By
Khan
Key
words; what is Listening, Top-down process of Listening Skills, Attentive listening, Extensive listening, intensive
listening, Interactive listening, Selective listening, Listening
Skills, Designing listening activities for the classroom, Strategies
for Listening, Factors affecting and effecting successful listening
Teaching Listening
Listening skill is different from hearing in a sense that
it's involves merely perceiving sound in a passive way while the listening skill
occupies an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds. This is
like seeing and reading. Seeing is a very ordinary and passive state in which
people and animals can see but can’t read the reading is a focused process
requiring reader's to learn to read and identification of words which is a
difficult process. Listening has a "volitional component". Tomatis'
(2007) view is, while listening; the desire to listen, as well as the
capability to listen (comprehension) must be present with the listener for the
successful recognition and analysis of the sound. 'Listening' really means is
'listening and understanding what we hear at the same time'. So, two concurrent
actions are demanded to take place in this process.
Linguists believe that a
listener is involved in guessing, anticipating, checking, interpreting,
interacting & organizing by associating and accommodating their prior
knowledge of meaning and form.
"Listening is vital in the
language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without
understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin. Listening
is fundamental to speaking” (Post).
According to Mecheal Rost
(1991), listening comprises of skills which are;
·
Discriminating
between sounds
·
Recognizing words
·
Identifying
grammatical groupings of words
·
Identifying
expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning
·
Connecting
linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues
·
Using background
knowledge to predict and later to confirm meaning and recalling important words
and ides
Listening Skills:
Listening is not a ‘passive”
skill but a “receptive” skill
Time devoted 45 per cent to
improve listening skills
Listening is the first step in
the process of Language learning.
Strategies for Listening:
Two types of strategies for listening processes:
•
Bottom-up process
•
Top-down process
Bottom-up: We use our knowledge of language and our ability to
process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to us
It is totally "text based" process where
learners rely on the sounds, words and grammar in the message in order to
create meaning.
From small to large Unit
Top-down we understand meaning from relative clues and
from making links between the spoken message and various types of prior
knowledge which we hold
Bottom-up processes Retain input while it is being processed
recognize word divisions, recognize key words in utterances
Recognize grammatical relations
between key elements in sentences; recognize the function of word stress in
sentences
Top-down process
Use key words to construct the outline of
speech
Top- down requires learners to go to the listening with
their prior knowledge of topic, context, and type of text, knowledge of
language to reconstruct the meaning using the sounds as clues.
·
Vocabulary:
identify synonyms of words on list and write down as heard.
·
Paraphrase: show
printed paraphrase of a broadcast segment, write in the equivalent that was
heard.
·
Give News a
Title: provide an open-ended headline
for the broadcast, based on what was heard.
·
Content Check: answer open-ended and true/false questions. E. fill
in the____
·
Translation: complete a partially done translation.
·
Discussion
Topics for the Classroom: follow-up
activities
·
Matching: join matching halves of sentences taken from the
text of the broadcast
1. Listen and Type. The
students listen for the significant portion of the
Narration, and respond by
typing it
Designing listening activities for the
classroom
Pre-Listening stage:
The purpose of the
pre-listening stage is to prepare the learners for what they are going to hear
by
* activating existing prior
knowledge.
Clarifying any necessary
contextual information and vocabulary to understand the text
Talk about related pic
While-Listening Stage
Activities ticking
multiple-choice items, filling in a chart, complete a table, map or picture, matching
pictures with the text
Four major differences Attentive
listening, Extensive listening, and Intensive listening, Selective listening and
Interactive listening.
Attentive
listening:
Attentiveness is a prior condition for understanding and
listener often lapse attention for various reasons. Losing interest, asking oral Q/R
Extensive
listening:
This type of listening has also a greater ease than other types as it is concerned to promote overall comprehension of a text and never requires learners
To follow every word and understand them. Learners need
to comprehend the text as a whole which is called global understanding
Intensive listening requires attention to specific items of language,
sound or factual detail such as words, phrase, grammatical units, pragmatic
units,
Sound
changes (vowel reduction and consonant assimilation), stress, intonation and
pauses
Selective listening:
It involves listening to selected part of a text. Listener constructs their understanding of the meaning of whole of the text through inferring.
Listeners have the chance of second listening to check
understanding.
Listening to sound sequences, documentary,
story maps
Interactive
listening:
This is a very advanced stage of listening practice as it implies social interaction in small groups which is a 'true test' of listening. In interactive listening,
Learners, either in pairs or in groups, receive new information,
identify them continuously
Post
listening stage activities can be used to
check comprehension, valuate listening skill, use of listening strategies and
use the knowledge gained to other contexts
Factors
affecting and effecting successful listening:
·
Distractions and noise, sound-proof language
lab is required to improve
·
A bad quality cassette player or CD player may
harm listening developing skills, good quality equipment’s are need motivation
and improvement
·
Uninteresting and inappropriate content for
the class level
·
topic, speed and vocabulary of the listening
material
·
internet is a good source for learners using
quality headphones or speakers
·
English programs or news are good for learners developing
listening skills
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