Part 1 Teaching Listening Skills (Pelatihan Guru Kab Siak 2009)

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    Part 1: TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS

    Differences between Spoken and Written Language

    Spoken Written

    Medium Sound is the medium. We use the

    speech organ (mouth, throat) and

    ears in speaking and listening.

    Words on a page or screen is the

    medium. We use our hands to write

    and eyes to read.

    Resources Paralinguistic features, e.g. pause,loudness, stress, intonation, etc. and

    extralinguistic features, e.g. gestures,

    facial expressions, eye contact, nods,

    body posture, etc. used to aid

    communication.

    Only words on the page andpunctuation marks available.

    Processing

    time

    Thinking, speaking and listening go

    on at almost the same time. If the

    listener fails to understand what the

    speaker says at the time the speaker

    says it, he will not get another

    chance to listen to it again.Speech is ephemeral.

    The writer can take his time in

    composing and the reader can take

    his time reading and re-reading

    what is written.

    Writing is permanent.

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    Feedback The speaker can find out the

    listenersresponse to what he said

    almost instantly.

    Delayed feedback. The writer has to

    wait until he gets a reply to his letter

    or review of his ideas.

    Language Usually simple sentences and

    vocabulary used.

    More sophisticated and complex

    structures and vocabulary used.

    organization More meandering and fewer

    organizational markers, especially

    in spontaneous speech, e.g.

    conversation

    Usually well-organized because more

    time for planning.

    Performance Many false starts, fillers, pauses,

    etc. found

    Editing. Therefore no mistakes visible.

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    WHY LISTENING NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT

    It is very important in daily life. According to Wilga Rivers (1981), we listen

    twice as much as we speak, four times as much as we read and five times as

    much as we write (L = 2xS; L = 4xR; L = 5xW).

    It has unique aspects that make it different from the other language skills.

    It is very important for developing speaking skills. As Nida (1957) rightly

    concludes, Learning to speak a language is very largely a task of learning to

    hear it.

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    PURPOSES OF LISTENING

    1. For maintaining good social relations

    We often hear people say they spent a whole afternoon or whole weekendchatting with someone else but when they are asked what they talked about,

    they say things like, Nothingmuch!or Icantreally remember.In this kind of

    talk, the information content or message is not important. What is important

    is the goodwill that is maintained or established through the talk. The

    communication here is listener-oriented and not message-oriented. A great

    deal of conversation and casual talk is of this nature.

    2. For entertainment

    People listen to jokes, stories, songs, plays, TV, radio broadcasts, etc. mainly

    for entertainment. The outcome of such listening is not usually measured interms of how useful it was but in terms of personel satisfaction.

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    3. For obtaining information necessary for day-to-day living

    People listen to news broadcasts, directions on how to get to different

    places, weather forecasts and travel informationairport, bus and train

    terminal announcementsbecause listening to these enables them to

    get the information necessary for day-to-day living; to know when to

    board the plane, whether it is safeto pelan a picnic, etc.

    4. For academic purposes

    People listen to lectures, seminars and talks as a way of extending their

    knowledge and skills. Listening is a central part of all learning. A pupilwho cannot understand what the teacher is saying in a class is seriously

    hampered in his learning.

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    PROCESS INVOLVED IN LISTENING

    1. Hearing vs. listening

    Our ears are constantly being barraged by sound. However, we do not pay

    attention to everything we hear. We only begin to listen when we pay

    attention to the sounds we hear and make an effort to interpret them.

    2. Top-down processing

    When a listener hears something, this may remind him of something in his

    previous knowledge, and this in turn, leads him to predict the kind of

    information he is likely to hear. When this happens, he is said to be using top-

    downprocessing. When a listener can relate what he is about to hear withwhat he already knows, this will help him understand what he hears better.

    This is why pre-listening activities are introduced to help students see how the

    listening text relates to what they already know.

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    3. Bottom-up processing

    If what he hears does not trigger anything in his previous knowledge, then thelistener would have to resort to what is called bottomuplistening, the slow

    building up of meaning block by block through understanding all the linguistic

    data he hears. This kind of processing is much harder. The way to solve this

    problem, however, is not to focus the students attention on the building

    blocks: pronunciation, word knowledge, etc. People do not listen for words

    and sounds. They listen for meaning. So you should teach your students to

    listen for meaning: to use whatever clues they can get from the contextwho

    is speaking, on what topic, for what purpose, to whom, where, etc.to make

    sense of what they hear. They should, for example, try to guess the meaning of

    unknown or partially heard words from the context. They should be taught to

    have a whole-to-part focus in their listening. They should work at

    understanding the whole message and to use grammar, vocabulary and

    sounds only as aids in doing this and not as important in themselves.

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    4. Listening as an active process

    When a proficient listener listens, he doesnt passively receive what the

    speaker says. He actively constructs meaning. He identifies main points andsupporting details; he distinguishes fact from opinion; he guesses the

    meaning of unfamiliar words, etc. These are cognitive aspects of listening.

    There are also affective or emotional dimensions to listening. The listener

    agrees or disagrees with a speaker. He likes or dislikes the speakerstone of

    voice or choice of words. He may find the speakerschoice of topic morallyobjectionable or absolutely boring. He may be disappointed with/surprised

    by/worried about/satisfied with the speakerstreatment of the topic and so

    on. Listenersattitudes, values and interests all affect the way they interpret

    and respond to talk.

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    SELECTION OF LISTENING MATERIALS

    We listen to many different types of material in our day-to-day life:

    a. monologues, e.g. people telling stories, jokes, anecdotes; talks, lectures,

    etc.

    b. dialogues, e.g. interview

    c. discussions, e.g. seminars, forumsd. informal conversations

    e. radio and TV broadcasts

    All of these can serve as listening inputs for teaching listening. However,

    you need to weigh certain factors before you decide which type of text

    you will use to teach what skill to whom.

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    Speed of delivery

    People who speak fast are generally more difficult to understand than those

    who speak slowly.

    2. Types of Text

    Amount of planning

    Lectures and talks often have clear marks of organization. They have what arecalled advance organizerswords and phrases that give listeners advance

    notice of what they will hear (e.g. I will first deal withthen, I will go on to, I

    will conclude withI wish to talk about three issues: onetwothree). They

    also contain summaries to remind listeners of the gist of what they have heard

    before the speaker moves on to the next phase (e.g. So far we have looked at

    how chocolate is made, now we will move on to who makes chocolate and for

    whom). All this makes pre-planned talks easier than unplanned or

    spontaneous speech like conversations.

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    Amount of performance features present

    Texts that are spontaneous, for example, have more false starts, incomplete

    sentences, etc. This makes them more difficult than scripted texts that do not

    have any of these features.

    Amount of support available

    For example, in face-to-face communication, the listener can use the speakers

    gestures, facial expressions, etc. to help him understand. When children listen

    to stories while looking at pictures that illustrate the characters and events in

    the story, the pictures help them to understand the words they do not

    understand.

    Level of sophistication of language

    Texts with words and structures beyond the listenersunderstanding should be

    avoided. This does not mean that no unfamiliar words or structure should be

    found in the text. If the hard words make the text challenging, that is good. If

    there are so many of them that the task becomes frustrating then it is time to

    leave the text or to simplify it.

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    Length of text

    Although length alone is not a good indicator of the level of difficulty of a text,

    try not to use very long texts. They tire the listener and put a strain on his short

    term memory.

    3. Content of text

    Relevance

    It is very important to choose texts that are relevant to pupils interest level,

    their maturity and the communicative need for English.

    Difficulty of argument or concepts

    Remember that a short text with many difficult ideas may be harder than a

    long text with very few ideas. It is this feature of content that makes a lecturemore difficult than a conversation. Conversations seldom have difficult

    concepts in them, whereas lectures, because their purpose is to teach, often

    have many new ideas that the listener must understand and remember.

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    Redundancy

    Texts where ideas are repeated in many different ways (e.g. by giving examples,

    by saying the same thing in a different way, etc.) are easier that texts where

    there is no repetition of ideas.

    Unfamiliarity of content

    When the topic that is being discussed is unfamiliar to the learner, e.g. because

    it is from a different culture, the listener will have difficulty understanding what

    he hears. He will not have enough previous knowledge to help him understandthe new information.

    4. Listeners

    Level of language proficiency

    You must always keep this in mind when choosing listening input. Listening to

    a text with too many difficult words and sentences that are long and complex

    can be a very frustrating experience.

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    Attention span

    Younger and less able pupils generally cannot concentrate for very long. You

    must bear this in mind when you decide on the length of your listening input.

    Interest

    This affects the motivation of the learner and the amount of effort he is likely to

    put into the learning task. This is, perhaps the most important thing of all to

    remember when choosing listening input. Such factors as the age and sex of the

    learner will affect interest and therefore would have to be borne in mind indetermining what kind of input will interest the pupils.

    Previous knowledge

    If the listener has very little or no previous knowledge of the content of the text

    or of the form of it (e.g. poem) then this would make it very difficult for him tounderstand the text and to respond to it.

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    5. Situation

    Amount of background noise

    In real life listening, there is often a lot of noise in the background. We learn to

    make sense of what we hear, in spite of the noise. However, the ability to copewith noise comes at a rather late stage in language learning. When pupils are in

    the earliest stages of learning, distinguishing the sounds of the new language

    above the noise in the background may be very frustrating.

    Number of chances for listening to the input

    How many times a listener can listen to the input also affects the difficulty of a

    listening task. At the earliest stages, taped input may be good, as this allows

    the pupil to listen to the input as many times as he needs. At the later stages,

    learners need to cope with listening to the input only once. This is because

    most times we only get to listen to the input once in real life.

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    6. Task

    Difficulty of task

    One factor that you also need to consider is what the pupil is required to

    do while or after listening to the tape. One way of simplifying a listening

    task is to make the expected outcome very simple, e.g. to find out whichitems on a list the speaker mentions.

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    GUIDELINES/PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING LISTENING

    Build-up your pupilsskills and self-confidence by doing the following:

    Make sure pupils understand clearly what they are expected to do before they

    start on any activity.

    Provide a context for listening. Tell them, for example, what kind of text they are

    going to listen to (a talk, a story, etc.) and where it takes place (e.g. in a small

    town in East Malaysia, at a party).

    Pupils can listen to the same listening input many times, each time for a

    different purpose. Make sure that pupils know what they are listening for each

    time.

    When pupils listen to the input for the first time, set them some straightforward

    questions which will help them to get a grasp of the overall text. You can, for

    example, ask questions about the main information content (who the speakers

    are, what they are talking about, etc.)

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    Prepare your pupils for the main listening task by doing plenty of pre-listening

    tasks which will help them succeed in whatever kind of listening task they are

    required to do.

    Ask questions or set tasks that are appropriate for the level of proficiency of the

    student and type of text.

    Listening and writing at the same time is difficult. Use formats that require

    minimum writing, e.g. filling in gaps, completing statements; MCQ, true/false,

    circle the best answer, etc.

    Arrange the questions in the order in which the answers appear on the tape.

    Do not ask questions on information closely packed together on the tape.Otherwise, while the student is recording his answer to one question, the

    answer to the next question would come on the tape and he would risk missing

    the information.

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    Give students a chance to read through the questions before they listen to the

    tape. This will give them a purpose for listening and cue them on what to look

    out for. It also saves them from having to read the questions and listen to the

    tape at the same time.

    Many listening comprehension exercises concentrate almost entirely on

    comprehension of facts. Make sure that at least some of your questions require

    higher order skills (e.g. I think the writer is wrong because; The following facts

    make me think that the story took place in a cold country

    ;) as well as anemotional response (e.g. I like the speaker because)

    Decide on the number of times the students would be able to listen to the

    listening input and inform them of your decision from the very outset. At the

    earliest stages, pupils should be allowed to listen to the tape as many times asthey want but as they progress, they need to move towards listening to the tape

    only once.

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    Help the pupils to gain confidence by encouraging them to ignore the bits they

    do not understand so long as they understand enough to do the task required to

    them.

    If you should used audio input with more than one speaker, make sure that

    distinguishing between one speaker and another is not difficult especially for

    beginners and intermediate students. One way of doing this is to have people

    with very different voices, e.g. male and female voices.

    Check all recorded material before you get the pupils to listen to it. Scanning a

    transcript is not enough. A transcript will not, for example, give you any idea of

    the speed of delivery or accent of the speaker.

    Ensure that the quality of your tape (if you are using a tape) is excellent, exactlythe way you want it. Otherwise students may be dealing with things you dont

    think they should handle at their stage of learning, e.g. background noise in a

    tape for beginners.

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    Choose a period that is suitable for a listening lesson. Do not, for example,

    try teaching listening when a netball game is going on right outside your

    class.

    Do your best find listening input and listening tasks that pupils enjoy doingand make sure that there is a very high likelihood that most, if not all, the

    pupils will be able to do what they have been asked to do successfully. This

    is very important in nurturing a positive attitude to listening.

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    TEACHING-LEARNING STRATEGIES

    Strategies for beginners

    Length of input

    Do not give more than one to three minutes worth of listening materials to

    process at any one time.

    Type of input

    a. Use teacher-made material with the following features: short basic sentences,

    clear pronunciation, small stock of words, no background noise.

    a. Select words/ideas/events that can be visually supported (e.g. actions,

    objects, colours, feelings, number). One very important group of words and

    structures that a pupil at this stage will have to learn to listen to and

    understand are words related to objects in the classroom and the kinds of

    language used in English classes. For example, chalk, chair, stand-up, take out

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    your books, close your bag, etc. Introduce new words and structures only after

    have repeated the old ones many times in different contexts.

    c. Use a great deal of visual support in the form of pictures, gestures, facial

    expressions and dramatization. You can even use a full story in a beginners

    class if you took a story with a very simple story line and repeating structures

    and supported your telling of the story with lots of gestures, facial

    expressions and acting. Stories like Cinderella, Christmas Carroll can be usedfor this purpose.

    d. In addition to global listening exercises, conduct also activities that focus on

    specific aspects of listening, e.g. minimal pair discrimination, distinguishing

    between questions and statements using intonation patterns. Systematicdevelopment of these skills will help the pupil in dealing with the listening

    comprehension tasks he has to do.

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    Speed of delivery

    Do not slow down your speech too much. This does not help the pupils. Instead,

    it prevents them from learning the natural rhythms and phraseology of English.

    Outcome of listening

    Do not expect full comprehension. Get pupils to be satisfied with adequate,

    rather than full understanding. Build in a lot of redundancy so that pupils can get

    the answers without too much difficulty or anxiety. Look, for example, at the

    number of different pieces of information that will help the pupil to get theanswer to the question in the following exercise:

    Example

    Is Amir an adult or a child?

    Amir was six feet tall. His children called him a giant. His wife was only five feet

    tall. She worked in the same office as Amir.

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    Strategies for Intermediate Learners

    Length of input

    They can listen to longer stretches of, say, 5 to 10 minutes each time.

    Type of input

    a. Their listening input can include two-way communication with more than one

    speaker.

    b. The major portion of the input should be educated English either in Americanor British English.

    c. At least some of the input must be authentic or semi-scripted so that they can

    develop strategies for dealing with normal speech.

    d. When you first introduce non-scripted, authentic material, make sure there is a

    lot of redundancy. This is to make sure students can get the correct answer to

    the questions given to them even if the background noise and other features of

    authentic speech distract them.

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    e. With less proficient students, the listening input can be given in two versions:

    authentic and edited. Students could listen to the edited version first. This

    would give them a chance to get a good grasp of what the listening text is

    about. Then, they can listen to the authentic text. The teacher can direct their

    attention to features of performancehesitations, false starts, fillers, etc. insuch a way that they learn to see them as an integral part of learning to cope

    with real spoken communication.

    f. At this level, pupils still need guided practice in specific aspects of the listening

    skill. Introduce the more difficult sub-skills, e.g. distinguishing between marked

    and unmarked stress, shortening the vowels in function words and swallowingof word endings (e.g. the shortening of can in the sentence, I can do that, or

    the near disappearance of the ed in missed in the sentence, I missed the

    train.) The way words fuse into one another in normal speech (e.g. Do you

    mind? would sound like dju mind?) can also be taught at this stage.

    g. At the level of global comprehension, you can see questions that focus ondiscourse level (e.g. at the level of paragraph or argument) and not focus

    entirely on sentence level comprehension. Questions can therefore focus on

    such skills as predicting outcomes and drawing conclusions.

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    STRATEGIES FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS

    1. Use a variety of authentic texts, ensuring that the major genres are present.

    Select the kinds of texts that are useful for the studentspresent and future

    needs.

    2. At all stages, task-oriented listening is recommended but at this stage, a major

    part of the work should be task-based.

    3. Development of micro skills can still proceed. More work should be done in

    areas to have problems, e.g. in recognizing intonation differences.

    4. Students should be given practice in listening to all the major varieties of

    English, e.g. British English, American English, Australian English, etc. Wherestudents are quite good, they should also be given practice in coping with non-

    native varieties of English, e.g. African English, Indian English, Filipino English

    and Singaporean English.

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    PLANNING A LISTENING LESSON

    Stages in a listening lesson

    Pre-listening stage

    During this stage the teacher does one or more of the following things:

    1. tries to rouse the studentsinterest in what he is about to listen.

    2. makes the student actively aware of information/experiences, etc. that would

    be useful in helping him understand what he will hear.

    3. does various things that help students to acquire or revise the language that

    would be necessary for him to understand the listening input.

    4. gives pupils a purpose for listening.

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    Some common types of activities during pre-listening stage

    a. Informal teacher talk and class discussion;

    b. Looking at pictures and talking about them;

    c. Making lists of possibilities/suggestions, etc;

    d. Reading a related text;

    e. Reading through question students need to answer while listening;

    f. Predicting outcomes;

    g. Previewing the language

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    While listening stage

    This is the center of focus of the lesson. The activities in this stage contain the

    teaching points the teacher wishes to deal with in the lesson. This part may

    contain just one activity or it may contain a number of related or steppedactivities.

    Some common types of activities during this stage

    a. Answering multiple-choice questionsb. True/false questions

    c. spotting mistakes

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    Post-listening stage

    At this stage, students may be given tasks that are spin-offs of the main

    activity. For example, pupils may discuss how the information/story theyhave listened to, relates to their own views on the subject (speaking) or

    they may be asked to write a letter to the speaker expressing a personel

    response to what the speaker said (writing), etc.

    Some common types of post-listening activitiesa. Extending lists given in the main activity from students own

    experiences/knowledge, e.g. if students heard a talk on solar energy, they

    could be asked to think of other renewable sources of energy.

    b. Extending notes into full-fledged written assignments or as basis for

    speech.

    c. Using information obtained from listening for problem-solving.