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Listen
Listen
Listening is the language modality that is used most frequently. It has been
estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time
listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of their in-school
information through listening to instructors and to one another. Often,
however, language learners do not recognize the level of effort that goes
into developing listening ability.
Far from passively receiving and recording aural input, listeners actively
involve themselves in the interpretation of what they hear, bringing their
own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to bear on the
information contained in the aural text. Not all listening is the same; casual
greetings, for example, require a different sort of listening capability than
do academic lectures. Language learning requires intentional listening that
employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from them.
Section Contents
Material for this section was drawn from “Listening in a foreign language”
by Ana Maria Schwartz, inModules for the professional preparation of
teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.;
Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)
Teaching Listening
As you design listening tasks, keep in mind that complete recall of all the
information in an aural text is an unrealistic expectation to which even
native speakers are not usually held. Listening exercises that are meant to
train should be success-oriented and build up students' confidence in their
listening ability.
Each activity should have as its goal the improvement of one or more
specific listening skills. A listening activity may have more than one goal or
outcome, but be careful not to overburden the attention of beginning or
intermediate listeners.
The factors listed below can help you judge the relative ease or difficulty of
a listening text for a particular purpose and a particular group of students.
Does the text involve multiple individuals and objects? Are they clearly
differentiated? It is easier to understand a text with a doctor and a patient
than one with two doctors, and it is even easier if they are of the opposite
sex. In other words, the more marked the differences, the easier the
comprehension.
Does the text offer visual support to aid in the interpretation of what the
listeners hear? Visual aids such as maps, diagrams, pictures, or the images
in a video help contextualize the listening input and provide clues to
meaning.
Use pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are going to
hear or view.
Organize activities so that they guide listeners through the text. Combine
global activities such as getting the main idea, topic, and setting with
selective listening activities that focus on details of content and form.
Teaching Listening
The greatest challenges with textbook tape programs are integrating the
listening experiences into classroom instruction and keeping up student
interest and motivation. These challenges arise from the fact that most
textbook listening programs emphasize product (right or wrong answer)
over process (how to get meaning from the selection) and from the fact that
the listening activities are usually carried out as an add-on, away from the
classroom.
You can use the guidelines for developing listening activities given here as
starting points for evaluating and adapting textbook listening programs. At
the beginning of the teaching term, orient students to the tape program by
completing the exercises in class and discussing the different strategies they
use to answer the questions. It is a good idea to periodically complete some
of the lab exercises in class to maintain the link to the regular instructional
program and to check on the effectiveness of the exercises themselves.
Students can use this outline for both in-class and out-of-class
listening/viewing activities. Model and practice the use of the outline at
least once in class before you ask students to use it independently.
(tape) Use fast forward to play segments of the tape; (video) view the
video without sound
Identify the kind of program (news, documentary, interview, drama)
Make a list of predictions about the content
Decide how to divide the tape/video into sections for intensive
listening/viewing
For example, for listening practice you have students listen to a weather
report. Their purpose for listening is to be able to advise a friend what to
wear the next day. As a post-listening activity, you ask students to select
appropriate items of clothing from a collection you have assembled, or
write a note telling the friend what to wear, or provide oral advice to
another student (who has not heard the weather report). To evaluate
listening comprehension, you use a checklist containing specific features of
the forecast, marking those that are reflected in the student's clothing
recommendations.
Teaching Listening
One-Way Communication
Materials:
Procedure:
Two-Way Communication
Teaching Listening
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their
listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and
listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies
and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.
Listening Strategies
To extract meaning from a listening text, students need to follow four basic
steps:
The Listener
Interest in a topic increases the listener's comprehension; the listener
may tune out topics that are not of interest. A listener who is an active
participant in a conversation generally has more background knowledge
to facilitate understanding of the topic than a listener who is, in effect,
eavesdropping on a conversation between two people whose
communication has been recorded on an audiotape. Further, the ability to
use negotiation skills, such as asking for clarification, repetition, or
definition of points not understood, enable a listener to make sense of the
incoming information.
The Speaker
Colloquial language and reduced forms make comprehension more
difficult. The extent to which the speaker uses these language forms
impacts comprehension. The more exposure the listener has to them, the
greater the ability to comprehend. A speaker's rate of delivery may be too
fast, too slow, or have too many hesitations for a listener to follow.
Awareness of a speaker's corrections and use of rephrasing ("er. . . I
mean . . .That is . . .") can assist the listener. Learners need practice in
recognizing these speech habits as clues to deciphering meaning.
Content
Content that is familiar is easier to comprehend than content with
unfamiliar vocabulary or for which the listener has insufficient background
knowledge.
Visual Support
Visual support, such as video, pictures, diagrams, gestures, facial
expressions, and body language, can increase comprehension if the
learner is able to correctly interpret it.
At the same time, two types of cognitive processing are also occurring:
bottom-up and top-down processing.
Top-down processing
Top-down processing refers to utilizing schemata (background knowledge
and global understanding) to derive meaning from and interpret the
message. For example, in preparing for training on the operation of a new
floor polisher, top-down processing is activated as the learner engages in
an activity that reviews what the learner already knows about using the
old floor polisher. This might entail discussing the steps in the polishing
process; reviewing vocabulary such as switch, on, off, etc.; or generating
a list of questions that the learner would like answered in the training.
Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up processing refers to deriving the meaning of the message
based on the incoming language data, from sounds, to words, to
grammatical relationships, to meaning. Stress, rhythm, and intonation
also play a role in bottom-up processing. Bottom-up processing would be
activated as the learner is signaled to verify comprehension by the
trainer/teacher asking a question using the declarative form with rising
intonation ("You see that switch there?"). Practice in recognizing
statements and questions that differ only in intonation help the learner
develop bottom-up processing skills.
What is known about the listening process and the factors that affect
listening can be a guide when incorporating listening skill development
into adult ESL classes. The following guidelines have been adapted from a
variety of sources including Brod (1996), Brown (1994), Dunkel (1991),
Mendelsohn (1994), Morley (1991), Peterson (1991), Richards (1983),
and Rost (1991).
Do a pre-listening activity:
Ask the learners questions about what happens at the weekly
meetings. Ask specifically about schedule changes. Show any form
or the weekly calendar. Discuss its use and demonstrate how to fill
it out if necessary.
Do a post-listening activity:
Ask the learners how they thought they did. Was it easy or difficult?
Why? They may listen again if they want to. Have them compare
their forms with a partner or check the information by filling a form
out as a whole class.
Then have the learner be the boss and write a script with schedule
changes. Have them practice in pairs or small groups giving and
recording schedule changes.
What kinds of listening tasks are appropriate?
Conclusion
Assisting learners in the development of listening comprehension is a
challenge. It is a challenge that demands both the teacher's and the
learner's attention because of the critical role that listening plays, not only
in communication, but also in the acquisition of language. Knowledge of
the listening process and factors that affect listening enable teachers to
select or create listening texts and activities that meet the needs of the
their adult ESL learners. Teachers, then, must weave these listening
activities into the curriculum to create a balance that mirrors the real-
world integration of listening with speaking, reading, and writing.
References
Implications
EAP teachers should devote serious time and energy to making their
ESL students aware of and ready for the interactive nature of U.S.
education and major courses, despite feeling quite at home with these
them bridge the gap between the safe interactions they experience in
ESL classes and the activities they find more challenging and threatenACADEMIC
LISTENING/SPEAKING TASKS 311ing in content classes. This could involve explicit discussion and
observation of the differences in classroom discourse patterns between their
writing classes, teachers can suggest that nonnative students add to,
know that in your country it’s not considered polite to interrupt the
teacher by asking questions or to argue with the teacher or your classmates. But U.S. university
professors expect you to let them know if
you don’t understand something and think it’s fine to express your
opinion—politely—when you disagree.”) Such discussions can be supported by in-class role plays or
simulations. In addition, it would be
even providing demonstrations of the type of give and take they might
Teachers should also be aware that the growing trend toward inclusion of student questions,
comments, and presentations in classroom
than the traditional chalk-and-talk lecture. As discussed above, Flowerdew (1995) outlines
qualitative differences between “academic listening” and “conversational listening” (pp. 11–12). But
a classroom
situation in which there is frequent give and take between teacher and
students, including perhaps formal, planned lecture material, informal
(or render nonexistent) the advantages of both academic and conversational listening (e.g., the
rhetorical devices of planned lectures which
can signal information to listeners or the negotiation between interlocutors in conversation which
can aid comprehension).
feasible, ESL teachers should simulate free-form classroom lecturediscussions for their students and
analyze videotaped classroom interactions with their students so that ESL students can be better
prepared
312 TESOL QUARTERLYlecture and that all of their speaking will be low risk (e.g., in smallgroup
discussions) or preplanned (in formal presentations).
The recurrent theme of these pedagogical suggestions is authenticity. Even though many U.S.
ESL/EAP classes are already communicative and student centered and involve a variety of interactive
activities,
some of these tasks may not adequately reflect the more rough-tuned
discourse they will confront in their other classes. Further, what the
respondents in this study said over and over is that ESL students need
vocabulary, and to practice authentic writing tasks. Though these professors are doubtless unaware
of the general versus genre-specific EAP
preparation. It should also be remembered, however, that these respondents were discussing major
courses, rather than general education classes. It is possible that a more diverse sample of faculty
would
in training subject-matter lecturers, not just ESL students. These comments echo those of L2
researchers (e.g., Flowerdew, 1995; Lynch,
In terms of cost effectiveness, it might well be that a higher level of understanding would be
achieved by the lecturers’ modifying their lecturing style,
(p. 240)
Conclusion
Studies in learning strategies that focus specifically on L2
listening as a skill are essential to understanding the process of
listening. Language teachers, therefore, need to understand
that they cannot take a laisser faire stand, hoping students will
somehow pick up this skills by "osmosis" – any more than any
other L2 skill (Mendelsohn, 1984, as cited in Mendelsohn
1994). With planning and continuous practice, language
teachers can help their students acquire strategic skills that
enhance listening comprehension and develop autonomy.