Chapter 1 of how to teach listening
- 1. How to Teach Listening Chapter 1: Listening in the World and in Language Learning Lecturer: Kong Seang Eng
- 2. Why and how of listening-motivation and mechanics Do you know that animals can listen? Frogs, kangaroos, bats, for example, are able to listen for different purposes. What about human?
- 3. Why and how of listening-motivation and mechanics The basic purposes for us are information- gathering and pleasure, and some other reasons. In addition to these basic purposes, hearing sounds can arouse the imagination and enrich lives for human.
- 4. Why and how of listening-motivation and mechanics Our listening can be classified as: 1. Listening for gist 2. Listening for specific information 3. Listening in detail 4. Inferential listening
- 5. The characteristics of spoken English Because of the new recent trend of text- messaging and chat rooms, writing has become to take the some of the features of speaking: - informality - lack of attention to punctuation - transience (being temporary) - real time interaction
- 6. The characteristics of spoken English Even though both listening and reading are receptive skills, there are some significant differences between them. - First, reading takes place over space, while listening takes place over time.
- 7. The characteristics of spoken English - Then, oral data has no recorded and invisible ink. - This data is based on spontaneous performance and disappear so soon. - As listening takes place over time, not space, the gaps between words in writing are not seen.
- 8. The characteristics of spoken English Some other key differences: 1. Elision: When sounds are omitted, usually at the beginning or end of a word, in order to make pronunciation of the utterance easier for the speaker. Ex: She sat next to the wall. In here, the t of next is elided into the t of to (neksta)
- 9. The characteristics of spoken English - Assimilation: takes place when the first of a series of sound changes to accommodate subsequent sounds. Ex: Tony’s a heart breaker. The t sound in heart changes to either a glottal stop or a p in this context. (hapbreaker)
- 10. The characteristics of spoken English - Intrusion: when a sound is added in order to allow the speaker to link up the two words more easily. Ex: He doesn’t have an original idea in his head. Here, an intrusive r is actually between idea and in (aidiarin)
- 11. The characteristics of spoken English - Another important feature is that formulaic phrases are often chucked, which means that the phrases are said rapidly as if they are one word. Ex: know what I mean? (nouwodaimi:n)
- 12. The characteristics of spoken English - And some other sound systems and phonological concerns are also to be noticed. Ex: Stress, intonation, tone, voice volume.............
- 13. Why listening is difficult All in all, we may be able to conclude that listening is a more difficult task than reading. And the difficulties can be: characteristics of the message, the delivery, the listener and the environment.
- 14. Why listening is difficult 1. Characteristics of the message - Words or phrases spoken out can be confusing. - There are, of course, ‘slips of the ear’—simple mishearing.
- 15. Why listening is difficult - Linguistic difficulties, such as unknown words, lexical density (short spaces of time between content words, forcing the listener to concentrate harder) and complex grammatical structure.
- 16. Why listening is difficult - Also, there are non linguistic characteristics of the message include familiarity of the topic, text type and cultural accessibility may also be the factors.
- 17. Characteristics of the delivery 2. Characteristics of the delivery Mode of delivery is a vital factor. Here, we will focus on reciprocal and non-reciprocal listening.
- 18. Characteristics of the delivery - Reciprocal listening involves interaction between two or more than two people, which means that there is a conversation.
- 19. Characteristics of the delivery - Repair strategy (speakers can react/ask to slow down......) is available here.
- 20. Characteristics of the delivery - While for nonreciprocal listening, the listeners has no opportunities to do that as they are in a situation which they can only listen, such as watching TV, listening to a radio and so on.
- 21. Characteristics of the delivery - In these circumstances, the listeners cannot control over the input, which means that they cannot react directly to the speakers.
- 22. Characteristics of the delivery - So surprising that when American shows were first shown on British TV, British people did not understand much because of American accent.
- 23. Characteristics of the delivery - Therefore, nonreciprocal listening is more difficult than the reciprocal one. - And there are actually more characteristics of delivery, such as: organization, duration, number of speakers, and accent.
- 24. Characteristics of the environment Environmental conditions: temperature, background noise, defective equipment and so on may affect the listening performance. Another major problem which is not usually listed is the role of memory of the listeners.
- 25. Characteristics of the environment While words are being processed, others are coming. So, the mind is being flooded with words. So, how can we help listeners to avoid being overloaded?
- 26. Characteristics of the environment A technique that helps reduce the memory load is the process of activating listeners’ prior knowledge. And this process is also called activating schemata.
- 27. Characteristics of the environment This will get listeners into the topic and help them develop their expectations of the input, which is a very crucial factor for them to be bale to predict the content.
- 28. Bottom-up versus top-down approaches to listening While listening can be very difficult, researchers have two listening models to introduce: bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up model focuses on the meanings of each small pieces of the language in the text
- 29. Bottom-up versus top-down approaches to listening Top-down model is to do with use of the background knowledge to predict content. So, the top-down model is, at least in part, based on the listeners; much of the comprehension relies on what happens in mind even before the listening has begun.
- 30. Bottom-up versus top-down approaches to listening Whereas the bottom-approach depends more on the sounds heard. There has been much debate recently about which models. Until recently, it is revealed that most errors caused by the mishearing of the individual words, which is a failure of the bottom-up approach.
- 31. Bottom-up versus top-down approaches to listening Some research, on the other hand, hints that it is the top-down approach which causes the mistakes in listening tasks. In this, it says that students know the topic and hear some familiar words. Then, they make wild guesses about the content.
- 32. Bottom-up versus top-down approaches to listening However, it is still a matter of ongoing research. But what we are sure is that we use both models when we listen. This is a called interactive model, a combination of the two.
- 33. Why students should listen to English Access the world Pleasure Travel/tourism Work purposes and academic reqiurement
- 34. The place of listening in language teaching Among the four macro skills, listening is probably the least understood, the least researched and historically the least valued. But because of the trend of giving importance to listening, the method of audiolinugalism has been introduced.
- 35. The place of listening in language teaching The method uses recorded drills, and put the listening as the utmost importance of the teaching language pedagogy.
- 36. The place of listening in language teaching What has been in essential factor in helping to building up listening capability. So, what does aural input consist of? 1. Target grammar/vocabulary 2. Discourse markers 3. Examples of pragmatic use of language 4. Features of intonation .......etc.
- 37. The place of listening in language teaching There is a distinction between roughly-tuned and finely-tuned input. - Roughly-tuned input: It is approximately at students’ level; it allows them to actually understand the message even though there may be some aspects of the message that goes beyond the comprehension.
- 38. The place of listening in language teaching Finely-tuned input is more carefully controlled. It does not have complex grammatical or vocabulary items far beyond the students’ current levels. And is usually designed not to distract the students from the target grammar or vocabulary.
- 39. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Assuming that all of you are quite familiar with CLT. But why CLT with Listening? CLT brought with it significant development in terms of listening to L2.
- 40. Communicative Language Learning (CLT) It focuses more on authenticity of materials, contexts and responses. It uses findings from research into pragmatics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics in order to show how real communication takes place.
- 41. Communicative Language Learning (CLT) In CLT, it involves you more in personal, emotional or critical responses to the content, and less drilling and repetition. Listening in CLT has a communicative purpose in that students are expected to use the information they hear, just as we do when listening outside the classroom.
- 42. Hearing English in context The characteristic product of language teaching is fragments no matter what methodology or approach we use. So, learning a language is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
- 43. Hearing English in context Likewise, listening to a piece of extended discourse gives the students the whole, complete view of what English sounds like. Then, listening can bring together the fragments.
- 44. Listening and language learning (six myths) We have begun talking about some facts about listening. And there are a number of myths: 1. You can’t teach people how to listen. 2. Listening is a passive skill. 3. It is easier for students to understand native speakers of English than foreign speakers of English.
- 45. Listening and language learning (six myths) 4. The skills involved in listening to a foreign language are the same as those that we use for listening to our native language. 5. While listening in class, students shouldn’t try understand every word. 6. Students shouldn’t be allowed to read the scripts of recordings.
- 46. Conclusion In this chapter we have: - looked at how the ears and brain work when we listen. - examined the characteristics of the spoken English. - talked about some difficulties in listening. - discussed bottom-up, top-down and interactive models. - looked at reasons for students listening to English. - examined the place of listening in language teaching. - talked about listening as input and as a model for one’s own speech. - discussed about how students’ confidence can be boosted. - examined some myths.