FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING AND SPEAKING SKILLS

LISTENING
What is the factor that affecting the LISTENING skills??

FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING SKILLS

Listening Skills

Listening is an important part of effective communication. We need to concentrate on encouraging not only students, teachers, but ourselves, to exhibit good listening behaviors and strategies. Listening is a process that involves actively hearing what another person is communicating and attending to that communication. Listening is how we receive the verbal portion of a person's message. By listening, we can show concern and interest in understanding both the person and the situation.

Listening can be affacted by:

Personal bias
Environmental factors A short attention span

Rehearsing a response
Daydreaming Hot words

Through the use of filtering.

PERSONAL BIAS
Bias can take on many forms. Personal prejudice can

affect how well we listen and how we perceive what the speaker is saying. Anger can also cause distortion of the message. As good communicators, personal bias and anger must be put aside in order to interpret the message. Be willing to listen to new ideas. Make eye contact with the speaker, use nonverbal communication, such as nodding your head or smiling to show that you are interested. Even if you do not agree with the speakers message, showing acceptance will let the speaker know that you have received their message

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
Environmental factors such as noise, temperature

and uncomfortable seating can cause us to focus our attention on other factors beside what the speaker is saying. Try to control environment factors whenever possible. Try adjusting the thermostat, finding another seat, or moving to a quiet place to continue the conversation. It is hard to focus attention when we are constantly distracted by outside forces.

SHORT ATTENTION SPAN

As we receive a message, we must attend to it or we will

lose it. Some people have trouble remembering points to discuss when the speaker is talking. Try taking notes as the speaker talks, or use a cue to help you remember what you were going to say. If you find your attention wondering, concentrate on what the speaker is saying, and reherse how you will answer, or what you are going to say to keep in your mind on the task at hand. Ask questions to clarify and to become involved in the conversation. Concentration helps you receive accurate information and indicates that you are interested in what speaker is saying.

Dont be like this!!!

REHEARSING A RESPONSE
Many times we catch the drift of what the speaker is

saying and we begin to reherse a response, thereby missing parts of the message. Other times we may be anticipating our turn to speak and will spend time mentally or physically reviewing notes and will miss what the speaker has said.

DAYDREAMING
We are capable of receiving and processing

information more rapidly than a speaker can deliver it. This causes us to have spare time to think or daydream, and if we dont concentrate on the message being delivered, we will find ourselves drifting or daydreaming.

HOT WORDS
We all have certain words that we react to.

Sometimes when a speaker uses a hot word in his or her message we will concentrate more on the meaning or the word, or its implications for us. Consequently, we tend to lose sight of what is being said by the speaker.

FILTERING
Many times we will be asked to attend a seminar

where we exhibit little or no interest in the topic. As listeners, we tend to listen to get an overview of what is going to be presented and then simply tune out the rest of message.

SPEAKING
What is the factor that affecting the SPEAKING

skills??

FACTORS AFFECTING SPEAKING SKILLS

1. Listening comprehension 2. Understand English pronunciation 3. Grammatical accuracy 4. Accent neutralization 5. Vocabulary 7. English fluency 8. Speak with enthusiasm 9. Self-confidence to being a great English speaker 10. The length of answers 11. Organization Ideas

LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Listening comprehension is a very basic skill one must have in order to be a good English speaker. Why? One of the most common and critical mistakes non-native speakers of English make is focusing their time and effort in improving their English speaking skills without first assessing and practicing their English listening comprehension skills. A lot of them actually know grammar rules pretty well and can construct even complex sentences. Surprisingly, just when you thought they can communicate well in English, they suddenly come to a halt when asked questions. Some nonnative speakers cannot understand the question/s, because the one asking speaks too fast or because of the speakers accent (in case of an Australian or a British speaker for example). They would often ask the speaker to repeat the question several times or request the speaker to speak more slowly, before they finally understand the question. Some, on the other hand, answer the questions impressively (with not many mistakes in grammar and pronunciation, good explanations and examples) just to find out in the end that he or she misunderstood the question, and therefore gave an in appropriate answer

UNDERSTAND ENGLISH PRONOUNCIATION

It is quite common for non-native speakers of English to mispronounce English words. However, it is not something we have to be ashamed of, but something we ought to understand. We have to get to the root/s of the problems, in order for us to improve our pronunciation. Here are some tips to understand English pronunciation better. English is not phonetic Unlike other languages, English is not phonetic. What does that mean? It means we dont always say English words the way we spell them. Example 1: The English word really is not pronounced as "re-a-li" or "re-a-lai", nor is the word really spelled as rili. Example 2: The English word read. At times it is pronounced as [red] and at times as [ri:d]. Although the spelling may not change, the way it is pronounced changes depending on the tense you are using. Thats one of the main reasons non-native speakers of English get confused in pronouncing many English words, especially if their native tongue is phonetic.

GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY
Common Mistakes in Grammar Nouns Example: There are three sheeps in the meadow. (Some nouns such as sheep, deer, salmon and trout have the same form in the singular as in the plural.) Pronouns Example: Everybody have their work to do. (The indefinite pronouns each, anyone, anybody, , everybody and everyone are referred to by singular pronouns. The sentence should have read Everybody has his work to do.)
Example: I watched a movie with my wife last night. He liked it very much. (Hes talking about his wife and then he used he to refer to her afterwards.) Adjectives Example: She is the most fairest girl I have ever seen. (Fairest is already in the superlative degree of comparison, so using most before it makes the meaning redundant.) Example: He is worst than my ex-husband. (If only two things/people are being compared, worse should be used instead of worst.)

 Adjectives Example: She is the most fairest girl I have ever seen. (Fairest is already in the superlative degree of comparison, so using most before it makes the meaning redundant.)

Verbs Ex. Few is expected to fail the test. (The indefinite pronouns both, many, several and few take a plural verb.)
Ex. I go to school yesterday. (The word yesterday indicates a past event, so the verb used should have been went.) Two ways of pronouncing the When used before a vowel sound, we say the as thee. Keep in mind that it is the sound we should listen to, not the letters themselves.

Example: The apple is pronounced as thee apple. The hour is pronounced as thee hour. (hour sounds like our)

ACCENT NEUTRALIZATION
What is accent? Who has an accent? What do we do to neutralize our accent? These questions and more will be answered by this post. Everyone has an accent. So, when I hear some people say, Shes good in English. She doesnt have an accent, I find it a bit amusing. Accent usually reflects the place where a person comes from, thats why its easy to say if someone is Korean, American, Filipino, British, Australian, etc., even if they all speak in English. Accent is also one of the main reasons why people have a hard time understanding each other, and thus many people strive to change their accent. I said change their accent not get rid of their accent, because I think its more appropriate to say the former. People can actually change their accent by studying another accent and imitating it. When people say neutralize or remove ones accent, what they often mean is to get the standard American English accent. So, how can we have this kind of accent? First, we ought to study our native tongues vowel and consonant sounds and compare it to the Standard American English vowels and sounds. By doing this, we will know why were having difficulty imitating their accent and how we can succeed on doing it.

VOCABULARY
Below are some examples of the most commonly misused words in the English language.
Accept versus Except 1. Accept is a verb which means to receive. Example: I accept your proposal. 2. Except is usually a preposition which means not included. Example: I eat all kinds of fruits except that one. 3. Except is a verb meaning to exclude. Example: Please except that vegetable from the grocery list. Affect versus Effect Usually, affect is a verb meaning to influence. Effect, on the other hand, is usually a noun meaning result. Example: Frequent drinking of alcohol affected his health. Example: One of the effects of illegal logging is flood. Its versus Its Its is the possessive case of the pronoun it. Its, on the other hand, is the contraction of the words, it is. Example: The airport changed its policy. Example: It's a very nice day today.

ENGLISH FLUENCY
English fluency means being able to use the language with ease. How can we assess our English fluency then? Below are questions that we ought to ask ourselves to gauge our English fluency. Do I pause a lot when I speak? Do I say ahh or uuhmm many times because I cant remember the right words that would be suitable for my sentences? Do I often say you know to replace the phrases I cant remember or explain myself? Do I speak so slowly, because Im too careful not to make mistakes in my sentences, that my listeners already tend to look drowsy? Do I make the pronunciation of certain words indistinguishable intentionally, because I am not sure how those words should be pronounced? If you answered yes to these questions, then you do have a problem in English fluency. In order to be more fluent in the said language, I suggest you practice speaking English as often as possible.

SPEAK WITH ENTHUSIASM

This guidance teaches how one could speak with enthusiasm and how this would help one become a great English speaker. 1. Speak up If you speak too softly, how in the world will people be able to hear clearly what you have to say? Do not expect the listeners to be the ones to exert effort in trying to understand you, if youre the one who wants to convey a message. 2. Be a singer Listen to songs. A good song has soft and loud parts, slow and fast parts. The changes in the volume and the rhythm makes the tune catchy, nice to listen to and even easy to remember at times. We should speak the same way. We should not speak in a monotonous tone that would put the listeners to sleep. We should sometimes speak fast, speak slowly, speak softly and speak loudly, depending on the ideas we would like to get across. 3. Feel it If you cant feel what you say, why would you expect the message to have an impact to the ones listening? Whether youre giving a speech, or taking an English exam, or answering a question, you should not sound as if youre reading something from a very boring textbook. You should put more feelings into it. Its not just the content that matters, its the delivery!

THE LENGTH OF ANSWERS

How long should one's answers be? The length of ones answers depends on the situation. If its just a conversation between friends, where you are telling someone a story which is very interesting for him/her, going into details and a long answer is okay. However, when one is in a job interview or an English examination, wherein the interviewer does not have much time to speak with you, you ought to give answers that are brief and detailed. Make sure you have already answered what has been asked, before moving on to elaborate on the details of your answer.

REFERENCES
http://ieltsm.blogspot.com/2010/03/factors-

affecting-english-speaking.html http://paraelink.org/7s2c/c7s2c_7.html http://www.scribd.com/doc/128138484/FactorsAffecting-Listening

THANK YOU