Receptive skills are our focus for the first course and we'd like to hear your views on teaching reading and listening. These are two skills that both pose similar challenges for the teacher (and the learner). They are both 'covert' and therefore hidden from the teacher's gaze. And one of the challenges is to try to get inside learners' heads to understand what they are doing when they read or listen. Another is whether we can impact on these internal processes to make learners read or listen more effectively. The questions of the helpfulness of strategy training for learners and what should we consider when teaching strategy are also at the fore.
Lots of questions, we know. Let's start the ball rolling with this one, what do you feel are the biggest challenges you face when teaching reading and listening? And, what steps do you take to overcome these challenges? Feel free to bring in any of the above issues (and others) in your post.
If you'd like to watch something to get you thinking, here's a clip or two focusing on listening.
And here are a couple focusing on reading strategies, both of which gives ideas for dealing with unknown vocab
