FM-AA-CIA-15 Rev.

0 10-July-2020

Study Guide in COG 1 – REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION Module No. 7

STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. 7

INTRODUCTION
MODULE OVERVIEW

This module aims to develop the ability of pre-service English teachers to organize, design, implement
and evaluate a remedial English program in any of the four-macro skills. This is geared for English language
learners who are faced with difficulty in communicative competence in one or more domains. It also attempts to
provide actual remediation through hands-on practice and various situational case studies.

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

In this module, challenge yourself to:

1. demonstrate an understanding of the nature of remedial instruction in the 2 English language skills:
listening and speaking
2. plan and design suitable remedial activities in improving the listening and speaking skills of students

REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN SPEAKING AND LISTENING

Remedial Instruction in SPEAKING

A child’s persistent, specific language difficulty is a language disorder. Disorders in speech

occur at phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and pragmatic levels. In a rural high
school class, nearly 20% to 30% are slow learners, learning at the rate and depth of below average
peers. Their communicative disorders not remediated at primary level, continue to haunt them till they
live.

There are five stages in the speaking process:

1. Conceptualization: it is the internal and external stimulus that causes intention and intervention.
2. Formulation: in this stage the intention is verbalized in the mind. The verbalized concepts are
formulated through reciprocal actions.
3. Articulatory buffer: the speaker speech is made as a unit and during the conversation the speech
it´s been monitoring in the mind.
4. Articulation: it´s the process of making sounds using the tongue, lips, teeth and palate.
5. auditory feedback: this stage contributes with smooth flow of the speech.

Problems Faced by the Students in Speaking English Language (Gulan Mustafa Ali Kan, 2015)

1] Fear of committing mistakes: Most students hesitate to speak English because what others may
think if they find the mistake. They can laugh at them or insult them. To be on safe side, they prefer to
keep quiet or speak as little as possible.

Solution: It is normal for a non-native speaker of English to commit mistakes while learning English
because English is not his mother tongue. Even the uneducated or less educated native speakers do
mistakes while speaking English. One should take courage to speak English without caring for
mistakes every time. They may ask the listeners to rectify them, as and when needed.

2] non-availability of words to express feelings: A non-native speaker of English wants to say

something but he doesn’t get words to express them in English.

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Solution: A student should always have two dictionaries – one from mother tongue to English and
other from English to mother tongue. Searching words in these dictionaries inspires one to speak
English.

3] Difference of syntax: The arrangement of words [syntax] in mother tongue is different from the
syntax of English. One cannot translate a sentence from mother tongue to English in the exact same
manner.

What makes speaking difficult?

1. Clustering
2. Redundancy
3. Reduced forms
4. Performance Variables
5. Colloquial Language
6. Rate of delivery
7. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation
8. Interaction

Teaching Pronunciation
1. Listen and Imitate – Learners listen to a model provided by a teacher and then repeat or imitate
it.
2. Phonetic Training – Articulatory description, articulatory diagrams, and a phonetic alphabet
are used.
3. Minimal Pair Drills – These provide practice on problematic sounds in the target language
through listening discrimination and spoken practice. Drills begin with word levels then move
to sentence level.
4. Contextualized minimal pairs – The teacher established the setting or context then key
vocabulary is presented. Students provide meaningful response to sentence stem.
5. Visual Aids – These materials are used to cue productions of focus sounds.
6. Tongue Twisters – “HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK IF A WOODCHUCK
COULD CHUCK WOOD?”
7. Developmental Approximation Drills – Second language speakers take after the steps that
English-speaking children follow in acquiring certain sounds.
8. Practice of vowel shifts and stress shifts related to affixation
Vowel shift – mime (long i) mimic (short i)
Sentence context – stress mimes often mimic the gestures of passerby.
Stress shift – PHOtograph phoTOgraphy
Sentence Context – I can tell from these photographs that you are very good at photography.
9. Reading Aloud/Recitation – passages and script are used for students to practice and then read
aloud focusing on stress, timing and intonation.
10. Recording of learners’ production – playback allows for giving of feedback and self –
evaluation.
The use of accuracy-based activities
1. Contextualized Practice – This aims to establish the link between form and function
2. Personalized language – personalized practice encourages learners to express their ideas,
feelings and emotions.
3. Building awareness of the social use of language – this involves understanding social
conventions in interaction
4. Building confidence – the key is to create positive climate in classroom where learners are

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Study Guide in COG 1 – REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION Module No. 7

encouraged to take risk and engage in activities.

Talking to second language learners in the beginning level (Carry 1997)
1. Speak at standard speed – this means providing more and slightly longer pauses to give students
more time to make sense of the utterances.
2. Use more gestures, movements and facial expressions – these provides more emphasis on
words, and give learners extra clues as they search for meaning.
3. Be careful with fused forms – language compressions or reduces forms can be difficult for
learners
4. Use shorter simpler sentences
5. Use specific names instead of pronouns.

For more readings check the link journal for remedial Instruction in Speaking:
https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/Vol-4%20Issue-6/Version-4/A04640109.pdf

From a study on slow learners, Erin N.Kig Ed.S (2008) has recommended some steps to be followed
in the classroom for teaching slow learners.
 Repetition, Repetition, Repetition. You might feel like you are saying the same thing over andover,
but it helps make concrete.
 Encourage other activities in which the child can experience success and keep them connected.
 Tutoring-This helps fill in gaps in basic skills and it helps a student
 Teach study skills to help a student become more efficient in studying.
 Teach the most important concepts and leave out some of the less important
 Details.
 Peer tutoring

Remedial Instruction in Listening

A. Factors Affecting Students' Listening Comprehension

1. Internal factors - refer to the learner characteristics, language proficiency, memory, age,
gender, background knowledge as well as aptitude, motivation, and psychological and
physiological factors
2. External factors - are mainly related to the type of language input and tasks and the context
in which listening occurs

B. Internal Factors
1. Problems in language proficiency (cover problems on phonetics and phonology like phonetic
discrimination, and phonetic varieties; problems in grammar, and lexicological problems)
2. Poor background knowledge
3. Lack of motivation to listen
4. Psychological factors
5. Other internal factors (age, attention span, memory span, reaction and sensitivity)

C. External Factors
1. Speed of delivery and different accents of the speakers
2. The content and task of listening materials
3. Context - refers to the spatial-temporal location of the utterance, i.e. on the particular time
and particular place at which the speaker makes an utterance and the particular time and place
at which the listener hears or reads the utterance.
4. Co-text - another major factor influencing the interpretation of meaning. It refers to the
linguistic context or the textual environment provided by the discourse or text in which a

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Study Guide in COG 1 – REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION Module No. 7

particular utterance occurs. Co-text constrains the way in which we interpret the response. Here
we can infer that the person is not going to a picnic by judging from the co-text.
A: Are you coming going to Baguio with us?
B: I have a paper to finish by Monday.

D. How to Improve Students' Listening Comprehension

1. Teach pronunciation, stress, and intonation of the critical sounds of English
2. Practice sound discrimination, liasions, and incomplete plosives
3. Recognize stressed and unstressed words
4. Enrich vocabulary
5. Teach grammar
6. Practice inferring information not directly stated
7. Improve skills in predicting
8. Teach note-taking skills
Read more:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325943953_LISTENING_COMPREHENSION_DIFFICU
LTIES_OF_COLLEGE_STUDENTS_
BASIS_FOR_REMEDIATION_STRATEGIES_IN_THE_CLASSROOMN

ACTIVITIES

I. Collaborative Work: Proposed Remedial Activities for Listening and Speaking Skill.

Score 6
A6 – The proposed activities command attention because of its insightful development and mature
style. It presents a cogent analysis of or response to the text, elaborating that response with well-
chosen examples and persuasive reasoning. The 6 paper shows that its writer can usually choose
words aptly, use sophisticated sentences effectively, and observe the conventions of written English.
Score 5
A5 - The proposed activities are clearly competent. It presents a thoughtful analysis of or response to
the text, elaborating that response with appropriate examples and sensible reasoning. A 5 paper
typically has a less fluent and complex style than a 6, but does show that its writer can usually
choose words accurately, vary sentences effectively, and observe the conventions of written English.
Score 4
A4 - The proposed activities are satisfactory, sometimes marginally so. It presents an adequate
analysis of or response to the text, elaborating that response with sufficient examples and acceptable
reasoning. Just as these examples and this reasoning, will ordinarily be less developed than those in 5
papers, so will the 4 paper's style be less effective. Nevertheless, a 4 paper shows that its writer
can usually choose words of sufficient precision, control sentences of reasonable variety, and
observe the conventions of written English.
Score 3
A3 The proposed activities are unsatisfactory in one or more of the following ways. It may analyze
or respond to the text illogically; it may lack coherent structure or elaboration with examples; it may
reflect an incomplete understanding of the text or the topic. Its prose is usually characterized by at
least one of the following: frequently imprecise word choice; little sentence variety; occasional major
errors in grammar and usage, or frequent minor errors.

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Score 2
A2 - The proposed activities show serious weaknesses, ordinarily of several kinds. It frequently
presents a simplistic, inappropriate, or incoherent analysis of or response to the text, one that may
suggest some significant misunderstanding of the text or the topic. Its prose is usually characterized
by at least one of the following: simplistic or inaccurate word choice; monotonous or fragmented
sentence structure; many repeated errors in grammar and usage.
Score 1
A1 - The proposed activities suggest severe difficulties in reading and writing conventional English.
It may disregard the topic's demands, or it may lack any appropriate pattern of structure or
development. It may be inappropriately brief. It often has a pervasive pattern of errors in word
choice, sentence structure, grammar, and usage CTIVITY
SUMMARY

Language teaching covers four macro-skills needed for communicating – listening, speaking, reading and
writing. Good language teachers plan lessons, and sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the
macro-skills, rather than focusing on developing only one macro-skill at a time. Listening and speaking are oral
skills. Reading and writing are literacy skills. Each week teachers should include some activities which focus on
developing the students’ oral skills (e.g. pair and group interactions and games) and some activities which focus
on literacy skills (e.g. reading and analysing texts and then students write their own). It’s important for teaching
activities to be designed so that learners receive input and modelled language (through listening and reading
activities) before they are expected to produce those modelled structures (in their own speaking and writing).
Listening and reading activities prepare students to be able to speak and write their own texts.

REFERENCES

https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/Vol-4%20Issue-6/Version-4/A04640109.pdf
https://adilblogger.com/problems-faced-students-speaking-english-language/

PREPARED BY:

ZARAH JANE B. ANUDDIN, MEd

Faculty, Secondary and Professional Education

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 5