a | heré was time when istsing, ‘in language classes was perceived chiefly as a way of AM presenting new grammer, ‘Dialoguts on tape provided oral examples of structures to be learned, and this was the only type of listing practice which most learners ‘ronieally large amount of effort was ‘sommitted to training learners to express themselves orally ~The changin: face John Field accepts the | improvements in listening | methodology but rejects _complacency. | i | of From the late 1960, practitioners recognised the importance of listening | and began to set aside time for practising the sll. A relatively standard formst for ‘the Hstelng lesson developed at this ime. Pre-listening | Pre-teaching ofall important new ‘vocabulary in the passage Ustening ‘Extensive listening (followed by ‘general questions establishing onto Intensive listening (followed by detalled comprehension quastions) Postiistening ‘Analysis of the laniguiage in the text (e.g. Why did the speaker uso the ‘Present [ston and Repeat. Teacher pauses | Ieamertcannot the tape, learners repeat words Over the past 30 years many teachers bave modified this procedure | considerably. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of therationale behind these ‘cbanges In doing 9, we may come to ‘quetiog the thinking at certain pits ‘We may also conclude that perhaps the hanger do not go far enough. Pre-listening Critical words Pre-teaching of vocabulary has now ‘Jargely been discontinvied. In real ie, ‘to have utkaown ‘words explained in advance; instead they ‘have to learn to cope with a situition | were parts of what is heard wnat be 4FiAN (1068) 13) The changing pee of Wstenng, ‘eam excuish TEACHING professional + 6 « understood. It may be necesstry: mF tbe teacher to presen two or hr ‘words at the beginning of the listening lesson - key words without which any: ‘understanding of the text wool be Jmpossble, But thes shoul ill be reacted to two or thre. “Cia” + means absolutely indispensable. Prevjstening activities |) Mos teachers now feature some kind 1 of prelistening activity, invebing {brainstorming vocabulary, or eviews 1 axes of grammas, or dscusing the | topic ofthe listening tent. This phase of | the lesson usually lasts longer than it | 1 | listening should, Quite apart from the fect that af Jong pre istening session considerably shortens the time available for istesing, itisolten counter-productve Excesie discassion ofthe topic may mean that {too much ofthe content ofthe listening ‘pasage hat been anticipate; revi -Tanguage points before listening wil nly encourage learners to fous on ‘hese ters inthe passage -rometimes at the expense of global meaning. ‘Tne Weal is to set onesel two simple aims inthe predlstening period: 4. to provide sulicent context to rmatch that which would be avaiable inseal lite '.to-reate motivation (perhaps by asking learneis to swap predictions about what they will hea). “Thea ea be achieved in aslitie ws five minutes Listening ‘The intensive/extensive distinction ‘Most practitioners have retained the extensivelintensive distinction, | and, on & similar principle international ‘examinations usually specify that the recording is o be payed tice to ‘candidates. Some theorists have argued that this ie unnatural that in real fe fone ony gets one hearing But the * ‘isa falsc one: the whole, ‘Situation of listening to a cassette in @ Janguage classroom is highly artifical ‘Furthermore, itis easy to. overlook the fact that listening to a steange voice 4 (especially a strange voice; speaking in 2 | | |foreiga language) requires a proces of {normalisation - of adjusting othe pitch, |) speed and quality of the voice, An initial playing of the cassette fr extensive | listening provides an opportunity for this | Pre-set questions | Checking comprehension has changed, ‘We now recognise that leamers stn in ‘aniunocased way if questions are not set unt after the passage es been heard. ‘Unsuie of wat they wil be asked, they ‘cannot judge the level of detal that they ‘are supposed tobe heeding and their ansivers ae likely to beas dependent ‘upon memory a5 upon listening sls. we pre-set comprehension questions, We ‘purpose, ad will use isening ks and ‘ot just memory. / | 1 ‘Questions or tasks? Better than setting traditional j comprefension questions isthe curent {practice of providing a task, Learners are | required to do something wit the __ information they have extracod from the {text Tasks can be as simple as caring {out tt of instcuctons; they typically || involve: labeling (eg. buildings on a map) | ~stlecting (eg, choosing a film from three tralets) - draving eg. symbols oa a ‘weather map) - form-filing (eg. a hotel ‘egistratio form) ~completinga gid. Task-bated activities ofthis kind reflecurnach more closely the type of {response that might be givea toa te experience in eae, They aso p amore reliable way of checking |) understanding by reducing the amount of reading and writing involved. A major lfculty with listening work is that, in "order to find out how much. lamer has understood, one has to involve othe kills ,, Are thereaions for any wrong answer ‘actually du to listening? For example if | Teamers give a wrong ansvec to a waitin comprehension question, it may be {because they have not understood the ‘question (reading) o because they cannot formulate an answer (witng) ather than Decale ther listening i at fault. nc Bee tht task demand ividual responses. Filing in forms, labeling diagrams or making choles | obliges every leamer to'try to make |) something of what they are hearing. This As especially effective ifthe class asked to workin pais, |) Authentic materials Another development has been the 2 increased use of authentic materials Tests ‘can ensure that learners listen witha clear | J Which were norspecialy prepared with [the language learner in mind eeflet the rhythms pf natural speech i a way tha! sce onary ote actors, Thy also provide an experience | of something tite reali itening ‘Because the lariguage they contain has ‘ot been simplified to reflect presumed knowledge ofthe learners. tis vital that learners gain practice in dealing with texts where they understand only | partofwhatis said. It's therefore, strongly advisable to | Intcoduce authentic materials relatively ‘arly oni & language course Some teachers fear this will discourage i students. However, the reverse usualy | | found tobe the case: povided earner are told in advance not to expect to ‘understand everything they hear, they {ind it motivating to discover that they ‘an extract information from-en ungraded passage The essence af the approach i: instead of simplifying the task that is demanded ofthe student. IF ‘the text i above he languagelevel of | the clas, chen one demands shallow comprehension. One sght play recording of areal stallholderin« ‘market and simply ask the cass to wre ddowa all tbe vegetables that are mentioned, Students often have dificltyin | adjusting to authentic converstional” | materials after hearingscripted ones. We | | tend not to give swicient thovght to this problem It isa good ideate = introduce your learners systematically to | those features of conversational speech | which they may find unfamiliar | hesitations, stuttering, false starts, and | tong, loosely structored sentences. A. | good epproach is to ctoose a few | exaniples ofa singe feature froma pie | of authentic speech, play themto the | class and ack them to try to trafierbe | her, | | Listening as strategy ‘Authentic materials may Involve very different type of listening from those that are graded and scripted, In real it, istening toa foreign language is & [strategic activity. Learners recognise only part of what they hear, (ay language of the text, one simplifis the... | ability ofeamers to sci research suggests a much smaller pereentage than we imagine). Tiey then Construct guesses which link these fragmested pisces of text, Learers need | practice and guidance in this pocss ‘Those who are cautious need tobe ‘encouraged to take risks and tomake Infecences based upon the words they ‘have managed to identify. Natural isk- ‘sen ido crore cork their guesses against new evidense asi ‘cormes in from the speaker, And) Jearaers need to be shown that making | guesesis nota sig offal: itis & | normal part of listesing toa fortgn { Tanguage~at least uni a very high level of second language competence, A long pre-listening session considerably shortens the time available for listening Postslistening dontifying functions ‘We no longer spend time examining the grammar of the listening tet; that refleced «typically structural view | oflistening as e means of reinforcing seceatly-learned material. However, iis ‘often worthwhile to pick out ay functional language and draw leamers attention to it. (Susan threatened John, | Do you remember the words she used?’ This seems to be quite rately done «ye listening texts often provide ‘excellent examples of functions such as apologising, inviting, refusing, ‘The Listen and Repeat phase has ‘been dropped as wal, on the basi that |. ievas tantamount to parcotng. This ks snot enticely air: in fact it ested lexical segmentation «to identi indi | words within the steam of found. But ‘one can understand that it does not [accord well with current communicative | thinking, Inferring meaning |) Alter listening, many teachers fevour setting earners to infer the meaning of new words from the contexts in which they appear - just a they doin reading. | “They wie the target words onthe board, replay the sentences containing E them and ask leeroers to work out their ‘mesinings Teachers ace deterred from this activity by the difficulty of finding the right place on the cassette. The ‘+ ENGLSH TEAGHING professional » 13- Thechanging face of listening >! solution isto copy the sentences to be used onto a second cassette, ‘To summarise, then, the format of « J good listening lesson ofthe 1990s is | considerably diferent from that of 30 years ago: Pre-istening: ‘Set context Create motivation Listening: Extensive listening (followed by questions on content, attitude) Pro-set task / Pre-set questions Intensive staning ‘Checking answers Post-listening: ‘xamining functional tanguago Infaring vocabulary mearing ‘Where do we go from here? Listening methodology bas changed a reat deal, but some would argue that | many of the changes Have been cosmetic, and that what is really needed isa rethinking of the aims and strato, ofthe listening lesson, Here are some of themore important limitations of our current epproach, ‘© We stil tond to test listening rather than teach It ‘Thisis often said, but the truth is that ‘we have litle option but to use some kind of checking procedure to assess the extent of understanding which has been achieved, What is arguably wrong is not ‘what we do, bat how we use the results ‘We tend to judge successful listening very simphistically in terms of correct aujsvers fo comprehension questions and tasks. We overlook the fact that there may be many ways of achieving a correct answer. One learner may have identified two key words and made an inteligent guess; another may have coristrcted meaning on the basis of 100% recognition of what was sid. | Wetend to focus upon the product | oflistening when we should be | interested in the process - whet is going | on in the heads of our feamers. ‘Wrong answers art more informative | |) than right ones, Spend time asking lecamers where and how understanding ‘broke down, Make listening diagnostic, | | | | | If'weare to use authentic texts (and these then construct remedial tasks If itis ‘evident that learners are finding it difficult to recognise weak Tons (wad! | for was, a orf, il for wha), ass oF sentences containing examples ofthese forms canbe dictated, fo. eer he next ne they ocr studeit ecogise them and interpret them correct ‘Remedial exercises can also beuted ‘0 develop higher-level skils: ling ohing important piss of mation, anticipating, noticing topic markers and s0 on. “Teaching listening athor then testing it, involves'a change in esn | shape Instead ofthe long prevstening ‘period which some teachers employ, iffs auch more fruitful to allow-time for en extended postistening period in which Jearners’ problems can be identified and tackled, ‘We do not practise the kind of lstaning that takes place in real ie. Feagon Why We shld) itis pointless to work on the assumption that earners will dentity most of the words they hear, We need a new typeof ‘where understanding of what i sid it Jess than perfect. The process that nor native listeners adopt seems to be: + Identify words ina few fragmented sections ofthe text. Feel relatively ‘certain about some; less certain bout others ~ Make inferences linking the pat ofthe ‘text about which you feel most confident = Check those inferences against what ‘comes next, ‘This kind of strategy is not confined to low-level learners; ray evidence suggests that itis wed up to the highest lees ‘We very sch need to reshapesome (not all) of our listening lessons 1 rellest ‘this reality, Let us encourage learners to write dowm the words they undentard, to form and discuss inferences, toisien again and revise their inferenes, then to check them against what the spedker say ‘ext In doing this, we not only give them ‘practice in the kind of listening they are Likely to-do in ral Lf; we also ensure that guessing isnot seen as a sign of SFveld (14486); (3) The chang inn Free of Wisteaag Pak» exaust Teacuina professionals & | right and who's wrong. When the class | has argued about the aecuracyof diferent | i | | isolating activity, in which te lvelist | separate individuals, each loced up in | understanding oF in pairs Emourage [them to disagree with each other= thereby. failure but something that mot people have to resort to when listeits (0 @ foreign language. ‘© Listering work js often titted in ‘scope and igalatng in efect Ourcurtent methodology reorces the natural instinct of the tesche fo provide answers. We need to desig stening Jesson where the teacher has much lest interventionist role, encouraging learners tolisten and re-lsten and todo as much ‘ofthe work as possiie for themselves ‘On the other hand, we shoul aso, recogtise that listening can rove an class can quickly become a goup of ‘ther owm auditory efforts. ‘The solution isto get eames to iten | toa short passage then to compre their motivation for a seond listening. Play the passage agi and let the pairs revise their views. AB them 0 share their interpretations wit the clas. Resist the temptation to tell hm who's versions play the tert again and ask them tommake up ther minds each student providing evidence to support hidher — point of view. In this way, listing becoraesa muuch more interactive activity, with eamers listening not because the teacher tells them to, but because they | have a vested interest in justiing thie | ‘own explanation of the ext. By listening | and re-istening, they improve the accuracy with which they stn end, by discussing posible interpretations they improve their | ability to constrict representations of seaning from what they hear ‘The methodology of te listening lesson has certainly come a ong way, but let us:not be complacent, Unless We | address the three problem areas outlined | cai ou teaching wil emai i | idebound and we willbe missing out on | ‘what should be our true aim -not simply | providing practice but producing better and more confident listeners DP GBR sone rin artes | BS itor anc char ner Exped fast rope ie | fever estan Ustunvetioraseter | {Srbegnnertoraso | ‘aed dlatance learnt H ‘tater or Bes ume doy PRD feeouh enUstening at het amertage.