Teaching Listening

Teaching Listening

Why does listening seem so difficult? Characteristics of the listening process Types of listening Principles of teaching listening Pre-listening activities While-listening activities Post-listening activities

Why does listening seem so difficult?

Task:• Discuss this question in your group

Why does listening seem so difficult?

Students:• Quickly forget what is heard.• Do not recognise words they know.• Understand the words but not intended

message.• Neglect the next part when thinking about

meaning.• Unable to form a mental representation from

words heard.• Do not understand subsequent parts of input

because of earlier problems.

Characteristics of the listening process

Task:

In groups, discuss the following question:

What is the difference between reading and listening?

Differences?

• You have just one go at it• The presence of stress, rhythm, intonation etc• Characteristics of fast, natural speech (e.g. weak forms)• Often the need to process and respond immediately• Often visual clues but also other noise• Information is often less densely packed and more

repetitive than in reading• Natural redundancy• Less complex in grammatical and discourse structure

Characteristics of the listening process

• Spontaneity• Context• Visual clues• Listener’s response• Speaker’s adjustment(Ur 1996:106-7)

Active listening?!!

The listening process

• Listening is a two or three stage process1. Recognition2. Utilisation

These stages can be summarised in three questions:

3. ‘What did he say? (recognising)4. What did he mean when he said X?5. What did he intend when he said X? (utilising –

applying to the context)’

The listening process

• Bottom-up processing – we use our linguistic knowledge and ability to process acoustic signals, which we first decode into phonemes, then words, phrases, and finally sentences

• Top-down processing – the speaker’s meaning is interpreted from expectations based on the context, world knowledge etc

(Hedge, 2000)

Types of listening

1. Selective listening – for a specific piece of information2. Global listening – for overall gist3. Intensive listening – for precise information and detail

(Ferguson, 2005b)

1. Transactional listening – to obtain new information2. Interactional listening – to maintain social relationships3. Critical listening – in academic contexts4. Recreational listening – for relaxation, entertainment

(Rost, 1990)

Principles of teaching listening

• Focus on process• Combine listening with other skills• Focus on the comprehension of meaning• Grade difficulty level appropriately

Principles of teaching learning

Look at the text from Headway Upper Intermediate (p86). Think about the following:

What is the general purpose of pre-listening work?

What are the specific purposes of the tasks in 1,2 and 3?

Why are the students given a task while listening?

What roles must the teacher perform during this listening work?

(Hedge, 2000)

Principles of teaching listening

• Pre-listening activities• While listening activities• Post-listening activities

Pre listening activities

RATIONALE:

•Motivating students by making the topic relevant and interesting

•Activating existing knowledge for new knowledge to be built upon

•Introducing key vocabulary and key structures, that students need in order to understand the text

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Pre-listening activities

• Predicting (eg. “What are these people doing? What are they saying to each other?”)

• Setting the scene - introduce people/ places (activating schemata)

• Gist listening• Listening for specific

information

While listening activities

• No response• Tick boxes eg. • Sequencing• Act • Draw• Gap fill• Take notes

Final thoughts

• Don’t expect learners to remember more than a native speaker would!

• Testing understanding rather than memory

• Think more about the process than the product (wrong answers more interesting...)

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References

Ferguson, G. (2005) Lecture Handout: Listening and Teaching Listening. MA Module: Language Teaching Methodology. University of Sheffield.

Hedge, T. (2000) Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rost, M. (1990) Listening in Language Learning. London: Longman.

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Post-listening activities

Multiple-choice questions (eg.) Answering questions Note-taking and gap-filling Dictogloss (preparation, dictation,

reconstruction, correcting)

Role play Debate Discussion

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