Teng1 Teaching English

MODULE 2
LANGUAGE MACROSKILLS

Desired Learning Outcomes:

K: Apply different reading and writing activities in planning a lesson.
S: Create a lesson plan that shows enhancement of reading and writing.
V: Explain the importance of integrating reading and writing activities in the class.

Lesson 1: The Six Macro skills

Duration: 4 hours/ 1 week
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
a. Analyze pictures as to what macro skills they show;
b. Present learned information about language macro skills through visual
organizers;
c. Determine the macro skills that different activities can enhance;
d. Identify the six language macro skills.
Refrences:
Barrot, J. (2016). Current principles and concepts in the teaching of macro skills. Retrieved on July
20, 2020 from https://www.national-u.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JSTAR-
6_Barrot.pdf

Manitoba.ca. (2017). Manitoba curriculum framework of outcomes and standards. Retrieved on July
20, 2020 from https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/ela/docs/frameworks-ktos1.html#:~:text
=Viewing%20and%20Representing,-Visual%20language%20is&text=Repre senting
%20enables%20students%20to%20communicate,art%2C%20drama%2C%20and
%20mime

K 3. Show your knowledge about the six macroskills by filling in the chart below. (5 minutes)

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_______________________________ (5 minutes) ____________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

T 9. PICTURE ANALYSIS (10 minutes)

Recognize the macro skill that is shown in each picture below.

Which photos show reception of knowledge?

__________________________________________
Which photos show production of learning?
___________________________________________
Which refers to skills that show reception of knowledge?
_________________________________
Which refers to skills that show production of learning?
___________________________________

T 10. READING TEXT (60 minutes)

Read pages 9-16 and comply the activities inserted therein.

LISTENING AND SPEAKING

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Oral language 1 is the primary foundation of literacy. Through listening and speaking,
people communicate thoughts, feelings, experiences, information, and opinions, and learn to
understand themselves and others. Oral language carries a community's stories, values, and
beliefs.

Listening and speaking enable students to explore ideas and concepts as well as to
understand and organize their experiences and knowledge. They use oral language to learn,
identify, and solve problems and reach goals. To become discerning, lifelong learners, students
at all grades need to develop fluency and confidence in their oral language abilities. They benefit
from many opportunities to listen and speak both informally and formally for a variety of
purposes.
Oral texts are used in a wide range of situations, casual and formal, immediate and distant.
These texts are often communicated through electronic media and technology. Speakers and
listeners use oral texts for a variety of purposes, ranging from functional to aesthetic. They create
and respond to a variety of functional and aesthetic texts, obtain and communicate information,
and build relationships with others.
1. Speaking
Speaking is a complex process that involves simultaneous attention to content, vocabulary,
discourse, information structuring, morphosyntax, sound system, prosody, and pragmalinguistic
features (Hinkel, 2006). It runs in a continuum from the immediate and most familiar to
decontextualized and more formal situations. It has also been observed that formal oral
communication shares similar features with written communication (CelceMurcia & Olshtain,
2000).
From a sociopragmatic point of view, teaching speaking involves effective communication
strategies, discourse organization and structuring, conversational routines or small talks, speech
acts, and conversation formulas like forms of address (Hinkel, 2006, p. 116). Celce-Murcia and
Olshtain (2000) have suggested some effective speaking activities in a language classroom. The
first activity deemed effective is role-play in which it simulates real communication that occurs
beyond classrooms. Other strategies include group discussions, using the target language outside
classrooms, using learners’ input, using feedback, and using authentic speeches. On top of these
activities, selfevaluation would also be helpful in enhancing speech performances (Barrot,
2015b).
As regards speaking proficiency, it can be measured through fluency, comprehensibility, and
accuracy. Oral fluency refers to the speaker’s automaticity of oral production (Derwing, Munro,
& Thomson, 2007). Researchers in the 1990s believed that it can be achieved through
engagement in communicative interactions (Hinkel, 2006) and can be enhanced through well-
designed and well-planned tasks (Ellis, 2003). Another aspect of speaking proficiency is
comprehensibility which refers to the ease and difficulty with which a listener understands L2
accented speech (Derwing et al., 2007). It can be adversely affected by filled pauses, hesitations,
excessive and inappropriate pauses, false starts, and slow speaking rate (Derwing, Munro &
Thomson, 2001). The third aspect of speaking proficiency is accuracy which relates to both
grammar and pronunciation. Since grammar will be extensively discussed in the succeeding
section, this part will just focus on pronunciation and its teaching.

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T 10-A.

2. Listening
Usually tied up with speaking as a skill is listening. It is a complex process that involves the
understanding of spoken data and involves receptive, interpretative, or constructive cognitive
processes (Rost, 2005). This definition implies that listening and listening comprehension are
essentially the same. Similar to reading, listening involves both bottom-up and top-down
processing rather than using these processes individually and that these processes operate
simultaneously.
L2 listening has three subprocesses namely decoding, comprehension, and interpretation
(Rost, 2005). Decoding refers to attending, perceiving speech, recognizing words, and parsing
grammar. Comprehension deals with activation of schema, representing propositions, and logical
inferencing. Interpretation refers to matching the meaning to previous expectations and
evaluating discourse meanings (p. 504). Further, listening can be reciprocal or nonreciprocal.
Reciprocal listening involves dialogues in which the original listener and speaker have
alternating roles as source and as receiver of information. Nonreciprocal listening involves a one-
way role taking as in the case of listening to monologues. Comparing the two, nonreciprocal
listening appears to be more difficult to undertake (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000).
Other variables that influence comprehensibility are speech rate and metrical cadence. In
most English varieties, 90% of content words have their stress on the first syllable, most of
which are monosyllabic. Also, each pause unit in speech contains at least one prominent content
item. As for speech rate, listening generally improves as speech rate is reduced to an optimum
level. Normal speech rate is usually from 100 to 240 words per minute (Rost, 2005). However,
other research findings revealed that more than reducing speech rate, what facilitates
comprehensibility is the additional pauses at natural pause boundaries.
As regards listening pedagogy, Hinkel (2006) argued that it has shifted from a more
linguistically-based approach to a more-schematic-based one which incorporates cultural
constructs, discourse clues, pragmatic norms, and topic familiarity. Current listening pedagogy
also involves the enhancement of metacognitive and cognitive strategies to facilitate listening
comprehension. The most widely adopted metacognitive strategies for listening include self-
monitoring and evaluating comprehension process, planning for listening, and determining
listening difficulties. As for cognitive strategies, they may include inferencing, elaboration, and
summarizing. Note-taking and other academic listening activities are techniques appropriate for
advanced listeners and can be integrated with speaking, reading, and writing.

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T 10-B.

READING AND WRITING

Written language is a powerful means of communicating and learning. Reading and

writing enable students to extend their knowledge and use of language, increase their
understanding of themselves and others, and experience enjoyment and personal satisfaction.

Reading and writing provide students with means of accessing ideas, views, and
experiences. By using effective reading strategies with materials at appropriate instructional
levels, students construct meaning and develop thoughtful and critical interpretations of a variety
of texts. Writing enables students to explore, shape, and clarify their thoughts, and to
communicate them to others. By using reading and writing strategies, they discover and refine
ideas.

Written texts, those generated by students and others, serve a variety of purposes ranging
from informational to aesthetic. Students read literary and informational texts for pleasure and
knowledge. They write texts to communicate ideas clearly, artistically, and with integrity. They
come to appreciate the ways in which literary language affects imagination and conveys human
experiences. Students write a variety of texts to make sense of and convey information, to
express their own and others' experiences, and to provide enjoyment for themselves and others.
Both as writers and readers, students need to experience a wide range of texts and use them for a
variety of purposes.
3. Reading
Traditionally, people imagine reading as a simple process that is linear and passive.
However, more recent views have established that it is a complex cognitive process of decoding
written symbols. It is a “linguistic, socio-cultural, physical and cognitive activity” (CPDD, 2010,
p. 31) which involves getting meaning from and putting meaning to the printed text. This
definition implies that reading and reading comprehension are essentially the same meaning.
Reading, in many instances, requires simultaneous application of skills and subprocesses, such as
identifying author’s mood and purpose, identifying main ideas, context clues, analysis,

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evaluation, recognizing and assigning meaning to words, constructing meanings at sentence and
discourse levels, and relating such meanings to the readers’ already existing knowledge (Graves,
Juel, & Graves, 1998). According to Chun and Plass (1997), two factors may have great
influence on reading ability of learners: L2 language proficiency and L1 reading skills. Others
are topic interest and prior knowledge (Barry & Lazarte, 1998) as well as linguistic complexity
(Barrot, 2012; Barrot, 2013; Barrot, 2015c).
Reading is an interactive and problem-solving process making meaning from the text. It
possesses the following characteristics: (a) reading is a language skill that can be developed
through systematic practice; (b) reading is a two-way process that involves the communication
between the author and the reader; (c) reading is visual which involves the transmission of
message via optic nerves and requires good eyesight; (d) reading is a productive process that has
purpose whether academically, personally, or professionally; (e) reading is the foundation of
good writing. Linguists assert that one of the most effective means of developing writing skills is
to be a good reader. Through reading, the reader gains knowledge on lexemes, syntax,
morphology, and orthography.

T 10-C.

4. Writing
Writing refers to the act of putting ideas in text whether print or nonprint. It is a “non-linear,
exploratory, and generative process” as they discover ideas and reformulate them (Zamel, 1983,
p.165). Writing allows the writer to reflect on the world around her/him; it makes

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communication effective; it documents and captures thoughts and ideas relevant to decision
making; and it provides knowledge to both the reader and the writer. Any composition we write
can either be short or long. It can range from short paragraphs to long essays. As regards L1-L2
writing relationship, Kobayashi and Rinnert (2008) claimed that transfer of writing skills happen
in a bidirectional way; that is, from L1 to L2 and vice versa. He further concluded that writing
competence can be transferred across languages. This may be the reason why in Krapels’s (1990)
review, findings revealed that even advanced L2 writers consider themselves stronger when
composing using their native language; that is, an increase use of L1 in writing correlates with
better L2 writing especially if the topic is culture bound.
According to Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), a well-written text has two features that
facilitate the comprehensibility of a text. These are coherence and cohesion. Coherence relates
to the pragmatic features and culturally acceptable rhetorical organization, structure, and
sequence. Cohesion, on the one hand, is the linguistic consequence of coherence through the use
of cohesive devices making it an overt feature of a text. As regards the writing process, Rollinson
(2005) has listed some insights that good writing involves revision; that writer need to have
specific audience for writing; that writing involves multiple drafts with feedback in between
them; that peers are useful resource of feedback at various stages of writing; that training
students to peer response leads to a more quality writing; and that peer and teacher feedback act
complementarily with additive value.
Currently, there are five approaches to teaching writing: product approach, process approach,
genre approach, process genre approach, and post-process pedagogy. More recently, Barrot
(2015d) proposed a sociocognitive-transformative approach in teaching writing which
incorporates the use of technology into the writing process (Barrot, 2016). Product approach
focuses on what a final piece of writing will look like and measures the product using vocabulary
use, grammar, mechanics, content, and organization as criteria (Brown, 1994). The procedure
includes four stages: familiarization, controlled writing, and free writing. From a teacher’s
perspective, it involves assigning a piece of writing, collecting it, and returning it for further
revision. The concerns with using product approach is it ignores the actual process used by the
students in producing a piece of writing, focuses on imitation and churning out a perfect product
on the first draft, requires constant error correction that affects students’ motivation, and does not
prepare students for real world.
The last four approaches has placed grammar in the background in writing texts and
methodology books in which grammar checking is usually considered as postwriting process
(Tribble, 1996). But the question is the role that grammar plays in the teaching and enhancing
writing skills. Muncie (2002, p. 185) proposed some guidelines in incorporating grammar to
writing classes. First, grammar should not defocus learners from the meaning orientation of
writing pedagogy. Second, teacher feedback should not involve any grammar correction. Third,
grammar correction must be directly linked to the editing stage. Fourth, grammar component
should satisfy the perceived learners’ needs. Finally, grammar component should involve the
recycling of materials. Though content and meaning should be the utmost priority in a writing
class, it is recognized as well that linguistic accuracy situates itself as an important factor in any
final written output especially if linguistic inaccuracy impedes the clarity of meaning (Ashwell,
2000).

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T 10-D.

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VIEWING AND REPRESENTING

Visual language is an integral part of contemporary life. Viewing and representing allow
students to understand the ways in which images and language may be used to convey ideas,
values, and beliefs.

Representing enables students to communicate their ideas visually through a variety of

media, including charts, posters, diagrams, scribbles, photographs, video presentations, visual
art, drama, and mime. Viewing enables students to acquire information and to appreciate ideas
and experiences visually conveyed by others.

Visual texts, like their auditory and print counterparts, have a variety of purposes and
audiences and occur in a wide range of contexts. They are often communicated through
technology. Students need opportunities to create and respond to a range of visual texts. They
need to recognize, analyze, and respond to ways in which media texts reconstruct reality and
influence their perceptions of themselves and others.

The dominance of visual media in our lives today has led to the inclusion of viewing in the
language macroskills. It refers to perceiving, examining, interpreting, and construction meaning
from visual images and is crucial to improving comprehension of print and nonprint materials.

With the inclusion of viewing and representing in the macroskills and proliferation of
multimedia technology, it is imperative that both speakers and listeners critically assess
audiovisual inputs and make meaning from them (Curriculum Planning & Development
Division, 2010). This need requires new forms of literacy: media literacy and visual literacy.
Media literacy refers to the ability to access, analyze, and evaluate media and technology
information that involves moving images and sound effects (Hobbs & Frost, 2003). According to
De Abreu (2004), developing media literacy would help students question and critically analyze
messages provided to them via media which facilitates critical viewing and thinking.
In classroom setting, enhancing media literacy involves learners analyzing their own media
consumption habits and identifying the author, purpose, and point of view of television and radio
programs, advertisements, and films (Hobbs & Frost, 2003). Visual literacy, on the one hand,
refers to the power of giving meaning to and building up similar messages for visual messages
and the ability to construct meaning from images (Glorgis, Johnson, Bonomo, Colber, & Al,
1999). As Kang (2004) put it, visual literacy is as important as language and textual literacy. It,
thus, obliges teachers to explore the potentials of visual and spatial instructional strategies to
better facilitate the learning. One way to realize this kind of instruction is through visual
organizers.

Visual organizers are “visual systems of using spatial frameworks such as diagrams, maps, or
charts to organize and present structural knowledge in a content domain” (Kang, 2004, p. 58).
The four general types of visual organizers include web-like organizers (spider map and
semantic map), hierarchical organizers (concept map and network tree), matrix organizers
(compare/contrast matrix), and linear organizers (Venn diagram, continuum, chain of events, and
storyboard). These organizers are mainly used when teaching reading so that students can have
better conceptual framework of their existing knowledge and new knowledge. Using visual
organizers also allows learners to actively construct and interpret information. Though these two

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forms of literacy are at the core of contemporary culture, they are still treated superficially if not
ignored in the classroom.

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T 10-E.

T 11. IDENTIFICATION (10 minutes)

Determine the macroskill/s that can be developed by each of the following activities. Put a
check mark on the corresponding column (L-listening; S-speaking; Rd-reading; W-writing;
V-viewing; Rp-representing). Then, explain how each skill can be enhanced by the activity.

ACTIVITY L S Rd W V Rp Explanation

Essay
Film Analysis
Group
Discussion
Interpreting
Image
Note-taking
Role-play
Speech
Summarizing
Text
Understanding
Visual
Organizers

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Word Relay
T 12. MACROSKILL CHART (15 minutes)
Show how much you have learned from this lesson by filling in the same chart in K1. Then,
answer the question that follow.

Why is it important to enhance language macro skills?

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

(15 minutes)

I learned that macro skills _________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

The lesson made me realize that

____________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

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As a future English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, I therefore commit to ______

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

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