PRE-LISTENING AND AND PRE-READING STAGES’ ACTIVITIES FROM THE SPEAKING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTIVE (based on Skyeng lesson development practice)

Abstract

The article focuses on the possibility of usage of Pre-listening and Pre-reading stages not only for traditional purposes of perception facilitation, but for development of students’ speaking skills. There have been presented typical exercises which fulfil the traditional aims of these stages together with the new aims. The topicality of the research lies in the attempt to shift the traditional aims of the Pre-reading and Prelistening stages to those which are aimed at student’s speaking for fluency skills. The authors claim that this practice might help design more student-centered lessons and balance the teacher and the student talking time during the lesson. All the practices described in the article are currently used during development of ESL/EFL lessons in Skyeng school which is one of the market leaders in the sphere of online English teaching. There have been justified the reasons why these practices are seen as preferred and important in the process of lesson development. The following research methods have been used: critical analysis of scientific sources and data; experimental studying (through the educational Vimbox platform in Skyeng); direct observation method. The outcomes of the research may be applied both in an online and traditional offline classroom environment to design student-centered ESL/EFL lessons.