Mohammed Kheidher University of Biskra
Faculty of Language Arts & Foreign Languages
Department of Foreign Languages
Branch of English Language Arts & Education
Master’s 2 (Post-Grad) Course Program
(Major) Language Arts & Education
(Instructor) Dr. BASHAR, Ahmed.
Listening Skill in TEFL : Nature and Teaching Strategies
Objectives : By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to :
1.
2.
3.
4.
Define the listening skill ;
Outline its characteristics ;
Plan a lesson to teach listening to non-native speakers of English ;
Promote non-native students’ active listening abilities.
Terminology Used in the Tutorial :
Ability, capacity, competence, competency, skill, background/ previous/ prior knowledge,
script, schema(ta), bottom-up process, top-down process, receptive and productive skills,
strategy.
Food-for-Thought Questions :
1. What is listening skill ?
2. Why is it termed skill and not ability ?
3. What is the difference between ‘listening for comprehension’ and ‘listening for
analysis’ ?
4. How many phases are there in teaching the listening skill ?
5. Why is listening a receptive skill ?
6. Why should Algerian students need courses in listening ?
Introduction
An estimated 80% of what we know is acquired through listening (Hunsaker, 1990).
Listening is the first of the language skills that most children develop and serves as the
foundation for subsequent language arts skills (Linebarger, 2001). Indeed, oral skills (spoken
language) and their receptive counterpart, listening, are essential for literacy development.
Despite its importance, listening has been labeled the forgotten language art for more than
50 years because it is rarely taught in elementary classrooms (Tompkins, 2002). Not
surprisingly, Funk and Funk (1989) pointed out that many teachers consider listening to be
an area that can be neither taught nor evaluated.
Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the
grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In
the case of listening, this means producing students who can use listening strategies to
maximize their comprehension of aural input, identify relevant and non-relevant
information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.
The aim of the tutorial is to provide a theoretical framework and practical ‘‘tips’’ to assist
would-be as well as novice teachers in their task of teaching listening comprehension in pretertiary levels.
Teaching Listening/ Master’s / Mr. BASHAR, Ahmed
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Structure of Background Knowledge
Good teachers introduce systematically the theme, content, working vocabulary, and
structures of the passage that their students are going to listen to. Therefore, teachers need
to capitalize on students’ previous (aka, background or prior) knowledge to lead them to be
responsive as to the content as well as tasks of the listening comprehension session. In
cognitive psychology, previous/ prior/ background knowledge refers to ‘‘.. what one
already knows about a subject..’’ (Stevens, 1980 :151). Background knowledge is organized in
schemata (pl. for schema) and scripts. The definitions of schemata and scripts are listed
below :
1. Schemata/ Schemas (pl. for schema) : They are abstract and generalized mental
representation of our experience that are available to help us understand a new
experience (Brown 2006).
Consider the following example ‘‘I am going to the post office’’ this schema conjures
up in the mind : a setting (post office building), participants (the post office clerks,
client, and security guards, etc.), goals (buy a stamp, send a package, and draw
money, etc.), procedure (fill in forms, pay, get change, count your money, and take the
receipt, etc), and outcomes (feel happy and/ or satisfied because you achieve your
goal).
Other examples could be ‘‘What do(es) ‘love’, ‘democracy’, friendship’, and ‘being a
teacher’ mean for you ?’’
2.
Scripts (Latin, scribere, to write) : Put more simply, ‘‘scripts are predictable
sequence of events’’ (ibid.). Differently stated, in a given situation you expect a more
or less patterned (i.e., regular) interaction. Schank & Abelson (197241) define a script
as ‘‘a structure that describes appropriate sequence of events in a particular context. A
script is made up of slots and requirements about what can fill those slots. The
structure is an interconnected whole, and what is in one slot affects what can be
another. Scripts handle stylized everyday situations. They are not subject to much
change, nor do they provide the apparatus for handling totally novel situations (qtd in
Sternberg et al. 2008 319:).
Consider the following example : you’re in a café, what kind of interaction there would
be with the waiter/ waitress ? (What can I get you ? I’d like a orange juice. Would you
like a cake ? I’ll take a baklawa/ baklava. How much ? DA 75).
Information Processing :
Information is processed in two ways : top-down and bottom-up. For a better
understanding, let’s first consider the following example : An acquaintance of yours notices a
bottle of Gatorade (beverage) on which there are three English words (rehydrate, replenish,
refuel) and asks you about one word, say, replenish. How would you explain it to him.
Probabaly, you’re going to deconstruct the word (i.e., morphological analysis) into re
(again)+plen (French ‘plein’ for fill)+ish (suffix to render the word into a verb), and
therefore, replenish means to refill. This type of information processing is termed bottom-up.
If you do the opposite (i.e., you give directly the synonym) then you explain the morphology
of the word, you have followed the top-down information processing. The following
expanations may make it clearer for you :
1. Bottom-Up Process: When you use the linguistic information (sounds, words,
clauses, discourse markers, and sentences) in order to attain meaning (semantic
Teaching Listening/ Master’s / Mr. BASHAR, Ahmed
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aspect) , then you have followed the ‘‘bottom’’ (i.e., base) (phonology,and morphology,
etc .) to attain the ‘‘up’’ (i.e., roof) (semantic aspect). Consider this example :
I asked at Madrid train station for tickets and was answered by a torrent of
language that included the word ‘‘huelga’’- Spanish for ‘‘strike’’. There had been a
strike that morning. All I needed was one word to what was going on. (By Steve
Brown).
2. Top-Down : When you use previous knowledge to solve a linguistic problem, then
you have opted for the ‘‘Top’’ (semantic aspect : meaning) to the ‘‘Down’’ (linguistic
aspect). Consider the following example :
I wanted to buy a postcard in an Austrian museum. I speak no German. Having
calculated that the postcards would cost 16 Schellings, I walked up to the counter
and gave the clerk a 20-Schilling note. She opened the cash register, looked in it, and
said something in German. As a reflex, I dug in my pocket and produced 1 Schilling
coin. I managed the conversation based on my previous knowledge of how one deals
with a small change at a store. (By Steve Brown).
Types of Listening :
Different situations require different types of listening. We may listen to obtain information,
improve a relationship, gain appreciation for something, make discriminations, or engage in
a critical evaluation. Therefore, there as many as five (5) types of listening (I REally
Appreciate your CRITICAL DIScourse, this statement summerizes the 5 types of listening
and would help you remember them easily) :
1. Informative Listening : Informative listening is the name we give to the situation
where the listener’s primary concern is to understand the message. Listeners are
successful insofar as the meaning they assign to messages is as close as possible to
that which the sender intended.
2. Relation Listening : The purpose of relationship listening is either to help an
individual or to improve the relationship between people. Therapeutic listening is a
special type of relationship listening. Therapeutic listening brings to mind situations
where counselors, medical personnel, or other professionals allow a troubled person
to talk through a problem. But it can also be used when you listen to friends or
acquaintances and allow them to “get things off their chests.” Although relationship
listening requires you to listen for information, the emphasis is on understanding the
other person. Three behaviors are key to effective relationship listening: attending,
supporting, and empathizing.
3. Appreciative Listening : Appreciative listening includes listening to music for
enjoyment, to speakers because you like their style, to your choices in theater,
television, radio, or film. It is the response of the listener, not the source of the
message, that defines appreciative listening. That which provides appreciative
listening for one person may provide something else for another.
Teaching Listening/ Master’s / Mr. BASHAR, Ahmed
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4. Critical Listening : The ability to listen critically is essential in a democracy. On the
job, in the community, at service clubs, in places of worship, in the family—there is
practically no place you can go where critical listening is unimportant. Politicians, the
media, salesmen, advocates of policies and procedures, and our own financial,
emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual needs require us to place a premium on
critical listening and the thinking that accompanies it.
5. Discriminative Listening : The final type of listening is discriminative listening. It
may be the most important type, for it is basic to the other four. By being sensitive to
changes in the speaker’s rate, volume, force, pitch, and emphasis, the informative
listener can detect even nuances of difference in meaning. By sensing the impact of
certain responses, such as “uh huh,” or “I see,” relationship listening can be
strengthened
Basic Steps in Listening
Real listening is an active process, although it belongs to receptive skills (i.e., the receptive
skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce language to do
these, they receive and understand it). Listening has three (03) basic steps.
1.
Hearing : Hearing just means listening enough to catch what the speaker is saying.
For example, say you were listening to a report on zebras, and the speaker mentioned
that no two are alike. If you can repeat the fact, then you have heard what has been
said.
2.
Understanding : The next part of listening happens when you take what you have
heard and understand it in your own way. Let's go back to that report on zebras.
When you hear that no two are alike, think about what that might mean. You might
think, "Maybe this means that the pattern of stripes is different for each zebra."
3. Judging : After you are sure you understand what the speaker has said, think about
whether it makes sense. Do you believe what you have heard? You might think, "How
could the stripes to be different for every zebra? But then again, the fingerprints are
different
for
every
person.
I
think
this
seems
believable."
Non-Native Students’ Challenges in Listening
EFl students frequently face challenges when they listen to native speakers. Here are listed
the eight commonest challenges/ or difficulties, which most non-native students of English
encounter.
1. Clustering : Try to pronounce the cluster of sounds/ letters in the name of this
famous British actor : Peter Postlethwaite
2. Redundancy : (Well/ You know/ I mean/ and You see/etc.)
3. Performance Variables (self-correction/ hesitation, etc.)
4. Reduced Forms (Won’t you do me a favor ? is pronounced /wontchyuh do me ../
5. Colloquial Language (slang words..)
6. Rate of Delivery (how fast/ slow native speakers talk)
7. Stress, Rhythm, Intonation (Americans are said to drawl when they speak)
8. Interaction (excited/ calm/ formal/ informal).
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Definition of Relevant Concepts in Teaching Listening :
In TEFL courses, different terms come to be utilized with different nuances and meanings. In
his book Qualifications : Introduction to Concept, Bergan (2007 :48) defines the following
concepts : ability, capacity, competence, competency, skill.
1. Ability : Ability is the power, mental or physical, to do something and usually
implying doing it well.
2. Capacity : Capacity refers to the condition that permits one to acquire that power.
3. Competence : Competency suggests ability to do something satisfactorily but not
oustandingly.
4. Competency : Competency (diminutive of competence) means to be skilled/
competent in performing a task (Bashar, 2011).
5. Skill : Skill implies recognized ability acquired or developed through experience’’.
Listening for Comprehension vs. Listening for Acquisition :
In most Algerian EFL classes, listening is assumed to have the main function of facilitating
understanding of spoken discourse. Teachers are so focused on bottom-up information
processing (students are supposed to pick up words from a text that a teacher reads out loud
for them). It is seldom that students are encouraged to notice a linguistic item in a passage
read for them for the purpose of developing their listening skills.
1. Listening for Comprehension : It is based on the assumption that the role of
listening in language program is to help develop learners’ abilities to understand
things they listen to (Richards, 2008 :14).
2. Listening for Acquisition : According to Schmitt (1990) learners will not learn
anything from input they hear and understand unless they notice something about the
input (ibid. p. 15).
Focus: The Listening Process
To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of listening rather than on its
product.
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They 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.
They allow students to practice the full repertoire of listening strategies by using
authentic listening tasks.
They behave as authentic listeners by responding to student communication as a
listener rather than as a teacher.
When working with listening tasks in class, they 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.
They have students practice listening strategies in class and ask them to practice
outside of class in their listening assignments. They encourage students to be
conscious of what they're doing while they complete listening tape assignments.
They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and their strategy use
immediately after completing an assignment. They build comprehension checks into
Teaching Listening/ Master’s / Mr. BASHAR, Ahmed
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in-class and out-of-class listening assignments, and periodically review how and when
to use particular strategies.
They 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.
They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another.
They 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.
Integrating Metacognitive Strategies
Strategy derives from Ancient Greek (strategos) meaning general. It refers to the long-range
plan where resources are used to achieve one’s goals and beyond. In educational settings
(TEFL included), a strategy may be defined as an action, behavior, method, procedure, and
technique which teachers use to optimize learning (Bashar, 2011).
Before listening: Plan for the listening task
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Set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen for
Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall
meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)
During and after listening: Monitor comprehension
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Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
Decide what is and is not important to understand
Listen/view again to check comprehension
Ask for help
After listening: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use
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Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
Evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular types of listening tasks
Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
Modify strategies if necessary
Using Authentic Materials and Situations
Authentic materials and situations prepare students for the types of listening they will need
to do when using the language outside the classroom.
One-Way Communication
Materials:

Radio and television programs
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Public address announcements (airports, train/bus stations, stores)
Speeches and lectures
Telephone customer service recordings
Movies, plays, sitcoms, and video games, etc.
Pictures, objects, and dolls, etc.
Textbook, school things, blackboard, etc.
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Procedure:
Help students identify the listening goal: to obtain specific information; to decide
whether to continue listening; to understand most or all of the message
Help students outline predictable sequences in which information may be presented:
who-what-when-where (news stories); who-flight number-arriving/departing-gate
number (airport announcements); "for [function], press [number]" (telephone
recordings)
Help students identify key words/phrases to listen for
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Two-Way Communication
In authentic two-way communication, the listener focuses on the speaker's meaning rather
than the speaker's language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear.
Note the difference between the teacher as teacher and the teacher as authentic listener in the
dialogues in the popup screens.
Worksheet for Listening Skill Lesson
As a teacher, you need to prepare your lessons diligently. Your worksheet should resemble
something like the table below :
Language
Timing
Teacher’s
Exponents
Activities
Teacher/ doctor/ 5 mns to T :
Ynes,
musician/
10 mns
what would
psychologist
you like to
be in the
future ?
Passive Voice
To
be+PP+by+Agent
Students’
Objectives
Activities
S : I would To involve
like to be a students.
midwife.
To extract
S : I would names
of
like to be a jobs
from
T:
What musician.
students
about you,
Ali ?
Observations
(I need more
pictures
of
people at work,
preferably
color ones).
Types of Activities
As a teacher, you can use different types of activities in the listening comprehension session
to be completed at different phases of the lesson (pre, in, and post-listening).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
True /False Activity
Cloze Test
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ)
Dictation
Dicto Comp (After listening to the teacher read a passage, students try to re-write the
passage preferably using their own words).
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References
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/goalslisten.htm
http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/background_knowledge
http://www.infoplease.com/homework/listeningskills1.html#ixzz1biX7JZ4A
Teaching Listening Strategies in the Inclusive Classroom.
by Kristine D. Swain , Mary Friehe , Jeanne M. Harr http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/klinelisten/b10ch4.htmingtonhttp://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5007106290
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