Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
The importance of listening in language learning can hardly be overestimated. Through reception, we internalize linguistic information without which we could not produce language. In classrooms, students always do more listening than speaking. Listening competence is universally "larger" than speaking competence.
Listening comprehension has not always drawn the attention of educators that it now has.
Perhaps human beings have a natural tendency to look at speaking as the major index of language proficiency.
Listening as a major component in language learning and teaching first hit the spotlight in the late
1970s with James Asher's (1977) work on Total Physical Response, in which the role of comprehension was given prominence as learners were given great quantities of language to listen to before they were encouraged to respond orally 1 .
So, the teachers consider some specific questions about listening comprehension:
 What are listeners "doing" when they listen?
 What factors affect good listening?
 What are the characteristics of "real-life" listening?
 What are the many things listeners listen for?
 What are some principles of designing listening techniques?
 How can listening techniques be interactive?
How Do We Listen?
Types of Listening
When we listen, we use a variety of strategies to pick up the message. Some of these are connected with understanding the ‘big’ picture, e.g. gaining an overview of the structure of the whole text, getting the gist.
Listening in this way is sometimes termed
 gist listening or - listening for gist
 extensive listening.
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Other strategies are connected with the small pieces of the text, e.g.
 correctly hearing precise sounds,
 working out exactly what some individual words are,
 catching precise details of information, etc.
This is often called ‘listening for detail’.
When working on listening in the classroom, it makes more sense to start with work on the 'small pieces'
(e.g. sounds and words and details) or on ‘big pieces’ (e.g. background topics, the overall structure and organization of a text, the general meaning, etc.)?
The two views described here are known as top-down and bottom-up .
Top-down and bottom-up
It used to be believed that listeners built up their understanding of a text by working out what each individual sound was, then adding these up into a word, understanding the word, checking the meaning of that word with the words around them, etc.. Although this theory, known as ‘bottom-up’ (i.e. building up the messages from the individual small pieces), may initially sound appealing, it is virtually impossible to do.
The alternative theory is that when we listen to a new dialogue, we start processing the text using skills associated with a second theory (‘top-down’), i.e. making use of what we already know to help us predict the structure and content of the text, and getting a general overall impression of the message.
Task: Factors that help you listen
Imagine that you are going to listen to (and take part in) an important conversation in a foreign language you half-know. You are, naturally, a little nervous. Will it be easier for you to follow the dialogue if you:
 have some idea what the topic being discussed will be?
 know something about that topic?
 know the typical sequence of exchanges that is used in a dialogue like this?
 can predict issues likely to be raised?
 are quickly able to get an overview of the general direction of the conversation?
1 H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, San
Francisco State University, 1994
2 Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching, Macmillan Books for Teachers, 2007
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Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
 know any general rules or guidelines for what can/can't be said in conversations of this type?
 understand the attitudes of the participants?
 know some words/phrases that are commonly used in conversations of this type?
We think the answer to each of these is probably ‘yes’. We don't come to a new piece of listening completely from a 'zero' starting point. We bring our previous knowledge to it, even before it's started.
Making a good prediction of the content or the shape of a listening text will definitely help us to make better sense of it when it happens. Rather than having to start from scratch, the listening may fall neatly into an imagined framework we have already set out for it. Of course, we can't be ready for everything, but anything that we have correctly expected frees up our energy to pay attention to things that require more intensive listening. This is summed up in Figure.
Task: Top-down and bottom-up
Do the following represent use of top-down or bottom-up strategies?
1. Before we start listening, we can already predict some possible words and phrases that might be used because of our knowledge of lexical sets associated with the topic.
2. We listen carefully to a recording a number of times so that we can find a word we can't catch clearly.
3. When we don't clearly catch some of what people say, we hypothesize what we have missed and reinstate what we think was there, based on our knowledge of similar conversations.
4. We know the typical pattern some interactions follow (e.g. the typical sequence of exchanges when ordering a taxi on the phone), and this helps us to understand these when they are spoken.
Commentary
Strategy 2 is bottom-up. Strategies 1,3 and 4 are examples of top-down strategies, and we do a lot more of this kind of processing that you might expect Using background knowledge, prediction and 'filling-in' gaps are all important i listening skills.
Several decades of research and practice in teaching listening comprehension have yielded some practical principles for designing techniques that include aural comprehension. These principles are summarized below. Some of them, especially the first two, actually apply to any technique; the others are more germane to listening.
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1. In an interactive, four-skills curriculum, make sure that you don't overlook the importance of techniques that specifically develop listening comprehension competence.
If your curriculum is strongly content-based, or otherwise dedicated to the integration of skills, remember that each of the separate skills deserves special focus in appropriate doses. It is easy to adopt a philosophy of just letting students "experience" language without careful attention to component skills.
The creation of effective listening techniques requires studied attention to all the principles o f
3 H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, San
Francisco State University, 1994
2

Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology listening summarized here.
2. Techniques should be intrinsically motivating.
Appeal to listener's personal interests and goals. Since background information (schemata) is an important factor in listening, take into full account the experiences and goals and abilities of your students as you design lessons. Also, remember that the cultural background(s) of your students can be both facilitating and interfering in the process of listening. Then, once a technique is launched, try to construct it in such a way that students get caught up in the activity and feel self-propelled toward its final objective.
3. Carefully consider the form of listeners' responses.
Comprehension itself is not externally observable. We cannot peer into a learner's brain through a little window of some kind and empirically observe exactly what is stored there after someone else has said something. We can only infer that certain things have been comprehended through students' overt responses (verbal or nonverbal) to speech. It is therefore important for teachers to design techniques in such a way that students' responses indicate whether or not their comprehension has been correct. Lund (1990) offers nine different ways that we can check listeners' comprehension:
 Doing-the listener responds physically to a command
 Choosing-the listener selects from alternatives as pictures, objects, texts
 Transferring-the listener draws a picture of what is heard
 Answering-the listener answers questions about the message
 Condensing-the listener outlines or takes notes on a lecture
 Extending-the listener provides an ending to a story heard
 Modeling-the listener orders a meal, for example, after listening to a model order
 Conversing-the listener engages in a conversation that indicates appropriate processing of information.
4. Encourage the development of listening strategies.
Most foreign language students are simply not aware of how to listen. One of your jobs is to equip them with listening strategies that extend well beyond the classroom. Draw their attention to the value of such strategies as:
 looking for keywords
 looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
 predicting a speaker's purpose by the context of the spoken discourse
 associating information with one's existing cognitive structure (activating schemata)
 guessing at meanings
 seeking clarification.
As you "teach learners how to learn" by helping them to develop their overall strategic competence, strategies for effective listening can become a highly significant part of their chances for successful learning.
5. Include both bottom-up and top-down listening techniques.
Speech processing theory distinguishes between two types of processing in both listening and reading comprehension. Bottom-up processing proceeds from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings, etc., to a final "message." Top-down processing is evoked from "a bank of prior knowledge and global expectations" and other background information that the listener brings to the text.
Bottom-up techniques typically focus on sounds, words, intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language. Top-down techniques are more concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the interpretation of a text. It is important for learners to operate from both directions since both can offer keys to determining the meaning of spoken discourse. However, in a communicative, interactive context, you don't want to dwell too heavily on the bottom-up, for to do so may hamper the development of a learner's all-important automaticity in processing speech.
The aim of listening comprehension activities is to enable learners to understand natural speech.
Spoken language differs in a number of respects from written language: there is greater redundancy; it is more repetitious (a feature of interactional type speech in particular); it contains more fillers; there is usually less cognitive content than in a similar passage of written discourse (although there may be considerable interactive and attitudinal content); the discourse is less structured, (e.g. discontinuous and fragmented structures, changes of direction); cohesive devices are more difficult to identify, there may be ungrammatical forms and unimportant words may be slurred or dropped.
Difficulties may also be caused by such features as the rate of delivery, unfamiliar rhythm and
3

Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology stress patterns, the number of speakers, different registers, strong regional accents, poor articulation, overlapping speech, emotional speech and background noise.
In order to develop the skills and strategies necessary to cope with natural speech, learners need to be introduced to authentic or authentic-sounding texts on a planned basis. Their confidence can be built up by a judicious choice of texts and preparatory activities appropriate to the learners' level.
It is helpful in these stages if speech is clear and not too fast, if the number of speakers is limited, and if learners do not have to cope with too many new words and structures or with a variety of accents.
Where the focus in on teaching rather than on testing listening skills learners should be allowed to hear the recording a number of times Listening can be made purposeful and may be guided by the provision of a variety of suitable activities (and not simply multiple-choice, true/false and wh- questions). If sk ills are to be developed, rather than simply tested, it is important that learners have regular opportunities to evaluate both the text and the activities so that they learn to work out for themselves where their listening problems occur and what might be done to help solve them.
While teaching listening comprehension the following well-known activities are illustrated as follows:
 Pre listening a c t i v i ti e s
 While-listening activities
 Post-listening activities.
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Learners can be prepared for or oriented towards the text in various ways. Where appropriate they:
 are told what type of text they are going to listen to, so that their knowledge of that particular type of discourse is activated, e.g. news bulletin, interview with a famous person, buying something, etc.
 are provided with any necessary background information about the text, e.g. "This is in interview between .... They are talking about.... The speaker presumes that l i s t e n e r s are aware of... Do you remember the incident in the news last week ....?", etc.
 may be advised that: the speech is fast, they won't understand everything at the first listening, gist comprehension is adequate initially, they will understand a little more each time they hear the text
 hear a shortened, simplified or slower version before the text is played
 study photographs or drawings which create certain expectations about the speakers and events in the text
 are given key vocabulary and expressions which occur in the text. They could use these to imagine what the text is about or to create their own versions which can then be compared with the recorded text.
 discuss the theme of the text. This gives learners an opportunity to express their own views, feelings and experiences both before and after listening to the recording.
 read a summary, (e.g. a series of jumbled sentences which they put in what they in to be the correct order. They check this when listening to the text)
 read a short parallel text, (e.g. a newspaper article which corresponds to a radio/T. V. news item)
 complete a gapped transcript of the recorded text.
These activities encourage the learners to listen to the text and comprehand the content.
These activities are carried out right at the time of listening to the text.
Some are summarised and illustrated as follows:
1. questioning
2. recognising
3. matching
4. following instructions
5. note-taking
6. using a transcript
4 Council of Europe, Communication in the modern language classroom, by Joe Sheils, 1993
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Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
7. interpreting
8. completing.
Questioning
Multiple choice, true/false/don't know, open-ended and various other types of questions (e.g. wh-questions : who, what, why, where, etc.) are among the most popular types of activities found in many coursebooks and other instruction materials.
Recognising
Recognising speech intensions:
 recognise the type of text, e.g. interview, advertisement, sports commentary, story ... .
 recognise the context - who is speaking to whom, about what, where, when, i.e. name and approximate age of speakers, how well they know one another, their attitude (polite/impolite, friendly/unfriendly), the topic, where they are (clues from background noises, loudness of voices)
 recognise the general purpose of the interaction, e.g. seeking information, social 'chatting'
(little or no information content)
 recognise specific speech intentions
 recognise selected items, e.g. key words, the number of times a particular expression is used, all the proper names which occur
 recognise and appreciate the value of rhetorical features, e.g. ways of encouraging someone to say more, repetition, fillers, formulae for introducing an opinion, an explanation, emphasising.
A transcript of the text is helpful in a follow-up discussion on the role of these features.
Matching
Matching technique intensions:
 match dialogues, short narratives, descriptions with the correct pictures or symbols; the focus may be on the literal content e.g. description of a picture, or on interpretation, e.g. matching the expression of attitudes and feelings with facial expressions and gestures
 rearrange a set of jumbled pictures, e.g. to match the sequence of events in a story variation: a number of pictures which are not so obviously related to the story are included. Learners choose the pictures that they associate with the story and explain their choice to their partners. The extra pictures allow learners to see different things in the story.
 match a spoken and written text, e.g. a news item in a radio/TV. broadcast with a newspaper headline; statements with the names of speakers (who said what).
Following instructions
Following instructions technique intensions:
 mark directions on a map
 fill in details on an outline map (e.g. rivers, roads, buildings) or picture (e.g. draw furniture in a room)
 modify a picture according to instructions, e.g. draw a moustache on someone, colour in objects
 variation: note any differences between a spoken description and a picture of a person, place or object. The differences may simply be marked on the picture or the picture may be modified to correspond to the spoken text.
 label objects or people in a picture
 draw a picture or diagram (abstract pictures are obviously the most difficult)
 perform actions (miming a story; assembling: e.g. shapes or blocks, arranging a set of pictures, etc.).
Note-taking
Note-taking technique intensions: o transfer information to a grid o complete a form o complete a flow chart (e.g. boxes with headings) so that the key points in a sequence are noted in order (a story, recipe, assembling something, following a procedure) o write down a telephone message for someone who is absent o take notes around key words or themes supplied in advance e.g. list words referring to
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Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
"sport", "violence", etc.; take notes on what the speaker says about something or someone o note the main points in a discussion, o note how the speaker expresses opinions, attitudes, feelings o study a paraphrase of what someone says, then listen carefully and note what the person actually said variation: study the text of what a person is thinking/preparing to say (e.g. illustrated in a thought bubble) and then compare this with what he/she actually says)
Using a transcript
Using a transcript technique intensions:
 mark pauses in an unpunctuated transcript of a spoken text (followed by discussion of the role of pauses)
 listen to a text and underline slight differences which occur in the transcript of the text.
Interpreting
Interpreting technique intensions:
 a short uncontextualised and deliberately vague extract is played (e.g. part of a dialogue or discussion) and learners infer who the speakers are, their relationship, what they might be talking about, where they are (clues from content, register, tone of voice, intonation, background noises). Extracts where the literal meaning is different from the implied meaning lead to a greater variety of interpretations and consequently to more discussion.
 listen to comments in a dialogue or interview and evaluate the speaker's attitude, e.g. approving, disapproving. The text should not be too explicit and attention can be directed to features such as tone of voice and intonation.
Completing
Completing technique intensions:
 aural cloze: insert missing words (gaps should not occur too frequently) and nonsense words could be substituted to retain the natural rhythm of the speech; as a help to learners the missing words could be supplied in a jumbled format
 complete unfinished utterances: the tape is stopped and learners predict the rest of the utterance (several options could be supplied)
 "role-listening": learners listen to a dialogue in pairs, each listening in the role of one of the speakers. The tape is stopped without warning and the learner listening in the role of the next speaker continues the dialogue, predicting the next utterance and addressing his/her partner.
The tape is then played, the two versions are compared and a discussion may follow on the appropriateness of the learner's utterance to the context. The most effective dialogues are those where the speakers have adopted standpoints and where the discourse has a reasonably predictable pattern e.g. expression of an opinion followed by partial or total disagreement and expression of an alternative opinion. The actual words used are less important than predicting the type of speech intention. With video it would be possible to use conversations with more than two people and the tape could be stopped at any point as it would be clear who is speaking to whom.
 dialogue completion: learners hear only one of the speakers in a telephone conversation and imagine what the other speaker might be saying
 complete an unfinished story, joke ...
 'patchwork listening': the volume is turned down at various points and learners try to guess the missing elements. On the first listening they note whatever they can. On the next playing the volume is lowered at different points so that learners can verify their guesses or revise them. The process continues until learners have the gist of the complete text.
Follow-up activities should involve learners in a creative response to listening texts, for example relating the content to their own experience, giving personal views, role-play, sharing information in a
'jigsaw' listening exercise. A number of the activities outlined below are illustrated.
Some possibilities:
Learners could:
 propose a title for a text (or choose the most suitable one from several options supplied)
 create new texts, e.g. a narrative is enacted as a role play, notes on an interview with a pop star arc
6

Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology written up as a magazine article
 devise questions they would like to ask the interviewee if they could meet him/her
 prepare questions and answers based on their interpretation of what was said, e.g. "What might
N. say about the following statements in the light of the views he/she expressed in the interview?"
 imagine and enact the ending which has been omitted from a dialogue or narrative
 describe or role play what might have happened before or what might happen as a result of a dialogue (e.g. focus on a dilemma or problem to be solved)
 carry out a survey, (e.g. after listening to interviews with teenagers on drinking/ smoking habits, learners carry out a survey on the same topic)
 express their own opinions on the topic
 describe their reactions, e.g. How did you feel when N. said ....?
 discuss how an interviewee reacts to questions
 discuss the attitude of the interviewer
 imagine the personality of the speakers using clues from what they said, mood, attitude, voice, gestures, appearance (video)
Activities could also deal specifically with language use either during or after listening:
 vocabulary, e.g. classify words from a text, e.g. sport: indoor/outdoor, physically demanding/not physically demanding
 grammar, e.g. note expressions of time, cause, consequence; note how particular speech intentions are expressed and practise these in new contexts
 discourse strategies, e.g. note how speakers introduce a topic, hold the floor, clarify misunderstandings, etc and then apply similar strategies in speaking activities
Jigsaw listening
No wonder this technique is a teachers' favourite.
You can run listening activity that allow learners to work at their own speed, controlling the CD player or tape recorder themselves and repeatedly playing parts of a text until they are really happy with their understanding of it. It also involves a lot of message-oriented communication and useful group co-operation.
Here's the basic idea:
 Working in small groups, learners listen to separate small parts of a longer recording, i.e. each group hears different things.
 They then meet up, perhaps in pairs, threes or fours, with people from groups that listened to other parts of the recording.
 They report to each other on what they have heard and compare ideas and reach a conclusion or consensus or complete some specific task. The task might be simply to construct a full picture of the recording's contents.
To run a jigsaw task, a little technical preparation is required:
 You'll usually need a separate CD player or tape recorder for each group to listen on and the same number of separate recordings.
 To make sure that students cannot accidentally hear parts of the recording from other groups' sections, you might need to rerecord and edit some recordings (if your course book doesn't offer ready-made materials).
The Tape Gallery
It is a variation of jigsaw listening.
Find about ten interesting short jokes, stories, advertisements or poems (not more than a minute long) and record yourself reading them, each onto a different cassette or CD. Borrow two or three extra tape recorders/CD players and place them at different locations around the room. Put two or three of your cassettes/CDs next to each machine. Make sure learners know how to operate the machines. Then invite learners to wander freely around the different places, changing tape/CD or location at will, with the aim of choosing their favourite recording.
Make sure they play recordings softly and that they don't all gather round one machine, but otherwise leave the control of the activity to them. Afterwards, get feedback on what they enjoyed or learned.
Home recording
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Susanna Asatryan
PhD, professor assistant
The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
Many teachers have found that it's interesting and useful to make their own short recordings for classroom use. This gives you the chance to offer listening topics directly relevant to your course or of interest to your learners. A popular tactic is to 'interview' one or two other teachers in the staff room.
When you ask colleagues if they can help, warn them how much time it might require. It's often possible to do the whole process of briefing, rehearsal and recording in about ten minutes.
You can have completely unscripted, improvised, ‘natural’ conversations, but it often works better if you give your speaker (s) a briefing on:
 what you want them to talk about
 any particular points that should be mentioned
 language items you would really like included (e.g. 'Please use lots of present perfect!') or avoided (e.g. ‘Don't use the past progressive if you can help it’);
 how fast and clearly you want them to speak (e.g. normal speed or slower?).
One useful strategy is to offer speakers a set of brief written notes - just the key words - to help them remember the structure of the conversation.
Alternatively, you could fully script the text of recordings, so that the speakers just read this aloud.
It's usually worth doing one quick rehearsal or ‘read-through’ before recording.
Making a home recording will take some of your time and it can be quite hard to make a voice recording of good enough audio quality to stand up to playing in some classrooms.
Live listening
One activity that has grown in popularity in recent years is ‘live listening’. The basic idea is straightforward: students get to listen to real people speaking in class, rather than to recordings. Here's a way of trying this:
 When you find that your course book has a fairly dull listening text coming up, instead of using the recording, invite a colleague with a spare five minutes to come into your class.
 Make sure the class has a clear task while listening, e.g. to note down the main points that each speaker makes.
 Sit in front of the learners and have a live ‘ordinary’ conversation on the same topic as the book.
Though there is certainly a lot of value in getting a variety of visitors with different vocal styles into your class, you can do live listenings on your own, too: reading or improvising conversations in your own voice, or 'acting' a range of characters yourself. The following activity could be done using a visitor or by yourself.
Guest stars
Prepare notes for a short monologue in character. In class, announce that a guest star is coming today, but don't say who is. Go out of the room and return 'in character' (or invite another colleague in). The 'guest' then chats naturally for a minute or two in character, about her/his life, a typical day, feelingss, etc. The learners should listen to and not shout out who they think he/she is, but instead write down their guess. At the end of the monologue let them compare their guesses in small groups (giving reasons) and then check with you. When they know who the guest is, they could briefly ask a few more interview questions to the character.
Repeat the activity with different ‘guests’ as a regular slot in your lessons. (Maybe students could play the
‘guest’, too.)
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