Book Review
Reviewer :
Ririn Rianingsih / PBI-B (V) - 14111320123
a.
Summary
of the book
The
book entitled understanding the teaching of listening and speaking by Mr.
Wakhid Nashhrudin presented in two parts; the first is understanding the
teaching of listening comprehension and the second is understanding the
teaching of speaking. All of the chapters in this book were presented the way
to understand the teaching of listening and speaking can contribute to the body
of knowledge in the area of Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) in
general, and more particularly can provide insight for readers having interests
in English Language Teaching (ELT).
Part
one is preparing students to face Listening Comprehension test, diverging tasks
in listening activities, and desperately listening. Chapter I is preparing the
students to face listening comprehension tests, such as in TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC,
or in National final examination. This chapter provides the students with three
approaches of listening (bottom-up, top-down, and interactive) and two kinds of
strategies (before test and while-tests). That will make students feel more
confident in facing listening tests. Because,
listening is a difficult skill in second language learning. The
difficulty is caused by many factors varying from the difference of sounds
between the second language learner’s first language and the second language he
or she is learning, his or her lack of vocabulary, his or her grammatical
unawareness, to pragmatic differences between the two languages. Students can
be successful in following listening tests not only because they are good at
listening, but also because they are supported by techniques or strategies to
do the listening tests, such as before test and while test strategies. Before
test strategies refer to technique applied b teachers to teach listening
comprehension in the forms of familiarization of test formats, extensive
listening, segmentation, and reading the transcripts. Despite the fact that
students should be prepared before the test, they should also be prepared with
strategies during the test. While test strategies include using pictures ,
using multiple inputs, catching main ideas, paying attention to voice changes,
remembering specific information, interpreting, and finding hidden meaning.
Longer conversation such as academic conversations, class discussions, academic
talks, and lectures can also be understood using those strategies. Chapter 2 is
diverging tasks in listening activities. This method discussed how teachers can
diverge listening tasks in their listening comprehension class. The word
“diverge” means to separate and go in different directions. The notion of “diverging
tasks in listening activities”, suggest that teacher can design varied and
different listening activities that will direct students to the mastery of
listening comprehension skill. The chapter has emphasized that diverging tasks
and setting the purposes in listening instruction are important. It highlights
the micro- and macroskills of listening comprehension. this is intended to
provide a guidance to lead students to master listening skills. The purpose of
listening tasks have also been discussed. In this case, students need to choose
what information they need. It is the basis of importance of knowing the
purposes of a listening task : whether it is listening for specific
information, listening for details, listening for the main idea, listening for
opinions, inferring meaning, recognizing context, predicting, or identifying
emption. Thus, the micro- and macroskills of listening comprehension combined
with purposes in listening classes. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is
that different tasks should be given to aim at different purposes. Chapter 3 is
desperately listening. The study reported in this chapter is to try out
‘listening while reading’ technique in helping EFL learners listen English to
speech. This is a way that learners can use so that they can see the printed
words while they practice listening how the words are spoken. This chapter
tells the result of a pre-experimental study on Listening a spoken text while
reading the text. The strategy of this chapter may not be used for advanced
level students or at intermediate level continuously ever time students
practice their listening skills. Since it will be contra-productive. But at
least it will make the lessons of listening be more not frustrating for low
level students. As a suggestion, teachers teaching low level students can
benefit from this technique. Consequently, students who start learning
listening at the beginning level can feel comfortable listening to “difficult”
text spoken by native speakers of English using this technique. Further
research can be directed to what learners can benefit from this technique and
whether types of concentration (distributive, focus) influence students in
listening tasks. The design can be also improved as I realized that
pre-experimental is not the best method for doing experiment.
Part
two is Helping EFL Learners Pronounce Wh-questions; Rehearsal, Performance,
Debriefing: An investigation of speaking strategy in EAP; Expecting speaking
course: A reflection from student’s perspective; and strategic interaction
approach to promote speaking skill. Chapter 4,
Helping EFL learners pronounce Wh-Questions. This research try to
analyze and solve Indonesian student’s problem in producing questions using
questions word, using drill techniques and supported by authentic materials. Chapter
5, Rehearsal, Performance, Debriefing : An investigation of speaking strategy
in EAP. This chapter examines the three principles in teaching speaking (Rehearsal,
Performance, and Debriefing) to promote speaking skill. Chapter 6, Expecting
speaking course: A reflection from student’s perspective. This chapter tells
the result of questionnaire delivery, asking student’s opinion about a
teacher’s teaching speaking and what they expect from speaking classes. However,
student’s perspective will enrich teacher’s knowledge on handling their
speaking classes. Chapter 7, Using the strategic interaction approach to
promote speaking skill. This chapter provides reader about student’s and
teacher’s opinion of the application of strategic interaction approach for
teaching speaking.
b.
Implications
of the research to the teaching of oral language
There
are two points in this book. The first point is that the teaching of listening
should not test listening skill and the second point is that the teaching of
speaking should be done by providing students language input before they can
start speaking.
Part
one presented how to understand the teaching of listening comprehension test.
Chapter I is preparing students to face listening comprehension tests with two
strategies (before the test and during the test). The before-test strategies
refer to what teachers should do before students do tests, which is the
teaching of listening comprehension in the forms of familiarization of the test
formats, extensive listening, segmentation, and reading the transcript. Familiarize
the students with the form of the test, before facing is dealing with the
National Examination for Senior high school students in Indonesia, for
instance, students need to be informed that the have fifty questions, fifteen
of which are on listening. The fifteen questions for listening are divided into
four kinds of questions : questions about pictures (3 questions), question and
response (4 questions), short conversation (4 questions), and short talks such
as announcements (4 questions). The questions are all in form of multiple
choices. Extensive listening, make students realize and believe that practice
makes perfect. In this sense, students should know that in preparing listening
tests, they cannot rely more on their teachers by expecting them to teach or
train them in the classroom, but also outside the classroom. The basis of the
idea comes from Harmer (2007:303). He suggests extensive listening to be
conducted in accordance to extensive reading, extensive listening will have a
good effect on the improvement of listening skill. Segmentation, a suggestion
about improving second language listening comprehension comes from field (2003
: 327) in the form of what he calls “lexical segmentation in L2 listening”.
Lexical segmentation is aimed to identify words in connected speech in order to
train students to use their knowledge of phonetics. He suggests one technique
in lexical segmentation, that is “to dictate ambiguous sentences, then to
disambiguate them by adding additional words”. For example, the teacher may ask
the students to write an ice cream. But, when the students are writing the
phrase, the teacher continues the dictation by saying a nice cream dress. Next,
reading the transcript. Obermeier and Karlsson, Kjisik, and Nordlund (2003)
support the use of reading the transcript in the training to prepare students
to do the listening tests. It suggests that students may re-read the transcript
and check unfamiliar words so that student’s vocabulary will also increase.
This will help students comprehend the text being learned or other texts. The
learning of the transcript will help them able to recognize words when the
words listened on the next time. Alternatively, Karlsson et al. (2003) propose
that students can also try to transcribe the listening text, and then replay to
check whether or not the transcription is correct. By doing this, again,
students can check and recheck their comprehension of a listening text. Then, while-test strategies include using
pictures, using multiple in specific information, interpreting, and finding
hidden meaning. Using pictures, in certain tests, for example TOEIC pictures
are presented in the test booklet. This is to help test takers answer some
questions related to the pictures. The pictures bring details and may function
as a clue or description in listening comprehension. A good point is to imagine
that the test takers can understand more about situation in the picture. By
being in the pictures, test takers can understand more about situation and
condition which were going on. Using multiple inputs, when students listen to
the questions, they also read the possible answers in the booklet test. Use the
written answers in the booklet to check their listening. They are probably not
that good in listening, so they can make use of texts (answer options) to guide
them. Next, catching main ideas. Main ideas are usually indicated by words that
come up frequently. Pay attention to such a complicated explanation, for
example by saying that the main idea of the text. Such an explanation should be
given during the teaching of listening comprehension. Next is paying attention
to voice changes, remembering specific information, interpreting, finding
hidden meaning, academic conversations, class discussion and academic talks. Chapter 2 is diverging tasks in listening
activities. This chapter presented micro- and macro skills of listening
comprehension which combined with purposes in listening will help teachers to
determine what tasks should be given to the students in listening classes. Microskills
of listening comprehension are: retain chunks of language of different lengths
in short-term memory, discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English,
etc. Macroskills of listening comprehension are : recognize cohesive devices in
spoken discourse, recognize the communicative functions of utterances,
according to situations, participants, and goals. Chapter 3 is desperately
listening. This chapter presented pre-experimental design. There are 2 practice
test, the first is pre-test and the second is post-test. Each test contains 100
questions (50 questions for listening comprehension and 50 questions in reading
comprehension section). Then student’s pre-test scores were compared with
student’s post-test score using t-test.
Part
two pordingly, EFL resented how to understand the teaching of speaking. Chapter
4 is Helping EFL learners pronounce Wh-Questions intonation. English Teachers
should give an emphasis on “falling down at the end” or glide-down as normal
intonation for pronouncing wh-questions. The other two intonations (Glide – up
and Take-off) should be introduced to students in order to make students
familiar with them. Accordingly, EFL students should pay attention to
intonation of their speech since it will affect the ideas or messages they want
to deliver. One important intonation is the intonation applied in wh-questions.
By applying some principles based on the audio-lingual method, the students of
EFL will get the benefit of drill technique. Another important issue in the
teaching of pronunciation is the use of authentic materials, that is, native
speaker’s recordings, which will make the learning more successful because
students can get the language input of the English native speakers in terms of
pronunciation. This is particularly the case if the teachers fail to produce
good examples of English pronunciation due to the interference of their native
language or other reasons. Chapter 5 is Rehearsal, Performance, Debriefing : An
investigation of speaking strategy in EAP. In rehearsal stage, the teacher asks
the students to study their text carefully and to discuss any questions about
the information or the language in their role text. Stage 2 is performance and stage 3 is
debriefing. Debriefing stage talks about the best way to persuade someone to
take a view, and not just the correction of individual language errors. Chapter
6, Expecting speaking course: A reflection from student’s perspective. The
method of this chapter is focus on student’s perspective in teaching of the
speaking. However, the data collected in this study were taken from student’s
reflections after mid-semester examination and student’s opinions are the key
points in the discussion. Chapter 7, Using the strategic interaction approach
to promote speaking skill. The method of this chapter is using the strategic
interaction approach (SIA) by using questionnaires (for students and teachers)
and field notes, the researcher could see how the teacher and his students feel
towards strategic interaction approach. The teacher’s activities during the
stages of the SIA are included : brainstorming,
rehearsal-performance-debriefing stages, questionnaires and field notes.
c.
Limitation
of the discussion
The
starting point of Mr. Wakhid’s book begins with the orally skills, listening
and speaking. He thinks that the important skills are only listening and
speaking. When learning to listen it is important for language learners to
understand the oral messages at both phonological and semantic levels. He attempts
to show how listening and speaking can be made easier. Various ways are
discussed to achieve the goal in learning to listen and to speak. But, in the
fact there are four language skills that the students should expert on, there
are reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
He
did not explain how to prepare to be a good writer or good reader. It means
that the students only expert on speaking and listening skill without know how
to be master in all of the language skills. In fact, reading and writing are
the most important skills that the students should expert on. Reading is a
complex process. Within the process, a reader should analyze, select, relate
and arrange ideas in order to construct the meaning. If the reader feels left
out or has no clue about the content of the text, reading can be a hard task to
do and it leads them to think that he or she is incapable of performing the
task or basically. Meanwhile, Writing is even more complex process. In writing,
a writer has to consider two things. A writer must really understand what he
writing and convey. Usually in writing activity, students have already found
problems since the beginning of writing process. They feel confused how to
start, arrange and display ideas are common problems faced by students. In
fact, writing frustrates most students and leads them to have less enthusiasm
in writing. In fact , writing helps improve student’s academic performance, it
can make the students success from mastering writing skills because they call
for creativity, decision-making, researching and presenting, regardless of the
career path you follow after you graduate, if you are a good writer, you can
excel in your classes and other areas of your life where you express yourself.
Meanwhile, Reading and writing have a strong connection. While reading
retrieves and processes the information, writing presents the information. Both
of activities are performed well with the existence of the background language.
The
second point is the teaching should benefit the learners, because teaching
means help students learn. So that , the teacher should able to facilitate the
learning process. But , there are various strategies to face listening and
speaking test in the book. It makes the reader confused to choose what the
appropriate strategy in teaching both of them. Then, the explanation of each
strategy is unclear because he explained just a little.
The
last point is about the systematic of the outline book. There are no pictures and
the book is not colourfull , so that the reader will be bored to read on the
book. The second is the cover is not makes the reader interest on. The last, I
think it will be better if the writer put references on the last page, not very
chapter in the book.
d.
Proposal
for further research based on the reviewed book
I
will take a research entitled understanding the teaching of listening and
speaking for young learners. I think it more difficult to teach the learners in
preschool. Because the teacher have to think about what he say in class and to
make his language more accessible to young learners, he also think about how
the way to make listening more fun and easy, not hard and boring. The teacher
as their model so he always think about how they are going to introduce an
activity before go to class. Writing out instructions as part of lesson plan
will really help the teacher to notice what language that using for young
learners. The language is too complex for the beginner pupils. He has to
imagine as a beginner learning a new language and see if what he say is too
difficult to follow. He needs to modify what he says. Instructions, if well
thought out and accompanied always with demonstration.
Preschoolers love to
play with words. They talk continuously both to themselves and others, keeping
conversations going by asking endless questions that may be hard to answer.
Conversing helps them learn to listen and speak. While they may still speak
only in three or four word sentences, they use rules of language naturally. They
use their growing vocabularies and communication skills to express their
feelings, ideas and curiosity about the world around them.
There are some ways to
teach children effective communication skills. The teacher play a music, then
he sing a song. If the song is about watermelon, he uses watermelon as a tool
to teach them. Then, the learners are imitates the teacher’s instructions. They
will learn about vocabulary and how to pronounce each of word. Kids love stories.
Then, the teachers start off a story and have them to finish it. He can tell
them a nursery rhyme and have them make up an alternate ending or add on to the
story. This exercise is great for teaching beginning verbal communication
skills. Other strategy is the teacher commands the students to write out
directions from their house to somewhere fun; for example, the ice candy shop.
They should able to write how the way to find the road from their house to some
places. Then, they present it to their friends in front of the class. Kids love
games. There are some games that usually used in learning process. Such as
simon says, Red Light (green light), I spy, obstacle courses, follow the
reader, and others.
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