LESSON 1: The Concept and Importance of
Listening
HEARING & LISTENING
HEARING
- Hearing is the process, function or power
of perceiving a sound.
- It is an accidental and automatic brain
response to sound that requires no effort.
- It is the reception of sound.
- A form of perception.
- The act of perceiving sound and receiving
sound waves or vibrations through your ear.
- The natural ability or an inborn trait that
allows us to recognize sound through ears
by catching vibrations.
LISTENING
- Listening is to hear something with
thoughtful attention.
- It is purposeful and focused to understand
the meanings expressed by a speaker.
- It is the attachment of meaning to the
sound.
- It's an active & intentional process.
- It is a complex, active process in which the
listener must discriminate between sounds,
understand vocabulary and grammatical
structures, interpret stress and intonation,
retain what was gathered in all of the above,
and interpret it within the immediate as well
as the larger sociocultural context of the
utterance.
- The act of hearing a sound and
understanding what you hear.
- The learned skill, in which we can receive
sounds through ears, and transform them
into meaningful messages.
CHILDREN’S MACRO SKILLS PROGRESS
Hearing > Listening > Speaking > Reading >
Writing
PASSIVE LISTENING
- It is regarded as one-way communication
wherein the receiver does not respond nor
give feedback to the speaker in any way.
ACTIVE LISTENING
- If the listener takes part actively in the
process of listening linguistically and uses
his/her non-linguistic knowledge to follow
up the message that the speaker intends in
a conversation, if s/he listens, replies, and
asks/answers questions, it is active
listening.
6 KEY ACTIVE LISTENING SKILLS
1. PAY ATTENTION
- It is concentrating on the speaker's
message while integrating one's own prior
knowledge and experiences. It also involves
paying attention not just to the speaker's
message but also to the non-verbal
gestures.
2. WITHHOLD JUDGMENT
- It is important to stay open-minded and to
welcome varied ideas, new perspective, and
different opinions.
3. REFLECT
- Reflecting during the communication
process allows you to understand the
speaker's experiences and the emotions
that come with them. Reflecting in this
context means rephrasing and repeating
both the words and the feelings of the
speaker.
4. CLARITY
- The listener has to clarify information that
has not been clearly understood; or ask for
more information or details about the topic.
5. SUMMARIZE
- Restate key points in the conversation to
ensure that you have the same
understanding of the intention and message
of the speaker.
6. SHARE
- You can begin to introduce (without
imposing) your perspectives, ideas, and
feelings without judgments.
ETHICAL LISTENING
- It highlights the importance of listening
with honest intentions. Respect is the key to
active listening. If you want to be heard and
respected when it is your turn to speak, you
should also extend the same degree of
respect to others whether you agree with
them or not.
Stages of Listening by DeVito (2000)
1. Receiving - involves hearing (isolating
sound) and attending (interpreting sound).
2. Understanding - assigning meaning to
the interpreted words. A mental
reconstruction of the speaker's message.
3. Remembering - processing the message
meaningfully by associating it to past
remembered information.
4. Evaluating - mentally reviewing and
determining the veracity of the information
against own knowledge and experiences
5. Responding - giving of feedback (can be
formative or summative)
THE PROCESS Of LISTENING
1. The Bottom-up Process
- language to meaning
- learners rely on their knowledge of the
linguistic code to achieve progressive
meaning construction
2. The Top-down Process
- meaning to language
- learners use their background knowledge
to comprehend the meaning
- Aural comprehension depends on the
listener's ability to activate his knowledge-
based schemata
SKILLS FOR LISTENING
• Skills are “ competencies which native
listeners possess and which non-natives
need to acquire concerning the language
they are learning” (Field, 1998 in Nihei,
2002).
• Acquiring these specific competencies for
listening would require work and practice
just like how they exert effort when trying to
master speaking, reading, and writing.
• Teachers should instruct students to know
that "achieving skill in listening requires as
much work as does becoming skilled in
reading, writing, and speaking in a second
language" (Morley, 2001, p. 72).
• teachers have to know which skills are
needed for effective listening and instruct
students to develop these skills.
The following skill classification is adopted
by Nihei (2002) from an article by Richards
(1987).
1. ability to recognize reduced forms of
words
2. ability to distinguish word boundaries
3. ability to detect key words (i.e., those
which identify topics and propositions)
4. ability to guess the meanings of words
from the contexts in which they occur
5. ability to recognize cohesive devices in
spoken discourse
6. ability to distinguish between major and
minor constituents
7. ability to recognize the communicative
functions of utterances, according to
situations, participants, goals 8. ability to
reconstruct or infer situations, goals,
participants, procedures
9. ability to use real world knowledge and
experience to work out purposes, goals,
settings, procedures
10. ability to predict outcomes from events
described
11. ability to infer links and connections
between events
12. ability to distinguish between literal and
implied meanings
13. ability to recognize markers of
coherence in discourse, and to detect such
relations as main idea, supporting idea,
given information, new information,
generalization, exemplification
14. ability to process speech containing
pauses, errors, corrections
15. ability to make use of facial,
paralinguistic, and other clues to work out
meanings
16. ability to adjust listening strategies to
different kinds of listener purposes or goals
LISTENING TO COMPREHEND AND
LISTENING TO ACQUIRE THE TARGET
LANGUAGE
• LSRW (LISTENING-SPEAKING-READING-
WRITING) methods suggests that students
learning a new language will first be taught
how to listen.
• To understand the nuances in a particular
language, one must be able to learn to listen.
• (Schmidt (1990) highlighted the role of
listening in facilitating second language
acquisition.
• “a learner will not comprehend and learn
anything from the input he hears unless he
will notice something about the input.
• “The only linguistic materials that can
figure in language-making are stretches of
speech that attract the child’s attention to
sufficient degree to be noticed and held in
memory
Listening is vital in the language classroom
because it provides input for the learner.
MODULE 2 (STRATEGIES IN TEACHING)
LISTENING TEACHING LISTENING
Cahyono and Widiati (2009) mentioned that
'successful listeners are those who can use
both bottom-up and top-down processes by
combining the new information and the
knowledge that they already know.
Brown (2006) in Yildirim (2016); Students
must hear some sounds (bottom-up
processing), hold them in their working
memory long enough (a few seconds) to
connect them, and then interpret what
they've just heard before something new
comes along. At the same time, listeners
are using their background knowledge (top-
down processing) to determine meaning
with respect to prior knowledge and
Schemata.
Lopez, et.al (2020) mentions as an
"integrative approach" in teaching listening
it involves three key stages; Before-listening,
While-listening, After-listening
Richards (2008) in Lopez, et.al. (2020)
explains that;
BEFORE-LISTENING STAGE
prepares students for both types of
processing through activities that require
activating their previous knowledge, making
predictions, and revising key vocabulary.
WHILE-LISTENING STAGE
focuses attention on comprehension
through activities that require selective
listening, listening for main ideas (gist
listening), or understanding the sequence of
events (sequencing); and
AFTER-LISTENING STAGE
students should express their opinions on
the topic and respond to comprehension.
this stage may also include a detailed
analysis of some sections of the text that
could not be understood by the students.
FORMAT OF A LISTENING LESSON
Pre-listening
This stage sets the context of the listening
activity that will be given to students.
Identifying vocabulary/comprehension
needs - identifying possible difficult words
or presenting specific vocabulary
expressions which students would need
while listening.
Activating interest- The listening text
should be familiar, interesting, and within
students' level of understanding.
Putting it in context - the teacher should be
able to design contextualized listening
activities that would activate students prior
knowledge and help them form appropriate
inferences which they need to comprehend
the message.
Setting the purpose - the purpose of the
listening activity should be made clear to
the students.
While-listening
Listening and re-listening- you may want to
inform your students ahead that such audio
recordings will be played more than once so
as not to put too much pressure on them.
Guided listening and Scaffold note-taking -
If you need your students to complete
something while listening. you have to make
sure that they have previewed and
understood the written task first before
listening begins.
Thinking space - students need 'breathing'
or "thinking space between and after
listening activities.
Post-listening - this stage serves as a follow
-up to the listening activity done while taking
into account the primary purpose of the
listening task.
Responding to the text - It is important that
students share their reactions to the
content.
Analyzing linguistic features of the text-
you can also ask students to analyze
language forms from the script.
Integrating speaking and writing - you may
also want to design tasks that would require
students to use their productive skills.
STRATEGIES AND EXAMPLES IN
TEACHING LISTENING
Pre-listening
Listening strategy: Identifying
vocabulary/comprehension needs
Example:
● Word webs ● Mind maps ● Ask me
●Words on the board ● Gap-fill
Listening strategy: Activating Interest
Example:
● Brain walking ● Guess the theme ● Solve
the puzzle ● Sing along ● Meme it ●Open questions ● What do you recall?
●Discussion questions ● WH Questions, ●Reflective and self-assessment
Questions ●Interpretative tasks

Listening strategy: putting it in context Listening strategy: Analyzing linguistic

Example:
● Post it ● Make up a story ● Let's draw
●Using poll KWL ● Exploring pictures
Listening strategy: Setting the purpose
Example:
● Brainstorming ● Listening for pleasure
●What I want to do
features of the text
Examples:
● Disappearing dialogues ● Synonyms and
antonyms ● Listening script as a
springboard ● Dictgloss ● Sequencing
events ● Reviewing the transcript ● Multiple
choice test
Listening strategy: Integrating Productive
skills: Speaking and writing

Examples:
WHILE LISTENING
● Demonstrating a listening passage
Listening strategy: Provide an opportunity ●Writing a short composition ● Time to
for students to re-listen
FREE LISTENING TEST AND EXERCISE
Example: WEBSITES

● Let me read it first ● Take two • TalkEnglish • ELLLO (English Listening

Lesson Library Online) • IELTS (International
Listening strategy: Promote guided listening English Language Testing System • ESL
and scaffold note-taking Lounge • Breaking News English • Ted Ed

Example:

● Graphic organizers ● Who's who?

●Dictogloss ● Look for the meaning
●Editing tasks

Listening strategy: Give students thinking

space

Example:

● Listen and describe ● What's next

POST LISTENING

Listening strategy: Responding to the text

Examples:

● True or false ● Checking and summarizing

● Discussions ● Test your classmate