2010

Writing
3
Ayulinda Putri S.D.
The Final
2215081423
08 DIK B REG Assignment

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Two Forgotten Parts of Teaching Listening Comprehension: Pre-
listening and Post-listening

In communication, listening is one of the most important parts which cannot be

separated in order to interact each other. Listening is not only listen to something, but also
understand what is being listened and respond it. In fact, listening is considered as the easiest
skill, but it is not as easy as we think.

In the educational world, especially in Indonesia, there are many teachers who still
using the conventional way of teaching listening; listen to the tape - do the exercise - check
the answers. Applying this way for teaching listening is just like ask students to do the test
that focuses on the participant’s memory, not the process of listening. It also makes students
cannot obtain what is being comprehend. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary (2005:311), “Comprehension is an exercise that trains students to understand a
language”. It is clear that listening comprehension is not testing the students, but training
them to understand the language through pre-listening, whilst-listening and post-listening.

Harmer (2002) examined that recalling the schemata stimulate expectations which
guide the students to predict what will happen in the monologue/dialogue. Such predictions
give the greater chance of success than if the students did not have such pre-existing step to
represent ahead.

Clarify and strengthen what students have heard is also very important. They can
clarify and strengthen the content through post-listening stage. Hook and Evans (1982) state
that the post-listening is a very useful stage. It gives students a chance to engage activities
with the content and develop it acquired during an oral presentation.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of pre-listening and post-
listening parts and also explicate what listening comprehension is, so that teachers can imply
the two forgotten parts (pre-listening and post-listening) and teach listening comprehension
properly.

English teachers in Indonesia may not realize that the way they teach is inappropriate.
So, it is my responsible as an English teacher being to guide me myself to the right track and
open others mind, because what is taught by a teacher can shape students’ mind forever.
 To give better understanding of the article, the writer wants to provide the definition
of listening. Rost (2002, 2) states there are four viewpoint of listening: receptive,
constructive, collaborative and transformative.

“Listening is receiving what the speaker says (receptive), constructing and

representing meanings (constructive), negotiating meaning with the speaker and
respond it (collaborative) and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and
empathy (transformative).” (Rost, 2002, 2)

There are three parts of teaching listening comprehension: pre-listening, whilst-

listening and post-listening. Pre-listening is a part which build up the schemata to give the
expectation and purposes that is relevant to what students will learn. According to Medley
(1977) as cited by Sui and Wang, pre-listening activities can be subdivided into “readiness
activities” and “guidance activities”. “Readiness activities” is recognizing the new words of
the text, sometimes looking at the picture given before the task, and also by asking
challenging questions or introducing background knowledge. “Guidance activities” is for
particular aspects of language input by letting students know what tasks they are going to do
with the text, or letting them think about what they have to do next.
The second part is whilst-listening. It is a stage that develop the skill of receiving
messages from the spoken language and recognize how the language sounds (pronunciation,
stress, rhythm and intonation of words) for use in their own speech. Marking/checking items
in pictures, putting pictures in order, text completion (gap filling), multiple-choice questions,
etc are the examples of whilst-listening activity.
Post-listening is the third part. It includes all works related to a particular listening
text and done after listening is completed. It is usually can be done through interpreting,
think-pair-share, role play, written work, problem-solving and decision-making.
Besides those three parts, there are a lot of things that should be paid attention in
teaching listening comprehension. Rees (2002) noted that in the first language, students do
not have problem in understanding listening, but in the second language they can not
understand it well.
“Listening is one of the hardest skills to develop, related at speed with unfamiliar
words, sounds and structure. It becomes harder if students do not know the topic
under discussion or who is speaking to whom.” (Rees, 2002)
This situation appears if the teacher does not give pre-listening part. Students can not

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engage and build up the schemata related to the topic. As the result, they can not obtain the
listening section successfully.
Actually, teacher has a lot of challenge in teaching listening comprehension because
listening has not specific rules like grammar; even, speaking and writing have rules. Beare
(2002) showed that this kind of situation makes students think that they are not able to do the
listening tasks, it is called as ‘mental block’. It occurs while they are listening (whilst-
listening), they suddenly decide which part they understand and not understand. Students
often translate what they hear; some of them try to convince themselves that they are not able
to do the tasks and create problem for themselves. What the teacher has to do is convince
them that not understanding is alright. Teacher has to build their students’ confident so that
they can receive the content easily. Beside that, Reese (2002) stated that “students need to
listen English as often as possible, but in short period of time (5-10 minutes) for 4-5 times a
week.”
At the end of everything, the writer hopes this article can open the reader’s mind,
especially English teachers in Indonesia who do not imply pre-listening and post-listening
parts yet. Teaching listening comprehension has a lot of theories, but there is no use to bear in
mind those theories without taking an action. Teachers should do a lot of practices and try to
fulfill students’ need of listening comprehension. Because the world is always changing,
moreover in the educational world, students need teachers who can compete with others, go
with the flow and guide them to the right track. A change is the lifeblood of a teacher. It is the
same as David Crystal’s quote, “we know something is alive when we see it move”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beare,Kenneth. 2002. “The Challenge of Teaching Listening Skills.” Esl About. 14 May 2010
<Esl.about.com/cs/teachinglistening/a/a_tlistening.htm>
“Comprehension” Def. 1 Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford ed. 2005.
Harmer,Jeremy.2002. The Practice of English Language Teaching Third Edition Completely
Revised and Updated. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Reese,Garreth. “Pre-listening activities”. 21 Nov 2002. 14 May 2010 <
www.teachingenglish.org.uk>

Rost,Michael.2002. Teaching and Researching Listening. London: Pearson Education

Limited.

Sui,Hui and Yuehua Wang. 2005 “On Pre-listening Activities.” Sino-Us English Teaching.
14 May 2010 <www.linguist.org.cn/doc/su200505/su20050502.pdf>

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