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Teaching listening

Ms. Alka Macwan

           Introduction

Consider for a moment  the importance of effective listening in your life. Conversations with friends and interviews, talks, lectures- the list is endless and the ability to listen is central to all of them listening enables you to do more than just hear  what others are saying. Real  listening means giving them your full attention and understanding. In fact it is difficult to imagine how one could be successful without also being a good listener listening is more than just sitting passively and telling sounds waft over you. It is also about being sensitive to the others  person’s voice choice of words, tone,  speed and body  language but in most language teaching programmes listening gets the least attention in spite of the fact  that poor  listening habits and skills can cause failures of communication. Lets go deep into how training through various activities and all the abilities required for effective comprehension.

What happens when we listen.

Although once labeled a passive skill, listening is very much an active process of selecting and interpreting information from auditory and visual clues There are several basic processes at work in listening. These do not necessarily occur sequentially; they may occur simultaneously, in rapid succession, or backward and forward as needed. The listener is not usually conscious of performing these steps, nor of switching back and forth between them. The listener:

determines a reason for listening;

takes the raw speech and deposits an image of it in short-term memory;

attempts to organize the information by identifying the type of speech event (conversation, lecture, radio ad) and the function of the message (persuade, inform, request);

predicts information expected to be included in the message;

recalls background information (schemata) to help interpret the message;

assigns a meaning to the message;

checks that the message has been understood;

determines the information to be held in long-term memory;

deletes the original form of the message that had been received into short-term memory (Brown 1994).

Each of these steps influences the techniques and activities a teacher might choose to incorporate into instruction in order to assist learners in learning to listen as well as listening to learn.

The skills of listening comprehension  

Based on studies expert have highlighted the skills that are needed for successful listening. The main ones include the following.

Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of the language.

Recognize reduced or ‘weak’ forms of words and phrases.

Recognize stress, rhythms and tone patterns.

Process utterances spoken at different speeds.

Detect sentence constituents.

Take note of different ways of expressing the same meaning.

Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.

Use nonverbal clues (including body language )to get at meanings.

Use one’s world knowledge to infer situations, goals etc.

Recognise communicative functions of different utterances.

 Various activities  for teaching listening  

Here are a few general types of activities that we all use.

Have students:

Draw what they hear.

-Indicate which word doesn't belong in a given sequence.

-Act out what is said.

-Complete grids, pictures, or sentences with missing information.

-Respond to questions about message content in a variety of formats.

-Supply possible titles for listening passages.

-Supply the missing portions of a telephone conversation.

-Supply the ending for a story.

-Participate in chain activities in which each person repeats what the preceding people said and then adds a detail.

-Indicate the number of words heard in a sentence.

-Respond to questions 

-Follow oral directions.

-Participate in various types of dictation exercises.

-Choose the picture that corresponds to the description.

-Indicate if they heard a particular statement in a passage.

-Indicate incongruities in a passage.

-Engage in guessing games based on message content.

-Repeat a description as accurately as possible.

-Categorize words heard.

-Write what they remember.

-Signal (by standing, raising hand, clapping, etc.) recognition of grammatical features (tense, gender, etc.).

-Distinguish sentences, questions, and exclamations.

-Respond to possible, impossible, and unlikely statements.

-Distinguish between homonyms.

-Indicate the moment when they realize the topic of a conversation.

-Place items heard in proper chronological order.

-Listen for a particular word or piece of information.

-Paraphrase what is said.

Some sample  Exercises for teaching listening  

1. Reading Stories

Stories, if interesting and well-told, are readily listened to by most students, and are particularly popular with students whose listening abilities are lower than intermediate..Before students listened to the tape, a teacher can read a short story in normal speed one or two times, after that, students would be asked some questions or asked to retell the story in their own words. Sometimes, leave the end of the story for students to discuss, and they could finish the story according to their own ideas. Almost all the students like the activity since they are interested in the stories and they got full benefit from the listening experience.

2. Question and Answer

Some people might think that asking questions is a purely technical  matter. But in some classes, it is not. As a matter of fact listening comprehension should demand students' participation, and the immediate feedback helps keep interest and motivation. first five to ten minutes of a lesson can be used as a "Question Time". Before listening to a passage, a teacher should always ask some questions so that students would have some ideas about the topic before they listen. In this process of doing the warm-up activity, students can build on their prior knowledge and at the same time, use vocabulary and structures that are connected with a particular function.

For example:

• Then, what will you do?

• Do you often go to restaurant?

• Do you like cooking?

• What will make you unhappy when you are eating in the restaurant?

• Now, you are going to listen to a passage, which tells you why Tom is so angry about the restaurant.

In this way, students can be aware of the purpose of the exercise in general and the nature of the specific task in particular before they listen to the passage. The "Question Time" activity can do much in listening classes, such as creating a friendly atmosphere between the teacher and the students, building the students' confidence and having the thrill of something spontaneous. Above all, it makes students feel interested and gets them involved in the listening activities.  

3. Using Pictures  

pictures can be used in listening class. Pictures can bring images of reality into the unnatural world of the language classroom. Pictures are useful in developing students' listening comprehension, particularly 'directed listening' They not only help to guide the student' listening, they can provide a general background and context. They especially contribute to interest and motivation. For example, try this "spot the similarity" activity.

• Ask the students to get into pairs, give each student or pair of students a picture that the other(s) must not see.

• Tell them that they have pictures that are very different from each other, and ask them to describe these pictures to each other with the aim of finding as many similarities as they can.

• After several minutes, ask them to look at the two pictures and see what other similarities they can find.

Sometimes, teacher can  read descriptions of faces, maps, diagrams for students to draw. No matter how well or badly they do, students become so happy to have the chance to listen, speak, and do something interesting in the listening class which they may have once considered a 'sleeping course'.

The above activities can be used as warm-up exercises that cultivate students' interest and help students enjoy their listening course. The activities have a positive affect on students and make them want to listen and speak more. After one year's practice, the students in my class had better understanding and speaking ability. Above all, the students had the habit of listening to English after class, such as listening to radio, tapes and so on.  

Summary

Of course, listening comprehension is a complex activity involving a large number of different skills and activities. No small set of exercises can possibly satisfy the needs of most students. No one correct learning strategy will work for all students at all times. So, English teachers should have a large battery of different exercises designed to give practice in most of these various skills. Moreover, listening should be taught with motivation, interest and variation so students can keep their interest in it. As a result, students can make good progress in listening comprehension.

References

• Anderson, A & Lynch T (1988) Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Andrew, W. (1989) Pictures for language learning. Cambridge University Press.

• Brown, G. (1990) Listening to spoken language. Longman.  

H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research, Vallabh Vidyanagar - 388120, Gujarat, India

Phone : 091-2692-230193, 091-2692-230079