Teaching Listening Listening comprehension is at the core

Teaching Listening

Listening comprehension is at the core of second language acquisition. Therefore demands a much greater prominence in language teaching.

Nunan He points out that there are two models of listening: Ø Bottom-up Ø Top-down These two models need to be follow by the key strategies: Ø Predicting Ø Selective listening Ø Listening for different purposes Ø Inferencing Ø Personalizing

Field He examines the three stages which involves the process: Ø Pre-listening Ø Listening Ø Post-listening These should be develop within the roles: Ø Teacher: guider through the processes of listening Ø Monitoring listening difficulties Ø Reshaping classroom task

Lam It illustrates that learners can develop awareness of the syntax and organization of spoken discourse in order to facilitate their ability to process spoken texts. The activities should integrate both listening and speaking and seek to prepare learners to handle the demands of real-world communication.

Listening Process It is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Listening is thus fundamental to speaking.

Bottom-up Processing Model It assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion. It goes from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to the complete texts. Phonemic Units Words Utterances Phrases Meaningful Texts

Top-down Processing Model It suggest that the listener actively constructs (or, more accurately, reconstructs) the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues. Prior knowledge of the topic Relationship to the situation Conclusions Prior events

Types of Listening We can classify these according to: Ø The purpose of listening Ø The role of the listener Ø The type of text being listened to These are mixed in many different configurations, each of which will require a particular strategy on the part of the listener.

The listener is also required to take part in the interaction. This is known as reciprocal listening.

Listening in Practice The challenge here is to provide the learners some: Ø Personalize content Ø Degree of control Ø Extension tasks Some of the strategies are: Ø Selective listening Ø Listening for different purposes Ø Predicting Ø Progressive structuring Ø Inferencing Ø Personalizing

Effective Listening Course It should be characterized by the following features: Ø The material should be on authentic texts, including both monologues and dialogues. Ø Strategies should be incorporated into the materials. Ø Learners should know what they are listening for and why. Ø Content should be personalized.

Listening Stages It is necessary to provide the opportunities to the students to construct progressively the listening structures by listening to a text several times and by working through increasingly challenging listening tasks. We have three mayor stages in listening, they are:

Pre-listening This stage shows us how: Ø To provide sufficient context to match what would be available in real life. Ø To create motivation by asking learners to speculate on what they will hear. Activities Ø Brainstorming vocabulary Ø Reviewing areas of grammar Ø Discussing the topic

Listening The Intensive/Extensive Distinction It demands a process of normalization of adjusting to the pitch, speed, and quality of the voice. An initial period of extensive listening allows for this. Preset Questions It is necessary to change the way to comprehend the listening, this can be achieved by presetting comprehension questions. We can ensure that learners listen with a clear purpose, and that their answers are not dependent on memory.

Listening task Authentic materials It is necessary to do something with the information, the tasks can involve: They need to develop a reflective attitude and offer the opportunities to bring the students’ background knowledge. Ø Labeling Ø Selecting Ø Drawing Ø Form filling Ø Completing a grid Instead of simplifying the language of the text, simplify the task that is demanded of the student.

Post-listening It remains worthwhile to pick out any functional language and draw learners’ attention to it. As part of this stage one can ask learners to infer the meaning of new words from the context. Write the target works Replay the sentences Learners work out in the meaning

Raising students’awareness of the features of Real - World Listening input

Features of Real- World Listening Input Ø The use of time creating devices: Pause fillers such as “umm”, “eh”, “urh”, they do have a primary aim to help the speaker to solicit more time to plan and in turn to furnish the listener with more processing time. Ø The use of facilitation devices: Chunks of words are very common: “Yes, I did”, “me too”, “ so I am”. Ø The use of fixed and conventional phrases ( speech formulas), “you Know”, “I mean”, “Well”.

The use of Compensation Devices Redundancy: It is the construction of a phrase that presents some idea. There are three ways to build redundancy and help relieve Memory load are: ØRepetition ØReformulation ØRephrasing

The EFL learner has to recognize time creating, facilitation, and compensation devices. The learner needs to understand that these devices are there to facilitate the speaker’s production and the listener’s processing of the speech and not to distract the listener’s attention or to implied understanding.

Skills Enabling exercises To make sure that the listening input is authentic, comprehensible and pitched at the level of students, the teacher can help the students to produce their own listening material.

There two basic ways to guide learners to write semi-scripts Ø The teacher can use brief notes or flow charts Ø Or think a role-play situation in which different students have different roles to play The teacher can prepare a number of topics which are of general interest and within the scope of student’s experiences. Then students can work in pairs and give talks on the topic

Conclusion It is important to address the difference between spoken and written texts in the teaching of listening skills. Awareness - raising and skills - enabling exercises that provide students with opportunities to monitor the difficult level of listening input and integrate listening and speaking skills are part of the new way of teaching.