EEE here was a time when listening, in language classes was perceived chiefly asa way of presenting new grammar, Dialogues on tape provided oral ‘examples of structures to be learned, and this was the only type of listening practice which most learners received. Ironically, a large amount of effort was ‘committed to training learners to express themselves orally. The changing ‘understood. It may be necessary for the teacher to present two or thre critical words atthe beginning ofthe listening lesson - key words without which any understanding of the text would be impossible. But these should ideally be restricted to two or three. ‘Criical” ‘means absolutely indispensable. Prevlistening activities ‘Most teachers now feature some kind of pre-istening activity, involving brainstorming vocabulary, or reviewing areas of grammar, or discussing the topic of the listening text. This phase of the lesson usually lasts longer than it ° face of listening John Field accepts the From the ate 196, practitioners recognised te importance of listening improvements in listening _snd began to set and ine for pacing thes A relatively standard format for methodology but rejects the listening lesson developed atti tine { Pre-fistenin, complacency. | re-eaching ofa important new vocabulary in the passage Listening Extensive istering followed by general questions establishing context) Intensive listening (lowed by detailed comprehension questions) Post-listening ‘Analysis ofthe language inthe text (e.g. Why aid the speaker use the Present Perfect?) Listen and Repest. Teachor pauses the tape, learners repeat words Over the past 30 years, many teachers have modified this procedure considerably. Its worthwhile reminding ‘ourselves of the rationale behind these changes. In doing so, we may come to question the thinking at certain points. ‘We may also conclude that perhaps the changes do not go far enough. Pre-listening Critical words Preteaching of voebulary has now iargely been discontinued In el lif Ieamers cannot expect to ave unknown | words explained in advance; instead they | ave to Jearn to cope with a situation where parts of whats heard will not be 4B sevusH TEACHING professionals Tssue & Tdonary \99E should. Quite apart from the fact that a Jong pre-listening session considerably shortens the time available for listening, itis often counter-productive. Excessive discussion of the topic may mean that too much ofthe content of the listening passage has been anticipated; revising language points before listening will only encourage learners to focus on these items in the passage - sometimes at the expense of global meaning ‘The ideal is to set oneself two simple aims in the preclstening period: 8. to provide sufficient context to match that which would be available in real life b.to create motivation (perhaps by asking learners to swap predictions about what they will hea), ‘These can be achieved in as little as five minutes. Listening The intensive/extensive distinction ‘Most practitioners have retained the extensivefintensive distinction, and, on a similar principe, international, examinations usually specify that the recording isto be played twice to candidates Some theorists have argued that this is unnatural - that in real life one only gets one heating. But the argument isa false one: the whole situation of listening to a cassette in a language classroom is highly artificial Furthermore, it is easy to overlook the fact that listening toa strange voice (especially a strange voice speaking in a{foreign language) requires a process of | normalisation - of adjusting to the pitch, [speed and quality ofthe voice. An initial playing ofthe cassette for extensive listening provides an opportunity for this. Pre-set questions [Checking comprehension has changed. ‘We now recognise that learners listen in ‘an unfocused vay if questions are not set until after the passage has been heard, Unsure of what they willbe asked, they ccennot judge the level of detail that they ‘are supposed to be heeding and their answers are likely to be as dependent ‘upon memory as upon listening skills If ‘we pre-set comprehension questions, We can ensure that learners listen with a clear purpose, and will use listening skills and not just memory, | Questions or tasks? [Better than setting traditional comprehension questions isthe current practice of providing a task, Learners are [required todo something with the | information they have extracted from the text. Tasks can be as simple as carrying outa set of instructions; they typically involve: labelling (eg, buildings on.amap) | selecting (eg. choosing a film from three tales) - drawing (eg. symbols on a | weather map) - form-fling eg. a hotel © registration form) - completing a grid, ‘Task-based activities of this kind [reflect much more closely the type of response that might be given toa listening ' experience in real-life They also provide a ‘more reliable way of checking, understanding by reducing the amount of [reading and waitin involved. A major © difficulty with listening work is tha, in | order to find out how much a learner has understood, one bas to involve other skis. [Are the reasons for any wrong answer actually due to listening? For example, if 'Teamers give a wrong answer toa written comprehension question, it may be [Because they have not understood the question (reading) or because they cannot formulate an answer (writing) rather than because thei listening is at fault, |The thd benefit is that tasks demand individual responses Filing informs, | Iabelling diagrams or making choices obliges every learner to try to make something of what they are hearing. This | isespecaly effective if the cassis asked to | work in pairs ‘Authentic materials [Another development has been the | increased use of authentic materials Texts ‘which were not specially prepared with the language learner in mind reflect the rhythms of natural speech in a way that scripted ones cannot, however good the actors. They also provide an experience of something like reaMife listening because the language they contain has not been simplified to reflect the presumed knowledge ofthe learners. Itis vital that learners gain practice in dealing with texts where they understand only pat of what is sid It's therefore, strongly advisable to introduce authentic materials relatively carly on ina language course. Some teachers fear this will discourage students. However, the rovers is usually research suggests a much smaller percentage than we imagine). They then ‘construct guesses which link these [ Sragmented pieces of text. Learners need practice and guidance in this process. ‘Those who are cautious need to be ‘encouraged to take risks and to make [inferences based upon the words they have managed to identify. Natural risk- takers need to be encouraged to check their guesses against new evidence as it [comes in from the speaker. And all learners need to be shown that making L guesses is not a sign of failure: it is a | normal pare ofistening fo foreign language - at Jeast until a very high level of second language competence. A long pre-listening session considerably shortens the time available for listening found to be the case: provided learners are told in advance not to expect to understand everything they hear, they find it motivating to discover that they can extract information from an ungraded passage. The essence of the approach is instead of simplifying the language ofthe text, one simplifies the task that is demanded of the student. IF the text is above the language level of the class then one demands only shallow comprehension. One might play a recording ofa rea-ife stallholder in a market and simply ask the class to write down all the vegetables that are mentioned, Students often have difficulty in adjusting to authentic conversational materials after hearing scripted ones. We tend not to give sulficent thought to this problem. It isa good idea to introduce your earners systematically 10 those features of conversational speech which they may find unfamiliar - hesitation, stuttering, false starts, and Jong, loosely structured sentences. A 00d approach isto choose a few [| examples of a single feature from a piece of authentic speech, play them to the | lass and ask them to try to transcribe them. Listening as strategy ‘Authentic materials may involve a very diferent type of listening from those that are graded and scripted. In real life, listening to a foreign language is a strategic activity. Learners recognise only part of what they hear, (my Post-listening Identifying functions We no longer spend time examining the ‘grammar of the listening text; that reflected a typically structuralist view of listening a8 a means of reinforcing recently-learned material. However, itis often worthwhile to pick out any functional language and draw learners’ attention to it. ‘Susan threatened John, Do you remember the words she used), This seems to be quite rarely done - yet listening texts often provide 5 excellent examples of functions such as apologising, inviting, refusing, suggesting, and so on, "The Listen and Repeat phase bas been dropped as well, on the bass that / twas tantamount to parroting. This is [not entirely fair: infact, it tested the [ability of leamers to achieve lexical segmentation - to identify individual ‘words within the stream of sound. But cone can understand that it does not accord well with current communicative thinking. Inferring meaning After listening, many teachers favour getting learners to infer the meaning of : [new words from the contexts in which they appear - just as they do in reading, ‘They write the target words on the board, replay the sentences containing them and ask learners to work out their meanings. Teachers are deterred from this activity by the difficulty of finding the right place on the cassette. The ‘ENGUSH TEACHING professional « AZThe changi face of solution is to copy the sentences to be used onto a second cassette. ‘To summarise, then, the format of a {good listening lesson of the 1990s is considerably different from that of 30 phe Create motivation Listening: Extonsiv listening (followed by ‘questions on context, attitude) Pre-set task / Pre-set questions Intensive listening (Checking answers Post-listening: Examining functional language Inferring vocabulary meaning Where do we go from here? Listening methodology has changed a great deal, but some would argue that {many of the changes have been cosmetic, and that what is really needed | is a rethinking ofthe aims and structure [ofthe listening lesson. Here are some of [the more important limitations of our current approach, © We still tend to test listening rather than teach it ‘This is often said, but the truth is that | we have litle option but to use some kkind of checking procedure to assess the extent of understanding which has been achieved. What is arguably wrong is not ‘what we do, but how we use the results We tend to judge successful listening very simplistically in terms of correct answers to 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 intelligent guess; another may have constructed meaning on the basis of 100% recognition of what was sai. ‘We tend to focus upon the produet of listening when we should be [interested in the process - what is going [om in the heads of our leamers, | Wrong answers are more informative than right ones. Spend time asking learners where and how understanding broke down. Make listening diagnostic, 144 « enaush teachin professional » ging hi stening then construct remedial tasks. it is evident that learners are finding it difficult to recognise weak forms (woz! for was, fal for fo, ul for who), a series of sentences containing examples of these forms can be dictated, to ensure that the next time they occur, students recognise them and interpret them corretly, ‘Remedial exercises can also be used to develop higher-level skills: distinguishing important pieoes of information, anticipating, noticing topic markers and so on, ‘Teaching listening, rather than i testing it, involves a change in lesson shape. Instead ofthe long pre-lstening Period which some teachers employ, itis ‘much more fruitful to allow time for an extended post-listening period in which learners’ problems can be identified and tackled © We do not practise the kind of listening that takes place in real life. If we are to use authentic texts (and there is every reason why we should), itis pointless to work on the assumption that learners will identify most of the words they hear, We need a new type of lesson ‘where understanding of what is suid is less than perfect. The process that non- native listeners adopt seems to be: + Identify words in a few fragmented sections of the text. Feel relatively certain about some; less certain about others = Make inferences linking the parts of the text about which you feel most confident + Check those inferences against what comes next, ‘This kind of strategy is not confined to Tow-level learners; my evidence suggests that it is used up to the highest levels. ‘We very much need to reshape some | (otal) of our listening lessons to reflect | this reality Let us encourage learners to ‘write down the words they understand, to form and discuss inferences, to listen again and revise their inferences, then to check them against what the speaker says. | next. In doing this, we not only give them practice inthe kind of listening they are likely to do in ral lifes we also ensure that guessing is not seen as a sign of failure but something that most people | have to resort to when listening to a foreign language ¢ Listening work is often limited in scope and isolating in effect. ur current methodology reinforces the natural instinct of the teacher to provide answers. We need to design a listening lesson where the teacher has a much less [interventionist rol, encouraging learners to listen and redisten and to do as much of the work as possible for themselves. On the other hand, we should also recognise that listening can prove an isolating activity, in which the liveliest class can quickly become a group of separate individuals, each locked up in their own auditory efforts. ‘The solution isto get eamers to listen to a short passage, then to compare their ‘understanding of it in pairs Encourage them to disagree with cach other - thereby increasing motivation for a second listening. Pay the passage again, and let the pairs revise their views. Ask them to share ther interpretations withthe class Resist the temptation to tell them who is right and who is wrong, When the class has argued about the accuracy of different versions play the text again and ask them tomake up their minds each student providing evidence to support his/her point of view. In this way, listening ‘becomes a much more interactive activity, with earners listening not because the teacher tells them to, but becatse they Ihave a vested interes in justifying their ‘own explanation of the text. By listening and reistening, they improve the accuracy with Which they lsten and, by discussing [possible interpretations they improve their [ability to construct representations of, ‘meaning from what they hear. The methodology ofthe listening > lesson has certainly come a Jong way, but Jet us not be complacent. Unless we address the three problem areas outlined earlier, our teaching will remain hidebound and we will be missing out on ‘what should be our true aim - not simply | providing practice but producing better and more confident listeners. Gf 7] ohn Foto materiale ‘ter and teacher trainer for beginers for radio ‘and distance leaning materias for We fe : ‘currently doing PRD erga ogtenng {he Univeral a Cambridge.