Intensive And Extensive Listening Activities At The Intermediate Level For Efl Learners
UNIVERSITATEA „ȘTEFAN CEL MARE” SUCEAVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE ȘI ȘTIINȚE ALE COMUNICĂRII
LUCRARE METODICO-ȘTIINȚIFICĂ PENTRU OBȚINEREA GRADULUI DIDACTIC I
Coordonator științific, Candidată,
Lector univ. dr. Daniela Hăisan prof. Otilia Corniciuc
ȘCOALA GIMNAZIALĂ BERCHIȘEȘTI
-2017-
UNIVERSITATEA „ȘTEFAN CEL MARE” SUCEAVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE ȘI ȘTIINȚE ALE COMUNICĂRII
Intensive and Extensive Listening Activities at the Intermediate Level for EFL Learners
ȘCOALA GIMNAZIALĂ BERCHIȘEȘTI
-2017
CONTENTS
Argument
Introduction
Chapter 1: Listening as a Language Skill
1.1 Teaching Language Skills
1.2 Teaching Listening
1.3 Difficulties in Teaching Listening
1.4 Listening Sources
1.5 Types of Classroom Listening Performance
Chapter 2: Extensive Listening
2.1 What is Extensive Listening?
2.2 The Language Learning Benefits of Extensive Listening
2.3 Preparing Learners for extensive Listening
2.4 Selecting and Using Materials for Extensive Listening
2.5 Extensive Listening Activities
2.5.1 Authentic Interviews
2.5.2 Mini-plays
2.5.3 Songs
Chapter 3: Intensive Listening
3.1 What is Intensive Listening?
3.2 Pre-listening Stage
3.3 While-Listening Stage
3.4 Post-Listening Stage
3.5 Intensive Listening Activities
Chapter 4: Listening Lesson Plans
Conclusion
Bibliography
Argument
A person who wants to answer affirmatively to the question if s/he knows a foreign language must possess listening skills. S/he must be able to understand what other people say. Apart from “knowledge of the code” (Saussure) – vocabulary and grammar- knowing a language requires possession of language skills in order to allow the speaker to interact linguistically with the other members of the social group.
As a student, I learned English by reading and writing, but this did not help me become a good speaker of the language. Even though I was a good reader, I had many problems with pronunciation and listening comprehension. Now, as an English teacher, I realize that listening is a complementary skill to speaking and therefore it is important to focus on listening when teaching English if students are to become good speakers. In essence, if students are to become good speakers, they should be trained to become good listeners first.
I have chosen the topic of teaching listening skills as listening is an important part of any language. Hearing the language is the first thing when we get in touch with it, not just with foreign languages but also with our mother tongue. As we are not in an English speaking country, most of the time we come across English by hearing it – on the TV, radio, internet or in the school. Listening also proves useful in preparing students for Cambridge, ESOL, IELTS tests, not to mention real life.
This paper intends to deal with the most important issues of teaching listening and to describe and compare theories and views of different authors on the issues of teaching listening skills.
Teaching English through listening is not an easy task, especially when there are many factors that impede the learning process such as: lack of adequate materials and conditions; lack of qualified teachers with good pronunciation, lack of innovative approaches to teaching listening skills. If our goal as teachers is to produce good English speakers, we must invest in training good listeners. In the present thesis I will focus on the following aspects: an overview of the listening skill through the other skills, what listening in the classroom really means, sources for listening materials, different types of listening and suggestions of activities which proved to be effective and productive in my classes.
In conclusion, I will include suggestions of how we can turn teaching problems into positive solutions; how to improve teaching listening skills and materials and recommendations for best practices in teaching listening skills in the EFL classroom.
Introduction
Due to its role as the world’s international language, there is a constant need for fluency in English, therefore finding ways to effective teaching has become a priority among teachers and researchers. Understanding the nature of listening and improving its teaching methodology has been an increased focus on EFL listening ability because of its importance in language learning and teaching.
It is considered that knowing a foreign language means the ability of speaking it, but this cannot be possible without dealing with listening as much as possible. Listening plays an important role in communication, it is the language modality that is used most frequently, taking up to 40-50%, speaking up to 25-30 %, while reading has 11-16% and writing, about 9%, according to Mendelsohn (1994: 09).
Still, the teaching of listening skills is widely neglected in the English language teaching process. Students have serious problems in listening comprehension due to the fact that most of the teachers pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary. Listening skills are not important parts of most of the course books and teachers do not seem to pay attention to this skill while designing their lessons. Why does this happen? Maybe because it is not easy at all to teach or learn how to listen, although one may say that you just pick it up through exposure, but in fact it is much different. Like any other skills, listening needs practice. And this practice can be done from two points of view: intensive or extensive practice. These ways of listening can come separately, but they usually interfere one with another, so extensive listening easily leads to intensive listening. Or, extensive listening is benefited by intensive practice. Successful listening depends on the ability to combine these two types of processing. Activities which work on each strategy separately should help students combine intensive and extensive processes to become more effective listeners in real-life situations.
Because listening is the main source of foreign language input for most language learners, development of listening as a skill and as a channel for language input is of critical importance in foreign language instruction (Rost, 2001: 03).
CHAPTER I
LISTENING AS A LANGUAGE SKILL
1.1 Teaching Language Skills
There are four skills that we need for complete communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, afterwards to read, and finally to write. So, listening, speaking, reading and writing are the basic language skills.
A good example for proving this statement is acquisition of the mother tongue. Young children acquire language through listening. Everything is new for them, so they listen to our instructions (Look! Stand up!) and then they physically respond to it. By time, they give us instructions. The method of TPR (Total Physical Response), developed by James Asher, a professor emeritus of psychology at San José State University, is based on this theory that children pick up the language at first through commands. According to this, instructors give commands to students in the target language and students respond with whole-body actions. The point is that listening of a language is the first step towards it. This is the reason why it is very important to teach listening skills in teaching English as a foreign language.
When you learn a language, you develop both receptive skills and productive skills. In receptive skills (reading and listening), the focus is on the language input and learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. In productive skills (speaking and writing) language is produced. Learners use the language that they have acquired and produce a message through speech or written text that they want others to understand. Harmer, in his book The practice of English Language Teaching (2007), uses this division and also names this division as passive and active skills. He introduces the idea of language activation – basically the learning by doing principle – placing the language to a meaningful context – any meaning-focused activity provokes language activation. He also emphasizes that however reading and listening are more passive skills, they also require language activation as the reader or listener has to make sense from the seen or the heard. Furthermore, it is important to expose learners to a large amount of material using the new item before they are able to actually employ it in communication. Even though it is not apparent, learners will be absorbing the new items on an unconscious level.
Of course, in real communication, the skills are not used separately. They go hand in hand, two by two: listening with speaking, reading with writing. If you want to speak, to take part in a conversation, you have to listen; when you write something, you instinctively read what you have written.
According to SIL International (1999), the four basic skills are related to each other by two parameters: the mode of communication (oral or written) and the direction of communication (receiving or producing the message). The skills are represented in a chart like this:
Often, teachers try to incorporate all four skills into their planning, though some classes may focus more on one set of skills or the other, due to the course and learner objectives (Oxford, 2001).
For both second language learners or children learning their first language, the order of acquisition of a new language material is this:
Listening: The learner is exposed to and hears a new item (sound, word, grammar feature, etc.)
Speaking: The learner is supposed to repeat the new item.
Reading: The learner visualizes the new item in written form.
Writing: The learner reproduces the written form of the item.
It is advisable to keep this order of acquisition when planning to teach a new language item. Learners are exposed to it as a listener before they are called on to use it as a speaker, and that they hear it before they see it in text. In this way, the order of learning a second language is similar to the way a child learns his or her first language. He/she will be able to understand the new item for quite a while before he/she is able to produce it and use it in communication (Laubach, 1996).
Teachers should expect that the learners will go through a period of being exposed to new language and internalizing it before they can produce. They will be able to understand, but will not be able to produce. It is because of this so-called “silent period” that many recent approaches to language teaching are “comprehension-based”. This means that the instructor presents material that does not require the students to respond verbally, but rather allows them to show comprehension without having to actually produce speech in the target language (Larsen-Freeman, D. 2000).
However, not being present while listening, speaking, reading or writing happened to everyone (for example the “to do list” while speaking to a neighbour, cooking while listening to a friend on the phone, reading through two pages without getting the meaning and starting again while preparing for an exam or writing on a lecture without realizing what exactly we are writing down). Nunan says that when we listen to TV or radio, we usually exclude some information which can be caused by lapse in concentration, lack of interest, or efficiency in listening (1991: 24).
These two contrasting points of view to a language, having purpose to communicate (so we are listening with the purpose to join a conversation) and being exposed to the language without a purpose (listening to the TV while tidying up) are both parts of the world and also present in language learning. According to these points, listening can be divided into listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition. This division is perfectly pointed out by Jack C. Richards in his work Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice (2008) where he is dealing with the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening. He says that in most methodologies, listening is considered to be the synonym to listening comprehension and it is based on that the function of listening in second language learning is to foster the understanding of spoken discourse (Richards, 2008:.3). However we should not forget about the importance of language acquisition.
The time we expend on teaching and learning a second language should be effectively and demandingly used, to create and absorb a strong and meaningful input of the foreign language. This means that methodologically appropriate tasks should be prepared, language should be placed to a meaningful context, so the students could take advantage of it. It is not true that there is not profit from listening activities in which the students’ brain is not “switched on” – we can still absorb pronunciation of sounds, intonation and also stress. We should think about our childhoods´ favourite pop songs: we were able to sing them phonetically however we didn´t understand the meaning, as our level of English was low, but we can still recall the rhythm and the phonetic sounds. Getting the meaning comes with time or never at all.
All in all, listening as comprehension should create the core of teaching listening skills, and listening as acquisition should be the “side dish” because both are natural parts of any language.
1.2 Teaching Listening:
Listening is a complex mental process, "difficult to describe" (Vandergrift, 2011), related to but distinct than hearing, which involves perceiving sounds in a passive way. Listening is an active process and occupies an immediate analysis of the stream of sounds. This is similar like the difference between seeing and reading. Seeing is passive, an ordinary state, while reading is a focused process which involves reader’s instrumental approach.
When we define listening it is necessary to consider listening components such as: understanding of the accent; the way words are pronounced; grammar rules; and learning vocabulary which helps us to understand the whole meaning of what the emitter is saying in context. Effective listening depends entirely on the relationship between these components. A disconnection amongst these factors would make listening less effective. If one listens to a certain message he/she must combine such factors in context to more accurately react to what he/she is listening to. Harmer states that “What a good listener is able to do is to process what he hears on the basis of the context it occurs in (Harmer, 1983: 15).”
What listening really means is understanding what we hear at the same time. So, two concurrent actions are demanded to take place in this process. Besides, according to Michael Rost (1991), listening comprises some component skills which are:
• discriminating between sounds,
• recognizing words,
• identifying grammatical groupings of words,
• identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning,
• connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues,
• using background knowledge to predict and later to confirm meaning and recalling important words and ideas.
The integration of all these component skills leads to successful listening. A person’s listening ability means the assembly of these perception skills, analysis skills, and synthesis skills:
Students need to be taught strategies in deciphering different accents and the importance of idioms and jargon, including speech rhythms which will enable them to listen to the various styles of spoken English, be in conversation with a native speaker from the Anglophone Diaspora, listening to song lyrics or watching films. Willis states that” Students need to learn how to listen, and to get the chance to listen to different types of English, so they will be able to listen with understanding to spoken English outside the classroom” (Willis, 1981: 135).
1.3 Difficulties in Teaching Listening:
Listening is a skill and a skill is something that can be acquired with the right kind of practice. As the students’ ears become trained, they very quickly become aware of how much better they have become at listening, generally in just a few sessions. So, building up students’ confidence in their listening ability should be our first concern when it comes to establishing the goal in listening practice. We should train them to listen more effectively by giving them the opportunity to practice decoding authentic listening input in the safe environment of the classroom.
But things don’t always go the way we desire, so different kind of problems may appear. They are not necessarily bad and most of the time they are useful; it depends on us, as teachers, how we face them. Most of the time we tend to see them as trouble, however problems also have the effect of helping us to analyze the time a situation from different perspectives in order to search for a solution. The same is true when we study a language. The language learning process involves challenges for non- native speakers which can only be solved with practice. It is also important that teachers develop creative approaches to language learning that simulate first language acquisition skills which produce fluency and correct application through effective listening. Teaching English through listening can be a difficult task if the teacher cannot create the appropriate environment; does not have the proper materials and equipments; if his/ her level of self-confidence is low; or if there is no student’s cooperation. Therefore, this chapter will deal with the major problems which may appear in the teaching listening process and the way in which EFL teachers can face them and turn them into something positive.
Environment:
When a classroom environment is inappropriate, or there isn’t a good acoustic in the room, problems may easily appear. The class will only be successful if there are proper conditions inside and outside the classroom. It is difficult to teach listening in a noisy environment. Noisiness inside the classroom normally happens when the teacher cannot control the class. Listening activities are hard to understand if the sound is not good. So, teachers should sensitize students for the activity, giving activities that may involve everybody, setting group work and raising the volume of the sound. If the noise comes from outside the classroom, the teacher has to find solutions for getting rid of it by moving to another place.
Equipment:
The lack of appropriate listening equipment like: tape recorders, cassettes, CD players, television, films and radio compounds the problem of providing students with an authentic listening experience. Unfortunately, there are still many schools, especially in the rural areas, which cannot provide audio equipment, or it is available but it often does not work well. Such a problem has a negative impact on how well we teach.
In order to have good listening classes we need adequate audio equipment. According to Yagang (1993) “Unclear sounds resulting from poor-quality equipment can interfere with the listener’s comprehension (17).” When the school does not supply the equipment teachers find themselves in the position of buying or bringing them from home. From the studies that I conducted with teachers, they stated that when the school does not provide the equipment, it is borrowed, made or bought at their expense. This is not sustainable. They also answered that if they have no equipment they have to use their own voice. This is a natural way of solving the problem only if the teacher has good pronunciation. If he/she selects a dialogue or a poem to be taught, he/she can use his/her own voice as a resource.
If the selected activity is a song, the teacher can use his/her voice to sing it, but it is necessary that he/she invites someone who can play an acoustic guitar. So, the sound of the guitar may get the students interested in the teacher singing. Survey results showed that students like to listen to music in the class. Celce-Murcia and Hilles (1988) demonstrate that “It has been our experience that songs and poetry in the ESL classroom can revive our love and respect for English and can bring to mind again the joy and exquisite beauty of the language we have chosen to teach (116).” The teacher also must have loud voice that can be heard throughout the classroom.
Students’ motivation and interest:
Student’s low motivation and lack of interest can negatively affect a listening class. If we want to develop listening and speaking that are complementary skills, it is necessary for teachers to develop motivation and interest in the students. These two elements are determinant and they seem to have a strong influence in the success or failure in language learning. There is a close relationship between motivation and interest. Motivation is something that encourages the student to achieve a certain goal and interest is the desire the student has to give attention to something. Motivation and interest are important in language learning and when student is learning listening comprehension he/she must be stimulated. Ur (1984) says that:“…we must try to avoid boring or over-theoretical subjects, using as far as possible ones we think our students may be interested in, that seem of practical relevance, that may arouse or stimulate them (27).” Often the student is not motivated because the topic is irrelevant, the activity is not appropriate to the student’s level or the content of the class is not related to student’s reality. When any of these constraints occurs, the student may not feel interested, i.e., he/she may not pay attention to the class and consequently, he/she will not participate in class. According to Byrne(1988) “…sometimes the length of time we are required to listen for, without participating, may cause memory problems or even fatigue, so that in the end we simply no longer listen with understanding (13).” Therefore a teacher who wants the student to be motivated and interested in a listening class should select activities that are attractive, give him/her a purpose for listening, and chose topics according to his/her school level and reality. All of this is interesting to the student and positive to the teacher too. Rixon (1986) points out that: “Using interesting passages and doing the right sort of exercises in a coherent sequence are essential to a successful lesson… (74).”
Teacher’s Capacity and Level of Confidence:
There are teachers who do not have enough capacity to teach listening skills and this implies a low level of self-confidence on their part. Most of the time this problem exists because the teacher is not trained, or the training is not adequate to the level taught, or, even, he/she does not have enough practice in teaching this type of skills. If teachers do not have the required abilities to conduct the class, it will be frustrating for him/her. In order to prevent this, it is necessary that the teacher prepares him/herself in advance by studying each aspect of the lesson conveniently, asking for the help of colleagues, suggesting model classes during biannual meetings and applying for trainings. All of these suggestions may contribute to raise his/her level of confidence. Since teachers know that these problems exist, it is our duty to work toward their solution. The teacher’s capacity and level of confidence are of great importance as well when giving a listening class. A teacher should be able to sufficiently dominate what he/she has to teach and have a certain level of self-confidence to perform the class.
1.4 Listening Sources
The teaching of listening has recorded a real evolution during the last years, not only because of the latest research in linguistics, but also because of the technological advances and because of the way in which receptive skills are taught. From the Audio-lingual Method to the Communicative Approach, Task-based Language Teaching and integrative ways of teaching (project work and approaches focused on learner’s style), all these are considered now the main trends in teaching skills. The development of technology leads to an easy access of EFL teachers to an endless array of not only aural but also audiovisual texts, the Internet offering a wide range of sources, most of the time for free. The importance of audiovisual dimension in all language classrooms is so evident that even the Common European Framework of Reference (2001) devotes a section (4.4.2.3 Audio-visual reception) to dealing with receptive activities and strategies using audio-visual texts.
In listening tasks teachers now have the chance to use multimodal comprehension activities that were just a dream years ago. And, what is very important in all these changes appeared lately, except the new approach, is the possibility of controlling task interactivity through tools such as streaming video, podcasts and video casts.
Before any technological device was introduced in the EFL classroom, the teacher was the only listening source students were exposed to, apart from the students themselves. The teacher’s English accent was the only contact with English spoken language learners had, in most cases this being a non-native one. This is called ”live” listening (Wilson 2008: 46), and the only possibility for a real contact with actual English is to invite native or proficient speakers of English to provide real-time “semi-authentic” conversations. This kind of listening has itself some advantages: he choice of the listening input (acceptability of the language), the ability of determination (in case it is necessary), minimal technical background noise, the ability of using visual aids (mimics and gestures), reaction of the speaker (Kadagidze, 2006: 3). But, beside this, live listening situations cannot be exactly identical in occurrence. To the contrary from recorded materials small segments cannot be repeated or speech production cannot be stopped artificially. Moreover,there is an incomplete utterance of speakers (especially when students listen to each other). So, there had not been any variety of voices in the English classes before the first recording was introduced.
1.4.1 The Cassette Tape- first step to authentic English:
Between the early 1970s and the late 1990s, a magnetic tape sound recording format was the most common material for pre-recorded listening texts in the language classroom or the language lab.
The cassette came with a lot of improvements in the classroom: different accents, different texts, different situations and different voices, all of these contributed a great deal to the way teachers presented aural texts in the EFL classroom. The cassette provided the necessary variety to help teachers go beyond the constraints of the unique input mentioned above (the teacher him/herself). Moreover, the cassette provided him or her with a variety of English aural input. It also contributed to help students listen more effectively since it provided a significant source of language input. The aural texts from textbook tapes inevitably used scripted recordings which, in most cases, sounded unnatural and unauthentic although there was usually an audible context (sounds off, background noises etc.) that helped to make it sound more real. More than this, EFL teachers could record many types of texts themselves, such as news, interviews, discussions, songs, stories etc., adding some flexibility in the text selection for their classes.
The next step from the magnetic tape was the audio Compact Disc (CD), which improved the replaying control of cassettes since it made it possible to go straight to the extract requested.
1.4.2 The Video- a gate to better comprehension:
When the video component was brought into the EFL classroom, there was a real revolution in the listening comprehension methodology. Students’ comprehension was visibly improved because they were able to see the speaker, to observe the body language (face, attitude, gesture) to notice the context in which the recording was taking place. Therefore, the viewing experience adds value to the practice of simply aural receptive skills.
The dynamic characteristic of presenting moving images helps students get engaged in what is happening in the video-recording and allows teachers to focus on the non-linguistic information provided by the images so as to develop learners’ viewing skills.
The video also increases students’ motivation when completing listening tasks. It provides complementary information to the understanding of the spoken word. But, although it is undoubtedly useful in the comprehension process, we should be aware that the learner can be overloaded cognitively with too much information. Consequently, the EFL teacher should devise tasks that minify this cognitive overload and train learners to be aware of the information they receive through the auditory and visual input (Suárez & Pujolà, 2012).
As happened with cassettes and CDs, in the late 90s the precision of replaying and finding particular scenes was improved when DVDs were introduced in the language classroom to substitute videotapes. The teacher’s preparation and classroom equipment management were facilitated with t his technical advancement.
DVDs also brought the advantage of including subtitles and captions which could help learners to rely on reading to build their listening comprehension strategies. This technical advancement, though, could be detrimental in the learning process of developing learners’ listening skills depending on how this written input is used and on the learners’ proficiency level (Bianchi & Ciabattoni, 2008; Vanderplank 1990, 1993). As Lynch (2010: 9) describes, “here we face a paradox: the availability of non-audio information, which makes it easier for the listener to understand what is said, may at the same time make it more difficult to learn”.
1.4.3 Computers- the multimedia revolution:
The use of computer technology into foreign language teaching, learning and assessment started during 1950s and it was not so widespread practiced then. It did not form very important place in teaching and learning process of EFL due to the technology and infrastructure related issues. But, with the emergence of first generation of personal computers in the 1980s, the use of computer technology in education, in general, and in EFL classrooms in particular, was accelerated. Today, computer technology has a noticeable presence in second and foreign language teaching and learning processes. This is because of infinite benefits this use has for teaching, learning and assessing second and foreign language like English. The use of computers in EFL classroom can offer the delivery of a wide variety of multimedia content, with authentic language models, accessed with individual control. It also presents another source of target language knowledge and examples and relieves the EFL teacher as the sole font of target language knowledge in the classroom as summarized by Szendeffy (2008: 4). The new concept is now interactivity, the relation that occurs between a computer user and a computer program. Interactivity provides learners with greater control over the playing of the recording and selection of texts and text types. A range of potential supporting data to assist comprehension such as the already mentioned subtitles and transcripts is also available, along with dictionaries, corpora, word glosses, pronunciation audio files etc., all available with only one click.
CD-ROMs were obviously a progress in the way we could approach listening and viewing tasks in class and in self-access mode. But the advent of the Internet made teaching methodology go further in helping the development of language learner autonomy. From their own computer, learners have the freedom to choose from a vast array of listening materials and use them to suit their needs and preferred learning style.
The digital era marks the start of new tools and devices that provide different possibilities of interactivity which offer flexibility in the teaching of listening and audiovisual comprehension and fosters language learning autonomy. Self-access learning centers promote the approach whereby students study independently choosing from different resources that are available. Listening lends itself to self-access in the same way that reading does. Listening in the real world and listening to authentic texts, however, is obviously more complex. Learners nowadays have access to an array of listening and viewing possibilities thus changing the teachers’ role, which now consists of helping them develop individual strategies to select the most appropriate material or tool to suit their learning purposes.
But the new technological tools available would not mean much without the teachers’ pedagogical actions to achieve their students’ learning objectives. How can teachers help students become effective listeners and overcome difficulties in listening comprehension and other barriers to listening? Drawing on technology may be a solution. Learners can use ICT (Information Communication Technology) in developing and improving their language skills, listening comprehension mostly, for the following reasons:
Students today have great expectations when it comes to technology and they expect a class to offer opportunities to use technology during a lesson, for example via a well-equipped self-access centre (Sharma & Barrett, 2007).
The use of technology outside the language classroom or in the self-access centre can give students more autonomy. One key feature of using technology in learning is that it allows language practice and study away from the confines of the classroom at your own pace anywhere.
The ITC skills learnt in the classroom can be transferred outside it, to real life. A web-based environment can make students practice listening regularly, and consequently, become a more effective listener.
While listening to a material or watching a video clip, students can pause whenever they want and listen and read a transcript. Moreover, they can get immediate feedback on what they have done (e.g. you watch a video clip or listen to audio and check answers immediately after watching or listening).
Students can access authentic websites, as well as websites for EFL/ESL learners. As they become used to choosing and evaluating listening materials, they are able to plan out their own use of web-based materials in their own time, this leading to becoming effective listeners and independent learners.
The multimedia revolution has brought about significant changes in the way listening skills can be taught and practiced. To start with, students can receive authentic input from non-pedagogical texts, which supply a type of language substantially different from the pre-recorded input of the cassettes and videos devised for teaching purposes only. As for the concept of authenticity, we can speak about the authenticity of the language used in the listening materials and about the authenticity of the materials themselves. According to S. Haines this is a kind of spoken or written language used by the native speaker. And authentic are the materials taken from real life communication (newspaper articles, tourist informational leaflets, radio and TV programs, “real-life” conversations) and not materials especially designed for teaching purposes.
In spite of the technological improvements, there still remains a tinge of doubt whether these changes are also applied to the teaching approach of listening and the questions used in order to teach (or assess) the students’ listening skills. That is, using the latest technology to present a listening text does not necessarily mean leaving apart the type of tasks used which are typical of more traditional teaching methodologies (e.g. listening for detail or for gist). Therefore, types of questions that could be found in the Audio-lingual Method such as drills or discrete-item questions on vocabulary and grammar are still common in many listening tasks despite new technological devices.
Listening comprehension is often the most difficult task for learners of English as a foreign language. Listening in the real world and listening to authentic texts is more complex than listening to non-authentic texts in the classroom environment (Peterson, 2010: 153). Effective listening does not just happen. Access to up-to-date materials via the Internet gives the students opportunities to develop and improve their listening skills by using materials outside the classroom. With the appropriate use of technology, learning can be made more active, motivating, and learner-centered, especially with such internet-based resources as audio-video, podcasts and video clip tools.
1.5 Types of Classroom Listening Performance:
Jim Scrivener (2005) says that it is important to tell students that they don’t need to understand every single word in order to understand the message they need. By doing this, teachers remove or reduce the stress factor students have while listening. This way, teachers can help students worry less about trying to understand everything and focus more on grasping the full message.
Listening in the English classroom should reflect listening in everyday life. When listening in daily life, individuals usually don’t concentrate on each detail, but listen to get an overview of the main message and try to catch specific details like names, numbers and so on. Scrivener (2005) questions the usefulness of certain materials used in many listening classes. He asks teachers to reflect on how interesting and relevant their material is to their students in their specific part of the world. He states that in real life, listening is done interactively. People have a chance to respond, ask, and repeat, and so on. While in a classroom-recorded conversation, it is passive listening. He questions how helpful teachers are being when using such pre-recorded materials. Additionally, Scrivener (2005) brings up a very important point, which is the difficulty of the material being used. Some teachers, he says, overwhelm their students by choosing a very difficult recording and even more difficult tasks. Again, this is not real-life listening, as in reality; we don’t usually face such situations. If the recording is difficult, he suggests simplifying the task, which would give the students a sense of achievement for completing it.
Scrivener (2005) indicates that we listen for a variety of reasons, which could be replicated in the classroom. Listening is part of speaking and so it is not an independent skill. He contends that when working on listening, some teachers should start with “small pieces” first. This is called “listening for detail.” A very useful technique, “listening for detail” is part of the “bottom-up” strategy, which says that learners build up the whole message from the separate small pieces. However, this is practical only in class. In contrast, real life listening cannot follow this approach, as it does not allow the listener to get the big picture. Real life listening requires top-down theory, which states that people listen to get the whole message first, building on past experience and knowledge, then leading to specific details.
Finally, Scrivener (2005) believes that in the classroom, and in real life, when students listen, they use a combination of the two strategies. He says there is no fixed way to do listening tasks, in the end, it’s the teacher who decides according to the needs and abilities of his/her students.
Learners will need to practice and identify different purposes for listening, such as for gist, or for details which may require different processing skills. Bottom-up processes can help learners develop word recognition skills, whereas top-down processing can build real life listening skills (Vandergrift 2004: 14-15). Rost (2011: 182) lists six types of listening which learners will need to practice in order to become competent listeners:
Intensive listening.
Selective listening.
Interactive listening.
Extensive listening.
Responsive listening.
Autonomous listening.
Furthermore, listening may not end with the comprehension of what was said. The listener may be required to respond, therefore teachers will need to provide opportunities to practice participatory listening, as in the real world listening is rarely just reciprocal (Nunan 2002: 239-40).
CHAPTER 2
EXTENSIVE LISTENING
2.1 What Is Extensive Listening?
Any language learner would say that one of the most difficult tasks he/she encounters is feeling comfortable in a conversation. If students are asked about their objectives in language learning, their responses are likely to be about understanding a film or a song, travelling abroad and talking to people in English. If students are not exposed to extensive listening sessions, they cannot feel comfortable in an English-speaking environment. The more they listen, the more they will understand. The more they understand, they more comfortable they will feel. The more comfortable they feel in English, the more they will speak.
But what is extensive listening? Extensive listening refers to listening to a lot of material but not trying to get all the details and every word; this is what you do when you listen to a live lecture or go to a movie: the goal is primarily listening for meaning, with any other development (like new vocabulary) occurring incidentally. During extensive listening, you can still make "mental notes" of new words/phrases or other language points you notice, but that should not interrupt the focus on getting the meaning.
Extensive listening usually happens outside the classroom – we should encourage students to listen to English language in their free time – music, series, CD from their course book, etc. In this modern world we have plenty of materials for creating condition to do so. The motivation is the freedom of choice what they would listen to and it would be good to make this extensive listening the natural part of our classroom. This would mean that students would be exposed to the language without a specific comprehension purpose; they would be in an environment in which they can just acquire the language. It is not about not having any purpose at all – we can give the students tasks, as suggested by Richards for listening as acquisition, such as noticing activities and restructuring activities:
„Noticing activities involve returning to the listening texts that served as the basis for comprehension activities and using them as the basis for language awareness. For example, students can listen again to a recording in order to:
Identify differences between what they hear and a printed version of the text;
Complete a cloze version of the text;
Complete sentences stems taken from the text;
Check off entries from a list of expressions that occurred in the text.
Restructuring activities are oral or written tasks that involve productive use of selected items from the listening text. Such activities could include:
Paired reading of the tape scripts in the case of conversational texts;
Written sentence-completion tasks requiring use of expressions and other linguistic items that occurred in the texts;
Dialog practice that incorporates items from the text;
Role plays in which students are required to use key language from the texts“ (Richards, 2008:16).
Listening without purpose is also discussed by David Nunan in his Language Teaching Methodology. He suggests that an important factor in interactive listening is whether or not we are taking part in the interaction. If not, it might seem a waste of time to involve learners in classroom tasks in which they are just listening to others. However, authentic conversations can provide learners with insights into ways in which conversations work and also with strategies for comprehending conversation outside the classroom (1991:24).
In the language classroom we usually teach strategic listening using short listening tasks. We listen to a dialogue for a gap-fill activity, we listen to an interview for an exam task, we listen to a short speech to fill in a chart or a form. We rarely have time to do listening sessions which are longer than ten minutes. Students often feel frustrated because they would like to hear more English without having to worry about giving the right answer to a multiple-choice exercise or listening for a particular word to fill in a gap in a text. There are plenty of things teachers can do with our students in order to teach them a foreign language and make it the natural part of their lives, even outside the classroom. An environment full of language – with a purpose to listen or without – is natural in our mother tongue, so we should try to make it also natural in the foreign language. Making extensive listening part of our classroom would have this effect and also it would be good for creating positive attitude towards foreign language learning.
2.2 The Language Learning Benefits of Extensive Listening:
Extensive listening can improve our students’ listening comprehension primarily because it enables them to process spoken language more accurately and fluently. Some language learning benefits associated with extensive listening are marked out by Renandya (2011: 32-33):
It can enhance learners’ ability to deal with normal speech rate, which for many beginning L2 learners is perceived to be too fast. Beginning students often complain about the difficulty of understanding spoken language, not because the content is difficult or the language is too hard, but because it is too fast (Renandya, 2012).
It can improve their word recognition skill. Students report that they can often recognize words in writing, but not in speech. Again, lower proficiency students seem to have problems recognizing words in speech and frequent listening practice seems to facilitate the development of automaticity in sound-script relationships.
It can enhance their bottom-up listening skills, in particular the skills of recognizing word boundaries. In speech, words often take on different forms from when they are said in isolation. Speech phenomena such as assimilation (e.g., in class –ing class), contractions (e.g., going to –gonna), resyllabification (e.g., bend it –ben dit) are common in speech and known to cause listening problems to lower proficiency learners.
Extensive listening can improve students’ listening vocabulary. Different from written language, spoken language often contains language features rarely found in the written papers, such as fillers (e.g., …er, well, ok) or stock phrases (e.g., do you know what I mean? or got it? ). Spoken language also tends to be less formal or colloquial and often colored by the presence of slang or non-standard grammar or vocabulary (e.g., what do you got? I ain’t got nobody). Extensive listening provides the kinds of practice that improve our students’ listening vocabulary.
Finally, extensive listening can give students a lot of opportunities to experience a high level of language comprehension. What we want our students to experience is a deeper degree of comprehension when they listen to spoken text, because it is this type of comprehension that is more likely to lead to acquisition. There is some research evidence that shows that repeated listening of the same material (called narrow listening) can lead to deeper comprehension. Dupuy (1999), for example, found that for her beginning learners of French as a foreign language, a higher degree of comprehension (95% and above) is possible only after the third or fourth listening.
Extensive listening has an important role in the development of learners’ aural comprehension ability, particularly in situations where students need exposure to large amounts of comprehensible input. For most learners, especially those EFL settings, this type of input is most readily available through extended listening. Since learners all have different learning styles, providing opportunities to engage in extensive listening should benefit a wider range of learners than in the case of intensive or classroom listening. With access to the internet now nearly universal in many areas, opportunities to find appropriate listening texts of a suitable level of difficulty and interest should become increasingly easy.
2.3 Preparing Students for Extensive Listening:
Learning to listen in a new language takes practice and time, often more time than learners have in class. In order to improve their listening abilities, learners must do more than just listen to interesting programs. They must also think about how they are listening and what they could do to improve their listening. Teachers can facilitate learners’ out-of-class listening by helping them access appropriate materials and teaching them ways to reflect on their listening experiences.
Although extensive listening means “listening for pleasure and without obligating the listener to keep demonstrating a satisfactory level of understanding” (Field, 2008: 54), the teacher has an important role in guiding the students in the process of extensive listening. Cutting (2004) refers to the role of the instructor in extensive listening as being primarily “supportive”, and proposes that instructors enable their students to begin listening independently by encouraging the following approach: self-analysis, in which learners think about their needs, problems and favorite learning styles, goal-setting (learners link their needs and problems with their learning objectives), planning (considering factors like materials, learning strategies, study time available, level), reflection on and self-evaluation of the learning. This kind of preparation could be carried out during classes as part of an intensive listening exercise.
For having a productive and efficient extensive listening session, it is important to provide or suggest students sufficient amounts of material at the right level. For the intermediate learners, extensive listening may seem too difficult or time consuming, and they could become tempted to give up. “While it is entirely appropriate in EL that students select their own material and pace their own listening, they should not be given the choice of opting out. Learners will need to be constantly encouraged, as fatigue and frustration are bound to occur, and at points finding suitable material will become difficult. At the same time as the learner’s ability develops, however, he or she will gain motivation and be able to access to a broader selection of more interesting and challenging material”(Holden, 2016: 305).
Another important aspect students have to be aware of is the difference between intensive and extensive ways of listening. “Learners may need help as well in simply understanding that a “style” is comprised of various strategies we rely on consistently, yet more or less unconsciously. Students may not understand what strategies are, much less why they should be learned, how they can be used, when and where they are most effectively employed, and how to evaluate their usefulness” (op. cit., 306).
Pre-listening:
So, first of all, they should be prepared for what they are going to listen. Initially, students need to make conscious any knowledge they have relevant to the content, background, setting, participants and goals or purposes of the text they will hear and the vocabulary likely to be used in that setting or situation. Afterwards, a purpose for listening has to be set: what information is required, and in how much detail. Then, ways in which the task might be approached can be presented and weighed before listening begins.
Pre-listening activities help students make decisions about what to listen for and where to focus their attention while listening. The teacher should encourage them to bring existing cultural, linguistic and personal knowledge to bear on the task.
Holden (2016: 306-307) suggests some of the strategies that might be presented in the pre-listening component:
1) Identify your purpose;
2) Use visual or environmental clues;
3) Predict words and phrases you are likely to hear;
4) Focus on key vocabulary;
5) Think of a synonym (or antonym)
6) Use the vocabulary/ rehearse;
7) Personalize the information;
8) Think ahead;
9) Relate the situation to your own experience;
10) Use your imagination.
While-listening:
During the listening activity itself, students need to be encouraged to monitor their level of comprehension and make decisions about appropriate strategy use. They should match the input they receive with the predictions they made in the pre-listening activities. At this stage, teacher’s intervention is almost impossible, that’s why this is a very difficult phase for learners. Therefore, consistent and systematic training in the use of strategies appropriate to particular tasks and extensive pre-listening activities need to be incorporated into any program of listening instruction.
Now, it’s time to:
1) Re-confirm the purpose;
2) Ask questions;
3) Think ahead. Use grammar as a guide;
4) Listen for collocations;
5) Identify signaling phrases and discourse markers;
6) Listen for stress/ intonation/ pitch;
7) Substitute similar sounding words;
9) Shadow;
10) Confirm understanding (idem).
Post-listening:
Unlike Field’s opinion mentioned above, who claims that learners do not have to demonstrate comprehension after extensive listening, Holden insists that post-listening tasks provide an opportunity for learners to evaluate their level of comprehension, compare and discuss strategies and reflect on alternative approaches to the task. This can be done in pairs, small groups or even in whole-class discussion. Moreover, the connection between pre-listening and post-listening needs to be made explicit, so that learners can develop the ability to better prepare for and predict what they will encounter by enlarging the range of strategies they use. Some post-listening strategies learners should employ are listed by Holden:
1) Confirm predictions;
2) Paraphrase or summarize;
3) Assess your success;
4) Write down what you remember;
5) Listen while reading;
6) Confirm understanding;
7) Evaluate the success of your strategies;
8) Evaluate your level of comprehension (2016: 308).
In conclusion, listening should be presented to learners as a cyclical process, not a linear one, starting from expectations and getting to the point where they are confirmed. Such an approach engages the students in the tasks more deeply, as they have assumed or expected something and are listening to confirm predictions, not simply to glean information.
2.4 Selecting and Using Materials for Extensive Listening:
The importance of Extensive Listening is obvious in language learning. Ellis (1994) indicates that a large amount of exposure to input, whether visual or aural, is vital for language acquisition. The selection of the listening materials and the way they are used are important aspects in the listening process and without them EFL learners wouldn’t be motivated to do extensive listening practice.
One of the reasons our learners are not interested in listening is that the materials are often above their head. They are simply too hard for them. Krashen (1985), advocating the Input Hypothesis, suggests that it is important for the learner to listen to a large amount of spoken English that is relatively easy. Easiness, in his opinion, is another key factor that helps the learner improve listening skills and language. Ridgway (2000:184) claims forcefully that our students “need to practice listening comprehension, not listening incomprehension”, as is often the case in many listening lessons in L2 classes. Thus the listening materials should be chosen at the right level.
Drawing partially on Krashen’s arguments, Nation (2007) suggested the four strands teaching approach in order to improve language skills effectively. These are meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output and fluency development. He says that a language course should have about 25 percent of each of these four strands. Different kinds of activities can be used within each component to promote language learning. He suggests that listening skills will improve when the learner engages in meaning-focused input and fluency development tasks that include Extensive Listening to easy and interesting materials. Extensive Listening must meet the following four assumptions of the meaning-focused input and fluency strands (Nation, 2007):
learners listen to what is largely familiar to them in terms of vocabulary, content, and discourse features,
learners focus on meaning (intrinsically interesting texts),
pressure is applied to the learners to perform at a higher than normal speed and
learners are exposed to a large amount of input.
Nation’s four strands of teaching appear to support the use of an Extensive Listening approach to improve student listening skills and confidence in language learning.
When choosing the right material for listening practice, it is advisable to be able to answer affirmatively at all of the following questions (adapted from Nation & Newton, 2009 and Waring, 2008):
Is the material personally meaningful to the learners?
Does the material contain interesting information that attracts the learners’ attention?
Can the students comprehend over 95-98% of the language in the material?
Can the students listen and/or view the material without having to stop and replay the audio or video material?
Can the students understand 90% or more of the content (the story or information)?
Does the material contain language features (words, phrases, collocations) that can engage the students’ attention?
A negative answer to these questions means that the materials are either incomprehensible and/or uninteresting.
A good selection of the listening materials leads to a variety of enjoyable activities aimed to develop students’ listening abilities and encourage them to do as much practice as possible. The next section is dedicated to extensive listening activities in order to provide students with as much target language input as possible.
2.5 Extensive Listening Activities:
An important aspect in helping students improve their listening skills is that teachers should convince them to listen to English as often as possible. The more material they get touch with, the more progress they will record.
Extensive listening is a perfect way to practice English listening skills. The successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of exercising. It means listening to many different recordings, videos, interviews, news, basically everything which is in English should be considered a proper material for listening practice. In this section I will offer some suggestions of activities which can be done in the classroom or at home, it depends on how the teacher plans to organize the following tasks.
2.5.1 Authentic Interviews:
(proposed by Luke and James Vyner on http://www.onestopenglish.com/):
It all starts from a video, Live from London: How well do you know each other, which can be seen here: http://www.onestopenglish.com/14205.file.
Transcript:
.
2.5.2 Mini-plays:
The following activities are based on a mini-play suggested by Tim Bowen and Liz Plampton on http://www.onestopenglish.com. It is called Celebrities and features two workmen who are sitting in a roadworks truck near Dartford, reading the paper.
Transcript:
Tips for approaching (adapted from http://www.onestopenglish.com):
Take away the title of the play. Students try to guess the context. Who? Where? Why? What?
Ask students to describe the appearance, personality and social status of the characters in the play.
Cut the play up into four sections. Students then put it back in the correct sequence.
Supply several statements of fact or opinion about the play. Ask students to assess whether each one follows from the play, supports it, contradicts it or is assumed.
Students can finish the play off in their own words or change its ending.
Students interpret the play, perform it and then record and listen to themselves for correct use of stress and intonation.
Students perform the play using the same words but in different styles, e.g. a romance, a ghost story, a thriller, etc.
Students identify vocabulary that has a negative connotation.
Students identify the word/phrase/phrasal verb that means …
Take an adjective or adverb out of a sentence and put it in brackets at the end of the line. Students put it back in the correct place or wherever it will logically fit, for example:
You have to know the places to go. [RIGHT]
You have to know the right places to go.
Tasks (adapted from http://www.onestopenglish.com):
2.5.3 Songs:
One of the most difficult aspects of using music in a lesson is the selection of the right song. Adam Simpson (2015) explains that teachers should consider the following things in the process of choosing the material:
Carefully examine what it is you want your class to learn in the lesson;
Think about the language level of your class;
How old are your learners?
Are there any specific cultural issues regarding the make-up of your class?
What kind of access do you have to the song?
Once all these aspects are settled, Simpson provides six steps for making a song the focus of a class:
1. Listen to the song.
Let’s take into consideration the song Jealous Guy, by John Lennon: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwfZXxRe9eQ).
Start things off by just listening. It’s important to remember that this is supposed to be a fun activity; don’t make it too serious or boring. It is advisable to use a video clip as it will cater to more learners’ needs in terms of learning styles (visual and audible).
Ask learners if they’ve heard it before, and don’t overload them with tasks at this point; simply let them enjoy the music.
2. Ask some questions about the title:
Some examples of the types of questions that can be asked:
What is a “jealous guy”?
What are three things a jealous guy might do?
What kinds of jealousy are there?
Such questions tend to work really well as conversation starters, so group three or four learners together and then get feedback from each group on their thoughts. Or, it can be made as a first step, before the initial listening.
Another idea would be that, before having listened to the song, a couple of words could be taught and given a simple task for the first listening: three or four words from the song and ask them to listen out for the words that rhyme with them.
3. Listen to the song again, this time with lyrics:
Learners can just read the lyrics while they listen. They can possibly highlight unknown words for later discussion.
Vocabulary:
A worksheet as a gap fill could be made; learners fill in the gaps as they listen:
Teachers can prepare cut-out strips of selected missing words and again make a lyric worksheet as a gap fill; this time learners match the word strips to the gaps as they listen.
4. Round things off with some creativity:
These were some suggestions of activities I have selected for practicing extensive listening in the classroom. Of course, there are plenty of ways of doing this and the important thing is that we, the teachers, are responsible for the quantity and quality of EFL practice learners do in order to improve their listening skills and, after all, their level of English.
In the next chapter I will focus on Intensive listening and the way it can be practiced to raise the learners’ awareness of how differences in sound, structure, and lexical choice can affect meaning.
CHAPTER 3
INTENSIVE LISTENING
3.1 What is Intensive Listening?
When designing listening activities, teachers should keep in mind that, in addition to global comprehension, they need to focus their attention on specific details, on language form. The aim of this approach is to raise the learners’ awareness of how differences in sound, structure, and lexical choice can affect meaning. This is crucial to help learners develop effective listening strategies and build bottom-up listening skills, in addition to the top-down skills that are emphasized in global listening activities. This is what intensive listening is about.
In the past, it was said that there was too much intensive listening, whereas nowadays teachers and course books show a taste or inclination for mainly understanding gist. Of course, there is a time and a place for both types of listening and students can benefit from each of them. Intensive listening involves focusing on particular segments of the text and this should come only after the students have developed global comprehension, through some extensive listening activities.
Intensive listening involves going over a piece of material multiple times and often mining it for other purposes, such as for dictation to build vocabulary and grammar. Through intensive listening practice the aim is to get more detailed understanding of some segments of the text, by transcribing certain segments in the text, guessing the meaning of a word or phrase from context, looking at certain grammatical structures in the text to see how they can aid comprehension etc. “Techniques whose only purpose is to focus on components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers etc.) of discourse may be considered to be intensive –as opposed to extensive- in their requirement that students single out certain elements of spoken language” (Brown, 2007: 267-268).
Intensive listening requires learners’ focus on the listening text so that they can understand what it means as well as how the meaning is expressed. It is an accuracy-oriented activity which engages learners in obtaining general and detailed information. Therefore, listening intensively expects the learners to pay close attention to the text so that they can make inferences, grasp the ideas relationship in order to close the gap between their current knowledge and that assumed by the speaker.
Intensive and extensive listening are very different mainly when it comes to class procedures and purposes. Bearing this in mind, we can either use a skill-based lesson whose focus is on a particular skill, for example inferring meaning, or a text-based lesson in which the text itself generates opportunities for learners to use whatever skills necessary to try to understand it to the full. An intensive listening approach may give learners opportunities to use the top-down and bottom-up listening processes in which learners may see the overall purpose of the text and also see specific points the speaker wants to make.
A well planned lesson may be staged into pre-listening so that the context of the listening is settled, while-listening as means of giving learners opportunities to listen, perform the tasks and discuss their answers with colleagues or partners and post-listening as a way of providing learners with feedback and opportunities to integrate the language they heard into a speaking activity. These steps should be borne in mind when designing a listening lesson in class and they are going to be detailed in the next sections of this paper.
3.2 Pre-listening Stage:
In real life, when people listen to something, they have an idea about what they are going to hear. When listening to a radio phone-in show, they will probably know which topic is being discussed. When listening to an interview with a famous person, they probably know something about that person already. A waiter knows the menu from which the diner is choosing their food. So, we normally contextualize any listening material we encounter in real life and this is the principle we should be guided after when teaching listening in the EFL classroom.
By simply asking the students to listen to something and answer some questions is a little unfair and makes developing listening skills much harder, it already being one of the hardest skills to develop – dealing at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures. This is even more difficult if we do not know the topic under discussion, or who is speaking to whom.
Many students feel a kind of reticence about listening because they are afraid of it, being discouraged when they listen to something but feel they understand very little. It is also harder to concentrate on listening if you have little interest in a topic or situation. Pre-listening tasks aim to deal with all of these issues: to generate interest, build confidence and to facilitate comprehension. They are supposed to prepare students for listening, to ensure their success and to get them excited about listening. Pre-listening activities should motivate students and answer the question “Why are we doing this?”.
The first thing we should have in mind is setting the context. This is perhaps the most important thing to do – even most exams give an idea about who is speaking, where and why. In real life we normally have some idea of the context of something we are listening to.
After they know what they are going to listen to, learners have to be motivated to do it, so generating interest is a key task for teachers. If students are to do a listening about sports, looking at some dramatic pictures of sports players or events will raise their interest or remind them of why they (hopefully) like sports. Personalization activities are very important here. A pair-work discussion about the sports they play or watch, and why, will bring them into the topic, and make them more willing to listen.
Once learners’ attention is drawn, it is high time to activate their current knowledge about the topic. Reese (2003) claims that an approach like ‘You are going to listen to an ecological campaigner talk about the destruction of the rainforest’ sets the context, but if you go straight in to the listening, the students have had no time to transfer or activate their knowledge (which may have been learnt in their first language) in the second language. What do they know about rainforests? Where are they? What are they? What problems do they face? Why are they important? What might an ecological campaigner do?
Students may have limited general knowledge about a topic. Providing knowledge input will build their confidence for dealing with a listening. This could be done by giving a related text to read, or, a little more fun, a quiz.
Activating the language (vocabulary) that may be used in the listening is an important step that should be considered before listening. Knowledge-based activities can serve this purpose, but there are other things that can be done. If students are going to listen to a dialogue between a parent and a teenager who wants to stay overnight at a friend's, students may be given a task to role play the situation before listening. They can brainstorm language before hand and then perform the scene. By having the time to think about the language needs of a situation, they will be excellently prepared to cope with the listening.
Once we know the context for something, we are able to predict possible content. It is a good idea to give students a choice of things that they may or may not expect to hear, and ask them to choose those they think will be mentioned. Or ask them to look at a picture showing the people speaking and ask them to guess who says some phrases given.
It is also very important, for the success of a listening activity, to pre-learn vocabulary.
When we listen in our first language we can usually concentrate on the overall meaning because we know the meaning of the vocabulary. For students, large numbers of unknown words will often be a barrier in listening and certainly lower confidence. That’s why, a selection of vocabulary for the students to study before listening, perhaps matching words to definitions, followed by a simple practice activity such as filling the gaps in sentences will be necessary before the first contact with the listening material.
Steven Brown recommends teachers always having a pre-listening stage. He mentions two types of pre-listening tasks: bottom-up and top-down.
Bottom-up listening refers to focusing on grammar and vocabulary in order to understand the listening track, so a bottom-up pre-listening activity would be pre-teaching some vocabulary or grammar that is central to the listening text.
Top-down listening refers to using background knowledge (of the world or of text structure) to understand a listening text, so a top-down pre-listening activity would involve asking students to recall what they know about the topic of the listening track. For example, if the listening track takes place in a coffee shop, you can ask students what people say and do in a coffee shop or what things you usually see in a coffee shop. Or, students can be asked what they know about the type of listening text they’re about to listen to. For example, if it’s a video of a cook explaining how to make a dish, students can suggest what words might come up as the cook explains each step of the recipe (first, then, after that).
However, it’s important to keep the pre-listening stage fairly brief. McCaughey has noted that some teachers spend ten to fifteen minutes on a pre-listening task that is followed by a one-minute listening text. Choose one short task and don’t let it drag on too long.
Finally, a while-listening task should be set up right before they listen. It should be briefly explained in English or written on the board, if necessary. If everybody is on the right page or on the right side of the worksheet, listening may begin.
3.3 While-Listening Stage:
The while-listening stage is where students listen and do a task. Many course books feature tasks, such as listening for gist, listening for main ideas, making inferences and summarizing. Assigning a task can help students focus and develop important strategies for language learning. As far as listening comprehension (i.e. listening for meaning) is concerned, the purpose of while-listening activities is to help learners develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language.
While-listening activities should be interesting for learners so that they feel they want to listen and carry out the activities. Part of the interest can rise from the topic and the content of what is said and the listening text should be chosen with the interests of the students in mind.
In everyday life, when we listen to something, we do it for a reason. Also, students need to be given a reason to listen, because they need to focus their attention on something. For developing their listening skills, students need to listen to the material a number of times – three or four should be enough. Usually, the first time many students listen to a text, they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.
The listening task teachers provide to learners should guide them through the text and they should be graded, so that the first listening task they do to be quite easy and helpful for them to get a general understanding of the text. Sometimes, just a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure. This is listening for gist- listening to get the main idea, so students should be trying to get the topic or theme of the listening track.
When they listen for the second time, students should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of the text. This means listening for detail, to get specific information, such as How much was the meal? or Where was the bus going? The task doesn’t have to request too much of a response. Writing long responses as they listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort of graphical response.
The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text. It is the making inferences stage, where students are listening to get information not explicitly stated on the track. Some examples: How do the two people feel about each other? or Where do you think the man will go next?.
Sarah Sahr (2011: 2) suggests three choices for while-listening:
Listen to Main Idea: This listening is for understanding the general picture;
Listen to Specific Events: Good for making timelines and categorizing;
Listen to Details: close activity, multiple choice questions etc.
Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason it is very important that students should have 'breathing' or 'thinking' space between listening periods. An idea is to compare their answers in these listening periods, as this gives them the chance not only to have a break from the listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again.
Ideas for while-listening activities:
Marking/checking items in pictures
Having carried out some pre-listening work using a picture, students are then asked to respond to various stimuli (questions/statements) by marking things on the picture.
The teacher who has checked through the actual listening text in advance (preferably by listening to it, not just by reading through the transcript) will have used the pre-listening stage to introduce any lexis or expressions which the students are not familiar with or need reminding about, so that the chances of everyone succeeding with the task will be enhanced. There are many activities which fall into this category: identifying people and things, marking items mentioned by the speaker, marking errors, checking details, marking choices etc.
This type of while-listening activity is good for helping students to focus on the listening itself, because they not distracted by the need to try to write down words.
Which picture?
Students hear a description or a conversation and have to decide, from the selection offered, which picture is the 'right' one. The most common pictures used are drawings/photos of people or scenes, indoors or out of doors. This is an activity where the level of difficulty can be changed both by the degree of similarity or contrast between the pictures and by the level of sophistication of the description/conversation.
Putting pictures in order
A number of pictures are presented to the students. The aim is to arrange the pictures in the correct order according to the listening text. Generally the ordering can only be done by numbering each picture, because most exercises of this kind are done from books. It is important not to have too many pictures (up to five or six) and to have a series which cannot be put in order easily without listening at all.
3.4 Post-Listening Stage:
The post-listening stage is where the teacher can determine how well the students have understood what they listened to, but also the stage where teachers should give the students the satisfaction of knowing they can apply what they have just heard to their learning or, even, to their life.
It is very important to design the tasks well. If the listening text is too long or complicated, students can forget what they have heard even in their native language. It is also possible for our students to remember and repeat things they heard, even if they did not understand them. But, it is more common for people to understand more than they can remember. Even in our own language, we remember the gist of the conversation, but we cannot remember exactly what words were said. In fact, in real life, it is more natural to select and interpret what we hear rather than repeat everything we have heard. That’s why, intensive listening must deal with very well-chosen short texts.
There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take: reactions to the content of the text and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content.
In our everyday life we naturally react to the content of what we listen to, so tasks that focus on students’ reaction to the content seem to be the most important. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what we've heard – do they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? – or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard.
The other kind of post-listening task type involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text. This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students’ listening skills. It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier.
Let's look at some types of post-listening activities. The most typical type of post-listening task is the multiple-choice comprehension question. While this type of task may prepare students to take traditional multiple-choice tests, it does little to help them develop good listening habits and strategies. The teacher needs to decide what balance is best for the students, preparing them for traditional multiple-choice tests or preparing them to function in English in the real world. The following example from Anderson and Lynch (1991: 69) illustrates two types of tasks: one provides test-taking practice and the other helps the students listen with understanding.
Exercise A focuses the students only on the information in the questions, whereas Exercise B helps students activate their schema of vocabulary about libraries before they listen to the passage. This way, the job of listening becomes easier and more like real life.
Sahr (2011: 3) argues that the post listening activities are often based on something from pre-listening or while-listening activities. Post-listening should not be looked at as testing. It is merely checking to see if the students understood the passage and can use what they heard in the future:
The post-listening task is the stage where teachers can lead learners beyond the listening text, as a gate open for further language practice.
At this point, the transcript of the listening material can be shown to students, although some EFL experts believe that this is not a good idea to do. Still, it is an excellent opportunity for students to get another look at the language contained in the listening track. Moreover, it can help students understand words and phrases that they didn’t understand when they were listening and notice some of the differences between spoken and written language.
Another thing to after listening is to set a speaking task. For example, if learners heard a joke, they can be asked to tell their favourite one in front of the class. Or to act in their way the situation they have just listened.
Also, the listening text should be personalized, finding ways that students can relate to the text. For example, if the listening is a monologue of a person expressing their opinion, students can be asked if they agree or disagree and give reasons for their position. It is a good way to practice speaking, but it also provides implication into the task.
Another step that does not have to be forgotten is detecting problems that could have occurred during listening. It is advisable to have a discussion about the problems which came up during the listening process, the sections considered the most difficult, what caused them confusion or misunderstanding.
In this chapter we have discussed about approaching a listening activity following the basis framework (pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening) that can be used to design a listening lesson that will develop students' listening. Conclusively, here is an example of how this framework can be used to exploit a song (after http://esol.britishcouncil.org and https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk):
Pre-listening:
Brainstorming: Students talk about different kinds of songs;
Speaking: Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it;
Students predict some words or expressions that might be in a love song;
While listening:
1st listening: Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad;
2nd listening: Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song;
3rd listening: Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in and correct them;
Post-listening:
Focus on content:
Discussing opinion: what they liked or didn't like about the song;
Deciding whether they would buy it or who they would buy it for;
Writing a review of the song for a newspaper or website;
Writing another verse for the song;
Focus on form:
Students look at the lyrics of the song and identify the verb forms;
Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean;
Students make notes of common collocations within the song.
3.5 Intensive Listening Activities:
In this section, I will suggest some ideas of activities which are verified and tested on intermediate learners and which are supposed to bring effectiveness and joy to listening in the language classroom.
News headlines (Scrivener, 2005):
This activity is based on a recording of the news headlines of the day, which can be recorded in the morning before the lesson. It is about the headlines, not the complete stories.
Pre-listening: Which people or places do you expect to hear mentioned in today’s news?
Listening:
Task 1: Which of the people or places you predicted do you hear mentioned?
Task 2: How many headlines are there?
Task 3: What are the key words in the first headline?
Task 4: What is the story about?
Task 5: Write out the text for the first headline.
Task 6: Mark the stressed words in the headline- first by predicting, then by checking with the recording.
Repeat Tasks 6 to 6 for each headline.
Further tasks:
What do you think will be in the full story that this headline is about?
Which headline was most interesting for you? Why?
Which story would you like to read more about or the Internet or in a newspaper article?
We can discuss one story- which one shall we talk about?
The tasks have to be set before each listening and the recordings have to be replayed as often as necessary in order for the students to find the answers to one task before moving on to the next. The recording should not be longer than one minute.
Jigsaw listening (Scrivener, 2005):
This technique is considered the teachers’ favourite. It involves a lot of message-oriented communication and useful group cooperation.
Learners are allowed to work at their own speed, controlling the CD player or tape recorder themselves and playing parts of a text until they are really happy with their understanding of it.
Working in small groups, learners listen to separate small parts of a longer recording, each group hearing different things;
They meet up, in pairs, threes or fours, with people from groups that listened to other parts of the recording;
They report to each other what they have heard and compare ideas, reach a conclusion or consensus or complete some specific tasks. For example, they might be asked to construct a full picture of the recording’s contents.
Preparation:
It is necessary to have enough CD players or tape recorders, one for each group. And, to make sure that students cannot accidentally hear parts of the recording from other group’ sections, teachers might need to rerecord and edit some recordings.
Task ideas:
Three or more different points of view of a single event, each on a separate recording. The task is to work out what actually happened. Useful additional materials might be a location map or diagram of the room. Example of events:
-accident reports;
-finding where someone might have lost their purse;
-witnesses of a crime;
-a party;
-an office;
-a factory process;
-a news story with additional details in each separate section.
Listen for lies:
For this activity, the teacher has to divide the class into two teams, A and B. One student at a time comes to the front of the class and reads aloud a passage which was carefully chosen by the teacher, e.g. a story or newspaper article. Then, the teacher asks them to read it aloud again, but to make some changes. Each time a lie (or change) is read out, the students must stand up. The first team to stand up gets a point. This game requires students to listen carefully and encourages them to remember important information and details.
In this chapter I have tried to describe a framework for listening development that could be applied to any listening text. This isn't the only way to develop our students listening or to structure a listening lesson, but it is a way that could be effective and motivating for students.
CHAPTER 4:
LISTENING LESSON PLANS
This chapter suggests some lesson ideas to serve as a model of how extensive and intensive listening can be used in the classroom (and not only).
Lesson Plan 1
(adapted from Miles Craven on http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/listening-lesson-plans/topic-based-lessons):
Lesson Plan 2
(adapted from Miles Craven on http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/listening-lesson-plans/topic-based-lessons):
Lesson Plan 3
(adapted from Miles Craven on http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/listening-lesson-plans/topic-based-lessons):
Lesson Plan 4
(adapted from Rachel Roberts on https://elt-resourceful.com/downloadable-lesson-materials/):
Lesson Plan 5:
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Anderson, A. & Linch, T. (1991). Listening. Oxford University Press. UK. pp. 69-154.
Bianchi, Francesca, & Ciabattoni, Tiziana (2008). Captions and Subtitles in EFL Learning: AnInvestigative Study in a Comprehensive Computer Environment. In: Baldry, Anthony/ Pavesi, Maria/Torsello, Carol/Taylor, Christopher (eds.): From Didactas to Ecolingua: An Ongoing Research Project on Translation and Corpus Linguistics. Trieste: EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste, pp. 69-90.
Brown, H. Douglas (2007). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Third Edition, pp. 299-32. : Pearson Education, Inc.
Barrett, B., & Sharma, P. (2005). The internet and Business English. Oxford: Summertown Publishing Ltd.
Brown, S. (2006). Teaching Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Byrne, D. (1988). Teaching Oral English: New Edition- London: Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers.
Celce-Murcia, M. & S. Hilles (1988). Techniques and Resources in Teaching Grammar Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Craven, Miles. http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/listening-lesson- plans/topic-based-lessons/ (May 2016).
Cutting, M. (2004). Making the Transition to Effective Self-access Listening. The Language Teacher, 28(6), pp. 21-24.
Dupuy, B. C. (1999). Narrow listening: An alternative way to develop and enhancelistening comprehension in students of French as a foreign language.System,27, pp. 351-361.
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Field, J. (2008). Listening in the language classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Field, J. (2009). Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Flowerdew, John & Lindsay, Miller (2005). Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice. , : Press.
Haines, S. Authentic Materials MET, VOL4/3 (1995), pp. 60-64.
Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching. : Longman Group
UK Limited, pp. 296 .
Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, pp. 448.
Hedge, Tricia (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 227-258.
Holden III, Wm. R., Extensive Listening: A new approach to an old problem, pp. 299- 312, http://www.hmt.u-toyama.ac.jp/kenkyu/kiyo49/william49.pdf (January 2016).
Horwitz, E.K. (2008). Becoming a language teacher: A practical guide to second language learning and teaching. Allyn & Bacon.
Kadagidze, Lamara. (2006).Different types of Listening Materials, in IBSU International Refereed Multi-diciplinary Scientific Journal, No 1, 2006.
Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. New York: Longman.
Larsen-Feeman, Diane. (2000). Techniques and Principals in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laubach Literacy Action (1996). Teaching Adults: An ESL resource book. Syracuse, NY: New Reader’s Press.
Littlewood, W. (1984). Foreign and Second Language Learning-Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCaughey, K. (2015). Practical Tips for Increasing Listening Practice Time. English Teaching Forum. http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/53_1_article_practical_tips_incre asing_listening_.pdf. pp. 2-13. (April 2016).
Mendelsohn, D. J. (1994). Learning to listen: A strategy-based approach for the
second-language learner. San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.
Nation, P (2007). The four strands. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1(1), pp. 1-11.
Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. New York: Routledge.
Nunan, D. (1991). Language Teaching Methodology. Prentice Hall.
Nunan, D. (2002). Listening in Language Learning. In: J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya, eds. Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 238-241.
Oxford, Rebecca. (2001). Integrated Skills in the ESL/EFL Classroom. ERIC Digest ED456670. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education, http://www.ericdigests.org/2002-2/esl.htm (February 2016)
Peachley, N. (2010). .A framework for planning a listening skills lesson, http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/a-framework-planning-a listening-skills- lesson (January 2016).
Peterson, E. (2010). Internet-based resources for developing listening. Studies in Self- Access Learning Journal, 1 (2). pp. 139-154.
Reese, G. (2003). Pre-listening activities. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/pre- listening-activities (May 2016).
Renandya, W.A. (2011). Extensive listening in the second language classroom. In
Widodo, H.P., & Cirocki, A. (Eds.), Innovation and Creativity in ELT Methodology. New York: Nova Science Publishers. pp. 28-41.
Renandya, W.A. (2012). The tape is too fast. Modern English Teacher, 21(3), pp. 5-9.
Richards, C, Jack. (2008). Teaching Listening and Speaking. From Theory to Practice Cambridge University Press.
Ridgway, T. (2000). Listening strategies—I beg your pardon? ELT Journal, 54, pp. 179- 185.
Rixon, S. (1986). Developing Listening Skills- Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Rost, Michael. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening. : Pearson Education Limited.
Sahr, S. (2011). Planning a Listening Activity. TESOL Connections. https://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/new-resource-library/-planning-a-listening- activity.pdf?sfvrsn=0. (May 2016), pp. 2-4.
Simpson, Adam, J. (2015). How to use songs in the English language classroom. https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/how-use-songs-english-language- classroom. (June 2016).
Scrivener, J., (2005). Learning Teaching. A Guidebook for English Language Teachers. Second edition. Macmillan, pp. 170-183.
Suárez, M., Pujolà, J.T. En M. Eisenmann & T. Summer, T., (2012) Basic Issues in EFL Teaching and Learning, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 83-91.
Szendeffy, John de. (2008). A Practical Guide to Using Computers in Language Teaching. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Thorn, S. (2009) Mining Listening Texts. Modern English Teacher, 18 (2), pp.5-13.
Ur, P. (1984). Teaching Listening Comprehension- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vandergrift, L. (2006). Second language listening: Listening ability or language proficiency? The Modern Language Journal, 90, pp. 6 – 18.
Vandergrift, L. Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence, http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67. (March 2016).
Vandergrift, L., Goh, C., (2012). Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening. Metacognition in Action. Ney York: Routledge.
Vanderplank, Robert (1993): A Very Verbal Medium: Language Learning Through Closed Captions. In: TESOL Journal3(1), pp. 10-14.
Vanderplank, Robert (1990): Paying Attention to the Words: Practical and Theoretical Problems in Watching Television Programmes with Uni-lingual (CEEFAX) Sub-titles. In:System18(2), pp. 221-234.
Vyner, Luke& Vyner, James. Live from London: How well do you know each other?. http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/live-from-authentic-interviews/live-from- authentic-video-lessons/live-from-london-how-well-do-you-know-each- other/555194.article (June 2016).
Willis, J. (1981) Teaching English through English- Hong Kong, Sing Cheong Printing Co. Ltd.
Wilson, Jeremy J. (2008) How to Teach Listening. Harlow:Pearson Education Limited
Yagang, F. (1993) Listening: “Problems and Solutions” – English Language Teaching Forum (January 2016).
http://www.elt-resourceful.com (June 2016)
http://www.esol.britishcouncil.org (May 2016)
http://www.onestopenglish.com (June 2016)
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk (May 2016)
Copyright Notice
© Licențiada.org respectă drepturile de proprietate intelectuală și așteaptă ca toți utilizatorii să facă același lucru. Dacă consideri că un conținut de pe site încalcă drepturile tale de autor, te rugăm să trimiți o notificare DMCA.
Acest articol: Intensive And Extensive Listening Activities At The Intermediate Level For Efl Learners (ID: 116960)
Dacă considerați că acest conținut vă încalcă drepturile de autor, vă rugăm să depuneți o cerere pe pagina noastră Copyright Takedown.