Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Suggestions for further reading
V.J.Cook, Active Intonation, Longman, 1968.
A.C.Gimson, An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English, Arnold,
2nd edn, 1970.
B.Haycraft, The Teaching of Pronunciation—A Classroom Guide,
Longman, 1970.
M.Heliel and T.McArthur, Learning Rhythm and Stress, Collins, 1974.
J.D.O’Connor, Better English Pronunciation, Cambridge University
Press, 1967.
J.D.O’Connor and G.F.Arnold, Intonation of Colloquial English,
Longman, 2nd edn, 1973.
P.Tench, Pronunciation Skills, Macmillan 1981.

---

65
Chapter 6
Listening and Speaking
Listening
It is a principle common to this and the previous chapter that
listening should precede speaking. Clearly, it is impossible to
expect a student to produce a sound which does not exist in
his mother tongue or a natural sentence using the stress,
rhythms and intonation of a native speaker of the foreign
language without first of all providing him with a model of
the form he is to produce. It is not possible to produce
satisfactorily what one has not heard. The logical first step,
therefore, in attempting to achieve oral fluency or accuracy is
to consider the learner’s ability to listen.
At first sight it appears that listening is a passive skill, and
speaking is an active one. This is not really true, since the
decoding of a message (i.e. listening) calls for active
participation in the communication between the participants.
A receptive skill is involved in understanding the message.
Indeed, it is essential to the speaker in any interaction that he is
assured continually that his words are being understood. This
is usually overtly signalled to him in a conversation by the
nods, glances, body movements and often by the non-verbal
noises (mm, uh-huh, oh, etc.) of his listener. A simple
experiment to demonstrate the truth of this is to make
absolutely no sound during a telephone conversation (where
the verbal cues that the message is being understood are
essential, since visual cues by the nature of telephone calls are
eliminated)—within a few seconds the person speaking is
guaranteed to ask if you are still there.

---

Listening and Speaking
66
This visual and verbal signalling confirms to the speaker
that listening and understanding has taken place. The
receptive capacity for decoding the language and content of
the message is a skill which can be trained and developed
through teaching, no less than the productive skill of speaking.