1.

JOURNAL OF TEACHING LISTENING AND HOW TO RUN

THE LISTENING CLASS
Review of journal language testing and research
Author

: Hongyu Wang

An Exploration on Designing Collage English Listening Class

According to the journal , nowadays in universities English teacher
always create listening learning

class activity by play the tape

recorder or cd for several times and after that ask the students
to answer the question related to the listening activity. It is called
push button English . Listening class in not design to listen and
do the task only . It is designed to improve students listening
skills, that will useful

for their future. However, some of the

English teacher do not do that toward their students.

that, there are three

To prove

steps to create English listening Class, to

develop students to understand and taking notes on listening

material , they are before, while, and after listening activities.
According to Fortune 500 CEO Survey of CEOs there are 10
international skills that student has to possessed , they are global
thinkers or wide global thinkers , excellent communicators
( competence in communication especially in foreign language),
team workers, innovative, creative, cooperative , problem solvers,
independent , self-starters, and technologically competent. So if
the students want to applied for a job they should have the skills
above to improve their carrier and to be competitive with the

other people around the world.

One of the way for student to

have that skills by learning in the listening class .

1. Teaching Mode Listening Class
According to Zang and Zhu (2004) research has shown that
in general

good listener use a variety of metacognitive,

does help improve listening comprehension. It is related to

the purpose of teaching listening to improve students skill.
Becarefull , before teacher teach she or he must prepare
the class condition , first by diagnose student needs and
students listening problem. Problem from the students
come from their background, culture , personality, needs,
interest, and expectation. Teacher can do pre test and
trouble shooting before teaching. One of the important
thing is the syllabus, teacher must creative in create the
learning points from the learning purpose or the material. It
has to match with the students needs

and to solve the

students problems.
Here the three stages of listening activity :
1.1Before Listening Activity
Teacher should prepare the materials for listening activity
before start the listening class. Do the warm up activit
ies, brain storming ideas , are some of the opening or
before listening activity. By doing this activity we can help
students

to guess what are they going to learn. Study

listening should be stimulated

real live situation through

pre-listening discussion to called up the back ground

knowledge of students , so they can connect to the new
material that will deliver. Culture background is affected to

the listening class especially for the students behavior. To

establish the difference between them is through the
dialogue. If there are gaps in students knowledge such as
grammar or vocabulary the listening can be preceded by
schema building activities (Shu : 2009 ).
1.2while listening activity
Traditionally , teacher who teaches listening always used
the listening comprehension as the passive skills. Listening
is not passive skills , students asked to be active and be
participated

in

communication

between

participants.

Listening comprehension is an interactive process involve

active guessing, expectation, idealization which makes
extensive use later in a typical speech. The first thing
teacher should do in while listening activity is :
a. tell students to get the global understanding of the
listening materials by using WH-Question such as what ,
when , who, where , how to guide them understand
general meaning.
b. Intensive process. In this process teacher tell students
to making notes from what they have heard. Make
groups in the class room based from their lavel and
ability.
answers

Let students summarizing, arguing , checking

,

and

make

the

listening

class

become

interactive. By using this way , listening class become

interesting and interactive activity because students
have the change to

show their own explanation and

They improve their abilty and construct the meaning

from what theyve heard. Here some steps of Note - taking

technique
1. First listening general
a. Guided note taking for main ideas : writes the main
idea only
b. Focus on relevant macrostrategy
c. Oral summary : by retell what we have summarized
2. Second listening specific
a. Detailed note taking : write the detail information
that we heard
b. Comparison of note taking : comparing what we have
written and listened.
According to Lynch note taking is very personal and
there is no single best system . but there are three
basic

rules

that

students

should

know

a.

be

selective : decide what is important to write , b. use

initial , abbreviation , and symbols, for make easy to
understand , c. show the interrelationship between
the speaker points like make the linear notes , mind
map, spider notes , etc.
1.3After Listening Activity
Post listening is the endless process of listening. Student
should explain what they have listened and understand
from the listening activity .
In this step students are expected to have the functional of
language such as

apologizing , inviting , refusing,

suggesting , and inferring the meaning of new words.

Student should practice lot not only learn in the class room
but out of the class room they should practice more in
order to make
proficient in listening comprehension.

2. ARTICLE OF HOW TO TEACH LISTENING

Practical suggestions of new ways to teach listening
Author : Lu Zang
There are some treatments for applied to the listening class activity ,
you can use the treatments before listening activity. The treatmens
not just for supporting the listening class activity and not only for
get students approaches in listening. However this is concern to
improve students listening skills, not only testing them. Here some
explanation about the treatments :
a. Use plenty of recorded material
One of the material to applied in listening class is recorded material.
Teacher can play recorded material to the students and play it several
times with the same sound if it necessary. The material can be
monologue, dialogue, and it should be native speaker sound.
Students can improve their listening skill out side the class room
such as listening to the radio , public announcement at the airport,
station, oe eavesdropping on strangers conversation. Typically it
happens in the conversation of listening , students have the
opportunity to give feed back to the speaker. It is very helpful for
them , teacher can provide video recording, television, movie as the
tools of listening activity.
b. Prepare the learners for listening by setting the scene, introducing
the characters, pre-teaching vocabulary,etc.
In this section students normaly have the back ground or prior
knowledge of vocabulary or some informations , that they can
expected and predicted about what theyre going to hear. Teacher can

play the tape recorder , movie, or film for a short time before start
the listening activity without any preparation and asking question
like who or where . it can help them to get the piece of information ,
and it will help the students to establish the scene from what they
hear.
c. Before the learners listen, set a listening task which directs them to
an overall 'gist' understanding of the passage.
This idea is given to support and direct learners listening . teachers
dont have to tell the students to understand the main points , but
understand all of the passage , to get the main points.
d. Check the answers to this task, playing the recording again if
necessary.
Teacher can re-playing recording several times but based on
students need.
e. Set a further task, or tasks, which direct learners to a more detailed
understanding.
After playing the recording teacher can give the task related to
listening material that already given.
f. only use the tapescript (if there is one!) as a last resort
Not only tapescript you can use other media like authentic printed
materials like news letter, post card, magazine, and so on. You can
also audio visual listening materials, such as soap opera , movies,
songs , and so on. The listening materials should be the authentic
materials.
g. The recording, and the tasks, as 'authentic' as possible
The material and task should be authentic. It means the authentic
material or task should

be something real such as recording,

transcript, movie , songs , conversation of some people , magazine,

movie advertisement , obituary

column, advice column, etc.

Students will easily understand to do the task or understand the

material. It will easy for the students because they already faced that
in the real life.

Theory Vandergrift ( 1999 ) listening is a complex process in which

listeners play an active role in discriminating between sounds /
understanding vocabulary and grammatical structure , interpreting
intonation and stress and finally , making

use of all the skills

mentioned above, interpreting the utterance within the socio-cultural

context.
Based on the theory above we can conclude that listening is an
active process b
y listener to interpreting , understand the conversation including the
vocabulary and grammatical structure , they use all of skills above
to retell the meaning of the information that they have heard.