Understanding Language Skills: Listening and Speaking

Posted on Jan 26, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

Why Can’t We Separate Language Skills?

We can’t separate language skills for two main reasons:

  1. One skill can’t be performed without another in most cases. For example, it is impossible to speak in a conversation if you don’t listen as well.
  2. People use different skills when dealing with the same subject. For instance, someone who listens to a lecture may take notes and then write a report. The same person could also describe the lecture to friends or read an article about the lecturer.

Specifically, listening and speaking skills are not separate because you cannot speak without listening, and if you don’t listen, you cannot speak.

What is Intercultural Competence?

Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures. In interactions with people from foreign cultures, a person who is interculturally competent understands the culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling, and acting. Intercultural competence is also called “cross-cultural competence” (3C). Cultures can differ not only between continents or nations but also within the same company and even within the same family. The differences may be ethical, ethnic, geographical, historical, moral, political, or religious.

The basic requirements for intercultural competence are:

  • Empathy
  • Understanding of other people’s behaviors and ways of thinking
  • The ability to express one’s own way of thinking

Differences Between Written and Spoken Discourse

The most important differences between written and spoken discourse are:

  • Permanence: Spoken discourse is ephemeral, while written discourse is fixed and stable. Reading can be done at whatever time and speed the reader wishes.
  • Formality: Spoken language is often more informal, sometimes using short, incomplete sentences. Written language is typically more formal and polished.
  • Planning: Spoken language is often spontaneous and improvised, whereas written language is usually planned and organized.

Importance of Oral Skills (Listening and Speaking)

Oral language is the basis of language development and, therefore, of learning. Through speaking and listening, people learn concepts, develop vocabulary, and perceive the structure of language. Humans are social beings who are in continuous communication and interaction with each other. We cannot develop speaking skills unless we also develop listening skills. Listening to spoken English is an important way of acquiring the language, structures, and vocabulary.

Listening

Casual/Extensive Listening vs. Focused/Intensive Listening

In real life, there are two main ways in which we listen:

  • Casual Listening (Extensive): Listening without a particular purpose in mind, often without much concentration (e.g., listening to the radio).
  • Focused Listening (Intensive): Listening for a particular purpose, to find information we need to know. We listen more closely and focus on the most important points or specific information (e.g., listening to someone explaining something).

Listening as an Interactive Process

Both types of listening must take place simultaneously. Listeners adjust the way they listen to the listening situation, type of input, and listening purpose. Listening is an interactive process that goes on between the listener and the input, resulting in comprehension. Depending on the purpose of listening and the listener’s competence in the foreign language, they will use different types of knowledge, skills, and strategies, including:

  • Linguistic Competence: The ability to recognize the elements of the language system (vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure).
  • Discourse Competence: Knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text.
  • Sociolinguistic Competence: Knowledge about different types of inputs and their usual structure and content.
  • Strategic Competence: The ability to use top-down strategies (attending to the overall meaning) and bottom-up strategies (focusing on words and phrases). The ability to maintain the flow of communication.

Main Listening Skills

  1. The Literal Level (Literal Identification)
    • Phonological: Control of the phonological system to discriminate sounds, words, and intonation patterns.
    • Syntactic: Recognition of grammatical structures, sentence types, and constituents.
    • Lexical: Recognition of the meaning of words and sentences.
    • Other Skills: Comprehension of something general (global comprehension), recognition of main ideas (skimming), and concentrating on detailed comprehension (scanning).
  2. The Inferential Level (Related to Text Comprehension)
    • Inferential: Inferring meaning, guessing meaning, understanding the speaker’s attitude, deducing meaning, and predicting what the speaker will say next.
    • Textual: Making connections between parts of the text, recognizing discourse markers, cohesive devices, and different styles.
  3. Critical Level: Making assumptions, drawing conclusions, and making evaluations.
  4. Creative Level: Handling verbal and non-verbal communication strategies. Identifying and discarding conversation fillers and hesitations.

What is Fossilization?

Errors that have become a permanent part of the way a learner speaks, as they do not notice them.

Speaking Skills

We can summarize the skills and knowledge involved in speaking as follows:

  • Linguistic Competence: Using grammar structures accurately, selecting understandable and appropriate vocabulary, and producing sounds, stress patterns, rhythmic structures, and intonations.
  • Sociolinguistic Competence (Pragmatic Awareness): Assessing characteristics of the target audience, including shared knowledge, status and power relations, interest levels, and differences in perspectives.
  • Strategic Competence: Applying strategies to enhance comprehensibility, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, checking for listener comprehension, and using gestures or body language.
  • Discourse Competence: Interconnecting utterances to form a meaningful text and paying attention to the success of the interaction, adjusting components of speech to maximize listener comprehension and involvement.

Communication Strategies

Communication strategies are techniques that learners use to solve any possible problems that may occur when they are trying to express themselves.

Types of Communication Strategies

  • Avoidance Strategies
    • Message Abandonment: Leaving a message unfinished due to language difficulties.
    • Topic Avoidance: Avoiding topic areas or concepts that pose language difficulties.
  • Compensatory Strategies
    • Circumlocution: Describing or exemplifying the target object or action.
    • Approximation: Using an alternative term that expresses the meaning as closely as possible.
    • Use of All-Purpose Words: Extending a general, empty lexical item to contexts where specific words are lacking.
    • Word Coinage: Creating a non-existing L2 word based on a supposed rule.
    • Prefabricated Patterns: Using memorized stock phrases, usually for “survival” purposes.
    • Nonlinguistic Signals: Mime, gesture, facial expression, or sound imitation.
    • Literal Translation: Translating literally from L1 to L2.
    • Foreignizing: Using an L1 word by adjusting it to L2 phonology and/or morphology.
    • Code-Switching: Using an L1 word with L1 pronunciation or an L3 word with L3 pronunciation while speaking in L2.
    • Appeal for Help: Asking for aid from the interlocutor either directly or indirectly.
    • Stalling or Time-Gaining Strategies: Using fillers or hesitation devices to fill pauses and gain time to think.