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    What Is Listening Skill?

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    Elsa Vargas
    The document discusses the importance of listening skills in language learning. It notes that listening was historically overlooked but is actually an active process. It defines listening in various ways, including as receiving and constructing meaning from messages. While hearing is passive, listening is active and learned. The document then outlines different methods in language teaching that emphasized listening skills to varying degrees, from grammar translation to current communicative and task-based approaches. It concludes by describing the stages in teaching listening - preparing learners before listening, activities and tasks during listening, and checking comprehension after listening.

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    What Is Listening Skill?

    Uploaded by

    Elsa Vargas
    45 views5 pages
    The document discusses the importance of listening skills in language learning. It notes that listening was historically overlooked but is actually an active process. It defines listening in various ways, including as receiving and constructing meaning from messages. While hearing is passive, listening is active and learned. The document then outlines different methods in language teaching that emphasized listening skills to varying degrees, from grammar translation to current communicative and task-based approaches. It concludes by describing the stages in teaching listening - preparing learners before listening, activities and tasks during listening, and checking comprehension after listening.

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    The document discusses the importance of listening skills in language learning. It notes that listening was historically overlooked but is actually an active process. It defines listening in various ways, including as receiving and constructing meaning from messages. While hearing is passive, listening is active and learned. The document then outlines different methods in language teaching that emphasized listening skills to varying degrees, from grammar translation to current communicative and task-based approaches. It concludes by describing the stages in teaching listening - preparing learners before listening, activities and tasks during listening, and checking comprehension after listening.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    45 views5 pages

    What Is Listening Skill?

    Uploaded by

    Elsa Vargas
    The document discusses the importance of listening skills in language learning. It notes that listening was historically overlooked but is actually an active process. It defines listening in various ways, including as receiving and constructing meaning from messages. While hearing is passive, listening is active and learned. The document then outlines different methods in language teaching that emphasized listening skills to varying degrees, from grammar translation to current communicative and task-based approaches. It concludes by describing the stages in teaching listening - preparing learners before listening, activities and tasks during listening, and checking comprehension after listening.

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    What is Listening Skill?

    Nunan (1997) calls the listening skill as the ‘Cinderella Skill’ which is overlooked by its elder
    sister speaking in language learning. Listening received little attention in language teaching and
    learning, because teaching methods emphasized productive skills and listening was
    characterized as passive activity (Richards & Renandya, 2010). However, researchers have
    revealed that listening is not a passive skill but an active process of constructing meaning from
    a stream of sounds. Listening can be considered the fundamental skill to speaking, because
    without understanding the input at the right level, any learning cannot begin.
    Some various definitions of listening are presented below to highlight its different aspects.
    Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to
    spoken and/or non-verbal messages (Brownell, 2002).
    Listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear (Helgesen,
    2003).
    Listening comprehension is a highly complex problem-solving activity that can be broken
    down into a set of distinct sub-skills (Byrnes, 1984).
    Listening is an active and interactional process in which a listener receives speech
    sounds and tries to attach meaning to the spoken words. The listener tries to
    understand the intended message of the oral text to respond effectively to oral
    communication.
    Listening and hearing are considered different process. While hearing is considered as
    physical, passive and natural process, listening is physical & mental, active and learnt
    process and is defined as a skill.
    Although listeners can understand messages presented at a rate of 380 words per
    minute, an average person speaks at a rate of about 150 words per minute. The
    following table shows the percentage of the use of language skills with formal years of
    training in daily life.
    Percentage of Communication

    Mode of Formal Years of Percentage of Time


    Communication Training Used
    Writing 12 years 9%
    Reading 6 - 8 years 16%
    Speaking 1-2 years 30%
    Listening 0 – few years 45%
    Historical Perspective
    Grammar Translation
    More than a century ago, as a dominant method of language teaching, grammar translation
    gave no importance to listening skill, because the aim was to read and translate scientific texts
    from target language (mostly Latin) to native language. Then, there was a paradigm shift from
    written language to oral skills with the emerge of …..
    Direct Method
    Around the turn of the 19th century, a method arose that served to right the shortcomings of
    the grammar-translation method. It was totally based on teaching by using only the target
    language. As it was based on the natural process of first language acquisition, listening was the
    core of the method.
    Audio Lingual Method
    In the second half of the 20th century, Audio Lingual Method emphasized the importance of
    listening skill and gave priority to oral proficiency. There were abundant use of language
    laboratories, tapes and cassettes to achieve nativelike pronunciation.
    Input Hypothesis
    During 70s, alternative methods were proposed by various researchers, listening skill was given
    prominence as the common characteristics of these methods. According to Krashen’s Input
    Hypothesis (1985), learners could learn best by exposure to comprehensible input which was
    slightly beyond their current level competence. Krashen (1985) pointed out that second
    language learning was similar to first language acquisition, thus listening was the first step on
    the way to language proficiency.
    TPR
    Similarly, in his Total Physical Response, Asher (1977) stated that oral language was primary to
    written language and listening comprehension should precede speech production. He also
    emphasized that learners were supposed to listen and obey the orders given by the instructor
    through actions.
    Communicative Language Teaching
    Language teaching was based on a view of language as communication and listening was the
    most prevailing part of daily life communication.
    Communicative Approach
    Context, four language skills were taught in an integrated way, supporting one after another.
    Listening was primarily used as a prompter or a first step before productive skills.
    Content-based instruction
    Listening and speaking were practiced in an integrated way such as viewing and discussion of a
    film and performing an interview.
    TBL
    Task-based language teaching, tasks provide both the oral and written input and output
    processing for language acquisition.
    Nowadays
    In the light of this shift to online teaching, now listening plays an important role in language
    virtual classroom. The current developments in both visual and audio technology enrich the
    varieties of listening materials and help to draw particularly young learners’ attention and
    motivate them better to reach the learning objectives.

    Stages in Teaching listening skills

    Good listening lessons go beyond the listening task itself with related activities before and after
    the listening. Here is the basic structure:

     Before Listening

    Prepare your learners by introducing the topic and finding out what they already know
    about it. A good way to do this is to have a brainstorming session and some discussion
    questions related to the topic. Then provide any necessary background information for
    the listening activity.

    Pre-Listening Tasks can:

    o Help teachers find out about what students already know about the topic.
    o Prepare students for the vocabulary and language structures in the text.
    o Helps mitigate the anxiety which comes from listening in a foreign language, by
    providing a clear context.
    o Offer opportunities for class discussion and more interaction among students.

     During Listening

    Be specific about what students need to listen for. They can listen for selective details or
    general content, or for an emotional tone such as happy, surprised, or angry. If they are
    not marking answers or otherwise responding while listening, tell them ahead of time
    what will be required afterward.

    Well-designed activities can help students to:

    o Identify what’s important in a passage.


    o Perceive the text structure.
    o Keep themselves concentrated throughout the passage.
    o Show their understanding
    o or non-understanding of the passage.

    Most While-listening activities focus on these subskills:

    Listening for the gist

    Listening for specific information

    Listening for the speaker’s attitude or opinion

     After Listening

    Check and Summarizing: One of the activities that a teacher can do to check
    understanding is to ask student to summarize the information they heard, this can be
    done orally or in writing.

    Discussions: You can ask students to have a short discussion about the topic, the topic
    for the discussion must be taken from the listening task that they previously did and
    should be interesting enough to inspire comments and debates.

    Always finish with an activity to extend the topic and help students remember new
    vocabulary.

    The following ideas will help make your listening activities successful.

     Noise
    Reduce distractions and noise during the listening segment.
     Repetition
    Read or play the text a total of 2 times. Tell students in advance you will repeat it. This
    will reduce their anxiety about not catching it all the first time. You can also ask them to
    listen for different information each time through and then you may repeat more.
     Content
    Unless your text is merely a list of items, talk about the content as well as specific
    language used. The material should be interesting and appropriate for your class level in
    topic, speed, and vocabulary.

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