LISTENING

I. What is listening?
II. Listening Skills &
Strategies
Outline III.Principles for Teaching
Listening
IV.Develop a Listening
Activity
 Listening is the ability to
accurately receive and interpret
messages in the communication
process.
I. What is
Listening? Listening is key to all effective
communication. Without the ability
to listen effectively, messages are
easily misunderstood.
LISTENING

Is listening an
LISTENING ACTIVE or
PASSIVE skill?
LISTENING

Either!

Let’s look at listening

as
an interactive process!
LISTENING

According to Clark & Clark (1977), the following

happens when we listen:

 Hearer processes the “raw speech” (the actual phrases,

clauses, etc.)
 Hearer determines the type of speech (conversation,
Process of speech, etc.)
 Hearer infers the objectives of the speaker (to
Listening persuade, request, etc.)
 Hearer recalls schemata (own background knowledge)
 Hearer assigns literal meaning to utterance
 Hearer assigns intended meaning to utterance
 Hearer determines whether information should be
retained in short-term or long-term memory
 Hearer deletes the form in which the message was
received
LISTENING

Simply put, there are many processes

interacting with the actually sounds
received by a listener.

Understanding these different

processes of attaching meaning to
sound can be a helpful starting point
for a teacher to understand how to
teach listening to students.
LISTENING
 Listening is also interactive because in most
situations listening is part of a two-way
communication between a two or more
parties.

Besides lectures, sermons (religious worship),

Listening is ceremonies, and radio, what are some other
interactive forms of one-way forms of communication?

What are some two-way forms of

communication?

Which list is larger?

LISTENING

Your list for two-way communication was

probably larger because language is used
mostly for communication between two or
more speakers.

Therefore, listening is a part

of an interactive process
of communication.
LISTENING

Before looking at the development of

listening skills with young learners, let’s
look at a basic taxonomy of listening
“microskills” developed by Jack
II. Listening Richards (1983).
Skills &
Strategies
This comprehensive list can be helpful
for teachers to recognize the individual
microskills skills that they are
developing with each listening activity.
LISTENING

Brewster, Ellis, and Girard (2004) mention

that developing “intelligent guessing” is
very important to develop in young
learners. They suggest the following
strategies:
Listening
Predicting: learners guess what they will
Strategies for be listening to next
YLs Guessing from context: learners guess the
meaning of a word through the context
given
Recognizing discourse patterns and
markers: learners understand signal words,
such as first, then, finally, but, so, etc.
LISTENING
These are strategies that teachers
should help learners develop. If
learners develop the use of these
strategies independent of the teacher,
then they will be improving their
ability to listen effectively on their
own.

Consider the list of microskills again.

Which ones can teacher encourage
young learners to use? Which ones
are appropriate for your particular
student profile?
LISTENING

 Bottom-up processing = proceeds from

sounds to words to grammatical relationships
to lexical meanings, etc. to a final message.

 Bottom-up techniques usually focus on

sounds, words, intonation, grammatical
Bottom-up structures, and other components of spoken
language.

Examples:
 Students listen to a pair of words and circle if the words are
same or different.
 Students match a word they hear with its picture.
 Students listen to a short dialogue and fill in the blanks of a
transcript.
LISTENING

When developing a listening

activity, be sure to set up the
activity in three distinct stages:
III. Develop a Pre-listening
Listening
Activity Listening
activity
Post-listening
LISTENING
Before the listening activity,
prepare students for the activity by

 activating schema
 connecting the activity to
their background
Pre-listening knowledge
 getting them to predict
what they will be
listening to
 introducing useful words
and concepts
LISTENING

While students are listening, be sure

that they are actively listening by

using of visuals, such as

pictures, facial expressions,
Listening body movement
Activity asking them questions and
eliciting answers
having them respond to the
listening by doing,
choosing, etc.
LISTENING

After the listening activity, be sure to

follow-up with some comprehension
checking activities which can include
the same types of activities mentioned
above.
Post-
Listening
In addition, the post-listening activities
can flow smoothly into a speaking
activity that practices the language
learned in the listening activity.