UNIT VII - LISTENING

Key Concepts.
1. Read and make a summary of your learning.
The main topic of the unit is Listening, which it's one of the four
language skills reading, writing, listening and speaking. Listening is
key to all effective communication, If there is one
communication skill you should aim to master, then listening is it. It
also stated that listening is a receptive skill that involves
responding to a language rather than producing it.
Listening involves understanding different speeds of speech and
different accents since some people may speak more slowly and
with more pauses than others, this is part of the connected
speech which its spoken language in where words are joined
together to form a connected stream of sounds.
The language skills of speaking, listening, writing and reading are
often divided into sub-skills, which are specific behaviours that
language users do in order to be effective in each of the skills. In
this unit we learnt about the different listening subskills which areÑ
• Listening for gist
• Listening for specific information
• Listening for detail or ro infer attitude (listening to see
what the person you're talking to is expressing)
• Listening intensively
• Listening extensively
In this unit we could learnt that listening not involves doing more
than just understanding the grammar, vocabulary and functions
of what we listen, but also dealing with characteristics of spoken
language; usinf the right context and put the knowledge we
have in practice in orden to understand the different text types,
speed speech and accents, making senses of connected speech
and above all, using the correct listening subskill.
2. Make definitions of the blacky words/expressions.
• Punctuaction is used to create sense, clarity and stress in
sentences. You use punctuation marks to structure and organise
your writing.
• Stress to subject to phonetic stress: accent.
•Entonation describes how the voice rises and falls in speech. The
three main patterns of intonation in English are: falling intonation,
rising intonation and fall-rise intonation.
• Skill an ability to do an activity or job well, especially because
you have practised it.
•Receptive skill are listening and reading, because learners do not
need to produce language to do these, they receive and
understand it.
•Context the parts of something written or spoken that
immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its
meaning.
•Connected speech is spoken language in a continuous
sequence, as in normal conversation. It is also called connected
discourse.
•Facial expressions is one or more motions or positions of the
muscles beneath the skin of the face, they are a form of
nonverbal communication.
• Gestures is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal
communication in which visible bodily actions communicate
particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with,
speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other
parts of the body.
•Logical sequence of words is all about Consistent arrangement
which is the important course of action of words as per the
characteristic laws and all around acknowledged ideas. Certain
between related words are given and numbered, followed by
different groupings of the numbers meaning them, as options.
•Hesitations a pausing or faltering in speech.
•Process a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a
particular end.
•Features a distinctive attribute or aspect of something.
•Utterances to express your ideas or feelings in spoken words.
•Text types in literature form the basic styles of writing. Factual texts
merely seek to inform, whereas literary texts seek to entertain or
otherwise engage the reader by using creative language and
imagery.
•Relevant closely connected or appropriate to what is being done
or considered.
•Interaction communication or direct involvement with someone
or something.
•Patterns is a model or design or instruction according to which
something is to be made.
•Linking connecting or joining something to something else.
• Subskill is a skill that is part of and necessary to another more
complex skill Objective tests of writing subskills do not measure the
ability to compose.
•Listen for gist involves general thematic understanding, without
any focus on specific details or discrete information. It is one
among many types of listening and aims to answer primary
questions related to an aural text's central theme, topic, and
purpose.
•Listening for specific this is when we listen to something because
we want to discover one particular piece of information.
• Listening for detail refers to the type of listening we do in which
we can't afford to ignore anything because we don't know
exactly what information of the listening passage will be
necessary to complete the task.
•Infer attitude using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to
work out the meaning of what we hear.
•Listening intensively is what you do in the classroom. The goal of
intensive listening is to focus on a certain detail.
•Listening extensively is listening to a lot of comprehensible and
enjoyable content. This means the listening materials should be
fairly easy to understand (although it is OK if you don't understand
100%).
•Pre-teaching word is a strategy in which teachers introduce
students to new vocabulary words before reading a text selection
that contains the new vocabulary words.
•Tasks is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a
defined period of time or by a deadline to work towards work-
related goals.
•Coursebooks is a textbook designed for use on a particular
course of study.
 •Authentic material is any material written in English that was not
created for intentional use in the English language classroom.
•Simplified make (something) simpler or easier to do or
understand.
•Confidence the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely
on someone or something.
•Minimal pairs is two words that vary by only a single sound,
usually meaning sounds that may confuse English learners, like
the /f/ and /v/ in fan and van.
•Mininal words consists of two words with sounds that are very
similar but have different meanings. For example, rot and lot may
sound similar, especially to some non-native English speakers.
•Word stress helps learners to identify words when listening, it
affects the sounds of the vowels in the word.
•Minimal sentence stress is the pattern of stressed and unstressed
words across a sentence. Normally this emphasis is on words that
carry important information, although this can change
significantly, depending on the specific meaning the speaker
wants to communicate.
•Phonemes one of the smallest units of speech that make one
word different from another word: The difference between "pin"
and "pan" depends on the vowel, i.e. the different phonemes /ɪ/
and /æ/.
•Complex complicated, intricate, involved, knotty mean having
confusingly interrelated parts.

3. Make the exercises FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES and Key concepts

from page 45, 46.

FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES
Complete this table with at least two examples of each category.
Characteristi Listening text Different Features of Listening
cs of types accents connected Subskills
spoken speech
language
Disappears Conversation Scottish Contracted Listening for
once spoken s forms gist
Simple Lectures Welsh Linking Listening for
grammar/ specific
vocabulary Information
Connected Announcem RP Word stress Extensive
speech ents listeninf
May be Texan Sentence Listening for
disorganised stress attitude
Supported Australian
by body
language
Dominican
Puertorican
Bristish

I. Answer these questions.

1. What are the different listening subskills?
• Listen for gist/global understanding, specific information,
detail or to infer attitude (listening to see what attitude a
speaker is expressing). Other ways of listening are listening
intensively and extensively.

2. Complete the exercise from page 47 aspects of listening.

A. Listening for specifi information

B. Listening extensively
C. Listening for detail
D. Listening for gist
E. Activating students' knowledge of the world
F. Working with authentic texts
G. Deducing meaning from context
H. Dealing with connected speech

Teacher's comments
I. My students find it hard to recognize the pronunciation of
individual words and hear people speak in the street. (H)
II. Students only need to recognize words like number and
names to practice this subskill. (A)
III. I always ask my students what information they can tell me
about the topic before we start listening. (E)
IV. I tell my students that they can use the situation to help
them understanding the meaning. (G)
V. It's nice if learners can just listen to a story and enjoy it
without doing a task. (B)
VI. Some listening texts in the coursebook are extracts from
real TV programmes and real conversations. The students think
they're challenging but useful. (F)
VII. The first task I give my students is usually one in which they
have to decide on the general meaning of the text. (D)