Teaching Listening
Aims of the unit 1. Why is listening so difficult for students? 2. What do we listen to in everyday life? 3. What are the characteristics of the listening process? 4. What are the principles of teaching listening? 5. What are the common activities in teaching listening
It is becoming more and more necessary to understand spoken English in many situations, e.g. face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, business meetings, lectures, speeches, television, etc. Among the four skills, foreign language learners often complain that listening is the most difficult to acquire.
Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than reading because:
Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects and accents, stress, rhythms, intonations, mispronunciations, etc.; The listener has little/no control over the speed of the input of the spoken material; The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material);
The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning; Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. round the classroom) or the media that transmit sounds; The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.
Even at the beginning stage, we need to give our students a variety of listening exercises to prepare them for real life use of language. In most cases, the listening materials in the classroom are daily conversations or stories, but in reality we listen to far more things. e.g.
Lessons or lectures given in English; Instructions in English; Watching movies in English; Dealing with tourists; Interviews with foreign-enterprises; Socializing with foreigners; Listening to English songs;
Radio news in English; Conversations with foreigners; Watching television programmes in English; Shop assistants who sell goods to foreigners; International trade fairs; Negotiations with foreign businessmen; Hotel and restaurant services.
1. Formal or informal? 2. Rehearsed or non-rehearsed? 3. Can the listener interact with the speaker nor not?
Listening to English songs Socializing with foreigners Radio news in English Watching television programmes in English Negotiations with foreign businessmen Hotel and restaurant services
Listeners response. In a conversation, we can interrupt the speaker and ask for repetition or clarification. Speakers adjustment. The speaker can adjust the way of speaking according to the listeners reaction, e.g. he/she may rephrase or elaborate (to put it in more details).
Focus on process
Listening is not a passive activity. We must do many things to process information that we are receiving.
Paying attention. Constructing meaningful messages in the mind by relating what we hear to what we already know (previous knowledge). So it is very important to design tasks the performance of which show how well the students have comprehended the listening material.
Psycholinguistic studies have shown that people do not remember the exact form of the message they hear, i.e., they dont remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning.
Which of the following would you use for intermediate middle school students? In what order? (PP.140-141)
A videotape of a talk by a native speaker about the school life of middle school students in the United States; A live talk by a competent English-speaking Chinese psychologist about effective study habits; An audiotape of an interview with a native English speaker talking about her experiences living in China; An audiotape of the news from CRI (China Radio International)
The teacher need to evaluate the tasks provided in textbooks, adapt and design tasks to provide more variety. Variety does not only help students remain interested and motivated to learn, but also provide practise in the many types of listening situations which learners will encounter in real life.
Bottom-up model
(Hedge, 2000:230)
1) : 2) : 3) : 4) :
Top-down model
( )
Pre-listening activities
Predicting Setting the scene Listening for the gist Listening for specific information
Predicting
Good listeners are good predictors. There are many different activities that can be used to encourage students to predict the content of what they are about to hear. Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students comprehension. They attract students attention and help and encourage them to focus on the subject in hand (Ur, 1984:30).
e.g. 1
T: Where are they? What are they doing? What is the relationship between them?
e.g. 2
T: What do you see in the picture? What is behind the trees? What is in the tree? What is in the river?
Another type of predicting task is to let students read the listening comprehension questions before they listen.
No specific responses
For stories, or anything that is interesting, humourous, or dramatic, we just have the students listen and enjoy it.
Answering questions
Open-ended questions and inference questions can be asked.
Dictogloss
Preparation: briefly talking about the topic and key words Dictation: for two times, first time focusing on the meaning, and second time taking extensive notes Reconstruction: working in pairs/groups, reconstructing the text Analysing and correction: comparing their own version with the original
9.8 Conclusion
We must know the nature of listening, both in real language use and in language classrooms Focus on the process of listening rather than on the result of listening. Dont merely test the memory.
Homework
What are the characteristics of the listening process? What are the models of teaching listening? What are the common activities in teaching listening?