Teaching Listening

Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Taken from http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/exams/listening-exams/listening-exams

Teaching Listening

A Good Summary of Jeremy Harmer’s Book

By Kiersten Ellis

Pre-Service Teacher, School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Friday, May 13, 2016

Post 275

Harmer’s (2007) Chapter 10: Teaching Listening focuses on teaching listening. Specifically covered are the reasons for listening, different kinds of listening, listening levels, listening skills, listening principles, listening sequences and other listening suggestions. Each of these elements are important aspects of this topic for the teacher to carefully consider as she approaches teaching the skill of listening.

Understanding spoken words is different than understanding written communication. Thus the prime reason to learn and perfect the skill of learning is to better understand what is spoken by others either face-to-face, on T.V. or on the radio. Another reason for learning to listen is that the students own pronunciation skills can be apprehended better as listening is fine tuned. As in reading instruction, listening activities can be intensive or within the classroom where the student listens in order to work on the listening skill or study how English is spoken. Extensive or out-of-the-classroom activities occur away from the classroom. Sources of these types of experiences may come through CDs, DVDs, live recordings, films or podcasts. These types of tools allow the student to replay and relearn what is heard. Other sources such as T.V. and radio which can not be stopped are a good way for students to test their skill as they are progressing. The teacher must be aware of different listening levels involving different genres and registers. These would include newscasts, announcements and lectures for example. The teacher should also incorporate authentic speech (that which is not intended for listening learners) and inauthentic speech activities. Lower learners may need to begin with inauthentic activities only to match their current skill level.

The teacher should present the students with a variety of things to listen to and in many different ways. These opportunities would help the student to recognize paralinguistic clues, listen for specific information as well as listen for general information. The teacher should mix lesson requirements so as to help the student multi-task between these objectives. This chapter presented 6 listening principles which are: 1) Encouraging students to listen as often and as much as possible, 2) Help students to prepare to listen, 3) Listening once may not be enough, 4) Encourage students to respond to the content of a listening and not just the language, 5) Different listening stages demand different listening skills, and 6) Good teachers exploit listening texts to the fullest. This chapter gives 3 complete listening sequences or activities geared for different learning levels. Each should lead the student into working on other skills and opportunities to personalize their listening skills. These examples include one for beginners that involves a live interview, another for pre-intermediate learners about buying tickets, and the last is an activity involving a prerecorded authentic interview narrative for upper-intermediate students.

The author gave more suggestions for listening activities including: jigsaw listening, message-taking, music and sound effects, news and other radio genres, poetry, stories, and monologues. Finally, the chapter offered views on the use of video in the language learning setting. Material should be chosen based on the level and interests of the students. Four techniques for profitable use of video were given including: playing the video without the sound, playing the video without the picture, freezing the frame and dividing the class in half with some viewing the video and some not. As the teacher makes good consideration of all of these different views and suggestions, she will be able to more successfully guide her students to a better understanding of the spoken word through listening skills.

Students can benefit in big ways from activities centered on listening. Teachers should consider using such activities or consider carefully how they will invovle listening in their lessons. Listening helps language students to analyze, break-down, and understand better the spoken word in a controlled way. It helps them focus on pronunciation. Also related to pronunciation is the tone in which people speak. Students can pay attention to this and learn from conversations what certain tones and intonations insinuate. In high levels they can even explore different accents. Having material that is recorded, whether on video or only audio, is very useful for stopping and re-playing to repeat and analyze further or even just so that the information or key aspect of the listening sticks better in the students’ memories.

The hard part about teaching through listening is the material. It may be hard to find audio materials that are interesting, age and language level appropriate, and usable for lessons or relatable to the subject or grammar focus. It takes time and research to build up a good audio library and pick and choose what’s best for your class and syllabus. This can deter many teachers from using listening material. Whatever type of audio is found or decided on for use in class, another important decision to make as the teacher is how often will you stop the recording and will you rewind, or how many times will you rewind for the students to hear the same part of the audio. We have to challenge them, but not make it impossible so as to not discourage them as well. As the course goes along I believe that becomes part of the regular gauging and diagnosing of our class. Besides considering level and difficulty, we also must take into account if it’s relevant or interesting for the students. These obstacles or difficulties will hinder the use of listening focused activities or lessons.

No matter how hard it may be to choose and involve audios or listening related activities in our lessons, it is so important to find a way some how. Listening, like reading, helps the language learner take in new and old language, analyze it, let it become part of the new lexicon for later use, as well as be exposed to authentic language. The hope is that teachers would expand their horizons when it comes to listening and not only use the textbook based recorded materials. Teachers should explore radio shows, podcasts, or any other sound based material they can use. Especially, if it’s unique, entertaining, or interesting. Whatever they can find that will motivate the learners and engage them.