Week 3: Oral/Aural Skills

At first time, I was a bit confused about Oral/Aural skills. Really, I did not have clear what were the differences about the meaning for each word. I had to read a lot. Then I found this “aural” refers to language as we hear it and “Oral” is the language we talk in order to get the communication”.

Teachers have to have the goals and different strategies appropriate to reach students comprehension, in order to develop the oral and aural skills. These are going to be together, because both have specific purpose in a communication such as: they develop receptive and productive skills, which involve different processes. But all are based on the view that we use language for communication, in other words, we use them to give and receive messages of different kinds, with different purposes in communication.

It is important to be clear that teachers and students want to use a language (English) in their higher level education and in their work. For them, the ability to give and receive information in English will be extremely important when they are learning.

Additionally, most learners of a language want to manage the socializing function of language. Expressing likes and dislikes, wants and needs, has been given greater importance in each new knowledge, according the science advance and the technology, where navigate in the websites is the most common activity for students.

Now, we can incorporate into an Oral/Aural class. Learners will demonstrate that they can understand without a lot of problems. Actually, correct the pronunciation could be difficult, because sometimes students could feel embarrassed, when they are learning. For that, it is important to be careful to do it in strong way. It is recommended to do it in group or using other resources such as: interactive videos, CDs etc.

¡Week 3! It was very very interesting.