Teaching Listening

       

What is listening?

   Every day we listen to many different things in many different ways.Whether it is conversation with a colleague, the TV news, or a new music CD, we listen. In our native language at least, we seem to automatically know "how to listen and what we are listening for. To language learners, listening is far more challenging. In this chapter, we will explore how listening works and ways to help learners become more effective listeners. Listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear. Language skills are often categorized as receptive or productive. Speaking and writing are the productive skills. Listening. along with reading. is a receptiveskill. 

    That is, it requires a person to receive and understand incoming information (input). Because listening is receptive, we can listen to and understandthings at a higher level than we can produce. For this reason, people sometimes think of it as a passive skill. Nothing could be farther from the truth Listening is very active. As people listen, they process not only what they hear but also connect it to other information they already know. Since listeners combine what they hear with their own ideas and experiences, in a very real sense they are creating the meaning" in their own minds.

Why teach listening ?

  One of the main reason for getting students to listen to spoken english is to let them hear different varieties and accents rather than just the voice of their teacher with its own idiosyncrasies. They need to be exposed not only to one variety of english, but also to varieties such as American English, Australian English, or West African English. When people nationalities speak to each other, they often use english too.

  Despite the desirability of exposing students to many varieties of english, however, common sense is called for. The number of different  varieties will be a matter for the teacher to judge, based on the students level, where the classes are taking place. But even if they only hear occasional varieties of english which are different  from the teachers, it will give them a better idea of the world language which english has become.

    The main method of exposing students to spoken english is through the use of  which can exemplify a wide range of topics such as advertisements, news broadcasts, poetry, reading, plays songs with lyrics, speeches, telephone conversations and all manner of spoken exchanges. 

    The second major reason for teaching listening is because it helps students to acquire language subconsciously even if teacher do not draw attention to its special features. Language is a fundamental requirement for anyone wanting to learn it. Listening to appropriate tapes provides such exposure and students get vital information not only about grammar and vpcabulary but also about pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress. Listening is skill and any help we can give students in performing that skill will help them to be better listeners. 

Whats special about listening ?

    Listening is special too because spoken language, especially when it is informal, has a number of unique features including the use of incomplete utterances ( e.g  dinner serving as perfectly functional way of asking  is dinner ready?) repetitions (e.g im absolutely sure, absolutely sure you know that shes right ) hesitations ( yes, well, ummm, yes, possibly, but, er,). Experience of informal spoken english together with an appreciation of other spoken factors the one of the voice , the intonation the speakers use , rhythm, and background noise will help students tease meaning out of such speech phenomena. Teachers need to ensure that students are well prepared for listening and that they are clearly able to hear what they listen to. 

What are the principles behind the teaching of listening?

• The tape recorder is jjust as important as the tape

    However good your tape is, it will be useless if the tape recorder has a poor speaker or if the motor speed keeps changing and the tape goes faster or slower. Another vital feature is a tape couter that is easy to see. If you want to use your tapr recorder for music as well as speech you may need a better machine. 

• Preparation is vital 

    Teachers and students need to be prepared for listening because of the special features we discussed above. Teachers need to listen to the tape all the way through before they take it into the class. Students need to be make ready to listen. Teacher will do their best to get students engaged with the topic and the task so that they really want to listen.

• Once will not be enough 

    There are almost no occasions when the teacher will play a tape only once. Students will want to hear it again to pick up the things they missed the first time. The first listening iis often used hust to give students an idea of what the listening material sounds like. once students have listened to atape two or three times, however, they will probably not want to hear it too many times more.

• Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the language 

     As with reading, the most  important part of listeniong practice is to draw out the meaning, what is intended, what impression it makes on the students.

• Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.

    Because there are different things we want to do with a listening text, we need to set different tasks for different listening stages.

• Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full

    If teachers ask students to invest time and emotional energy in a listening task nd if they themselves have spent time choosing and preparing the listening then it makes sense to use the tape for as many different applications as possible.

5 reason why you should teaching listening

•   Learners develop an ability to discriminate sounds. Listening iearnvolves the identification of the differences among sounds. This identification and discrimination leads children to the understanding that sounds are grouped together to form words.

• Students realize the value of listening. Listening makes up a great percentage of a students day, both in and out of school. Expanding their views of listening and the benefits of using good listening skills can impact how they use listening. For instance, listening precisely to verbal instructions has a direct impact on students success in the classroom. They know exactly what they are to do as a result of being able to perform this type of listening.

• Students learn to listen for a variety of purposes. There are many purposes for listening, such as to determine a speakers intended message, being able to thoughtfully respond to a speakers message, and to appreciate music. The good news is that teachers can actually teach children how to listen for a variety of purposes, which is one of the main goals of the Listenwise curriculum. Teaching students how to listen is far different from simply expecting them to develop this complex language art by listening for longer periods with no specific focus.
• Listening enhances childrens ability to use the other language arts. Teaching listening allows students to follow directions, understand expectations, and make sense of oral communication. As children improve as listeners, they learn to use the same strategies to improve their command of the other language arts. For example, when children ask a question (speaking), they then listen (listening) for the response which might clarify what they need to do to complete a given reading or writing task.

• Students understand the relationship between listening and reading. Listening, like reading, is an active process. Listening and reading require the use of similar thought processes such as predicting and self-monitoring to attend to the conveyed message for the construction of meaning. And lets remember that reading a word is much easier if it has first been heard