The Importance of Using Listening Skill at Sudanese EFL Classroomijsetr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IJSETR-VOL-9-ISSUE-2-20-35.p… · It has taken lot of times to give the listening

International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)

Volume 9, Issue 2, February 2020, ISSN: 2278 -7798

20 All Rights Reserved © 2020 IJSETR

The Importance of Using Listening Skill at Sudanese EFL Classroom

A Case Study of Teacher Basic School, Alkamiln Locality, Gezira State, Sudan(2019) By: Reyad Omer Ali Rahamtallah Under supervision of: Dr Alhaj Ali Adam

Abstract

Listening is an activity that requires paying our attention to the speaker and

subsequetly attempt to understand what we hear. This study aims to develop and upgrade

English teachers to give more attention to listening skills activities so as to train students to

use English for a variety of purposes and take students beyond the text and classroom,

create and suggest suitable environment inside and outside schools where the students can

practice and develop listening skill. The analysis has led to these results: Some classes are

overcrowded so it’s difficult to practice listening skills activities, teachers are not trained

enough to teach and develop students listening skills levels, student are not encouraged to

listen and speak English language inside and outside schools, there are not sufficient

activities in lessons that raise and develop students' listening skills. This study

recommends that : Learners should be given more activities in listening, collaborative

listening activities should be used to encourage learners visual aids, teachers should use

some teaching strategies to encourage their students to develop their listening skills,

teachers shoukd be creative in preparing and organising listening activities, teachers

should use visual aids devices to motive students teachers- students interaction.

Keywords: listening skills in classroom.

1.1 Background

While “to listen” is rooted in terms that connote attention and silent obedience, “to

hear” has more to do with the perception of sound and the faculties of the ear (see Lipari,

2010; and the response by Bodie & Crick, 2014). This distinction often helps separate the

focus of work by audiologists who study the physiological components of hearing from

those, like communication scholars, who study the individual and relational components of

listening. In this latter work, listening is recognized as a multidimensional construct that

consists of complex




(a( affective processes, such as being motivated to attend to others;

(b( behavioral processes, such as responding with verbal and nonverbal feedback; and

(c( cognitive processes, such as attending to, understanding, receiving, and interpreting

content and relational messages (Halone, Cunconan, Coakley, & Wolvin, 1998).

1.2 Objective of the Study

1. Making teachers utilize self-constructed activities to boost the listening skill.

2. Train students to use English for a variety of purposes and take students beyond the

text and classroom.

3. Create and suggest suitable environment inside and outside schools where the students

can practice and develop listening skill.

1.3 Question of the Study

1. Are the English teachers will qualified to be good models to the students in listening

and speak English in correct ways?

2. Why is the curriculum not modified or renewed to include modern vocabulary and the

new technology?

3. What are the ultimate objectives of teachings listening skills in the Sudanese Basic Level

Schools?

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Listening, as we know, is the skill of understanding spoken language. Listening is an

essential skill, present in most of the activities we carry out throughout our lives, as Lindsay

and Knight (2006: 45) shows:

"We listen to a wide variety of things, for example; what someone says during a conversation, face to face or on the telephone; announcements giving information, for example, at an airport or railway station; the weather forecast on the radio; a play on the radio; music; someone else’s conversation (eavesdropping); a lecture; professional advice, for example, at the doctor’s, in the bank; instructions, for example, on how to use a photocopier or other machinery; directions; a taped dialogue in class"

Besides, Listening is a complex process due to its double psychological and social

nature (Bueno et.al, 2006:282).




"Listening is a psychological phenomenon, which takes place on a cognitive level inside people’s heads, and a social phenomenon, which develops interactively between people and the environment surrounding them. It considers listening as a complex process, which needs to be understood in order to teach it, and subsequently, evaluate it before integrating it with phonological aspects and with the skill of speaking".

The aim of teaching listening to help learner of English cope with listening in real life,

but there is a large variety of different types of listening in real life:

(1( Listening to announcements in stations, airports, etc

(2( Listening to the radio,

(3( Participating in a conversation face-to-face,

(4( Watch TV,

(5( Participating in a meeting, seminar or discussion,

(6( Taking part in a lesson,

(7( Participating in a telephone conversation, among others.

2.1 Definition of Listening

Listening is the most frequently used form of language skills, so it plays a significant

role in the daily communications and educational process. To listen means to give

attention to the sounds or make an effort to hear something. A tentatively Hawatt and

Dakin (1974:32) define listening as "the ability to identify and understand what other are

saying, this involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his

oracular and gasping his meaning”.

Listening is the process of absorption of the meanings of words, phrases and

sentences by the brain. Listening always leads to the understanding and clarity of facts and

ideas. But listening takes attention or sticking to the task at hand despite distractions. It

requires focusing and concentration, which means one focuses one's thoughts upon one's

problem. A person who incorporates listening with concentration is actively listening.

listening is considered as a very important skill for teachers, many teachers tend to talk too

much during teaching session, this defeats the purpose of teaching which is to allow

students to learn by discussion. Rather than turning session into a mini-lecture teacher must

actively listen and encourage their students to become active learners.




When people listen effectively, they understand what the person is thinking and feeling

from the other person’s perspective. It is as if people were standing in the other person’s

shoes, seeing through his/her eyes and listening through his/her ears. Lisa (2008:1) defined

listening as; "making efforts to hear something, to pay attention or need, Which is different

from hearing which is physiological process of the ear absorbing the sounds waves and

transferring them along neural path ways to part of the brain".

Listening is like apart of hearing but needs more efforts. She also differentiated

between listening and hearing process. “Hearing is necessary for listening but listening is

much more than processing sounds someone may hear very well but be very poor

listener”. Listening, as it is known, is the skill of understanding spoken language. Listening is

an essential skill, present in most of the activities people carry out throughout their lives, as

Lindsay and Knight (2006:45) shows:

"We listen to a wide variety of things, for example; what someone says during a conversation, face to face or on the telephone; announcements giving information, for example, at an airport or railway station; the weather forecast on the radio; a play on the radio; music; someone else’s conversation (eavesdropping); a lecture; professional advice, for example, at the doctor’s, in the bank; instructions, for example, on how to use a photocopier or other machinery; directions; a taped dialogue in class".

Listening is a psychological phenomenon, which takes place on a cognitive level inside

people’s heads, and a social phenomenon, which develops interactively between people

and the environment that surrounding them. It considers listening as a complex process,

which needs to be understood in order to teach it, and subsequently, evaluate it before

integrating it with phonological aspects and with the skill of speaking. (Bueno et.al,

2006:282).

Listening is more than just intense hearing; listening is, according to Lundsteen, as cited in

Jalongo, (1991:21) "the process by which spoken language is converted to meaning in the

mind".

Helgesen (2003:24 )states that “ listening is an active , purposeful process of making

sense of what we hear”.

To listen effectively, one must be actively involved in the communication process and not

just listening passively and if one wants to identify listening skill generally as it is said that

listening is a two persons process but even that is over simplified, there are listener, speaker




and the message. Brown and Yule (1998:11)“listening ought to be naturally acquired ….

Sadly this apparently natural process doesn’t seem to produce the desired result".

In Sudanese school specially Basic Level listening and speaking are the most neglect

skills both in first and second languages teaching, teachers tend to focus on the rudimentary

elements of listening and speaking briefly and pass over to other aspect of language

teaching.

2.2 The Listening Process

2.2.1 Difficulties of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken lot of times to give the listening skill the importance it deserves in

second and foreign language learning among the teaching profession. Rivers (1966: 196)

claimed, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is

comprehended by another person. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is

therefore a primary importance of the communication aim is to be reached”.

However, Morley (1972:7) notes, “perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a

little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one´s native

language – has marked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a

non-native language”. Contrary to what everybody thinks about foreign language learning,

listening competence is wider than speaking competence. This is the reason why; recently,

the language teaching profession has brought into focus on listening comprehension.

According to Nunan, (2001:23) Listening is a six-staged process, consisting of

Hearing, Attending, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding. These stages

occur in sequence and rapid succession. The first one is Hearing and has to do with the

response caused by sound waves stimulating the sensory receptors of the ear; hearing is the

perception of sound, not necessarily paying attention, you must hear to listen, but you need

not listen to hear. For this, we have Attention. It refers to a selection that our brain focuses

on. The brain screens stimuli and permits only a select few to come into focus. The third

stage is understanding, which consists of analyzing the meaning of what we have heard and

understanding symbols we have seen and heard. We must analyze the stimuli we have

perceived. Symbolic stimuli are not only words, they can be sounds like applause or even

sights, like a blue uniform that have symbolic meanings as well. To do this, we have to stay

in the right context and understand the intended meaning. The meaning attached to these




symbols is a function of our past associations and of the context in which the symbols occur

for successful interpersonal communication: the listener must understand the intended

meaning and the context assumed by the sender. After following with the next stage, it is

necessary to make a remark: as it has mentioned previously, the background knowledge is

important, and people have to take into account several points: general factual information,

local factual information, socio-cultural knowledge and knowledge of context. With these

factors, the information will be correctly received.

The next step, remembering, is an important listening process because it means that

a person, in addition to receiving and interpreting the message, has also added it to the

mind’s storage bank, which means that the information will be remembered in his/her

mind. But just as his/her attention is selective, so too is his/her memory, what is

remembered may be quite different from what was originally heard or seen. In the

penultimate stage, valuating, the listener evaluates the message that has been received. It is

at this point when active listeners weigh evidence, sort fact from opinion and determine the

presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message. The effective listener makes sure

that he or she does not begin this activity too soon, as beginning this stage of the process

before a message is completed results in no longer hearing and attending to the incoming

message and, as a result, the Listening process ceases. Finally, we have responding, a stage

in which, according to the response, the speaker checks if the message has been received

correctly. This stage requires that the receiver complete the process through verbal or

nonverbal feedback, because the speaker has no other way to determine if a message has

been received. Therefore, it is sometimes complicated as we do not have the opportunity to

go back and check comprehension (Nunan: 2001:23).

2.2.2Listening Instruction

The ability of listening of the students can be improved through direct instruction. To

improve the teaching of listening it has been suggested that any child can be trained in

three ways:

(1( to concentrate on body language and gestures to enhance attention;

(2( to practice techniques to overcome negative attitudes toward listening; and

(3( to learn to identify important aspects of the speaker's material (Edwards, 1991,

Shepherd et.al, 1988). Listening instruction can enhance comprehension of content.




In addition, teachers can use a set strategy of instructions to increase and develop students'

listening skills. For example, teachers need to teach children to listen to one another inside

or outside classrooms. Also providing a goal for listening is important. Teachers need to

model good listening on a regular basis daily. Teachers also need to design learning

experiences that promote active listening, as well as integrating listening activities into all

subjects.




2.2.3 Process of Listening

During listening to somebody or something, people use different strategies so as to

understand the message and that is why it is so important for teachers to help their

students to learn how to listen. There are two main views of listening:

1- Bottom up listening skills

2- Top down listening skills.

2.2.3.1Bottom up Listening Skills

This type of process of listening is linear as the meaning is gained at the end of the

process. Hedge (2000: 230) points out that we use our knowledge of the language and our

ability to process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to us. In

other words, we create the message from the individual parts e.g. from sounds to words to

grammatical units to lexical meaning. And at the same time with this procedure we use any

clues that can help us with the meaning. Hedge claims that there are several clues such as

the stress implied on certain meaningful units, relationship between stressed and

unstressed syllables; people also use their lexical and syntactic knowledge to get the

meaning of the words. Helgesen (2003:26)“With bottom-up process, students start with the

component parts ‘words, grammar and like this”.

2.2.3.2 Top down Listening Skills

Top down skill or processing refers to how we use our word knowledge to make

meaning to language input, how our knowledge of social, custom, rules of behavior help us

understand meaning. These are the skills that teachers should teach in listening skills their

classrooms, but often are not. To give a quite understanding of the role of the bottom up

and top down process in teaching listening is central to any theory of listening

comprehension. In most classrooms the common way to teach listening is to have students

listen to some language tape or CDs or other sources, after that the teachers ask some

comprehension questions. Did the students understand? No? Well I play the source again,

ask the question again. Did they understand? No, well …… tell them to practice more and

more for practice makes perfect and one day they will get used to English and will be able to

understand.

The teacher might select a particular grammar point. This passage for example uses

the report speech so the teacher might go over some of the changes that are done when




change from direct to indirect speech and may write some examples on the board. this is

the approach taken by most teachers and it is insufficient. This might be very well a good

grammar lesson, but it is not listening. Students need to be told how English works and how

to use their knowledge to improve their skills. Yes, practice makes perfects; but instruction

can make this process happen much more efficiently. The teachers need to teach their

students. in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Richard Shamider has put forward a theory

called the “Noticing Hypotheses” which states that the learners have to notice language

input teachers need to teach.

Schmidt and Mcarthy (1997:11)there is support in the literature for the hypotheses

that attention is needed for all learning learners need to pay to input and pay particular

attention to whatever aspect of input ( phonology, morphology pragmatics discourses)that

you are concerned to learn. An ideal listening class should provide both practice and

instruction, students need practice in listening for meaning and also some instruction about

how to do so effectively. Lightbawn and Spada (1980:126-172) claimed that

"classroom data from a number of studies offer support for the view that forms focused instruction and correct we feedback provided within the context of communicative programs more effective in promoting second language learning than programs which are limited to a being in fact exclusive emphasison either accuracy of fluency”

Long (1989: 32-40) says that

"top down processing is the opposite to bottom-up where learners start from their background knowledge, either content schema” general information based on previous learning and life experience” or textual schema “awareness of the kinds of information used in given situation".

The integration of bottom-up and top down processes can take place in listening

lessons. Before listening, learners can brainstorm on vocabulary related to a topic or invent

a short dialogue relevant to language functions. In the process, they base their information

on their knowledge of life “top down information” as they generate vocabulary and

sentences “bottom-up data”. The result is a more integrated attempt at processing.

Petterson (2001:113) calls the use of top-down and bottom-up “the interactive processing”.

To help learners cope with the demand of this processing poses, Sheerin (1987:126) points

out that "when teachers have long been aware of the importance of providing “adequate

support and the provision of appropriate tasks”.




3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Population of the Study

The populations of this study are English language teachers at basic schools in Gezira

State.

3.2 The Sample

The sample is randomly selected from the teachers at basic schools. chosen from

the subject they are about 50 teachers.

3.2 Instruments of Data Collection

The researcher used one tool to collect the data for this study. These tool is, a

questionnaire for teachers.

3.3 Procedures

The questionnaire is designed and used as a tool to collect data for investigating the

topic the effects of neglecting listening skills for beginners, at basic schools this questionnaire

is distributed to the EFL teachers at Gezira State.

4. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Data Analysis and Discussion

There are not sufficient lessons that raise and develop student listening skills.

Table(4.1)

Frequency Percent

Agree 35 70.0

Neutral 8 16.0

Disagree 7 14.0

Total 50 100.0




Figure(4.1)

The statement which mentioned that there are not sufficient lessons that raise and

develop student listening skills. The respondents who agree with are (70%), and those who

neutral are (8) teachers with (16%) and (14%) are disagree. This statement is supported.




Student are not encouraged to listen and speak English language inside and outside schools.

Table(4.2)

Frequency Percent

Agree 42 84.0

Neutral 4 8.0

Disagree 4 8.0

Total 50 100.0

Figure(4.2)

Table and figure (4.2) show that, Student are not encouraged to listen and speak English

language inside and outside schools. According to the statistical analysis of the statement,

the majority of the respondents agree that, student are not encouraged to listen and speak

English language inside and outside schools with a total number of(42) which represents

(84%).This statement is supported.




Teachers are not trained enough to teach and develop students listening skills levels.

Table(4.3)

Frequency Percent

Agree 40 80.0

Neutral 7 14.0

Disagree 3 6.0

Total 50 100.0

Figure (4.3)

Table and figure (4.3) explain that, the majority of the respondents agree that teachers are

not trained enough to teach and develop students listening levels. Their percentage is (80%)

while only (14%) neutral, (6%) disagree. Therefore, the hypothesis is accepted.

5. CONCLUSION, FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Students opportunities to use their listening skill in real life situations, give them the

sense of self confidence and use English language in all situations with no fear either inside

classrooms or outside and become fluent in it gradually. It is required and desired from the

English teachers in basic schools level to use English all the time with their pupils and be

good examples for them, must support them and encourage them to use English as possible




as they can inside schools or outside. English teachers need to be in constant contact with

new techniques and materials that are available in the internet, nowadays

Teaching listening skill is connected with each other they depend on the

methodology that is followed by each teacher but what it is really important is to develop

these skills during the English lessons to encourage pupils learn the second language

entirely. Due to this, some suggestions have been offered, which can be put into practice

during the lesson in order to motivate students to participate in class and to do interaction

activities to develop listening skill in pairs and group work. These activities allow students to

feel more comfortable and sure when they have to hold a conversation in English and they

make the skills more effective in order to get a perfect learning and acquisition of the

second language, covering the others the English language skills beside listening.

5.2 Findings

1. Some classes are overcrowded so it’s difficult to practice listening and speaking skills.

2. Teachers are not trained enough to teach and develop students listening skills levels.

3. Student are not encouraged to listen and speak English language inside and outside

schools.

4. There are not sufficient lessons that raise and develop student listening skills.

5.3 Recommendation

1. Learners should be given home work listening.

2. Collaborative listening activities should be used to encourage learners visual aids.

3. Teachers should use some teaching strategies to encourage their students to be

creative and organized listening.

4. Teachers should use visual aids devices to motive students teachers- students

interaction.




REFERENCES

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Bueno, A, D. Madrid and N. McLaren, (eds). (2006) TEFL in Secondary Education. Granada:

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doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01366.x

Halone, K., Cunconan, T. M., Coakley, C. G., & Wolvin, A. D. (1998). Toward the

establishment of general dimensions underlying the listening process.

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The Importance of Using Listening Skill at Sudanese EFL Classroomijsetr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IJSETR-VOL-9-ISSUE-2-20-35.p… · It has taken lot of times to give the listening