Listening and speaking, and the functions of language

What this lesson covers

One syllabus heading that is really three questions, and the paper asks them separately:

1. What is listening, and why is it the skill schools do not teach?
2. What is speaking, and what should a teacher do about errors in it?
3. What do children use language for — and what does "as a tool" mean?

The third is the one candidates are least ready for, because it is not a skills question at all. It is a question about what language is for, and the expected answer is wider than "to express thoughts".

Listening

Hearing is not listening

Hearing is physical: sound reaching the ear. Listening is attending, interpreting and responding. A child can hear every word of a lesson and listen to none of it, and the difference is not loudness.

This matters for a reason the paper exploits: because listening leaves no mark on paper, a teacher cannot tell by looking whether it happened. So listening is the most used skill in life and the least taught in classrooms — a point CTET makes directly, and a point that turns into questions about how to teach and assess it.

Intensive and extensive

• Intensive listening — close attention to detail: particular sounds, exact words, specific information.
• Extensive listening — longer stretches for overall meaning and for pleasure: a story, a song, a talk.

Both are needed, and the second is what builds the ear. A classroom that only ever does intensive listening (dictation, "listen and repeat") never gives a child the experience of following connected language.

The sub-skills the paper names

• Listening for gist — the overall point.
• Listening for specific information — one fact out of many.
• Listening for detail — following closely throughout.
• Inferring the speaker's attitude, mood or intention.
• Predicting what is coming next.

Note the parallel with reading: gist is listening's skimming, specific information its scanning. The paper sometimes tests the pair across skills.

Three stages of a listening task

Stage	What it does
Pre-listening	Sets the purpose, activates knowledge, introduces what is needed
While-listening	The task itself — follow a route, complete a table, tick what is mentioned
Post-listening	Discuss, respond, use what was heard

The examinable principle is in the first row: the purpose is set before the listening, not tested after it. "Find out why he was late" is a listening task. Playing a passage and then asking ten questions is a memory test with listening attached, and in a question it is the wrong option.

Why listening gets harder than it should

Worth knowing, because questions describe these as problems to diagnose:

• Speed. Speech does not wait, and a listener who stops to work out one word loses the next three.
• No second chance — unlike a reader, a listener cannot go back. So in a teaching task, playing it twice, with a different purpose each time, is good practice rather than a concession.
• Unfamiliar accent or pace.
• No visual support — which is why pictures, gestures and objects help, and why a recording is harder than the same words said in the room.

Speaking

Accuracy and fluency

• Accuracy — correctness of form: grammar, pronunciation, word choice.
• Fluency — flow: speaking at a reasonable rate without undue hesitation.

Both are goals. They compete for attention in the moment, and that is the whole of the pedagogy: in the early stages and in any fluency activity, fluency comes first.

The reason is practical, not permissive. Insisting on accuracy while a child is speaking stops the speech — and a child who has stopped speaking is not acquiring anything. The standard guidance: during a fluency activity, note errors and deal with them afterwards; do not interrupt. Correcting every spoken error on the spot is the classic wrong option in this area.

Correction that works

• Delayed correction — note what recurred, teach it later without naming who said it.
• Recasting — repeating the child's meaning in correct form, as ordinary conversation: "I goed to the mela" — "Oh, you went to the mela? What did you see?" The correct form is supplied, the child is not stopped, and the exchange continues.
• Self-correction before teacher correction — a raised eyebrow or a repeated phrase is often enough.
• Never in front of the class, for its own sake. Public correction buys one form and costs the child's willingness to try.

The pattern across all four: the error is addressed, the speaking is not interrupted.

What makes a speaking activity real

The test is whether there is something to communicate and a reason to communicate it.

• Good: describing a picture only one partner can see so the other can draw it; role play; interviewing a classmate; telling what happened; arguing for one of two options; giving directions.
• Not: "make a sentence with beautiful". That practises form with no function — nothing is being communicated, and nobody needs the answer.

Two features of good tasks that the paper names: an information gap (one person knows something the other needs) and a purpose beyond producing language.

Why so little speaking happens

Also examined, as problems with remedies:

• Teacher talking time. In many classrooms the teacher produces most of the language. Pair and group work multiplies children's speaking time without lengthening the lesson.
• Fear of error — which is the affective filter by another name.
• Large classes, which pair work answers rather than prevents.
• Only volunteers speak, so the children who most need practice get least.

The functions of language

Here is the part of the heading that is not about skills. Function of language and how children use it as a tool.

The expected answer is not "to express thoughts". Language does many jobs, and a child learns each one separately.

Function	What the child is doing	What it sounds like
Instrumental	Getting needs met	"I want water"
Regulatory	Controlling others' behaviour	"Move over"
Interactional	Making and keeping relationships	"Will you be my friend?"
Personal	Expressing identity, feeling, opinion	"I don't like this"
Heuristic	Finding out, questioning	"Why is the sky blue?"
Imaginative	Pretending, storymaking, play	"Let's say I'm the doctor"
Representational	Conveying information	"It rained yesterday"

Why the list matters

School tends to recognise only the last one. Informative language is what examinations need, so the other six are treated as noise — and two of them are the most important for learning:

• Heuristic language — asking questions — is the main instrument of finding anything out. A classroom where children only answer, never ask, has switched off the function that does the learning.
• Imaginative language is the largest voluntary language practice a child ever does. Play talk is not time off from language work; it is the language work.

A question that asks what is lost when a classroom is silent and orderly is asking about this.

Language as a tool for thinking

The second sense of "tool", and the deeper one. Language is not only the vehicle for a finished thought; it is how the thought gets made — Vygotsky's position, and the one the syllabus expects here.

• A child working on something talks to themselves. This private speech does not disappear with age; it goes inward and becomes thinking. Evidence: it increases when the task gets harder.
• A name stabilises a concept. Once a child has the word triangle, triangles become something they can reason about.
• Explaining clarifies. A child who has to say it discovers what they do not yet understand — which is why letting a child explain in their own words is not only a language activity but a way of learning the subject.

The classroom consequence is one sentence: children must be allowed to talk — in every subject, not only in the language lesson. A silent classroom is not a well-managed classroom; it is one in which the main tool of thought is not being used.

A question of the kind the paper sets

A class IV teacher wants to develop her learners' speaking. Which is most appropriate?

The distractors are usually: ask learners to memorise and recite a paragraph; have them repeat sentences after her; ask each to make sentences with new words; correct every error as it occurs.

Recitation and repetition produce sound without meaning. Making sentences with words practises form with no function. Correcting every error stops the speech.

The expected answer has learners say something to somebody who needs to hear it — describe a picture a partner cannot see, interview each other, retell an event, decide something together. Information gap, real purpose, errors handled afterwards.

Mistakes that cost marks here

• Treating hearing and listening as the same thing.
• Testing listening after the passage instead of setting a purpose before it.
• Putting accuracy before fluency in early or fluency-focused work.
• Choosing the option where every spoken error is corrected immediately.
• Calling drills and recitation speaking practice. They are form practice with no function.
• Reading "function of language" as only the informative function.
• Treating play talk and children's questions as off-task.
• Reading "language as a tool" as only a tool of expression, missing the tool of thought.
• Thinking a large class rules out speaking work. Pair work is the standard answer.

In one line

Listening is attention rather than hearing and needs a purpose set in advance; speaking needs fluency before accuracy and a real reason to speak; and children use language for seven jobs, of which school recognises one, while the deepest use is not telling anyone anything at all but thinking.

In the classroom

Two changes cost nothing. Give every listening task a question to answer before it starts — one sentence, on the board. And replace "who can tell me" with thirty seconds of everyone telling a partner, then take answers. Both convert the same minutes into practice for the whole class rather than for the one child already most willing to speak.