CHAPTER I

TEACHING LISTENING

LISTENING COMPREHENSION IN PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH

Listening is a major component in language learning and teaching first hit the spotlight in
the late 1970s with James Arher’s (1977) work on total Response.

AN INTERACTIVE MODEL OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION

One facet the first step of listening comprehension is the psychomotor process of
receiving sound waves through to the ear and transmitting nerve impulses to the brain.

The following eight processes (adapted from Clark & Clark, 1977; Richard, 1983) are all
involved in comprehension.

1. The hearer processes what we will call “raw speech” and holds an “image” of it in short
term memory.
2. The hearer determines the type of speech event being processed and then appropriately
“colors” the interpretation of the perceived message.
3. The hearer Infers the objectives of the speaker through consideration of the type of
speech event, the context, and the content.
4. The hearer recalls background information relevant to the particular context and subjects
matter.
5. The hearer assigns a literal meaning to the utterance.
6. The hearer assigns an intended meaning to the utterance.
7. The hearer determines whether information should be retained in short term memory or
long term memory.
8. The hearer deletes the form in which the message was originally received.
TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Monologues, when one speaker uses spoken language for any length of time, as in
speeches, lectures, readings, the hearer must process long stretches of speech without
interruption-the stream of speech will go on whether or not the hearer comprehends.

Dialogues involve two or more speakers and can be subdivided into those exchanges that
promote social relationship and those for which the purpose is to to convey propositional or
factural information.

WHAT MAKES LISTENING DIFFICULT?

1. Clustering
In written language we are conditioned to attend to attend as the basic unit of
organization.
2. Redundancy
Spoken language, unlike most written language, has a good deal of redundancy.
3. Reduced forms
While spoken language does indeed contain a good deal of redundancy, it also has many
reduced forms and sentence fragments.
4. Performance variables
In spoken language, except for planned discourse, hesitations, false stars, pauses, and
corrections are common.
5. Colloquial language
Learners who have been exposed to standard written English and/or “textbook” language
sometimes find it surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial language.
6. Stress, rhythm, and intonation
The prosodic features of the English language are very important for comprehension.
7. Rate of delivery
Virtually every language learner initially thinks that native speakers speak to fast
Actually.
8. Interaction
Unless a language learner’s objective is exclusively to master some specialized skill like
monitoring radio broadcasts, interaction will play a large role in listening comprehension.
MICROSKILLS AND MAKROSKILLS OF LISTENING

Microskills

1. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory

2. Discriminate among distinctive sounds of English
3. Recognize English stress patterns and their role in signaling information
4. Recognize reduced forms of words
5. Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and interpret word order
patterns and their significance
6. Process speech at different rates delivery
7. Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables
8. Recognize grammatical word classes
9. Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents
10. Recognize that a particular meaning

Macroskills

1. Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse

2. Recognize the communicative functions of utterance
3. Infer situations, participant, goal using real-world knowledge
4. From events, ideas, etc.
5. Distinguish between literal and implead meanings.
6. Use facial, kinesic, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings.
7. Develop and use a battery of listening strategies.

MICROSKILLS AND MAKROSKILLS LISTENING

In his seminal article on teaching listening skills, Jack Richard (1983) provided a
comprehensive taxonomy of aural skills, which he called microskills, involved in conversational
discourse. I have adapted Richard original microskills into a list of micro-and macroskills, the
latter to designate skills that are technically at the discourse level.

TYPES OF CLASSROOM LISTENING PERFORMANCE

1. Reactive
Sometimes you want a learner simply to listen to the surface structure of an utterance for
the sole purpose of repeating it back to you.
 2. Intensive
Techniques whose only purpose is to focus on components (phonemes, words, intonation,
discourse markers,etc)
3. Responsive
A significant proportion of classroom listening activity consist of short stretches of
teacher language designed to elicit immediate responses.
4. Selective
In longer stretches of discourse such as monologues of a couple of minutes or
considerably longer, the task of the student is not to process everything that was said, but
rather to scan the material selectively for certain information.
5. Extensive
This sort of performance, unlike the intensive processing described above, aims to
develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken language.
6. Interactive
Finally there is listening performance that can include all five of the above types as
learners actively participate in discussions, debates, conversations, role play, and other
pair and group work.

PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS

1. Include a focus on listening in an integrated-skill course

Assuming that your curriculum is dedicated to the integration of all four skills,
remember that each to the separate skills deserves special focus in appropriate doses.
2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating
Appeal to listeners personal interest and goals. Since background information is an
important factor in listening.
3. Utilize authentic language and contexts
Authentic language and real word task enable students to see the relevance of
classroom activity to their long term communicative goals.
4. Carefully consider the form of listener responses
Comprehension itself is not externally observable.
5. Encourage the development of listening strategies
Most foreign language student are simply not aware of how to listen.
6. Include both bottom-up and top-down listening techniques
 Speech processing theory distinguishes between two types of processing in both
listening and reading comprehension.

LISTENING TECHNIQUES FORM BEGINNING TO ADVANCED

The important of listening comprehension in language learning should by noe be quite

apparent.

ASSESSING LISTENING IN THE CLASSROOM

1. Understanding the Term ‘’assessment’’ and ‘’Test’’

2. Assessing Types of Listening and Micro and Macroskill
a. Intensive listening tasks
b. Responsive listening tasks
c. Selective listening tasks
d. Expensive listening tasks
 CHAPTER II

TEACHING SPEAKING

A. ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN PEDAGOGIKAL RESEARCH

1. Conversatioanal discourse

When someone ask you “do you speak english?” they usually mean: can you carry on a
conversation resionably competently? The bencmark of succesful language acquasition is almost
always the demonstration of an ability to accomplish pragmatich goals trough interactive
discourse with other speakers of language.

2. Teaching pronounciation
There has been some controversy over the role of pronounciation work in a
communicative, interactive course of study ( Levis, 2005;Setter & Jenkins, 2005; Tarone, 2005.
3. Accuracy and fluency
An issue that porvades all of language perfomance is the distinction between accuracy
and fluency ( Bailey, 2003 ). In spoken english the question we face as teacher is: how shall we
prioritize the two clearly important speaker goals of accurate ( clear, grammatically and
phonologically correct) language and fluent( flowing, natural) language?
The fluency/accurancy issue often boils down to the extent to which our techniques should be
message oriented(or, as some call it, teaching language use) as opposed to language oriented(also
known as teaching language usage).
4. Affective factors

One of the major obstacles learners have to overcome in learning to speak is the aanxiety
generated over the risk of blurting things out that are wrong, stupid, or comprehensible. Because
of the language (see PLLT, chapter 3 and 6) that imforms other that “ you are what you
speak,”learners are reluctant to be judged by hearers.

5. The interaction effect

The greatest difficulty that learners encounter in attemps to speak is not the multiplicity
of sounds, words, phrases, and discourse forms that characterize any language, but rather the
interactive nature of most communication.
 6. Question about intelligiblity
A now outdated model of english language teaching assumed that intelligiblity should be
gauged by whether nonnactive speakers are intelligible to native speakers.
7. The growth of spoken corpora
The intelligibility issue is now being infrmed by what McCharty and O’keefe(2004)
describe as repid growth of readily available corpora of spoken language one of the key
development in research on teaching oral production. As the size and scape of corpora expand,
so our understanding of what people really sas is informed by empirical evidence.
These data are suppiring the language –teaching profession-especially texbook and course
developers-to adopt new models that transcend the traditional native speaker/nonnative speker
dichotomy.
8. Genres of spoken language
Finally, research on spoken language has recently attended to a specification of
differences among various genres or oral interaction, and how to teach those variotions(Hughes,
2002). What is judged to be acceptable and/or correct varies by contexts, or genres, such as small
talk, discussion, and narrative, among others.

TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

In several categories were defined for understanding types of spoken language(see

especially figure 18.1, page 303). In beginning trough intermediate levels of proviency, most of
the efforts of students in oral production come in the form of conversation,or dialogue. As you
plan and implement techniques in your interactive classroom, make sure your students can deal
with both interpersonal(sometimes referred to as interactional) and transactional dialogue and
that they are able to converse with a toyal stranger as well as someone with whom they are quite
familiar.
WHAT MAKE SPEAKING DIFFICULT?

Bear in mind that the following characteristics of spoken language can make oral
performance easy as well as, in some cases, difficult.

1. Clustering
2. Redundancy
3. Reduced forms
4. Performance varables
5. Colloquial language
6. Rate of delivery
7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation
8. Interaction

MICRO-AND MACROSSKILLS OF ORAL COMMUNICATION

One implication of such a list is the importance of focusing on both thr forms of language
and the functions of language. In teaching oral communication, we don’t limit students’ attention
to the whole picture, even though that whole picture is important. We also help students to see
the pieces-right dowh to the small parts-of language that make up the whole.

TYPES OF CLASSROOM SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

The kinds of oral production that students are expected to carry out in the classroom.
1. Imitative
2. Intensive
3. Responsive
4. Transactional (dialogue)
5. Interpersonal(dialogue)
6. Extensive(monologue)
9. PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS
1. Focus on both fluency and accuracy, depending on your objective
2. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques
3. Encourage the use autenthic language in meaningful contexts
4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction
5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening
6. Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication
7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies

TEACHING CONVERSATION
Research on teaching conversational skills( McCarhty & O’keefe, 2004; Tarone, 2005)
historically describes two major approaches for teaching conversation. The first is an indirect
approach in which learners are more or less set loose to engage in interaction. The second is a
direct approach that” involves planning a conversation program around the specific microskills,
strategies, and process that are involved in fluent conversation” (Richards, 1990,pp.76-77).the
indirect approach implies that one does not actually teach conversation, but rather that students
acquire conversational competence, peripherally, by engaging in meaningful task. A direct
approach explicity calls students attention to conversational rules, conventions,and strategies.
1. Conversation-indirect (strategy consciousness-raising)
2. Conversation-direct(gambits)
3. Conversation-transactional(ordering from a catalog
4. Meaningful oral grammar practice (modal auxiliary would)
5. Individual practice: oral dialogue journals
6. Other interactive techniques

TEACHING PRONOUNCIATION
The variable that you should consider
1. Native language
2. Age
3. Exposure
4. Innaate phonetic ability
5. Identify and language ego
6. Motivation and concern for good pronounciation
A significant factor for you in the success of such techniques lies in your ability to instill in your
students the motivation to put forth the effort needed to develop clear, complrehensible
pronounciation

a. Intonation-listening for pitch changes

b. Sress-contrasting nouns
c. Meaningful minimal pairs

FOCUS ON FORM AND ERROR TREATMENT

1. The role of feedback
2. When and how treat errors

ASSEASSING SPEAKING IN THE CLASSROOM

1. Item types and tasks for assessing speaking
a. Imitative speaking tasks
b. Intensive speaking tasks
c. Responsive speaking tasks
d. Interactive speaking tasks
e. Extensive speaking tasks
2. Evaluating and scorong speaking tasks
One or more of at least six possible criteria may be your target:
~ pronounciation
~ fluency
~ vocabulary
~ grammar
~ discourse features(cohesion, socuolinguistic appropriateness, etc.)
~ task (accomplishing the objective of the task).ss