Teaching listening

1. Factors affecting listening

 Speed of incoming language
 Interference: other sounds, own language
 Spoken language takes place in real time; the listener cannot backtrack / seek
clarification as easily as the reader
 English is spoken as a continuous stream of sounds - often difficult to define word
boundaries
 Tension: for some learners, intensive listening causes stress which prevents
effective listening
 Listening is all too often presented as a testing technique rather than a teaching
technique
 Motivation: students do not always want to listen and see no reason to do so
 Learners may have developed 'poor listening habits':
listening to every word
day dreaming
paying equal attention to main and supporting ideas
missing important 'key words' which are essential to meaning
making premature judgements
2. Focused listening
The way in which we listen is (or should be) determined by the reason for listening. There are
basically two ways in which we often listen:
 casual listening
 focused listening
In normal situations, we know what we are going to listen to and why before we listen. In the
classroom, we should also prepare our students in advance by telling them what to expect and
what to listen for.
Only part of an incoming message is necessary to effective listening. The rest is redundant
and is filtered out. As effective listeners, we must be able to make decisions about what is
significant to the message. To understand a message, the listener must be able to interpret it:
what is said is not always the same as what is meant.
3. Teacher strategies: helping learners become good listeners
 Understand the whole first rather than all its parts - global listening
 Listening should be active not passive
 Provide activities which teach students to recognise, select, retain
 Listening should be integrated; there should be no such thing as "the listening
lesson"
 Variety of task-type is essential - listening should involve far more than answering
questions (C.f. reading)
 Build confidence: give listening practice regularly and in small amounts
 Give a listening purpose - it helps to increase motivation
 Get students to predict as much as possible - it is an essential skill
 Get students to identify redundant information
 "Chunk" language where necessary
 Exploit contextual clues - pictures, diagrams, titles, etc