Summary of Nation and Newtons Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

Nation and Newton (2009) in Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking discuss about the way to teach listening and speaking to ESL/EFL learners. Nation and Newton classify those ways into ten chapters. The first chapter is about parts and goals of listening and speaking course. The second chapter tells us about how to begin listening and speaking in other language. The third chapter tells about listening. The fourth chapter is about the use of language-focused learning through dictation. The fifth chapter is about pronunciation. The sixth chapter tells about learning through task-focused interaction. The seventh chapter is about learning through pushed output. The eighth chapter is about languagefocused learning. The ninth chapter tells about how to develop fluency, and the last chapter is about monitoring and testing progress. In this summary, we will discuss about each chapter of this book. On the first chapter, the writers talk mainly what is called four strands. There are four strands that are used as standard of well-balanced language. These four strands are learning through meaningfocused input which is learning through listening and reading where the learners attention is conveyed by the language, meaning-focused output which is learning through speaking and writing, deliberate attention to language items and language features which is learning through direct vocabulary study, and developing fluent use of known language items and features over four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Meaning-focused input involves learning through listening and reading- using language receptively. On the other hand, meaning-focused output involves learning through speaking and writingusing language productively. Language-focused learning involves the deliberate teaching of language features such as pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse. The fluency development strand should involve all the four skill of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Integrating the four strands are opportunities for certain types of learning. They differ from each other according to the conditions which are needed for different types of learning. On the second chapter, the writers tell about suggestions and techniques for learners. He suggests what learners should learn, how teaching and learning should be applied properly, what approaches and activities for teaching and learning in a beginners course and so on. Also, in this chapter some sets of learning that should be learned are using a new alphabet, phrasing for talking about ourselves, phrases and vocabulary for everyday life, sight vocabulary, classroom expressions, and high frequency words. Moreover, there are principles that relevant to the teaching of beginners such as meaning, interest, new language, understanding, and stress free.

Summary of Nation and Newtons Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

All about listening will be found in chapter three. This chapter discusses about the definition of listening, models of listening, types of listening, listening processes, activities for meaning-focused listening, supporting listening, information transfer, strategy in listening, and monitoring meaningfocused listening. It is said that listening is the natural precursor to speaking; the early stages of language development in a persons first language are depend on listening. It has two types, one-way listening and two-way listening. The two processes of learning are bottom-up processes and top-down processes. There are also a lot of methods for meaning-focused listening. For instance, listening to stories, oral cloze, picture ordering, what is it?, same or different, listen and choose, listen and draw, and padded question. Furthermore, we can support our listening by providing more experiences, guiding the learners, setting up cooperative learning arrangements, and providing the means by which learners can achieve comprehension by themselves. In information transfer, a small amount of written language is involved in group activities. In these activities, learners produce the message they hear in a new form. In this case, teacher needs strategy training such as communication strategy and learning strategy. The fourth chapter is about components in dictation including its definition, function, and variation. Here, we are going to know how to choose dictation texts. Dictation is a technique where the learners receive some spoken input, hold this in their memory for a short time, and then write what they heard. The key is it should contain useful or interesting content like seen in humorous or unusual stories, dialogues, and poems. Next, the writers suggest teachers to give learners a pre-dictation exercise. Also, they inform some variations of dictation which are easily prepared in classroom. The examples are running dictation, one chance dictation, dictation of long phrases, guided dictation, dictation for a mixed class, peer dictation, completion dictation, and etc. Moreover, we will also know some related techniques that can be practiced. In this case, the writer thinks that read-and-look-up exercise is much better than the others, delayed repetition and delayed copying. The fifth chapter is about pronunciation. It explains the importance of pronunciation and how to apply it while teaching. It also has some procedures and techniques that can be used in order to improve students ability in pronouncing words. In addition, the theme of this chapter is about the importance of having a broad view of what is involved in learning a new sound system. What learners need is practicing to transfer what they have practiced to monitor theirs spontaneous use.

Summary of Nation and Newtons Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

On the sixth chapter, the w writers talks and examines mostly about activities that bring listening and speaking together in communicative activities. It includes task-focused interaction like negotiation which is aimed to gain more comprehension in both activities and what things are suitable to be used, what factor will affect negotiation, and other explanation about what negotiation is. The seventh chapter tells about speaking by learning through pushed-output. It describes kinds of speaking like formal speaking and informal speaking, what can be applied in speaking through pushing output, and the way to teach speaking to learners. Additionally, it also discuss about problems that learners might have or face during the process of speaking and how to overcome or handle those problems. As an example, possible cause is lack of fluency and the solution is do repetitive activities. On the eighth chapter, language-focused learning will be discussed. We will know what language-focused learning is. It is a kind of deliberate teaching that concerns with vocabulary, grammar, and discourse. The objective of this chapter seems to help learners understand and produce spoken language well. Furthermore, this chapter also gives information about the requirements in languagefocused learning including some aspects that should be noticed carefully by teachers while teaching in a classroom. Fluency is a goal that teachers expect their students have. On the ninth chapter, all information about fluency will be given since this chapter is about developing fluency. The information that we will get are the characteristic of fluency, the difference between fluency and accuracy, the way to develop fluency, how to design some fluency activities, and many else about fluency. This information which is given by the writer is very helpful to teachers so that they are helped to create useful teaching activities to be practiced while they are teaching. The last chapter is about some suggestions to monitor progresses are discussed. The suggestions which are given help us not only in speaking but also in listening teaching activities. We will also know when a test can be categorized as a good test or not. A good test should be reliable, valid, and practical. Moreover, we will learn a lot of kinds of listening and speaking tests. These kinds of tests can be practiced while teachers teach their student in listening and speaking activities. For example, it can be used in dictation, recorded cloze, text with question in listening while interviews and scale, conventional cloze, and dycoms are used in speaking.

Summary of Nation and Newtons Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

In short, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking written by I.S.P. Nation and Jonathan Newton is good to be read by its readers especially teachers. Since its title is listening and speaking, this book has described a wide range of techniques and strategies that can be implemented for improving learners ability especially in both skills above. These techniques and strategies will be very valuable to learners only if their teacher use it well. By doing this information, teaching and learning English can be effectively done in classroom activities and hopefully it will make the objectives of this book successfully transferred to its readers