Anecdote

Three people were on a train in England. As they approached

what appeared to be Wemberly Station,

One of the travelers said: Is this Wemberly?

Second passenger : No, its Thursday
Third person remarked : Oh I am too; let’s have a drink!
Why Teach Listening?
1. Let students listen to different varieties and accents in
spoken English rather than just the voice of the teacher.
2. Helps students acquire language subconsciously even if
teachers do not draw attention to its special features.
3. Exposure to language is a fundamental requirement for
anyone wanting to learn it.
4. Students get vital information about grammar and
vocabulary, pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch, and
stress.
 Exposure to Spoken English
Main method of exposing students to spoken English :
ready made taped material
teacher made taped material

Advertisements
News broadcasts
Poetry reading
Plays
Songs
Speeches, etc.
 Level of Difficulty & Kinds of Tasks
Beginners :
authentic listening material:
political speech><realistic though not authentic tape of a
telephone conversation
Result?
Students do not understand a word><Students may
learn more about the language – and start to gain
confidence as a result.
 Listening Engagement
Listening demands listener’s engagement

Long tapes on subjects students are not interested :

demotivating

Students will ‘switch off’ and it will be difficult for

them to tune back into the tape, comprehension is
lost and the listening becomes valueless.
 What’s Special About Listening?

Students have to be encouraged to listen for general

understanding first rather than trying to pick out the details
immediately.

They must get into the habit of letting the whole tape ‘wash
over them’ on first hearing before returning to listen for
specific detail.
 What’s Special about Listening?
Spoken language especially when it is informal has a number of
unique features including the use of:

♥ incomplete utterances: Dinner?,

♥ repetitions: I’m absolutely sure, absolutely sure you know it,
♥ hesitations: Yes, well, ummm, yes, but, er,
♥ reduced forms: phonological: Djeetyet?,
♥ morphological: I’ll

Rate of delivery, stress rhythm, intonation

 Types of Classroom Listening Performance:
What your students do in a listening technique

Reactive:
Example: brief choral or individual drills that focus on
pronunciation.
Students listen to the surface structure of an utterance for
the sole purpose of repeating it back.
It requires little meaningful process.
The role of the listener as merely a tape recorder and not
generating meaning.
 Types of Classroom Listening Performance:
What your students do in a listening technique
Intensive:
focus on phonemes, words, intonation, etc.

Responsive:
classroom listening activity consists of short stretches of
teacher language designed to elicit immediate responses

Asking questions: How are you today?

Giving commands: Stand Up.
Seeking clarification: what was that word you said?
Checking comprehension: How many people were listening to the talk?
 Types of Classroom Listening Performance:
What your students do in a listening technique
Selective:
In longer stretches of discourse such as monologues of a couple of
minutes or longer students do not process everything that was said but
rather scan the material selectively for certain information.
Speeches
Media broadcasts
Stories and anecdotes

Techniques promoting selective listening skills: listen for: people’s

names,dates, certain facts or events, location, main ideas or
conclusion
 Types of Classroom Listening Performance:
What your students do in a listening technique
Extensive
Listening to lengthy lectures and deriving a comprehensive message.
Requires students to invoke other interactive skills: note-taking,
discussion, etc. for full comprehension.

Interactive
Includes all of the above types as students actively participate in
discussions, debates, conversations, role-plays, and other pair and
group work.

Listening performance must be intricately integrated with speaking and

perhaps other skills in the authentic give and take of communicative
interchange.
 Principles in Designing Listening
Techniques

Don’t overlook the importance of techniques that specifically

develop listening comprehension competence.

Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating: appeal to students’

personal interest and goals.

Utilize authentic language and contexts: authentic language and real

world tasks enable students to see the relevance of classroom activity
to their long term communicative goals.
The Form of Listeners’ Responses
It is important to indicate whether or not their
comprehension has been correct.

Doing – the listener responds physically to a command

Choosing: the listener selects from alternatives such as pictures,
objects, and texts
Transferring: the listener draws of what is heard
Duplicating: the listener translates the message into the native
language or repeats it
Extending: The listener provides an ending to a story
Condensing: the listener outlines or take notes on a lecture
 The Form of Listeners’ Responses

Answering: the listener answers questions about

the message

Modelling_: the listener orders a meal for example

after listening to a model order

Conversing: the listener engages in a conversation

that indicates appropriate processing of information.
 Listening Strategies
Encourage the development of listening strategies:

Looking for key words

Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
Predicting a speaker’s purpose by the context
Guessing at meanings
Seeking clarification
Listening to the general gist
The Roles of a Teacher
Organiser:

 tell students their listening purpose

 give them clear instructions how to achieve it
 build their confidence through offering tasks that
are achievable and texts that are comprehensible.
The Roles of a Teacher
Machine operator:
 When we use the tape we need to be as efficient
as possible in the way we use the tape player.
 Try the material out before taking it into class so
that we do not waste time making things work when
we get there.
Respond to students’ needs in the way we stop and
start the machine.
The Roles of a Teacher
Feedback organizer:
when students have completed the task, we
should lead a feedback session to check that they
have completed their tasks successfully

Prompter
when students have listened to a tape for
comprehension purposes we can have them listen
to it again for them to notice a variety of language
and spoken features.
The Principles Behind the Teaching of Listening

The tape recorder is just as important as the tape.

A vital feature a tape recorder should have is a tape counter.

Preparation is vital: Listen to the tape all the way through before
taking it into class. You will be prepared for any problem, noises,
accents, etc. that come up.

You can judge whether students will be able to cope with the tape and
the tasks that go with it.
The Principles Behind the Teaching of
Listening

Students need to be made ready to listen: look at pictures, discuss

the topic or read the questions first. If students are engaged with the
topic and the task they will really want to listen.

Once will not be enough.

The first listening is used to give the students an idea of what the
listening material sounds like so that the subsequent listenings are
easier for students.
The Principles Behind the Teaching of
Listening

Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a

listening not just to the language.

The most important part of listening practice is to draw out the

meaning, what is intended, what impression it makes on the students.

Questions like “Do you agree? Are just as important as ‘What

language did she use to invite him’.
The Principles Behind the Teaching of
Listening

Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.

First listening: tasks need to be straightforward and general.

Later listenings : focus on details – of information, language

use, pronunciation, etc.
The Principles Behind the Teaching of
Listening

Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.

Spend time choosing and preparing the listening

Listening Suggestions
Jigsaw listening (intermediate/advanced)

Listen to a phone message and record it on a message pad.

(elementary)

Students hear sound effects and then construct a story of what actually
happened.(elementary)

Students listen to a news broadcast and compare it with a newspaper

report. What are the differences? (upper intermediate/advanced)

Students listen to story. They have to put some pictures in the correct
order to match the story. (elementary/intermediate)