Listening effectively improves personal relationships through the reduction of conflict and

strengthens cooperation through a collective understanding while speaking is vocalization of

human communication.

•It is a communication technique that requires the listeners to understand, interpret and
evaluate what they hear.

Macro-skills involve using everything we know about the world, about who says what to whom,
and why, and what might happen next.

• It is about perceiving “the big picture,” synthesizing discrete elements to decipher the
larger message, and it enables us to go beyond a mere understanding of the words
formed by speakers.

Listening As a Macro Skill

• Listening is an active mental skill, a thinking skill.

•  Listening is a key to all effective communication.

• Listening means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages.

Listening Taxonomies

1. Recognizes cohesive devices in speech

2. Recognize the communicative functions of utterances

3. Recognize where a proposition begins and ends, signaling a topic shift

4. Use real-world knowledge to infer ideas and purposes of speech.

5. Infer links between events, for example, cause and effect, generalization and example.

6. Distinguish between main ideas and subsidiary ideas.

7. Identify where word boundaries occur.

8. Recognize typical word order patterns in English.

9. Deduce the meaning of unknown words.

10. Use paralinguistic features, for example, pitch, volume, fillers like um and er to aid
comprehension.

11. Guess the meaning of unknown words based on contextual clues.

 12. Process speech which occurs at different rates.

13. Recognize nonstandard accents and make adjustments in order to comprehend.

14. Make a “mental model” of the discourse structure being used by a speaker.

Listening and Language Learning

•An appropriate aural comprehension program that targets learner listening at all levels of
instruction is an essential for second language competence.

•Aural comprehension establishes a base for the development of oral language within the
“speech chain” of listening and speaking (Denes and Pinson 1963, p. 1).

•In particular, listening comprehension lessons are a vehicle for teaching elements of
grammatical structure and allow new vocabulary items to be contextualized within a body of
communicative discourse.

Practices to Improve Listening Comprehension Skills:

•Listening Consistency

•Listen with the Text

•Write what you hear

•Listening repetition

•Speak with native speakers

It is the medium through which people gain a large proportion of their education, their
information, their understanding of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of
values, (Guo & Wills 2006).

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.

Importance of listening in language learning

Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner.

Authentic spoken language presents a challenge for the learner to understand language
as native speakers actually use it.
 Listening exercises provide teachers with a means for drawing learners’ attention to
new forms (vocabulary, grammar, new interaction patterns) in the language.

Four Models of Listening and Language Instruction

Model #1 Listening and Repeating

Learner Goal To pattern-match: to listen and imitate to memorize

 Instructional Material- Features audiolingual style exercises and or dialogue

memorization: based on a hearing-and-pattern-matching model.

Procedure- Asks students to (a) listen to a word, phrase or sentence pattern; (b) repeat
it, imitate it and (c) memorize it often, but not always a part of the procedure.

 Value- Enables students to do pattern drills. To repeat dialogues, and to use memorized
prefabricated patterns in conversation enables them to imitate pronunciation patterns
Higher level cognitive processing and use of prepositional language structuring are not
necessarily an intentional focus.

Model #2 Listening and Answering Comprehension Questions

 Instructional material: Features a student response pattern based on listening-and-

question-answering model with occasional innovative variations on this theme.

 Procedure: ask students to (a) listen to an oral text along a continuum from sentence
length to lecture length and (b) answer primarily factual questions. Utilizes familiar
types of questions adapted from traditional reading comprehension exercises, has been
called a quiz-show format of teaching.

 Value: Enables students to manipulate discrete pieces of information, hopefully with

increasing speed and accuracy of recall. Can increase student’s stock of vocabulary units
and grammar constructions. Does not require students to make use of the information
for any real communicative purpose beyond answering the questions; is not interactive
two-way communication.

Model #3: Task Listening

  Instructional material. Features activities that require a student response pattern based
on a listening-and-using (i.e. Listen-and-Do) model.

 Procedure. Ask students to (a) listen and process information and (b) use the orally
transmitted language input immediately to complete a task which is mediated through
language in a context in which success is judged in terms of whether the task is
performed.

Value. The focus is on instruction that is task oriented, not question oriented. Two types
of tasks are (a) language use tasks and (b) language analysis tasks.

Model #4 Interactive Listening

 Instructional material: Provides a variety of student presentation and discussion

activities, as well as individual and small-group panel reports, with audience
participation in question/answer sessions as an integral part of the work.

 Procedure: Asks students to participate in discussion activities that enable them to

develop all three phases of the speech act: speech decoding, critical thinking, and
speech encoding.

 Value: The focus here is instruction that is communicative/competence-oriented as well

as task oriented.

Listening in Three Modes

BIDIRECTIONAL LISTENING MODE:

The obvious mode is a two-way or bidirectional communicative listening. Two or more

participants take turns exchanging speaker role and listener as they engage in face-to-face or
telephone verbal interaction.

UNIDIRECTIONAL LISTENING MODE:

A second mode is one-way or unidirectional communicative listening. The input comes from a
variety of sources: overheard conversations, public address announcements, recorded
messages, the media, instructional situations of all kinds and public performances.

AUTODIRECTIONAL LISTENING MODE:

The third listening mode is auto-directional. We may think of this as a self-dialogue
communication in which we may not be aware of our internal roles as both speaker and a
listener/reactor.

Psychological Processes: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Schemata

Bottom-up

 The bottom-up mode language processing involves the listener playing close attention
to every detail of the language input.

 Bottom-up refers to that part of aural comprehension process in which the

understanding of the “heard” language is worked out proceeding from sounds to words
to grammatical relationships to lexical meaning. That is, the meaning of the message is
arrived at, bottom to top, based on the incoming language data.

Top-Down Processing

 Involves the listener’s ability to bring prior information on the task of understanding the
“heard” language.

 This internal resource includes a bank of prior knowledge and global expectations about
language and the world.

 Implications for the Instruction

Teachers need to provide students with practice in both kinds of language processing.

Developing Listening Comprehension Activities and Materials

1. Information Processing

- Listening comprehension is an act of information processing in which the listener is involved in

bidirectional communication, or unidirectional communication, and/or auto-directional
communication.

2. Linguistic functions

-Broadly speaking, real-world spoken communication can be viewed as serving two linguistic
functions: interactional and transactional.
3. Dimensions of Cognitive Processing.

- The cognitive processing of spoken language appears to involve simultaneous activation of

both top-down and bottom-up engagement in order for listeners to construct what they
believe to be the intended meaning of the spoken language.

Types of Speaking

 Imitative speaking is the ability to imitate (parrot back) a word or a

phrase or possibly a sentence.

At the imitative level, it is probably already clear what the student is trying to
do. At this level, the student is simply trying to repeat what was said to them in
a way that is understandable and with some adherence to pronunciation as
defined by the teacher.

What needs to be highlighted in imitative speaking is that the communicative

competence of the language is not essential.

Why? It is because in imitative speaking, it doesn’t matter if the student

comprehends what they are saying or carrying on a conversation. The goal is
only to reproduce what was said to them. Again, one common example of this is
“repeat after me” experience in the classroom.

• Intensive speaking-  Intensive speaking requires students to produce short

stretches of oral language demonstrating grammatical, phrasal, lexical, or
phonological (intonation, stress, rhythm, juncture) relationships. (Brown
2004).

Unlike imitative, intensive speaking does not emphasize on pronunciation or

phonological aspect. Understanding meaning is needed to respond certain tasks
but the interaction with the counterpart is minimal.

A good way to assess a student's ability to produce

short stretches of discourse (no more than a sentence)
is to ask questions with antonym-based responses
like in or out, allowing the student to respond within
the limits of the question.  Example 1: Antonym-
Prompted Response

     Another example of an intensive speaking activity

would be a task in which the student must rearrange
word groups in order to correct the grammatical and
lexical order of the phrase.  Example 2: Phrasal
Segment Organization

Responsive speaking- Responsive

speaking requires students to respond to
a spoken prompt (for authenticity), and briefly converse with the
prompter at the limited level using standard greetings and small talk,
simple requests and comments, etc. (Brown 2004).

To response a short conversation, making a simple request comment is a kind of

activity that belongs to this type of speaking. At this level, the dialog includes a
simple question with a follow-up question or two. Conversations take place by
this point but are simple in content.

Questions eliciting open-ended responses are concrete

examples of responsive speaking assessments. 

Example 1: Open-Ended Oral Response

-What do you like about the English language?

- Why did you choose your academic major?

-  If you could interview the president of our country, what would you ask that
person?

Example 2: Paraphrasing a Story

Paraphrasing a story is not the most authentic

responsive speaking activity, but it aids students'
reading abilities while testing their ability to
respond to a spoken prompt in their own words. 
  Interactive Speaking-Interactive speaking is lengthier and more
complex than responsive speaking, requiring students to converse
using multiple exchanges and/or participants (Brown 2004).

Interactive speaking requires the students to combine their listening/reading

comprehension with their ability to respond appropriately. 

For example, Partner Conversations: Students practice spontaneous

conversations with a partner on a specific topic. The focus is on responding
appropriately to what was said. An example variation may include group
storytelling one sentence at a time, being sure to emphasize connections to
what was previously said.

Another example is a debate, where students are given an issue and a position
on the topic. They practice supporting their position and responding to the
opposite point of view. Rebuttals at higher levels can enhance this learning
experience.

Role playing is a common example of an interactive speaking assessment.  It is

an authentic language activity that can assess multiple students
simultaneously.  Example 1: Role Play

    Interviewing is another example of an interactive speaking assessment

tool.  The administrator must do careful planning to create a consistent,
workable scoring system for reliability.  Example 2: Interview 

 The unique feature of interactive speaking is that it is usually more

interpersonal than transactional.

By interpersonal it is meant speaking for maintaining relationships.

Interpersonal conversation is the conversation that primarily involves
the extension of personal and social relations. Online chats are an
example of interpersonal communication even though they are not in-
person. Similarly a virtual meeting like this is an example of
interpersonal communication among a group of people.
On the other hand, Transactional speaking is for sharing information as is common at the
responsive level.  It focuses on getting something done, rather than maintaining social
interaction. (In communicative language teaching, transactions are generally referred to
as functions, and include such areas as requests, orders, offers, suggestions, etc.) A transaction
may consist of a sequence of different functions. Two different kinds of transactions are often
distinguished. One type refers to transactions that occur in situations where the focus is on
giving and receiving information, and where the participants focus primarily on what is said or
achieved (e.g. asking your teacher for instructions about a given activity). The second type
refers to transactions that involve obtaining goods or services, such as checking into a hotel or
ordering food in a restaurant. Talk in these situations is often information- focused, is
associated with specific activities and often occurs in specific situations.

For example, when we order food in a restaurant, we usually look at the menu, ask any
necessary questions and then tell the waiter what we want. The waiter may ask additional
questions and then repeat our order to check. Then, when we check into a hotel, the
transaction usually starts with a greeting, the clerk enquires if we have a reservation, then we
will confirm if we have a reservation or not and provide our name and so on.

In using language in this way, the goal is to carry out a task. Communicating information is the
central focus, and making oneself understood, unlike small talk or conversation, where social
interaction is often as important as what the participants actually say. In addition, the language
used in carrying out transactions is often predictable, contains many fixed expressions and
routines.