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Why Using Extensive Listening in Teaching English as a Foreign Language?

In teaching English as a foreign language, we know that there are four

important skills, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Most of people

say that listening skill is the difficult one to teach or learn, however we know that

listening is the most important skill in English. In teaching listening, there are two

famous techniques or strategies used, those are known as intensive and extensive

listening. Intensive listening is the often one used by teachers to teach EFL

students. It is really helpful for them it needs full of concentration on it. Also,

intensive listening is done seriously, it means that EFL students can understand

what they hear clearly because of repetition. While some teachers continue to use

it as a main technique in teaching listening as a foreign language,others use

extensive listening as a better way to teach EFL students. That is, extensive

listening is the one of strategy who provide three main benefits to EFL students.

They are experience, easily to understand the material clearly, and speed

recognition is built. Those three advantages are as the reason why extensive

listening becoming the most important thing and useful for teaching listening as a

foreign language.

One reason for extensive listening becoming the good way to teach

listening as a foreign language is it gives experience to EFL students. Renandya

and Farrell (2010) explain some aspects that differentiate listening from other

skills. They state that listening is fast, variable, with blurry word boundaries and

has to be processed in real time.

José Luis Borges Ucán (2010) states all these characteristics make this

skill challenging to students. If we compare listening to reading we find that

although they are both receptive skills, they are both challenging in different

ways. For instance, when students have reading material and face problems

understanding a sentence, they can always go back and read the sentence again.

This is not possible if they have listening material which is fast and has to be

processed in real time.

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When extensive listening is used as the strategy in teaching listening as a

foreign language, the most important thing that should be got by students is they

feel comfortable or enjoyable with the material. It means that they like it because

of the interesting one, for example: watching movie. When they enjoy the

material, immediately they get experience of the style of using pronunciation,

accent, and culture of the language so that when they are involved in conversation,

indirectly they are habitually with what they have heard. They listen and produce

clearly following the accent they have got.

In addition for experience reason of the benefits of using extensive

listening in teaching English as a foreign language is understanding the material

easily. Often, teachers choose the material by their own self, sometimes the

material assigned by them is too fast and sometimes it is needed more

concentration to understand it. However, when they are asked to choose the

material freely, for instance, watching a movie that they like and interest in it,

besides they enjoy it, unconsciously they are also forced to understand the story,

and should focus on the language they hear. It means that besides learning the

culture of language, they also try to hear carefully and clearly, and the most

important thing is they like the material.

The last reasons from the benefits of extensive listening is the speed

recognition is built. While someone listens to someone else speaks with same

language (mother tongue). That someone will response the someone else’s talking

quickly. It is because that someone understands thoroughly the language used.

That is because he or she has what we call speed recognition. It means that

someone can response fast without thinking before. That is why the extensive

listening improving speed recognition to EFL students. When they enjoy and like

the material that they hear, and the such way of their learning is becoming routine,

they are not to worry to listen English native speaker speaks because they are

familiar with that such thing. They can response the sentence spoken and guess

the meaning quickly, and skip the words that they don’t understand.

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One view that makes some teachers consider that intensive listening is

more important than extensive listening in teaching English as a foreign language

is, extensive listening is too much wasting the students’ time and makes the

students to be lazy. Some techers claim that students must be full of concentration

on what they hear, so that intensive listening is really needed more than extensive

listening with the reason such of ‘full of concentration. They teach what we call as

a repetition of listening, that is listening the material in several time untill

understand the story thoroughly. However, that view above can be refuted.

Essentially the main purpose of the listening itself is to get the feeling of language

and surely they must enjoy and like the material first. Sometimes the material

assigned by teachers is boring and too fast. They are not asked to guess the

meaning of the sentence, but to force understand the sentence thoroughly. Then, it

causes an uncomfortable of them to the material and hard to understand the story

so that the material is repeated untill they understand it. Then, they will get tired

although at the end they understand it. However, they don’t get the feeling of

language from the material they hear. It is against with the extensive listening that

gives priority to the comfortable and suitable material to EFL students. Based on

the research . most students obtained benefits from extensive lestening. These are

some of the answers related to the benefits obtained.

“I understand the audio material and my classes of English easily.”

“I understand more how to pronunce word.”

“It helps me with my speaking.”

“I have learned about the culture and customs in other places.”

“I know much more vocabulary.”

“I can listen more carefully.”

“I is much easier to understand when someone speaks at a faster pace. I

understand better when they use contractions and listening to English is not tiring

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anymore because you understand easily what you are listening to. It feels as

though I have always been listening to English.”

Based on the comments from students, extensive listening helps them to

increase their vocabulary, to improve listening comprehension, to feel more

comfortable when listening to English, and to increase their general knowledge

(José Luis Borges Ucán, 2010).

In teaching listening as a foreign language, techers have to make their

students not only understand what they hear, but also learn and feel the style of

using language. So that although they talks as not good as native speakers, they

still can listen as well and clearly. Therefore the extensive listening is really

needed in teaching English as aforeign language.Waring (2003) listed the

following advantages of using extensive listening in ELT: Speed recognition is

built, learners are helped to chunk, text is more likely tobe enjoyed, and focus is

on understanding and interacting with the text (José Luis Borges Ucán, 2010).

References

Liu,MingMing, 2009. Extensive or Repeated Listening? A comparison of their effects on the use of listening strategies Retrieved June 25, 2012 from http://lib.csghs.tp.edu.tw/05-1.pdf

Mashori,Ghulam Mustafa, 2006.Analyzing the Forms & Techniques of Teaching Listening ComprehensionRetrieved June 25, 2012 from http://www.bzu.edu.pk/jrlanguages/Vol2004/GhulamMustafaMashori-4.pdf

Renandya, W. A. & Farrell, T. S. C. , 2010‘Teacher, the tape is too fast!’ Extensive listening in ELT. ELT Journal Advance Access published March 31, 2010, doi:10.1093/eltccq015

Sulistyowati,Titis, 2011. Bringing Movies Into The Listening Classroom To Introduce Authentic Material To The EFL StudentsRetrieved June 25, 2012 from http://eprints.umk.ac.id/265/

Ucán,José Luis Borges,2010. Benefits of using extensive listening in ELT Retrieve June 25, 2012 from http://fel.uqroo.mx/adminfile/memorias/borges_ucan_luis.pdf

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