teaching of general english k.s.maniam college of education

TEACHING OF GENERAL ENGLISH

K.S.Maniam College of Education

Issues for discussion:1. Why is listening so difficult for students?2. What do we listen to in everyday life?3. What are the characteristics of the

listening process?4. What are the principles of teaching

listening?5. What are the common activities in

teaching listening? K.S.Maniam College of Education

.1 Why does listening seem so difficult? It is becoming more and more necessary to

understand spoken English in many situations, e.g. face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, business meetings, lectures, speeches, television, etc.

Among the four skills, foreign language learners often complain that listening is the most difficult to acquire.


Reasons why listening is often neglected in language teachingLack of teaching materials;Lack of equipment;Lack of training in how to use the equipment;Listening is not included on many important

tests;Lack of real-life situations where language

learners need to understand spoken English;Lessons tend to test rather than to train

student’ listening skills.


Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than reading because:

Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects and accents, stress, rhythms, intonations, mispronunciations, etc.;

The listener has little/no control over the speed of the input of the spoken material;

The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material);

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The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning;

Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. round the classroom) or the media that transmit sounds;

The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.


.2 What do we listen to in everyday life?Since we are teaching our students English

not only to help them pass exams, but also to prepare them to use English in real life, it is important to think about the situations they will listen to English in real life and then think about the listening exercises we do in class.


Even at the beginning stage, we need to give our students a variety of listening exercises to prepare them for real life use of language.

In most cases, the listening materials in the classroom are daily conversations or stories, but in reality we listen to far more things.

e.g.


Telephone conversations about business;Lessons or lectures given in English;Instructions in English;Watching movies in English;Dealing with tourists;Interviews with foreign-enterprises;Socializing with foreigners;Listening to English songs;-


Radio news in English;Conversations with foreigners;Watching television programmes in

English;Shop assistants who sell goods to

foreigners;International trade fairs;Negotiations with foreign businessmen;Hotel and restaurant services.


8.3 Characteristics of the listening processIt is important to understand the

characteristics or process behind these listening situations so that we as teachers can design appropriate activities to help our students to develop effective listening habits and strategies.


1. Formal or informal?2. Rehearsed or non-rehearsed?3. Can the listener interact with the

speaker nor not? Listening to English songs Socializing with foreigners Radio news in English Watching television programmes in

English Negotiations with foreign businessmen Hotel and restaurant services


Characteristics of the listening: (Ur 1996:106-7)

Spontaneity. We listen to people peaking spontaneously and informally without rehearsing what whey are going to say ahead of time.

Context. While listening, we know the relationship between the listener and the speaker. The situation helps to predict what we are going to hear.

Visual clues. Facial expression, gestures, and other body language, and the surrounding environment, these visual clues help us predict and understand what we hear.

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Listener’s response. In a conversation, we can interrupt the speaker and ask for repetition or clarification.

Speaker’s adjustment. The speaker can adjust the way of speaking according to the listener’s reaction, e.g. he/she may rephrase or elaborate (to put it in more details).


8.4 Principles of teaching listeningFocus on process.Combine listening and speaking.Focus on comprehending meaning.Grade difficulty level appropriately.


Focus on processListening is not a passive activity. We must do many things to process information that we are receiving.

Paying attention. Constructing meaningful messages in the

mind by relating what we hear to what we already know (previous knowledge).

So it is very important to design tasks the performance of which show how well the students have comprehended the listening material.


Combine listening and speakingTwo problems with the traditional listening

classroom: No opportunities to practise listening and

speaking skills together;The questions only test the students, rather

than train the students how to listen or how to develop listening strategies.


Focus on comprehending meaningIn the traditional textbooks, the listening

exercises are to test the students’ memory, not their listening comprehension.

Psycholinguistic studies have shown that people do not remember the exact form of the message they hear, i.e., they don’t remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning.


Grade difficulty level appropriatelyThree factors that may affect the difficulty level of listening tasks:

Type of language used; Task or purpose in listening;Context in which the listening occurs.


Which of the following would you use for intermediate middle school students? In what order? A videotape of a talk by a native speaker

about the school life of middle school students in the United States;

A live talk by a competent English-speaking Chinese psychologist about effective study habits;

An audiotape of an interview with a native English speaker talking about her experiences living in China;

An audiotape of the news from CRI (China Radio International)

-K.S.Maniam College of Education

The teacher need to evaluate the tasks provided in textbooks, adapt and design tasks to provide more variety. Variety does not only help students remain interested and motivated to learn, but also provide practise in the many types of listening situations which learners will encounter in real life.


Common activities in teaching listening

Pre-listening activities

While-listening activities

Post-listening activities


Pre-listening activitiesPredicting Setting the scene Listening for the gist Listening for specific information


PredictingGood listeners are good predictors.There are many different activities that

can be used to encourage students to predict the content of what they are about to hear.

Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students’ comprehension. “They attract students’ attention and help and encourage them to focus on the subject in hand” (Ur, 1984:30).


Using pictures for predictionIn the beginning the students may have

difficulty in predicting. In this case the teacher can help them by asking leading questions.

e.g.


e.g. 1

T: Where are they? What are they doing? What is the relationship between them?


e.g. 2

T: What do you see in the picture? What is behind the trees? What is in the tree? What is in the river?


Another type of predicting task is to let students read the listening comprehension questions before they listen.


Setting the sceneThe teacher can help provide the background

information to activate learners’ schema, so they will be better prepared to understand what they hear.

e.g. A passage about Michael Jackson


Listening for the gist Listening for the gist is similar to

skimming a passage in reading. The key is to ask students one or two questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage.

Notice that students can answer the gist questions even though they do not understand every word or phrase in the passage.


Listening for specific informationThere are situations in real life where we

listen only for some specific details and ignore the rest of the entire message. e.g. weather forecast, announcements in train stations/airports

It is important to expose our students to a variety of types of listening texts for a variety of purposes so that they will develop a variety of listening strategies to use for different situations.


Summary on pre-listening activities We may use more than one kind of pre-

listening activity; Pre-listening tasks should not take much

time; The purpose of pre-listening activities is to

activate the students’ schema, i.e. to provide context.


8.6 While-listening activitiesThe while-listening stage is the most difficult

for the teacher to control, because this is where the students need to pay attention and process the information actively.

Some tasks for while-listening activities:


No specific responses For stories, or anything that is interesting, humourous, or dramatic, we just have the students listen and enjoy it.


Listen and tick


Listen and sequence


Listen and actTotal Physical Response: for beginners

“Stand up”, “Point to the …”; for intermediate learners

“Pretend you’re …(doing something)”


Listen and draw (p. 91)


Listen and fillIt is important NOT to overdo this type of tasks, since it gives students the impression that they need to understand every word.

We may ask the students to fill in the blanks with function words, say, prepositions.


Listen and guesse.g. For height, appearance, and personalities

Four clues about an animal


Advantages of the above listening activities

They personalize the lesson and make the listening interesting.

They integrate listening with the other skills, especially speaking.


Summary on while-listening activities Most of the time, it is helpful to provide a

task for the students to do something while they are listening.

By providing a variety of types of tasks, students learn to listen for a variety of purposes, which better prepares them for listening in the real world outside the classroom.


.7 Post-listening activitiesThe post-listening stage is where the teacher

can determine how well the students have understood what they listened to.

One important point to keep in mind is whether we are testing the students’ listening comprehension or their memory.

It is more common for people to understand more than they can remember.


Some types of post-listening activitiesMultiple choice questionsAnswering questionsNote-taking and gap-fillingDictogloss


Multiple choice questionse.g. Compare Exercise A and Exercise B:


Answering questionsOpen-ended questions and inference questions can be asked.


Note-taking and gap-filling

for a summary of the text


DictoglossPreparation: briefly talking about the

topic and key wordsDictation: for two times, first time

focusing on the meaning, and second time taking extensive notes

Reconstruction: working in pairs/groups, reconstructing the text

Analysing and correction: comparing their own version with the original


Summary on post-listening activitiesDon’t demand students to remember more

details than a native-speaker would in a real-life situation;

Don’t spend too much time giving students practise with traditional test-taking questions;

Integrate listening tasks with speaking and writing.


8 ConclusionWe must know the nature of listening, both in real language use and in language classrooms

Focus on the process of listening rather than on the result of listening.

Don’t merely test the memory.


Thank you!


teaching of general english k.s.maniam college of education

Documents

maniam college of educationk

listening materials

listening process

variety of listening

students english

real life use of language

everyday life

english songs