TESOL Florida

In this Unit I have learnt about the two receptive skills - reading and listening. They are both equally important for the students and should be incorporated in lessons for having a healthy balance. When planning a lesson, we have to always think about the two main purposes for a human beeing to read or listen: Either we do it for a purpose or for our own entertainment. It is also possible that our reading / listening motives come out as a mix of those two mentioned above. But no matter what purpose our reading and listening might have, it is always essential to gain understanding and make sense out of the words we are exposed to - for students of the English language even more. Choosing the right topics for text work or listening exercises is crucial for a successful lesson. As teachers we have to engage our students interest in a topic. If we can not achieve this, students are likely to not pay enough attention to the whole lesson. An other important point is to expose students to texts that not only motivate them, but also give them confidence in their skills. In order to do so, a teacher has to always use an appropriate variety of different texts or dialogues in class, which should be neither too easy nor too difficult.