Delta Module One

Unit 8
Receptive Skills

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Contents
Contents ........................................................................................................................................................ 2
Study Guide 8: Receptive Skills ............................................................................................................. 3
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3
A quick overview of receptive skills ................................................................................................................ 4
What are receptive skills? ................................................................................................................................................... 4
Top-down and bottom-up approaches to skills development ............................................................................ 4
Schema theory .......................................................................................................................................................................... 7
What are the implications of schema theory for teaching? .................................................................................. 7
L1 and L2 reading ................................................................................................................................................................... 8
The relationship between language and skills ........................................................................................................... 8
A Note on Terminology ........................................................................................................................................................ 9
Reading List: Receptive skills ......................................................................................................................... 10
Key References (Refer to as many of these as you can) ...................................................................................... 10
Other resources .................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Some useful online articles .............................................................................................................................................. 10

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Study Guide 8: Receptive Skills

Introduction
If learners of a second or foreign language are to make genuine progress in that language, they need
constant exposure to it. There are only two ways in which learners can get that exposure to the target
language through listening to the spoken word and reading the written word. As these two methods are the
only source of language available to them, it is self-evident that the development of listening and reading (the
receptive skills) is a crucial element in all-round L2 development.
When considering listening and reading in a second language, we also need to bear in mind that learners
are normally fluent listeners in their mother tongue. In some cases they may not be fluent readers, and may
even be illiterate in their mother tongue, a fact that should not be overlooked when discussing L2 receptive
skills. The degree of transferability of L1 receptive skills is a key issue in L2 skills development, and
encouraging learners to apply similar skills and strategies when listening or reading in a foreign language to
the ones they apply in their mother tongue is central to effective skills development.
In both reading and listening, teachers also need to consider types of text and how a native-speaker listener
or reader would approach them, and for what purpose. If a global understanding of the text is what is
required, training in strategies that enable the listener or reader to get the gist or general sense of the text
will be needed. If, on the other hand, the reader or listener would normally expect to understand details
(when reading instructions, for example), then strategies that help the learner to understand details will need
to be developed.

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A quick overview of receptive skills

What are receptive skills?
Reading and listening are known as the receptive skills (in contrast to speaking and writing, which are the
productive skills).
They are called receptive because the reader or listener is receiving (and processing) the message of a
writer or speaker.
Until fairly recently they were known as the 'passive' skills (and speaking and writing as the 'active' skills)
but, reflecting a change in our understanding of skills, these terms are rarely used nowadays.
In recent years two important and related - theoretical areas have contributed to discussions about
receptive skills: (1) top-down / bottom-up processing and (2) schema theory.
We will look at these first.

Top-down and bottom-up approaches to skills development

A relatively recent view of reading and listening is the top-down / bottom-up description.
This can describe either:
(a) a theoretical idea of how we as readers or listeners do our own reading or listening
or, by extension,
(b) ways in which we can help our learners to do reading or listening in class.
The following two pages on top-down / bottom-up in listening are an extract from:
Scrivener J., Learning Teaching (2

nd

Edition) Macmillan ELT

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Top-down and bottom-up

It used to be believed that listeners built up their understanding of a text by working out what each individual
sound was, then adding these up into a word, understanding the word, checking the meaning of that word with
the words around them, etc. (a bit like building up a wall from the individual bricks). Although this theory, known
as bottom-up (i.e. building up the messages from the individual small pieces), may initially sound appealing, it is
virtually impossible to do.
Spoken English probably comes at you too fast to be able to adopt such an item-by-item approach on its own. It
seems likely that we make use of bottom-up skills more to fill in missing gaps rather than as a general approach
to comprehension word by word.
The alternative theory is that when we listen to a new dialogue, we start processing the text using skills
associated with a second theory (top-down), i.e. making use of what we already know to help us predict the
structure and content of the text, and getting a general overall impression of the message.
Factors that help you listen
Imagine that you are going to listen to (and take part in) an important conversation in a foreign language you
half-know. You are, naturally, a little nervous. Will it be easier for you to follow the dialogue if you:

have some idea what the topic being discussed will be?
know something about that topic?
know the typical sequence of exchanges that is used in a dialogue like this?
can predict issues likely to be raised?
are quickly able to get an overview of the general direction of the conversation?
know any general rules or guidelines for what can/cant be said in conversations of this type?
understand the attitudes of the participants?
know some words and phrases that are commonly used in conversations of this type?

Commentary
I think the answer to each of these is probably yes. We dont come to a new piece of listening completely from a
zero starting point. We bring our previous knowledge to it, even before its started. Making a good prediction of
the content or the shape of a listening text will definitely help us to make better sense of it when it happens.
Rather than having to start from scratch, the listening may fall neatly into an imagined framework we have
already set out for it. Of course, we cant be ready for everything, but anything that we have correctly expected
frees up our energy to pay attention to things that require more intensive listening.
Top-down and bottom-up
Do the following represent use of top-down or bottom-up strategies?
1 Before we start listening, we can already predict some possible words and phrases that might be used
because of our knowledge of lexical sets associated with the topic.
2 We listen carefully to a recording a number of times so that we can find a word we cant catch clearly.
3 When we dont clearly catch something, we hypothesise what weve missed and reinstate what we think was
there, based on our knowledge of similar conversations.
4 We know some typical interaction patterns (e.g. the typical sequence of exchanges when phoning a taxi), and
this helps us to understand these when they are spoken.
Commentary
Strategy 2 is bottom-up. Strategies 1, 3 and 4 are examples of top-down strategies, and we do a lot more of this
kind of processing that you might expect. Using background knowledge, prediction and filling-in gaps are all
important listening skills.
Top-down and bottom-up in the classroom
When we listen, we probably adopt a continually varying combination of top-down and bottom-up strategies, so
work on both areas is useful to learners. I suspect that when I listen, I often process chunk by chunk, catching
the general meaning of a small segment of text and, if necessary (e.g. if something isnt clear), go back over and
review the temporarily stored segment (from short-term memory) and analyse more carefully what its
components were.
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You need to decide your own personal theory about how people listen so that you can plan lessons to reflect
this. Many teachers nowadays believe that we mainly listen top-down in real life, and so structure lesson
sequences starting with top-down work.
nd
Learning Teaching (2 edition), Scrivener, Macmillan ELT 2005
Example sequence of activities in a top-down listening lesson
Procedure

Why?

Discuss the general

topic

Learners start to think about the topic, raising a number of issues that will
be discussed later on the recording. This preparation may help them to hear
these things being discussed later.
Students hypothesise specific issues that may be raised.

Predict the specific

content
Predict the structure
Gist listening for
overview
Gist listening for
attitudes

Students consider/discuss possible organisational structures for a phone-in

(who speaks? what kind of questions? typical exchanges? etc.). This may
help learners to recognise the content more easily.
Learners get an overall impression of the content without worrying about
small items or individual words.
Learners interpret intonation, paralinguistic features (sighs, etc.).

More careful listening

for complex meanings

By catching and interpreting smaller parts of the text, learners fine-tune their
understanding.

Listening to pick out

specific small
language details

This focused work (e.g. on pronunciation) may raise learner awareness

(e.g. of weak forms) and thus help students to listen better in future.

So to summarise in class:

Top-down approaches focus on developing the learners ability to understand the whole message by
bringing meaning to it through their knowledge of the world (knowledge of the subject matter of the text
or listening material) and the application of prediction, deduction and inference skills.

Bottom-up approaches take language as the starting-point and focus on vocabulary and grammatical
items as a means of understanding a piece of discourse.

In practical terms, most contemporary approaches are based on a combination of the two, and focus both on an
understanding of the whole through the application of reading and listening skills and strategies and an
understanding of detail through a knowledge of lexis, syntax and grammatical structure.

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Schema theory
Closely connected to the top-down approach is schema theory.
A schema (the plural is schemata) is the mental representation of the knowledge and understanding a person
has about something.
For example, imagine that someone has just told you that a kangaroo cannot walk backwards. Assuming that
you didnt already know this fact, you will now add this to your mental representation of what a kangaroo is and
does. You already had a 'kangaroo schema' in place but it will change and grow slightly with this new
knowledge.
Over the course of our lives we 'map the world' (i.e. make an internal representation of what the outside world is)
in this way, growing our internal representation of what the world is and how it works. We dont precisely know
what physical form these schemata might take so discussion of them is mainly in the form of metaphor (e.g.
database, filing system, library, map etc.) rather than biology.
Often, as with the kangaroo example, changes to a schema are small additions or expansions of knowledge.
Occasionally, what we learn has the potential for completely redrawing or reshaping large parts of our map.
In some cases, we will branch off to form a new schema e.g. when we start learning in a new area but even
here, the new schema is grown from a base in our old, currently existing knowledge. We never start with a
completely blank slate. Everything we learn is related to our current knowledge.
One important point is that everyones internal map of the world is different. Your life experience has led you to
lay down a mental stock of different things about, say, gladiators, than I have.
Schemata apply to everything for example, a students knowledge about phrasal verbs will grow and twist and
change over time as they progress from ignorance to greater understanding.
Writers on schemata related to language and language learning have suggested two main sub-categories of
schemata: content schemata (knowledge about the world, life, universe etc.) and formal schemata (knowledge
about how things are sequenced and structured when they are said or written).
In terms of reading and listening, we are mainly concerned with how a learners content schemata are used in
helping them to understand a text i.e. bringing their own knowledge of the world to bear on helping them to
comprehend a text. If we have a clear idea of what to expect when we read or listen to something, we will be
much more capable of catching the relevant information. Meaning, in this view, does not only come from a text
but is brought to a text.
For example, when you first arrive at a hotel reception desk you will be expecting certain probable sequences of
actions, greetings, questions and pieces of information, based on your accumulated previous knowledge and
experience of hotel receptions. You dont know exactly what will be said but you have a number of clear ideas
as to what the likely content will be. This will help you to pick up on what is actually said when it comes.
However, were the receptionist to say something completely outside your 'arriving at hotel reception' schema
(e.g. When mixed as directed, the compound will provide a free-flowing trowelable paste which sets hard after
about two minutes.) it is likely that you would, initially at least, have some severe comprehension problems, until
you had adjusted your expectations in line with whatever you were hearing.
Even if this were your first-ever time checking into as hotel, you would still probably have a 'hotel reception'
schema, gathered perhaps from books, films or anecdotes. Major schema adjustments often come when people
do something for the first time which they have previously only seen on film.

What are the implications of schema theory for teaching?

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If we want to help our students to become better readers or listeners, it isnt simply about doing the reading or
listening itself.
Imagine that we wanted to use a recording of a discussion about problems running some stables in the south of
England.
Much of the recording might be very hard to follow for someone who had an incorrect mental image of what
stables in the south of England meant, what they did, how they operated, who used them etc. They would be
much less able to follow the flow of conversation, might completely misunderstand sections of dialogue, would
be less able to guess the meaning of unknown words, and so on.
Even if a student understood the word 'stables', it might be that their schema of 'stables' was based on stables in
their own country, or in fairy stories or in Hollywood movies, etc. Any set of schemata that were inaccurate might
cause comprehension difficulties for the learner.
In class, teachers using a top-down approach will be concerned to activate learners schemata before diving
into a reading or listening text. Using the stables example, they will perhaps check what students image of a
stables is, what they know about it etc., and help them towards a clearer and more accurate picture.
Techniques such as brainstorming, building illustrations or mind maps of words, thinking through sequences of
events or interactions (c/f script in the Discourse Study Guide) may all be used.
Contextual items such as layout, pictures, headlines and so on are helpful in getting students to activate
schemata.
All this will in turn help learners to process the actual text better when it comes. And, of course, if the learner
successfully coped with the listening, it is possible that they would be able to adjust their schemata as a result of
the input.

L1 and L2 reading
Many methodologists argue that second language reading and listening is simply a matter of transferring the
skills and strategies applied in reading and listening in ones mother tongue to the target language.
This may well be true in certain cases a telephone directory in German looks pretty much like one in English
and a German learner would have no problems in locating information in an English directory even with minimal
knowledge of the language.
However, it is also clear that the application of L1 skills and strategies is limited by knowledge of the target
language. If the learner knows none or very little of the lexis in a particular text or piece of listening material, they
have very little chance of getting much from it, no matter how skilful they may be in the application of those L1
skills and strategies.
Likewise, the degree of transferability of L1 skills will also depend on the similarity or otherwise between the L1
and the target language (English). If they are radically different (Chinese, Arabic etc.), the rhetorical structure of
mother tongue discourse may also be different, making the transferability of L1 skills much more difficult.
In practical terms, this will mean taking the mother tongue of the learners into account when working on
receptive skills development and not, for example, spending hours training German speakers how to scan items
such as menus or telephone directories.

The relationship between language and skills

Put very simply, the two cannot be separated and you cant have one without the other.
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In order to read, write, listen and speak, you need some knowledge of the language.
Likewise, in order to use any language they have learned or acquired, learners must read, write, listen and
speak. Thus an overt focus on skills development in all four skills is an essential part of a comprehensive
language learning programme.
However, in the world of ELT, where the methodological pendulum often seems to be swinging between
mutually incompatible extremes, there is a notable current trend towards arguing against the value of working on
skills at all.
A recent mantra (believed to be from Michael Swan) has been that language teaching is teaching language
and the implied view is that if a student has sufficient language, then the skills of reading and listening will, to a
large degree, look after themselves and do not need to be explicitly taught.
Some quite notable experts such as Swan are arguing against classroom time being spent on work on reading
skills in the classroom. However, this is still far from a mainstream view and, for example, is not reflected by the
design of the Delta, which clearly distinguishes between systems and skills lessons and values both.
So, a question for you to ponder: is teaching skills actually a waste of time?

A Note on Terminology
There is a little confusion over exactly what we mean by skills, sub-skills and strategies. Different writers have
used these terms to refer to slightly different things. The following is suggested as a relatively mainstream
current interpretation:
Skills:

The big overall areas of reading, writing, speaking, listening (and, possibly, thinking)

Sub-skills:

Individually identifiable discrete abilities that are employed as part of the skill maybe at a subconscious level e.g. inferring meaning, predicting, using previous knowledge to fill in missing
items.

Strategies:

Actions that a reader or listener chooses to do in order to help them read or listen - e.g. read
through the whole text quickly in order to get a general overall idea, listen and try to catch the
most stressed words.

Having said that, many writers and teachers in staff rooms do not distinguish between sub-skills and
strategies. The term skills is often used to refer to sub-skills (e.g. 'listening skills') and strategies.

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Reading List: Receptive skills

Key References (Refer to as many of these as you can)
Anderson, A. and Lynch, T.

Scheme for Teacher Education: Listening

1998

OUP

Nuttall, C.

Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language

rd
(3 ed.)

2005

Macmillan

Wallace, C.

Scheme for Teacher Education: Reading

1992

OUP

Wilson, J.

How to Teach Listening

2008

Pearson

Alderson, J and Urquhart, F.

Reading in a Foreign Language

1984

Longman

Bowen T and Marks J.

Inside Teaching (chapters 8 and 9)

1994

Macmillan

Brown, G.

Listening to Spoken English (2

1996

Longman

Cauldwell, R.

Phonology for Listening

2013

Speech In
Action

Field, J.

Listening in the Language Classroom

2008

CUP

Grellet, F.

Developing Reading Skills

1981

CUP

Harmer J.

The Practice of ELT

2007

Longman

Rost, M.

Teaching and Researching: Listening

2002

Longman

Rost, M.

Listening in Language Learning

1990

Longman

2005

Macmillan

Other resources

nd

nd

ed.)

Scrivener, J.

Learning Teaching (2

ed.)

Smith, F.

Understanding Reading

1994

Routledge

Underwood , M.

Teaching Listening

1989

Longman

Ur, P.

Teaching Listening Comprehension

1998

CUP

Some useful online articles

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/stratlisten.htm
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Stott-Schema.html
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9211/reading.htm
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Lingzhu-Listening.html
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/AlKahtani-ComputerReading/
http://iteslj.org/Articles/McCarthy-Reading.html
http://www.speechinaction.com
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/jar/Reading_Wars.html

An overview of approaches to
teaching listening skills
An introduction to schema theory
More about schema and interactive
reading
A review of top-down listening
activities
Some ideas for using CALL in L2
reading skills development
A review of the four skills and an
interesting focus on reading
development. Extensive bibliography
Various articles on, and materials for,
teaching listening by site creator
Richard Cauldwell
An overview of the ongoing debate

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http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr029.shtml
http://www.improve-education.org/id46.html
http://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/111026195203whycanttheyread.pdf

over whether phonics or a wholeword approach to reading is the most

effective way of teaching children to
read.
A look at how whole-word and
phonics approaches can be
integrated.
Two articles supporting phonics over
the whole-word approach.

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