Unit 9 Teaching Listening
I. Differences between real-life listening and classroom listening
Purpose of listening
Meaningfulness
For information
Comprehension
Authentic, with
Meaningful: serves the
Real-life
For enjoyment
gestures, facial
listeners’ purpose and
listening
To maintain
language, context, so
motivates the audience
relationship
easy to understand.
As a springboard for
other activities
As a check of one’s
listening
Meaningless—usually
Artificial- deprived of
Classroom
comprehension
listening for several times,
all other means of aid,
listening
As practice of
which bores the listeners. It and thus difficult to
listening
is demotivating.
understand.
comprehension
As training of
listening skills
Implication for listening instruction:
1. Making the listening activities interesting.
2. Making listening meaningful to the listeners.
3. Use authentic materials.
4. Make listening purposeful, with information to get.
5. Make listening enjoyable.
6. Make listening comprehensible.
II. Factors constitutes the difficulty of listening comprehension.
1. phonetic decoding
Phonetic decoding is vital in listening comprehension. Though we
can replay the recorder, ask for repetition, usually listening is once for all. In such a case, automatic
decoding is very important. To achieve automatic decoding, special training is to be conducted.
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2. vocabulary
Lack of vocabulary is one of the main difficulty in listening. Without needed
vocabulary it is difficult to conduct automatic decoding, and thus difficult to conduct plain listening,
that is to understand the literal meaning of a listening material.
3. idioms
Though one can guess from the context the meaning of unfamiliar words or the
new meanings of idioms or phrases, it is very difficult to conduct word guessing as one can do in
reading. Though a large repertoire of idioms is necessary for listening.
4. listening materials
Difficult listening materials, for example dialogues, radio broadcasts,
and stories will pose different demand on the listener. So in listening lessons, the teacher should pay
attention to the selection of listening materials. Suit the materials to the existing listening level of
the students.
5. authenticity of listening materials
Though real-life listening is easier than classroom
listening, authentic materials used in classroom listening will make it relatively more difficult.
Deprived of the help of body language, facial expressions, the distraction of background noise, the
fragments, and so on all will add to the difficulty of decoding. So when selecting materials it is
necessary to take the authenticity of materials into consideration.
6. listening mechanism “stress, intonation, elision, weak forms, contractions, thought
groups” and so on all have some influence on listening comprehension. To ensure effective
listening, it is necessary for the listener to know all these. For example. They must be good at
distinguishing between thought groups like:
John said, “My father is here.”
“John,” said my father, “is here.”
Afred said, “The boss is stupid.”
“Afred” said the boss, “is stupid.”
7. motivation
As with any learning activity, motivation is always the most important. In
listening, it is also important to stimulate students’ interest. To achieve this purpose, it is necessary
to select suitable topics, to suit the activity to the characteristic of students.
8. background knowledge Lack of background knowledge constitute one of the main factors
affecting listening. So before listening, there is necessity to activate student’s schemata.
9. listening skills
Research shows that many times, it is because the listener is unable to
apply the right listening strategy that they fail to understand the listening materials. It implies that it
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is necessary to train strategies like gist listening, focused listening, deductive listening, word
guessing and so on.
III. Teaching approaches to listening
There are mainly two approaches to listening instruction. One is the top-down approach, the
other is the bottom-up approach. The bottom-up approach place more emphasis on instruction on
phonetic and linguistic items. It is characterized by micro-listening practice in sound systems and
instruction about vocabulary and grammar items. The top-down approach pay more attention to
knowledge about context, speaker or topic. In classroom room instruction, it will direct more time
to activation of background knowledge. however, an effective listener is not one who sticks to only
one of these two approaches, but one who knows how to make use of both approaches at the same
time, and thus what they apply is usually referred to as interactive-compensatory approach.
IV. Listening strategies
1. abilities to train
1) to follow the general trend of what is said
2) to check specific details of what is said
3) to understand the speaker’s intention
4) to understand speaker’s attitude
2. strategies to apply
1) gist listening—like skimming in reading
2) focus listening- like scanning in reading
3) deductive listening – to infer implied meaning
4) note-taking
5) word-guessing
V. Training activities of listening abilities
1. listening for gist
1) deciding on title of the text
2) writing summary of the text
3) sequence the main points
2. listening for specific information
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1) circling the names/places/characters while listening
2) listening and matching
3) spot dictation
4) completing TD
5) re-arranging of facts
3. listening for detailed information
1) right or wrong questions
2) multiple choice questions
3) answering questions
VI. Classroom instruction
1. pre-listening stage
* objectives
1) to establish listening expectations
2) to activate students’ prior knowledge about the topic
3) to smooth away linguistic difficulty
4) to present the topic
5) to motivate the listeners
* activities
6) prediction
7) brainstorming
8) questions
9) discovery activity
2. while-listening
*objectives
1) to get the information right
2) to understand the speakers’ intention and attitude
3) to obtain the main idea of the material
4) to train listening skills
* activities
5) listen and guess
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6) listen and act
7) listen and sequence
8) listen and tick
9) filling in forms
10) taking notes
11) drawing pictures
12) charting
3. post-listening
* objectives
1) to consolidate what has been learned
2) to apply what has been learned
3) to check what has been learnt
* activities
4) role play
5) simulate situation
6) retelling
7) re-writing
8) parallel writing
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