What is listening?
Define it in your own words.

Listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear.

Why do we listen (in our own lives, everyday)?

Mainly to:
Engage in social rituals (with family, friends, coworkers, merchants, taxi/bus drivers, etc.)
Gather and exchange information
Enjoy ourselves (pleasure)

What are some things people listen to everyday (that you could and should use as materials in class)?

Casual conversations (yours or someone else’s – eavesdropping)
Recounts and narratives
Explanations, instructions, and procedures (e.g. how to use or operate something)
Professional advice (e.g. hospital, bank, or law office)
Announcements (e.g. at an airport or in a grocery store)
Things on the Internet (e.g. news, videos, TED, etc.)
Radio broadcasts (e.g. news, weather, talk shows, stories, etc.)
TV shows (commercials) and movies (trailers)
Music (with lyrics)
Things at school (e.g. lessons, lectures, teacher-talk, or student-talk)
Things at work (e.g. meetings or presentations)
Telephone conversations

What are some listening myths?

Listening is a passive skill
Listening is a one-way process
Learners just need to listen a lot
Listening and speaking are separate skills
Listening practice should be based on native speaker models
Listeners should be able to understand everything in the text

What are the types of listening we engage in on a day-to-day basis?

Listen for gist (general idea of what is being said)
Listen for specific information (only need to understand specific, limited parts)
Listen for details (for exact information that will help achieve a task)
Listen for inferences (to know how a person feels)

What are some of the factors that come into play when we engage in the process of understanding spoken language?

Listener factors (purpose, proficiency, confidence, familiarity, interest, strategies)
Linguistic factors (variety of English, colloquial language, speed, number of speakers, relationships to each other, length of segment, nonverbal communication, type of discourse)
Situational factors (setting, contextual clues and affectations, participant roles, participants actions and reasons for these, how actions inform speech, connection or disconnection to context)

What should teacher’s objectives in the classroom be? What should teachers strive to do?

Expose students to a range of (everyday) listening experiences
Make listening purposeful/meaningful
Help students understand the process of listening and how they might approach it
(i.e. teaching listening strategies)
Build students’ confidence in their own listening ability

How can a teacher successfully teach listening in class?

Make sure instructions are clear
Give students a specific purpose/task
Do lots of pre-listening work
Provide any necessary scaffolding while listening
Tell students not to worry about understanding every word (at least initially)
Review, recycle, and connect

What is the guideline when doing a listening task?

Process rather than product. The going is more important than the getting there.
The goal is to work on the listening itself, not just get the right answer(s) or finish your lesson plan.

What does listening involve?
What do people do when they are listening?

Get clues from the environment (facial expressions, gestures, background noise, setting, other people)
Use background knowledge about the setting, topic, language
Predict what the speaker is going to say next
Distinguish which words are important and carry meaning
Understand and interpret the meaning of those words and groups of words (pronunciation, colloquial vocabulary, ungrammatical utterances, redundancy)
Ask questions when they don’t understand
Note the meaning of silences
Have a goal in mind and try to achieve it

What are some features of a good listening activity?

Variety of situations (monologs, dialogs, announcements, etc.)
Relevance to students’ needs
Listening processes (top-down, bottom-up, interactive)
Linguistic level (vocabulary, grammar, length of text)
Topics (interest, background knowledge)
Tasks (realistic, useful, help improve skills)
Sequence (before, during, after)

What are the elements of a good listening lesson?

Has pre-listening activities
Allows students to know the kind of text and purpose for listening in advance
Gives students a purpose for listening (e.g. to get general or specific information or to accomplish a task)
Requires some kind of response from the listener such as taking notes, answering questions, or making a group decision
Uses appropriate material (topic is of high interest or value, at right level, authentic, etc.)
Gives students more than one chance to listen – each time with a different purpose
Has follow-up activities which include other skills

What is the difference between top-down, bottom-up, and interactive processing?

Top-down [meaning level] describes how the listener’s background knowledge affects listening (i.e. our knowledge of the world and different kinds of texts – narratives, explanations, reports, etc.)
Bottom-up [word level] emphasizes the decoding of the smallest units that lead us towards meaning (i.e. recognizing the words the input contains and using knowledge of the meaning of the words and grammar to determine the speaker’s meaning): phonemes > syllables> words > clauses/chunks > sentences > paragraphs > longer sections of text > whole text
Interactive [both meaning and word level] moves between bottom-up and top-down processing (i.e. it utilizes both)

What is a typical route map for a listening activity?

1. Before the lesson (familiarize yourself with the materials and activity, think about learners’ needs and challenges, plan for clear instructions, consider seating arrangements and use of the board, etc.)
2. Lead-in (raise motivation or interest, focus on language items that might be useful in the activity)
3. Set up the activity (organize students, give clear instructions – demonstrate/model/show vs. tell)
4. Run the activity (allow students to do the activity while you monitor and facilitate)
5. Close the activity (sense when the students are ready to move on; make a judgment about when coming together as a whole class would be useful to most people > time warning)
6. Post-activity (hold some type of feedback session on the activity – address comments and questions about the topic and the language)

What is a typical framework for a listening lesson?

1. (P) Predicting content
2. (P) Warm-up questions
3. (P) Vocabulary activity
4. (P) Task listening or listening overview
5. (D) Listen for main idea(s)
6. (D) Listen for details
7. (D) Listen for inferences (what is not explicitly said yet implied)
8. (P) Summarize
9. (P) Discussion questions
10. (P) Language work (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc.)
11. (P) Extension activities (projects)

What are some types of listening activities?

No overt response (stories, songs, TV shows, movies, videos – students do not have to do anything in response to the listening; facial expressions and body language indicate whether they are following or not)
Short responses (obeying instructions, ticking off items, true/false, detecting mistakes, cloze, guessing definitions, skimming and scanning
– students respond by writing a word or symbol or by phyical movement)
Longer responses (answering questions, note-taking, paraphrasing, translating, summarizing, long gapfilling – students write longer answers)
Extended responses (writing or speaking – students have to combine skills in creative ways)

What are some typical prelistening activities?

Brainstorming about a topic
Warm-up (discussion) questions
Situations (e.g. What would you do if . . . ?)
Pictures, maps, diagrams, graphs, videos or other visual aids
Realia related to the topic (e.g. menu or movie schedule)
Vocabulary or grammar work
Listing, ranking, rating, categorizing
Graphic organizer, chart or table
Prediction questions (about content)
Task overview (e.g. What do you want to know about . . .?)

Why do pre-listening activities?

Set the context
Establish a purpose for listening
Generate interest
Activate background knowledge
Help acquire new knowledge
Learn lexis used in the listening
Predict content
Preview listening tasks

What makes a good listening text?

How can you check the level of difficulty of a text?

Check how the information in the text is organized
Check how familiar students are with the topic
Check the vocabulary and expressions used
Check if there is any cultural information
Check if the text has multiple objects or individuals, and if they are clearly differentiated
Check if the text offers visual support to aid in the interpretation of what the listeners hear

What three kinds of information does listening comprehension depend on?

Input (the sounds the listener hears)
Linguistic knowledge (knowledge of sounds, vocabulary, grammar)
Context (general knowledge, personal experience, knowledge of what precedes the text)

How should the during-listening tasks be graded or arranged?

 Easy to difficult
 General to specific
 Concrete to abstract
Example: (1) main idea or gist (2) supporting details
(3) inferences – not explicitly stated/between the lines
(4) critical analysis (5) summarizing

What are some typical duringlistening activities?

Main idea
Details
Inferences (identify what is not explicitly stated – e.g. speaker’s attitude)
Cloze (fill in the blanks) exercise
Graphic organizer, chart or table
Ordering, numbering, ranking, listing, matching
Selecting correct response or detecting mistakes
Multiple choice, true/false, boxes, labeling, matching
Note-taking or dictation
Listen and do something (e.g. TPR, stand up or changes chairs if, etc.)
Section summaries or short answers

What should teachers do in the post-listening part of the lesson?

Review students comprehension and provide remedial activities (to address learner difficulties) where needed
Link comprehension to appropriate responses and follow-up (via tasks that mirror real-world listening purposes – e.g. role play, debate, etc.)
Use listening texts for language development (i.e. acquisition-focused activities – lexis, grammar, extend to other language skills, etc.)

What are some typical postlistening activities?

Comprehension questions
Summary
Content discussion (i.e. critical response)
Vocabulary review
Surveys
Debates
Role plays
Presentations
Skill work (i.e. writing – paragraph, reading – passage , listening – video)
Extension projects (i.e. creative content work)

What are some guidelines for listening skills work in class?

Keep the recording short (2 minutes is enough)
Play the recording a sufficient number of times
Let students discuss their answers together
Throw answers back to class (“Do you agree with . . . ?”)
Don’t be led by one strong student. Have they all got it?
Play challenging parts of recording again and again
Give help if they are stuck (scaffold as necessary)
Don’t change your requirements halfway through
Don’t let them lose heart – strive for achievement

What are some testing techniques for listening?

Discrete-item (multiple-choice questions)
Integrative (summarizing and dictation)
Communicative (writing a complaint letter after hearing a description of a problem)
Interview (with the teacher or another student)
Self-assessment (learner rates self on given criteria via questionnaire or journal)
Portfolio (collection of student work and performance)

Why is listening difficult?

Redundancy (rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, “I mean”/ “like”)
Reduced and chunked forms (“Djeetyet?”and “KnowwhatImean?”)
Performance variables (hesitations, false starts, pauses, corrections)
“But, uh . . . I also . . . Well, I mean, if you’re playing well, you get, you know, focused on your game –
I mean, keyed up, excited. Then it’s easy to, like, concentrate. And when you get in there, it’s uh . . . you know . . intense. And you don’t have to think about it. I mean, it’s just automatic. You’re on autopilot.”
Colloquial language (idioms, slang, expressions, cultural knowledge)
Rate of delivery (speak too fast, don’t know when words stop and start)
Key word recognition in spoken discourse (content vs. function words)
Inference identification (what is not being explicitly stated)
Stress, rhythm, intonation, accents, and attitude (features of pronunciation)
Social interaction (negotiate meaning – what’s important, details, etc.)

What do effective listeners do while listening (what strategies do they use)?

Are ready and have a plan to achieve a given task
Use background knowledge to predict what will be said
Use linguistic knowledge to predict what will be said
Monitor performance while listening
Pick out only salient points (listen selectively, ignore irrelevant details)
Take notes (write relevant information in shorthand)
Note the approximation of a difficult word (check later)
Listen for key words for topic identification
Check with other listeners
Ask for clarification
Reconstruct orally or in writing
Listen for transition points

How can you plan a listening course?

1. Carry out a needs analysis (i.e. reasons or purpose for taking the course, needs, interests, etc.)
2. Develop the course goals and objectives (i.e. what the course intends to teach – which reflects information gathered during the needs analysis)
3. Select and sequence content (by difficulty level or needs)
4. Chose appropriate listening materials (based on their effectiveness in achieving the purposes of the course, appropriateness for students’ current level and teacher’s style of teaching, availability of resources, and authenticity – to include modifications by adding, deleting, adapting, simplifying, or reordering)

What are some goals for teaching listening?

Develop students' awareness of the listening process and listening strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they listen in their native language.
Allow students to practice the full repertoire of listening strategies by using authentic listening tasks.
Behave as authentic listeners by responding to student communication as a listener rather than as a teacher.
When working with listening tasks in class, show students the strategies that will work best for the listening purpose and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the strategies.
Have students practice listening strategies in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their listening assignments.

Encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and their strategy use immediately after completing an assignment. Build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class listening assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular strategies.
Encourage the development of listening skills and the use of listening strategies by using the target language to conduct classroom business: making announcements, assigning homework, describing the content and format of tests.
Don ’ t assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another.
Explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of listening task or with another skill.
*By raising students' awareness of listening as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching listening strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.