Unit 9 Teaching Listening

Aims of the unit

1. Why is listening so difficult for students?
2. What do we listen to in everyday life?
3. What are the characteristics of the listening
process?
4. What are the principles of teaching listening?
5. What are the common activities in teaching
listening 
 9.1 Why does listening seem
so difficult?
 It is becoming more and more necessary
to understand spoken English in many
situations, e.g. face-to-face
conversations, telephone calls, business
meetings, lectures, speeches, television,
etc.
 Among the four skills, foreign language
learners often complain that listening is
the most difficult to acquire.
 Reasons why listening is often
neglected in language teaching
 Lack of teaching materials;
 Lack of equipment;
 Lack of training in how to use the equipment;
 Listening is not included on many important
tests;
 Lack of real-life situations where language
learners need to understand spoken English;
 Lessons tend to test rather than to train
student’ listening skills.
Both listening and reading are receptive skills,
but listening can be more difficult than reading
because:

 Different speakers produce the same sounds

in different ways, e.g. dialects and accents,
stress, rhythms, intonations,
mispronunciations, etc.;
 The listener has little/no control over the
speed of the input of the spoken material;
 The spoken material is often heard only once
(unlike the reading material);
 The listener cannot pause to work
out the meaning;
 Speech is more likely to be distorted
by background noise (e.g. round the
classroom) or the media that
transmit sounds;
 The listener sometimes has to deal
simultaneously with another task
while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.
9.2 What do we listen to in
everyday life?
 Since we are teaching our students
English not only to help them pass
exams, but also to prepare them to
use English in real life, it is important
to think about the situations they
will listen to English in real life and
then think about the listening
exercises we do in class.
 Even at the beginning stage, we need
to give our students a variety of
listening exercises to prepare them
for real life use of language.
 In most cases, the listening materials
in the classroom are daily
conversations or stories, but in reality
we listen to far more things.
 e.g.
 Telephone conversations about business;
 Lessons or lectures given in English;
 Instructions in English;
 Watching movies in English;
 Dealing with tourists;
 Interviews with foreign-enterprises;
 Socializing with foreigners;
 Listening to English songs;
 Radio news in English;
 Conversations with foreigners;
 Watching television programmes in
English;
 Shop assistants who sell goods to
foreigners;
 International trade fairs;
 Negotiations with foreign businessmen;
 Hotel and restaurant services.
9.3 Characteristics of the
listening process
It is important to understand the
characteristics or process behind
these listening situations so that we
as teachers can design appropriate
activities to help our students to
develop effective listening habits and
strategies.
1. Formal or informal?
2. Rehearsed or non-rehearsed?
3. Can the listener interact with the speaker
nor not?
 Listening to English songs
 Socializing with foreigners
 Radio news in English
 Watching television programmes in English
 Negotiations with foreign businessmen
 Hotel and restaurant services
Characteristics of the listening:
(Ur 1996:106-7)
 Spontaneity. We listen to people speaking
spontaneously and informally without
rehearsing what whey are going to say
ahead of time.
 Context. While listening, we know the
relationship between the listener and the
speaker. The situation helps to predict what
we are going to hear.
 Visual clues. Facial expression, gestures,
and other body language, and the
surrounding environment, these visual clues
help us predict and understand what we
hear.
 Listener’s response. In a
conversation, we can interrupt the
speaker and ask for repetition or
clarification.
 Speaker’s adjustment. The
speaker can adjust the way of
speaking according to the listener’s
reaction, e.g. he/she may rephrase
or elaborate (to put it in more
details).
9.4 Principles of teaching
listening
 Focus on process.
 Combine listening and speaking.
 Focus on comprehending
meaning.
 Grade difficulty level
appropriately.
Focus on process
Listening is not a passive activity. We
must do many things to process
information that we are receiving.
Paying attention.
Constructing meaningful messages in the
mind by relating what we hear to what we
already know (previous knowledge).
So it is very important to design tasks the
performance of which show how well the students
have comprehended the listening material.
Combine listening and speaking
Two problems with the traditional
listening classroom:
 No opportunities to practise listening
and speaking skills together;
 The questions only test the students,
rather than train the students how to
listen or how to develop listening
strategies.
 Focus on comprehending
meaning
 In the traditional textbooks, the listening
exercises are to test the students’ memory,
not their listening comprehension.
 Psycholinguistic studies have shown that
people do not remember the exact form
of the message they hear, i.e., they
don’t remember what they hear word for
word, rather, they remember the
meaning.
Grade difficulty level
appropriately

Three factors that may affect the

difficulty level of listening tasks:
 Type of language used;
 Task or purpose in listening;
 Context in which the listening
occurs.
Which of the following would you use for
intermediate middle school students?
In what order? (PP.140-141)

 A videotape of a talk by a native speaker about

the school life of middle school students in the
United States;
 A live talk by a competent English-speaking
Chinese psychologist about effective study
habits;
 An audiotape of an interview with a native
English speaker talking about her experiences
living in China;
 An audiotape of the news from CRI (China
Radio International)
 The teacher need to evaluate the tasks
provided in textbooks, adapt and
design tasks to provide more variety.
Variety does not only help students
remain interested and motivated to
learn, but also provide practise in the
many types of listening situations
which learners will encounter in real
life.
Principles for selecting & using
listening activities
 For principles, please refer to pp.141-
142
 Bottom-up model
(Hedge, 2000:230)
所谓“自下而上”指在理解语言所表达的信息时
，人们根据所掌握的语言知识，对输入的信息按照语言自
下而上的层次作分析、归纳和解释。语言的层次由下而上
依次为：
1) 语音层次 : 如语音的同化、省音和溶合规则，以及重音
与韵律模式；
2) 词汇层次 : 如词汇和构词法规则；
3) 句法层次 : 如句子结构、时态、语态和格等语法规则；
4) 篇章—语用层次 : 如篇章的类型和人际间交流的规则等
。
Top-down model
“ 自上而下”的处理方式指在理解
输入信息时，人们利用原有的各种知识 ( 语
言知识、社会知识和专业知识等 ) ，对听力
材料中的话题、场景和材料本身的结构先做
出预测，并根据材料的部分陈述和事实，做
出进一步的推断或期待下一个话题。
Three teaching stages
 Pre-listening activities
 While-listening
activities
 Post-listening
activities
Pre-listening activities
 Predicting
 Setting the scene
 Listening for the gist
 Listening for specific
information
Predicting
 Good listeners are good predictors.
 There are many different activities that can
be used to encourage students to predict
the content of what they are about to hear.
 Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding
students’ comprehension. “They attract
students’ attention and help and encourage
them to focus on the subject in hand” (Ur,
1984:30).
Using pictures for prediction
 In the beginning the students may
have difficulty in predicting. In this
case the teacher can help them by
asking leading questions.
 e.g.
e.g. 1

T: Where are they? What are they doing? What is

the relationship between them?
e.g. 2

 T: What do you see in the picture?

What is behind the trees? What is in
the tree? What is in the river?
 Another type of predicting task is to
let students read the listening
comprehension questions before they
listen.
Setting the scene
 The teacher can help provide the
background information to activate
learners’ schema, so they will be
better prepared to understand what
they hear.
 e.g. A passage about Michael Jackson
Listening for the gist
 Listening for the gist is similar to skimming a
passage in reading. The key is to ask students
one or two questions that focus on the main
idea or the tone or mood of the whole
passage.
 Notice that students can answer the gist
questions even though they do not understand
every word or phrase in the passage.
Listening for specific
information
 There are situations in real life where we
listen only for some specific details and
ignore the rest of the entire message. e.g.
weather forecast, announcements in train
stations/airports
 It is important to expose our students to a
variety of types of listening texts for a
variety of purposes so that they will
develop a variety of listening strategies to
use for different situations.
Summary on pre-listening
activities
 We may use more than one kind of
pre-listening activity;
 Pre-listening tasks should not take
much time;
 The purpose of pre-listening activities
is to activate the students’ schema,
i.e. to provide context.
9.6 While-listening activities
 The while-listening stage is the most
difficult for the teacher to control,
because this is where the students
need to pay attention and process the
information actively.
 Some tasks for while-listening
activities:
No specific responses
 For stories, or anything that is
interesting, humourous, or
dramatic, we just have the
students listen and enjoy it.
Listen and tick
Listen and sequence
Listen and act
 Total Physical Response:
 for beginners
“Stand up”, “Point to the …”;
 for intermediate learners
“Pretend you’re …(doing something)”
Listen and draw (pp. 149-150)
Listen and fill

 It is important NOT to overdo this

type of tasks, since it gives
students the impression that they
need to understand every word.
 We may ask the students to fill in
the blanks with function words,
say, prepositions.
Listen and guess
e.g.
 For height, appearance, and
personalities
 Four clues about an animal
Advantages of the above
listening activities

 They personalize the lesson and

make the listening interesting.
 They integrate listening with the
other skills, especially speaking.
Summary on while-listening
activities
 Most of the time, it is helpful to
provide a task for the students to do
something while they are listening.
 By providing a variety of types of
tasks, students learn to listen for a
variety of purposes, which better
prepares them for listening in the real
world outside the classroom.
9.7 Post-listening activities
 The post-listening stage is where the
teacher can determine how well the
students have understood what they
listened to.
 One important point to keep in mind is
whether we are testing the students’
listening comprehension or their memory.
 It is more common for people to
understand more than they can remember.
Some types of post-listening
activities
 Multiple choice questions
 Answering questions
 Note-taking and gap-filling
 Dictogloss
Multiple choice questions
e.g. Compare Exercise A and Exercise B:
Answering questions
 Open-ended questions and
inference questions can be
asked.
Note-taking and gap-filling

 for a summary of the text

Dictogloss

 Preparation: briefly talking about the topic

and key words
 Dictation: for two times, first time focusing on
the meaning, and second time taking extensive
notes
 Reconstruction: working in pairs/groups,
reconstructing the text
 Analysing and correction: comparing their
own version with the original
Summary on post-listening
activities
 Don’t demand students to remember
more details than a native-speaker
would in a real-life situation;
 Don’t spend too much time giving
students practise with traditional test-
taking questions;
 Integrate listening tasks with
speaking and writing.
9.8 Conclusion
 We must know the nature of
listening, both in real language
use and in language classrooms
 Focus on the process of listening
rather than on the result of
listening.
 Don’t merely test the memory.
Homework
 What are the characteristics of the
listening process?
 What are the models of teaching
listening?
 What are the common activities in
teaching listening?