Listening Is A Critical Receptive Skill

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

As we know, English has four skills; reading, speaking, writing, and listening skills. Of course, there are other skills such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling that all play a role when learning English. I will refer to the four commonly used skills, because those are the most important ones when teaching and learning. This research, aims to improve students´ listening skills by giving recommendation about what should be done according to standard teaching methods, but we know that in order to improve the listening skill, we have to use a little bit of each of the four skills. That is why the most commonly known skills are mentioned.

2.3.1. Reading Skills:

Reading skills are specific abilities which enable a reader:

- To read the written form as meaningful language.

- To read anything written with independence, comprehension and fluency.

- To mentally interact with the message.

2.3.2. Writing Skills:

Writing skills help the learner gain independence, comprehension, fluency, and creativity in writing. If learners have mastered these skills, they will be able to write so that they can not only read what they have written, but other speakers of that language can read and understand it.

Writing skills are specific abilities which help writers put their thoughts into words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message.

2.3.3. Speaking Skills:

Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words.

2.3.4. Listening Skills:

Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. When we speak of listening, what we really mean is listening and understanding what we hear.

(ADRIAN,1988) , (HARMER, 2007)

2.4. THE LISTENING SKILLS.

DEFINITION

&

IMPORTANCE

KINDS OF LISTENING

AND

KIND OF SKILLS

LISTENING SKILLS

TEACHING

-

THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS

APPROACHES

METHODS

STRATEGIES

TECHNIQUES

RESOURCE

Definition & Importance :

- Definition:

Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. When we speak of listening, what we really mean is listening and understanding what we hear. It describes a person´s ability to listen and understand what she or he is hearing. The main objective of this thesis is to find out the weaknesses in the teaching – learning process, and to give recommendations to improve the listening skills in the students of "Eloy Alfaro" High School. Therefore, in the future the students will be able to understand better what the teacher is teaching, whether she or he is talking to the students, playing a recording, watching a movie, giving instructions, etc. The students will feel confident in English classes, because they will see how they are improving their English understanding. They will also understand what the teacher is saying or doing without feeling confused.

- Importance:

Listening is a critical receptive skill ("input") that typically precedes the productive ability ("output"). Inside the language classroom, and outside the class, students engage in more listening than speaking. Providing students with comprehensible input is an important element of language teaching. Some of its important features are:

- Access to the world:

Because of globalization and for the necessity of being up to date with knowledge that is originated in first world countries which allows third world countries not to face a barrier in developing, educational and financial aspects.

- Pleasure:

A lot of movies and music watched and heard in many countries are in English, so the listening skills is important for a person to fully comprehend the meaning and context behind them as they are in their original language.

- Travel / tourism:

English is an internationally used and widespread language and it is sometimes called a "lingua franca" because it serves as a tool for international communication.

- Work purposes and academic requirements:

Advances in science and economy are achieved, shared and incorporated in all the continents because of the usage of English as a way to communicate with people of different countries. Also, work opportunities appear for people who are proficient in the English language and who can travel outside their countries.

Kinds of listening and kind of listening skills:

Listening situations:

There are two kinds of listening situations:

Interactive

Non – Interactive

Interactive listening situations include face to face conversations and telephone calls, in which people alternate listening and speaking, and in which they have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from a conversation pattern. Some non – interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, TV, films, lectures, or sermons. In such situations, people usually do not have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition.

The listening skills are divided in two kinds: Micro-skills and Macro-skills:

- Micro-skills: This is the ability to comprehend meaning in a narrow or concrete scope.

• Sentence level

• Retain chunks of language in short-term memory

• Discriminate among the sounds of English

• Recognize stress and intonation patterns

• Recognize grammatical word classes

• Process at different rates of delivery

• Distinguish word boundaries

• Recognize word order patterns

- Macro-skills: This is the ability to comprehend meaning in a wider scope.

• Discourse level

• Recognize cohesion devices

• Recognize communicative functions

• Distinguish main and supporting ideas, new and understood information

• Distinguish literal and implied meanings

• Understand nonverbal communication signals

• Use listening strategies: guessing from context, asking for help, signaling (lack of ) comprehension

Types of classroom listening skills:

From an academic point of view, and in accordance to the activities performed in class, the listening skills are catalogued in this way:

- Reactive (listen and repeat)

- Intensive (listen for specific sounds, discourse markers, intonation patterns, etc.)

- Responsive (listen and respond – briefly)

- Selective (listen for particular items in a longer stretch of discourse)

- Extensive (listen for global comprehension)

- Interactive (authentic communication; listening as part of discussion, conversation,

debate, etc.)

Teaching – Theoretical Assumptions:

The Process of English Language Teaching and Learning.

The main purpose of this research is to prove that the best way to learn English is through listening and speaking. Accordingly, this work will focus on researching the process of English Language teaching and learning to investigate how to implement these methods to daily teaching. The old ways of learning and teaching are found too rigid and too out of date. It has been urged that the training of the young requires, on the part of teacher, a deep psychological knowledge.

The Teaching – learning process is the heart of education, and the fulfillment of the aims and objectives of education depends on this process. It is the most powerful instrument of education that brings about desired changes in the students. Teaching and learning are related terms.

In the teaching – learning process, the teacher, the learner, the curriculum and other variables are organized in a systematic way to attain some pre – determined goals.

Essential aspects of the teaching – learning process:

Diana Laurillard (Laurillard, 1993; Lurillard, 1994) argues that there are four aspects of the teaching – learning process:

(a) Discussion between the teacher and the learner.

(b) Interaction between the teacher and learner and some aspect of the world defined by the teacher.

(c) Adaptation of the world by the teacher and action by the learner.

(d) Reflection on the learner´s performance by both teacher and learner.

She then considers how different educational media and styles can be described in these terms. For example, a text book represents a one – way flow of knowledge from the teacher´s conceptual knowledge to the students´ conceptual knowledge. A lecture or tutorial may be seen the same way, but there is a possibility of meaningful discussion between teacher and learner.

Approaches:

Of the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) that are generally recognized as the keys to ‘knowing’ a language, listening is probably the least understood, the least researched and, historically, the least valued.

In the past, foreign languages were learnt mainly by reading and translating rather than listening. In the second half of the twentieth century, increased research into how people learn both first and second languages, as well as developments in linguistics, sociology and anthropology, led to an understanding that listening is probably the key initial skill. After all, people cannot talk without listening first.

Another factor that led to changes in foreign language education was spying. During the Second World War the US Army Specialized Training Program trained a number of soldiers to learn foreign languages. These soldiers spent years studying grammar and vocabulary from books, but when it came to actually speaking the language in order to infiltrate a country or to listen to enemy conversations over the radio waves, their language skills were inadequate. The authorities realized that a new methodology was required, and this is how Audiolingualism came into being.

Audiolingualism, which uses recorded drills (the development of technology, including the widespread use of recording equipment in classrooms, was significant), put listening at the forefront of language teaching pedagogy. The idea was based on a premise from psychology called behaviorism, in which the subject responds to a prompt in order to gain a reward. In the context of language learning, students were to hear passages - mainly dialogues - which contained the target grammatical patterns, and then the students would repeat the pattern, thereby ‘learning’ it. The reward, in this case, consisted of a better understanding of the language. The syllabus would include structures of gradually increasing complexity.

Then, Noam Chomsky famously disputed the idea that people could learn languages through habit-formation. He put forward the idea of generative grammar, arguing that language could not be delimited to a fixed number of sentences, but that people were capable of expressing an infinite number of thoughts, and that pedagogy should reflect this. With the growing popularity of Chomsky’s ideas, Audiolingualism’s days were numbered, to be replaced in the 1970s by more humanistic methods. The centrality of listening, however, remained, and was reinforced by the work of Stephen Krashen.

Listening was at the forefront of Krashen’s input hypothesis. According to Krashen, languages are acquired when people understand messages (he called these messages comprehensible input). The input hypothesis is consistent with what we know about children’s L1 acquisition. A parent says to a toddler, ‘Pass me the paper, please’ or ‘Put your hat on’. Although the child may not say anything, he or she is taking in the language during this silent period and the brain is storing it all up, categorizing words, parsing verbs and examining meaning. A few months later the child begins to speak.

Although Krashen produced little empirical evidence, the theory appealed to common sense and became extremely influential in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) studies. The methodology that Krashen designed in order to put this and other theories into practice was called The Natural Approach, which places listening at its centre, with the teacher speaking to the students (telling stories, etc), but not necessitating an oral response from them . The language was to be graded according to the natural order in which people acquire L2 (for example, the present perfect is ‘late acquired’ and so would not feature on the syllabus until the students were fairly proficient).

The input hypothesis and the silent period also formed the basis for James Asher’s methodology called Total Physical Response (TPR). The principles behind it were: learning L1 and learning L2 are similar processes; listening comes before speaking; delaying the need to speak alleviates stress on the learner; children and adults respond well if asked to react physically to speech. In practice, students were to hear instructions given by the teacher and act up on them; for example, the teacher would say ‘Stand up’ and the student would do so.

There was no pressure on students to speak. Some practitioners would argue that the techniques of TPR are to be used sparingly (after all, a linguistic diet of commands is probably only useful for future drills), and mainly with beginners, elementary levels and children. However, the activities in TPR can provide a pleasant change of pace in language classes, and are good for the type of learners who enjoy learning by moving around. Another benefit is that TPR activities require little preparation, besides giving orders, a number of variations can be useful for a sagging class, and the technique has been incorporated into many game-like activities that can serve as a non-threatening way to get, and react to, input.

Input

The idea of input has been central in the elevation of listening to its recent status in language learning. But, what does auditory input consist of? A short answer is: any aspect of the language. A carefully scripted piece of input for the language class will contain target grammar and / or target vocabulary. More natural input will probably also contain discourse markers, examples of pragmatic use of language, features of intonation, etc.

Input gives opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning when students pick up on words/phrases by chance and circumstance rather than by a designed material of a teacher. Incidental vocabulary learning often comes about, because the topic, and the vocabulary learnt may be of personal interest to the listener. Perhaps he or she really needs the words to accomplish a personal goal. This type of vocabulary learning - achieved because of personal interest or necessity rather than, say, the demands of a course book - is often more memorable for students so they are more likely to retain the words in the long term. We can make a distinction between roughly-tuned and finely-tuned input.

Roughly- tuned input is only approximately at the students’ level; it permits them to understand the message although there may be many aspects of this message that elude comprehension.

An example of roughly-tuned input might be a teacher telling the students a story.

Finely-tuned input is more carefully controlled. It does not contain complex grammatical constructions or vocabulary far beyond the students’ current level, and is designed so as not to distract the students from the target grammar/vocabulary. In some cases, finely-tuned input may contain only structures and vocabulary that the students have already covered on the syllabus.

In practice, students benefit from a combination of roughly-tuned and finely-tuned input, the first form is a natural example of language use, the other is to provide crystal clear examples of target grammar.

Bottom-up and top-down approaches to listening.

Listening, then, is difficult for many reasons. While examining the difficulties, researchers have tended to use two models to describe the listening process. These are the bottom–up model and the top-down model. The bottom-up model emphasizes the decoding of the smallest units - phonemes and syllables - to lead us towards meaning. The approach is based on simpler units of language in the text.

The top-down model emphasizes the use of background knowledge to predict content. This may refer to world knowledge, knowledge of the speaker or context, or analogy (if the situation is familiar, listeners can guess what they are going to hear next). The top-down model is based, at least in part, on the listener; much of the comprehension relies on what happens in the mind before the listening has even begun, whereas the bottom -up approach depends more on the sounds heard.

There has been much debate in recent years about which model is most salient when we listen to foreign languages. Until fairly recently it was assumed that most errors in listening comprehension were caused by students mishearing individual words - a failure of the bottom-up process.

Recent research, however, suggests that it is often top-down approaches that cause mistakes in listening tasks, a typical occurrence being that the students know the topic, hear some familiar vocabulary and make wild guesses about the content. It is an area of ongoing research, but what we can say with some certainty is that we use both processes simultaneously when we listen, something that is known as the interactive model.

(WILSON, 2008)

Methods:

Audiovisual methods of teaching.

It is a new trend regarding the use of technology such as: videos, television and

language laboratories, and with these resources this trend looks forward improving the

student’s skills.

By audiovisual methods in teaching we mean the devices that can be used in teaching

for their appeal to the ear and the eye.

Audiovisual methods in teaching are divided in two categories; simple and advanced

visual aids.  Blackboard, posters and cartoons are simple visual aids which can help

in how to speed the learning. On the other hand, epidia-scope, television

and filmstrips are the advanced visual aids used to train students how to speed the

learning. 

These helpful means provide good support to the students in the start of their learning,

because he or she can learn from the situations.

As students become more familiar with technology, audiovisual methods in teaching play

a more important role in the classroom.  Students learn in different ways and the use of

audiovisual components help to improve their learning environment, including audio

visual computer, television, tapes, DVDs and audio-visual projector type.

Posters, cartoon strips, costumes, models and field trips are also audio-visual.

Carolyn Chapman,(2.011) an international educational consultant and coach, believes the

students gain more English knowledge when they use audiovisual materials.

Students can operate the camera, build posters, charts, graphics and images, and use

computer features.

Educational theory and cognitive psychology research shows that visual learning is

one of the best methods for teaching students of all ages.. These visual learning

techniques help students to understand and interpret information by transforming abstract

ideas into concrete ideas. Also, these can provide a structure for writing, reporting,

analysis and discussion. Concept mapping, posters and storyboards are some of the

techniques used in visual learning.

In everyday life, we often rely on visual tools to help us achieve our goals and tasks, for

example, many of us depend on our social calendar to organize charts, graphs,

(slide shows) PowerPoint presentations, skits, and other . Visual learners are most

receptive, because they learn new information largely through their eyes.

Audiovisual methods in teaching are most effective when the information it contains is

systematically organized. Breaking information into smaller chunks and grouping similar

pieces together to help students connect and store information more efficiently. Also,

consider presenting the most important key points during the first part of a lesson,

when their attention is at full capacity.

Like all English as Second Language students (ESOL), Asian students have

unique cultural characteristics (regarding language and communicative characteristics

such as phonology and syntax ) that can make it challenging for them to learn to

communicate in English. In order to effectively teach English to Asian students, teachers

must first develop an awareness of learning styles and their cultural customs and work to

accommodate them in their own teaching approach. In addition to accommodating

cultural differences, there are several techniques that can be used to facilitate effective

language learning students:

-Exposing students to the media that combines audio and visual to help them

contextualize English conversation in a specific way, will make it easier for them to

learn the language.

-Displaying a television show with a brief description, for example,

allows students to connect them to hear conversations in English with words that they

understand and written with visual cues that will help them better understand the

workings of the English language in context.

-Developing short writing assignments that ask students to reflect on English

language learning activities in which they have participated.

-Writing about the challenges they experience or success they have achieved will

encourage them to think deeply about the process of learning English and help them see

the relationship between English writing and conversation, both of which will help them

to develop an understanding of a durable and balanced conversation how English works

in theory and how to use it in practice.

Audiovisual methods in teaching can serve a variety of purposes. The pace of learning

can be increased with the help of these aids taking into account the student’s capability.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

The 1970s saw the first stirrings of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). This

has been widely, though not universally, adopted, and in developed countries is

arguably the dominant methodology. It emphasizes the use of English for real

communication rather than demonstration (or ‘display’) of target grammar and

vocabulary. Using information- gap activities, role-plays, games and discussion of real

issues CLT seeks to engage the student on a personal level through meaningful

interaction and personalization. TPR is often seen as a form of CLT, but one difference

is that CLT, in its broader use, encourages dialogue from the start. Even with very little

English at their disposal, students attempt to develop communicative competence using

any means they can - gesture, mime, interlanguage (this is the student’s attempts at L2,

which may not be grammatically correct but form part of the developmental stage

towards proficiency), etc.

CLT brought with it significant developments in terms of listening to L2. It

emphasized authenticity of materials, contexts and responses. The passages students

listen to in a communicative approach tend to be closer to real-life use of language than

was the case in, say, Audiolingualism , which often used contrived dialogues as carriers

of the target grammar. CLT uses findings from research into pragmatics, discourse

analysis and sociolinguistics in order to show how real communication takes place,

instead of an idealized version.

The other main development in listening in CLT stems from the ways in which the

passages are used - in other words, what the students do with them . In CLT there is

more room for personal, emotional or critical responses to the content, and less

emphasis on drilling and repetition. Listening in CLT has a communicative purpose in

that students are expected to use the information they hear, just as we do when we listen to it outside the classroom

Six essentials for planning listening lessons:

1.- Check the recording, if you are using one. Do not rely on reading the transcript. Scripts tell us nothing of speed, accent or clarity.

2.- Check the machine, if you are using one. If it is a tape recorder, make sure that the tape is cued to the beginning of the correct recording. If the tape recorder has a counter, set it to zero so that you can rewind and know exactly where the recording will start.

3.- Calculate how long the whole listening sequence will take.

4.- Anticipate ‘trouble spots’ that will be difficult for students, and consider how you will deal with these.

5.- Prepare different tasks for first, second and third listenings, i.e. a sequence of tasks that builds on what students understand. Make this sequence success-oriented so that the majority of students will be able to complete these tasks. If the task is too easy, you run the risk of boring the students. If it is too difficult, students become demotivated.

6.- Be ready to abandon your plan at any moment. Abandoned plans allow for reactive, responsive teaching, a sure sign that the teacher is engaged in what is happening here and now in the classroom.

(WILSON, 2008)

Techniques:

Types of Listening:

There are several types of listening, starting with basic discrimination of sounds and

ending in deep communication which ESL students should learn:

- Discriminative listening:

Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference

between different sounds is identified. If you cannot hear differences, then you cannot

make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such differences.

We learn to discriminate between sounds within our own language early, and later are

unable to discriminate between the phonemes of other languages. This is one reason

why a person from one country finds it difficult to speak another language perfectly, as

they are unable to distinguish the subtle sounds that are required in that language.

Likewise, a person who cannot hear the subtleties of emotional variation in another

person's voice will be less likely to be able to discern the emotions the other person is

experiencing. Listening is a visual as well as auditory act, as we communicate much through body language. We also need to be able to discriminate between movements that signify different meanings.

- Comprehension listening

The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make

sense of them. To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at

our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax, by which we can understand

what others are saying. The same is true, of course, for the visual components of

communication, and an understanding of body language helps us understand what the

other person is really meaning. In communication, some words are more important and

some less , and comprehension often benefits from extraction of key facts and items

from a long spiel. Comprehension listening is also known as content listening,

informative listening and full listening.

- Critical listening

Critical listening is listening in order to evaluate and judge, forming opinions about

what is being said. Judgment includes assessing strengths and weaknesses, agreement

and approval. This form of listening requires significant real-time cognitive effort as the

listener analyzes what is being said, relating it to existing knowledge and rules, whilst

simultaneously listening to the ongoing words from the speaker.

- Biased listening

Biased listening happens when the person hears only what they want to hear, typically

misinterpreting what the other person says based on the stereotypes and other biases that

they have. Such biased listening is often very evaluative in nature.

- Evaluative listening

In evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other

person is saying. We seek to assess the truth of what is being said. We also judge what

they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy.

Evaluative listening is particularly pertinent when the other person is trying to persuade

us, perhaps to change our behavior and maybe even to change our beliefs. Within this,

we also discriminate between subtleties of language and comprehend the inner meaning

of what is said. Typically we also weigh up the pros and cons of an argument,

determining whether it makes logical sense as well as whether it is helpful to us.

Evaluative listening is also called critical, judgmental or interpretive listening.

- Appreciative listening

In appreciative listening, we seek certain information which we will appreciate, for

example, that which helps meet our needs and goals. We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or maybe even the stirring words of a great

leader.

- Sympathetic listening

In sympathetic listening we care about the other person and show this concern in the

way we pay close attention and express our sorrow for their ills and happiness for their

joys.

- Empathetic listening

When we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understanding

of how others are feeling. This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to

the nuances of emotional signals. When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel

what they are feeling. In order to get others to expose these deep parts of themselves to

us, we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanor towards them by asking

sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure.

- Therapeutic listening

In therapeutic listening, the listener has a purpose of not only empathizing with the

speaker but also uses this deep connection in order to help the speaker understand,

change or develop in some way. This does not only happen when you go to see a therapist, but also in many social situations, where friends and family seek to both diagnose problems from listening, and also to help the speaker cure themselves, perhaps by some cathartic process. This also happens in work situations, where managers, HR people, trainers and coaches seek to help employees learn and develop.

- Dialogic listening

The word 'dialogue' stems from the Greek words 'dia', meaning 'through' and 'logos'

meaning 'words'. Thus dialogic listening mean learning through conversation and an

engaged interchange of ideas and information in which we actively seek to learn more

about the person and how they think. Dialogic listening is sometimes known as

'relational listening'.

Regarding the types of listening that are most used in English teaching, there are :

-Listening for gist

This refers to the occasions when we want to know the general idea of what is being

said, as well as who is speaking to whom and why, and how successful they are in

communicating their point.

-Listening for specific information

This refers to the occasions when we do not need to understand everything, but only a

very specific part. For example, while listening to a list of delayed trains, we are only

interested in hearing news about one particular train - the one we want to catch - and so

we listen selectively for this specific information. We ignore everything else.

-Listening in detail

This refers to the type of listening we do when, for example, we need to find errors or

determine differences between one passage and another. We cannot afford to ignore

anything because, unlike listening to a list of delayed trains, we do not know exactly

what information will help us to achieve our task.

-Inferential listening

This refers to the type of listening we do when we wish to know how the speaker feels.

It may involve inferring.

(www.changingminds.org/techniques/listening)

Strategies:

Strategies can be divided into three groups: cognitive strategies, metacognitive

strategies and socio-affective strategies. Cognitive strategies are those that we use in

order to complete an immediate task. For example, a student may find out about the

topic (perhaps using information in L1- the mother tongue) before listening, in order to predict content.

Metacognitive strategies are related to learning in general and often have long-term

benefits. For example, students might choose to tune into a BBC recording once a week

as a strategy for improving their listening. Socio-affective strategies are concerned with

the learners’ interaction with other speakers and their attitude towards learning. For

example, they may choose to rehearse a telephone conversation in the L2 with another

student in order to develop confidence, or reward themselves with a doughnut when

they successfully complete some task in the target language.

Good listeners use many strategies simultaneously and in accordance with the task at

hand,they may listen regularly to a radio broadcast (metacognitive), take notes on the

key points (cognitive) and then meet fellow students in the cafe (for their doughnut) and

tell them all about what they just listened to (socio-affective). Here are some ideas for teaching listening strategies:

Strategy

How to teach it

When to teach it / Type of text

Be ready and have a plan to achieve a given task.

Clarify what students will need to do with the information they hear by asking concept questions. These encourage the students to verbalize what they need to do, thus clearing up any ambiguities.

Teach it before the students listen. It can be done with any listening text.

Use world knowledge to predict what will be said

Before listening, discuss the subject and how the speaker might view it. Use KWL charts (Know/Want to Know/Learnt) to pool knowledge of the topic. Give students headlines/titles. They predict additional content before listening to the recording.

Teach it before the students listen. It can be done with factual texts, e.g. news, discussion of a topic, lectures.

Use linguistic knowledge to predict what will be said.

Use gap-fill exercises (students fill the gaps in a transcript). Students complete the exercise before listening. As they listen, they can see how accurate their predictions were.

This can be done either before listening or after a first listening. If the latter, it should be used to show which words naturally follow other words, rather than as a memory test. It can be done with any listening text containing common collocations and idioms (‘How are you?’ ‘Fine, thanks.’ ‘Thanks.’‘ You’re welcome.’).

Monitor performance while listening.

Pause at regular intervals during the listening to check comprehension (students in pairs, groups or as a whole class). Ask questions such as Who said X? Why? What is the topic? Ask students if their answers are logical.

This is taught during listening. The strategy should be taught only occasionally as the teaching of it interrupts the listening experience and can frustrate students. It can be done with any listening text, especially if the students are listening for gist, but it works better with slightly extended texts.

Strategy

How to teach it

When to teach it / Type of text

Pick out only salient points, listen selectively and ignore irrelevant details.

Give tasks that require listening for detail, e.g. with train timetables and cinema listings information, which consist mainly of information that is extraneous for the individual listener. Use gap-fill exercises.

The strategy can be taught during the setting of the while-listening task, as the teacher explains what the students must listen for. It can be reinforced during feedback after listening. Use announcements and other lists of information.

Take notes, writing down relevant information in shorthand.

As above. People can’t remember details such as telephone numbers, so they need to practice writing information quickly. Ask students to identify key words (the stressed words, which they should note) in full sentences. Give students ‘Who / Where / What / Why’ charts. They take notes in the columns. Explain that note-taking systems only need to make sense to the note-taker (notes are essentially private aids for later recall).

The strategy requires pre­listening advice on what to note down and how to write it. It also requires extended feedback after listening, as students compare their notes. Use factual texts, e.g. news, discussion of a topic, lectures and texts with information such as phone numbers and addresses.

Note an approximation of a difficult word / name. Check later.

As above, but help students to make a guess based on a phonetic approximation. News broadcasts are excellent for this as they often contain names of places and people.

The strategy requires a hint before listening - ‘Even if you aren’t sure of the answer, write down what you think you heard’- and then post-listening feedback. Use factual texts, e.g. news, discussion of a topic, lectures. The strategy is especially useful as practice for exam situations.

Strategy

How to teach it

When to teach it / Type of text

Listen for key words for topic identification.

Ask students to listen again and pick out words belonging to a lexical set. Check with the script, if available. Songs lend themselves well to this.

Teach this after the first listening, pointing out that the key words clarify the topic. Use factual texts and songs.

Check with other listeners.

Regularly include a stage at which students compare answers. This is also valuable as a way to highlight discrepancies in interpretation.

This strategy can be taught after listening, and is built into many published materials. It can be done with any listening text.

Ask for clarification.

Teach phrases: Could you repeat what you said about...? What did you mean by... ? I didn’t catch X. Give opportunities for students to use these, e.g. by telling an anecdote slightly above the students’ level.

The phrases need to be taught and practiced before listening. The strategy requires face-to-face communication, and works well with stories (fact or fiction) and anecdotes.

Reconstruct orally or in

writing.

Do dictogloss activities: tell a story or anecdote at full speed several times. Students work together to reconstruct the story, gradually adding details.

The strategy is explained as the teacher gives the while-listening task. After listening, the students evaluate their success in using the strategy. Use stories (fact or fiction) and anecdotes.

Listen for transition points.

Teach linking expressions / devices: so, on the other hand, furthermore, in conclusion, etc. Pause (a recording) after the expression and ask students what comes next.

The phrases need to be taught and practiced before listening. The text can be paused during a second listening, once students have got the gist. Use actual texts, e.g. news, discussion of a topic, lectures. You can also use stories (fact or fiction) and anecdotes.

WILSON, J..J. (2008). How to teach listening

Listening for gist

On their first encounter with a passage in the classroom, students usually listen for gist- the main idea. Before teachers can develop any discussion of themes, analyze language used and examine features of pronunciation the students need to have grasped the overall communicative intention of the speaker. This forms the basis and the context of all other work that we do on the text.

Here are some examples of typical gist questions:

-What problem are they discussing?

-What does the speaker think of the topic?

-Look at the pictures. Who are the speakers talking about?

A simple gist exercise is to ask for basic information under the headings "What?", "Who?", "Why?".This works for most listening passages.

Listening for detail

When teachers ask the students to listen for gist the first time they listen, teachers usually ask them either to listen in detail or to listen for specific information the second time.

Skills and activities to perform during "listening for detail" practice:

In recent years, psychologists have discovered some rather interesting things about peoples´ ability to focus on details at the expense of other information.

The oral/aural equivalent is selective listening. While listening to announcements in an airport, people filter out almost everything they hear because only one flight announcement is relevant to them: their own. The skill of extracting the information they need requires an ability to ignore most of what they hear and focus only on what is relevant.

Inferring

Inferring is a thinking skill in which people make deductions by going beyond what is actually stated. It is all about making analogies to situations that people recognize. Inferring is closely linked to schema theory in that it requires a ‘model’ in the own head of how the situation might unfold.

Skills and activities to perform during "inferring" practice:

To a certain extent, people cannot help inferring every time they listen.

In every situation that demands an inference something latent remains unsaid or there is a hidden truth below the surface of the situation. In other words, there is a ‘gap’ which the listener fills in.

The techniques and strategies mentioned above must be used in class by teachers so the students can be into an appropriate class environment to secure their language progress.

(WILSON, 2008)

Resource :

In the context of language classes, teachers can divide several factors into two groups: content and delivery.

Content :

-Interest factor:

Perhaps the most vital factor of all is interest. If the text is intrinsically interesting, and particularly if the students have a personal stake in it, they will listen attentively. In order to try to ensure that the listening texts they use in class are intrinsically interesting to their students, some teachers give lists of topics and subtopics to their classes to choose from. They then find listening materials to match their students’ needs, a surefire though potentially time-consuming way of raising the interest factor. Of course, what is interesting for one person may be dull for another, but part of the role of pre-listening tasks is to raise interest in the topic.

-Entertainment factor:

Related to the notion of interest and ‘having a stake in the text’ is entertainment. Funny, enjoyable or gripping texts contain their own built-in interest factor.

-Cultural accessibility

The text needs to be accessible to the listener. Certain concepts simply do not exist in some cultures, so the situations and contexts of some recordings may be incomprehensible, for example, "Halloween". If the aim of the lesson involves learning new cultural information, it is fine, but if the aim was listening practice, then the passage would be unsuitable because the student may not know foreign cultural features.

Teachers need to make sure that the students have the content knowledge to make the text accessible, and this knowledge extends to cultural issues.

-Speech acts:

A further factor to consider when asking what makes a good listening passage is the type of speech act it represents. Speech has a number of different functions, such as suggesting, narrating and criticizing. Some fixed speech acts include airport announcements, formal introductions and most transactions in shops. Narratives and extended discussions tend to be dynamic - they flow, twist and turn. A lecture on quantum theory or a discussion of existentialism is abstract in that it deals with ideas rather than concrete things. As long as they are not too technical, fixed or static speech acts tend to be easier to grasp. Some dynamic texts, especially narratives, may also be quite straightforward in that they sometimes have a fairly predictable structure. Abstract texts tend to be more difficult, asking listeners to hold in mind a number of (often hazy) concepts. A good rule of thumb is that, for lower levels, the more predictable and familiar the speech act is, the more easily it will be understood. Perhaps this is one reason why low- level course books tend to focus on transactional dialogues, such as buying stamps in the post office, checking into a hotel, etc.

-Discourse structures:

There are also certain discourse structures which are easier than others. Discourse structures refer to the organization of a piece of text.

-Density:

Somewhere between these two categories, content and delivery, is the issue of density. Density refers to the amount of information in the text and if the speaker repeats main ideas, backtracks and clarifies points. If he or she continually moves on to the next point, without stopping to clarify, this places a greater burden on the listener. Redundancy - as mentioned in the previous chapter - gives listeners a chance to process the content of the previous utterance. The less redundancy present, the more demanding listening is. News headlines are an example of a typically dense listening passage.

-Language level:

Also related to both content and delivery is language level. A listening text containing many new lexical items and high-level grammatical structures will be difficult. Besides grammar and vocabulary, a further aspect of level is complexity: long sentences full of noun phrases, packed with meaning, are hard for students to process. Degrees of formality also need to be considered. Very informal texts, perhaps containing slang and/or unclear articulation, may cause difficulties, as may very formal texts. Formal English is generally longer and more convoluted in its construction than ‘neutral’ English, and it tends to use lots of words with Latin origins. For this reason, formal English may be easier for Italian students than Japanese students.

Delivery:

Listening input in the classroom comes primarily in two modes. The first is live talk, which may be student-to-student, teacher-to-student or guest speaker-to-student. One of the benefits of live talk is that the listener may have the opportunity to influence the delivery, for example through body language, facial expression, gesture, interruption or verbal interaction. The second type of input comes in the form of recordings. These may also vary in their mode of delivery: cassette, CD or DVD, etc, but generally speaking, none of these allow the listener to influence the delivery.

The aspects of delivery that people need to take into consideration when they come to choosing good listening texts are:

Length:

A key factor is the length of the recording. Most students can only cope with a limited amount of input. Every time they listen, they need to process language at the same time as receiving more language. Even as they try to understand what has been said, more input is constantly arriving. This is tiring for students, who get overloaded with input. Elementary course books usually average about one minute per listening text. This is a reflection of the difficulties of listening for extended periods of time in a foreign language. Students at slightly higher levels, however, need a balance of intensive and extensive listening. There are many different purposes for listening, and extensive listening is usually marked by factors such as relative ease in terms of comprehension, and the use of gist questions rather than questions asking for detailed information.

Because of class time constraints, most teachers do little or no extensive listening during the lesson (an exception is teachers who use Suggestopedia, a methodology which involves the teacher reading long texts to relaxed students). Instead, most teachers see extensive listening as something students can do in their free time.

Quality of recordings:

In many classrooms around the world, much of the listening input comes in the form of recorded materials. In such situations, the quality of the recording is an important aspect of delivery. These days, professionally produced material is recorded in a studio and the sound quality is generally high. Teachers attempting to make their own listening material sometimes find, however, that their own recordings, made perhaps on old machines, contain distortion and lack clarity.

Speed and number of speakers:

There are other issues related to the recording itself, such as speed. Rapid speech, such as that heard in BBC news headlines, is more difficult for students than the speech rates of an adult talking to a young child. The number of speakers is a farther issue. The more speakers there are, the more potential there is for confusion, especially when there is no visual backup for the students.

Accent:

There has been much comment in recent years about world ‘Englishes’. The English spoken in downtown New York is very different from English in Delhi or Trinidad or London. This raises the question of which type of English students should listen to and take as a model. Some European commentators believe that ‘standard British English’, such as that heard on the BBC news, is the best model, while countries with more contact with the US, such as Brazil and Japan, tend to learn a variety of American English. Others say that we need to teach international English (which has fewer idioms and colloquial phrases than British English), a variety that can be understood by everyone. What is likely is that local dialects spoken by minorities will pose great problems for foreign learners when it comes to listening. For this reason, most professionally recorded materials, at least for the European market, tend to favor a southern English standard accent. There is, however, a growing belief that students should be exposed gradually to a variety of accents as they become more proficient. This belief is reflected in recent professionally produced materials.

Another factor to take into account is that, these days, there is perceived to be less need for students to speak like the English, Australians, North Americans or any other native speakers. English in the world is spoken between non-native speakers, and teachers generally don’t need to sound like native speakers in order to provide good models for students to listen to.

We have so far looked at certain factors that make a good listening text. This leads us inevitably to the question of whether the text should be authentic or not.

Authentic versus pedagogic resources:

Henry Widdowson has stated that authenticity has something to do with the purpose of the text and the quality of response it elicits. One way to define authenticity may be to say that if the text exists for a communicative purpose other than teaching language, then it is authentic. Situational dialogues in course books are often criticized for their lack of authenticity. Some dialogues represent nothing like the messiness of real communication in real situations. Below is a list of common differences between authentic and scripted speech.

Authentic

Scripted

-Overlaps and interruptions between

speakers

-Normal rate of speech delivery

-Relatively unstructured language

-Incomplete sentences, with false starts,

hesitation, etc.

-Background noise and voices

-Natural stops and starts that reflect the

speaker’s train of thought and the listener’s ongoing response.

-Loosely packed information, padded out with fillers

-Little overlap between speakers

-Slower (maybe monotonous) delivery

-Structured language, more like written

English

-Complete sentences

-No background noise

-Artificial stops and starts that reflect an

idealized version of communication (in

which misunderstandings never occur).

-Densely packed information

Although there is an abundance of authentic material on the Internet, most of it does not come in a pedagogical framework (preview questions, comprehension questions, discussion points, etc). This means that the teacher may need to spend a considerable amount of time preparing authentic materials for classroom use. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that authentic materials are any more interesting than scripted materials. As many functional - notional course books proved in the 1970s and 1980s, train station announcements and the like may be authentic, but they are not content-rich, and, out of context, may be rather demotivating. Some English Language Teaching (ELT) writers have also argued that, if we are concerned with ‘naturalness’, what could be more natural than native speakers slowing down their rate of speech and using simplified vocabulary to a foreigner, just as they do to a young child who has not yet mastered the language? What could be less natural than native speakers talking at full speed to a foreigner and not taking into account his/her language level?

A solution favored by many material´s writers is authentic-based language. This may include some features such as hesitation and false starts, but the dialogue is basically cleaned up of any overly distracting aspects. In other words, it is scripted, but more realistically than in the past. Alternatively, there is the semi-scripted recording, in which actors are given a task to accomplish and may be asked to include various language points. They then improvise the dialogue.

What makes a good recorded text, whether authentic, scripted or semi-scripted?

Feature

Questions to ask

1. Interest

2. Cultural accessibility

3.Speech act/Discourse structure

4. Density

5. Language level

6. Length

7. Quality of recording

8. Speed

9. Number of speakers

10. Accent

-Will this be interesting for the students?

-Will the students understand the context and ideas?

-Does it discuss abstract concepts or is it based on everyday transactions?

-Does the information come thick and fast or are there moments in which the listener can relax?

-Is the majority of the vocabulary and grammar appropriate for the students?

-Will the teacher need to cut part of the recording because it is too long?

-Is the recording clear? Will background noise affect comprehension?

-Do the speakers talk too fast for the students?

-Are there many voices, potentially causing confusion?

-Is the accent familiar? Is it comprehensible?

Realia:

They are real objects, and in English classes, it is especially well suited to listening to anecdotes and stories.

Realia can help students with their listening because objects in general bring with them memories and associations that can spark off students’ ideas. Memories and associations are aspects of people´s schemata. All students can benefit from the use of realia, though it must be said that younger learners, in particular, love handling real objects.

Guides, maps and brochures can be used as realia, as well as numerous others such as menus, calendars, entertainment sections of magazines, etc, for authentic purposes.

(WILSON, 2008)