students (Darcy,
2018). Lack of technological resources in the schools of Malaysia will lead to the knowledge
gap as illustration and local craft supplies will not help a student to be involved in the various
activities of listening and pronunciation (Adger et al., 2018).
Limited class timings for learning the details of a language can be challenge for a
teacher to incorporate the teachings of a globally accepted business language. The challenges
for teaching English as a second language in Malaysia is very evident (Newton et al., 2018).
Another challenge faced by a teacher can be the persistence of the students in conversing in
Malay language for which the teacher should be able to incorporate activities with prior
preparations, which will have continuous engagement of students in practicing English
(Thomson, 2017). Treating English as a subject in the curriculum can be a challenge as the
students will start memorizing contents in order to get marks but they will lack the
understanding of the importance of learning the pronunciation and listening skills which can
get them numerous educational and employment opportunities (Kaur, 2018). Students may
feel unmotivated to learn a foreign language, which can be a major challenge for the
Malaysian teacher. The concentration on the grammar (accuracy) in the teaching process will
reflect deficit in the skills of oral communication (Nair, Krishnasamy & De Mello, 2017).
Less focus on the pronunciation and listening skills can affect the student’s overall ability of
speaking fluently.

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Teachers may find it difficult to differentiate the understanding between effective
pronunciation and accent as developing accent without prior experience with the foreign
language can reflect the unnatural progression of learning (Kandasamy, Yunus & Embi,
2018). Teacher can also face difficulties in terms of combing different expectations from a
second language towards a common goal of developing fluency for oral communication. The
dispute of selecting a particular kind of accent in regards with developing pronunciation in
the Malaysian school can restrict the knowledge of the teacher in adapting changes
(Kandasamy, Yunus & Embi, 2018). In the rural areas, the students find no functional use of
the English language, which makes the learning process restricted to the classroom timing
and utilizing 200 minutes of teaching English in a week for implementing fluency with
effective listening, and pronunciation skills can be difficult for a student (Hassan & Selamat,
2017). Projecting the interactive skills of a crowd of multilingual students towards the
learning of a foreign language with the balance of fluency as well as accuracy can be very
difficult for a local ESL teacher (Kandasamy, Yunus & Embi, 2018). The local teachers may
not have experienced the learning process with the presence of technology himself or herself
to teach the nuances of the language (Newton et al., 2018). The lack of availability of Smart
teacher training course with the changing attributes of the English language can be a
challenge in Malaysia. Improper support from the board of educational curriculum can affect
the standard of learning and communicating in English language (Kandasamy, Yunus &
Embi, 2018).
Therefore, negative attitudes towards learning the language or culture will result in
the unsuccessful achievement of proficiency. Negative attitude can develop with the
unawareness and unfamiliarity of the students with the culture and teaching about a language
without the familiarity of the cultural difference may results in the lack of motivational
factors for students (Hassan & Selamat, 2017). On the other hand, teaching about the cultural
differences of the selected standard country may result in the conversion of history class

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rather than English (Hung, 2017). Attainment of balanced levels of accuracy and fluency in
an unknown cultural language can be a challenging task, which may lose the functional
importance among the students (Ann et al., 2018).
Moreover, the teacher may face difficulties in arising the importance of bilingual
characteristics for the future growth (Newton et al., 2018). A local ESL teacher may be from
a different social group in Malaysia, which can restrict the teacher's understanding about the
expectations of functionality of students from different social and cultural background in
regards with the language (Razali, 2017). Lastly, it can be stated that teachers may face
challenges in development of the skills of appropriateness, accuracy and fluency for the use
of language as the transition from linguistic competencies to the communicative
competencies of understanding the various functional use of the language is complex for a
second language (Hassan & Selamat, 2017).
Response to Question b:
One of the examples of challenges faced by the teacher in regards with the teaching of
speaking and listening in ESL in Malaysia is a teacher belonging from a city of Malaysia
joins a school with diverse culture for teaching listening, speaking and pronunciation skills to
the students in Malaysia. The teacher was highly educated and organized activities for
student’s participation but the teacher did not consider the expectations and background of
the diverse audience (students) (Hassan & Selamat, 2017). The teacher was unable to
comprehend the sentiments of few students from a rural background, did not find English as a
functionally crucial language or rather communicative importance.
The teacher was conducting various activities for facilitating Bottom-up processing
approach, which involves retaining sound units during the time it is being communicated
followed by recognizing keywords. Then, transforming the recognized words into sensible
texts by associating with grammar (Ismail & Yusof, 2016). But the focus should have been in

7TEACHING OF LISTENING AND SPEAKING IN ESL
making the diverse audience aware of the importance of the functionality of the language,
which could have been made the involvement and practice easier to implement (Sidhu, Kaur
& Fook, 2018). In the second language theory, Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis
reflects that the factors, which affect the learner’s ability of developing
skills for the second language, are motivation, anxiety, awareness and
self-efficacy (Hassan & Selamat, 2017).

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