Modern Methods of Teaching Listening
Skills
Effective, modern methods of
teaching listening skills encompass everything from interactive exercises
to multimedia resources. Listening skills are best learned through simple,
engaging activities that focus more on the learning process than on
the final product. Whether you are working with a large group of students
or a small one, you can use any of the following examples to develop
your own methods for teaching students how to listen well.
Interpersonal Activities
- One effective
and nonthreatening way for students to develop stronger listening skills
is through interpersonal activities, such as mock interviews and storytelling.
Assign the students to small groups of two or three, and then give them
a particular listening activity to accomplish. For example, you may
have one student interview another for a job with a company or for an
article in a newspaper. Even a storytelling activity, such as one that
answers the question "What was your favorite movie from last year?"
can give students the opportunity to ask one another questions and then
to practice active listening skills.
Group Activities
- Larger
group activities also serve as a helpful method for teaching listening
skills to students. You can begin with a simple group activity. For
the first part, divide students into groups of five or larger and instruct
them to learn one hobby or interest of at least two other group members.
Encourage them to ask clarifying questions during the activity, and
you may allow them to take notes if helpful. However, as time passes
and their skills grow, you should limit students to only writing notes
after the completion of the first part of the group activity. For the
second part, have the students sit in a large circle, and then have
each individual student share the name and the hobby or interest of
the group members that she or he met. This second part of the group
activity can also lend itself to additional listening exercises. For
example, you may ask students to name a number of the hobbies and interests
identified during the sharing session.
Audio Segments
- You can
also teach listening skills through audio segments of radio programs,
online podcasts, instructional lectures and other audio messages. You
should model this interactive listening process in class with your students,
and then instruct them to repeat the exercise on their own. First, instruct
students to prepare for listening by considering anything that they
will want to learn from the content of the audio segment. Once they
have written down or shared these ideas, then play the audio segment,
allowing the students to take notes if helpful. Once they have gained
confidence and experience, repeat this activity but instruct students
to not take notes until the completion of the audio segment. You can
use shorter or longer audio segments, and you can choose more accessible
or more challenging material for this type of exercise.
Video Segments
- Another
helpful resource for teaching listening skills are video segments, including
short sketches, news programs, documentary films, interview segments,
and dramatic and comedic material. As with audio segments, select the
portion and length of the video segment based on the skill level of
your students. With your students, first watch the segment without any
sound and discuss it together. Encourage the students to identify what
they think will be the content of the segment. Then, watch the segment
again, this time with sound, allowing students to take notes if helpful
for their skill level. After the completion of the video segment, you
can have students write a brief summary of the segment, or you can take
time to discuss as a group how the segment compares with the students'
expectations.
Instructional Tips
- Whatever
method you use for teaching listening, keep a few key instructional
tips in mind that will help both you and your students navigate the
learning process. One, keep your expectations simple, as even the most
experienced listener would be unable to completely and accurately recall
the entirety of a message. Two, keep your directions accessible and
build in opportunities for students not only to ask clarifying questions,
but also to make mistakes. Three, help students navigate their communication
anxiety by developing activities appropriate to their skill and confidence
level, and then strengthen their confidence by celebrating the ways
in which they do improve, no matter how small.
Teaching Listening
Listening is the language modality
that is used most frequently. It has been estimated that adults spend
almost half their communication time listening, and students may receive
as much as 90% of their in-school information through listening to instructors
and to one another. Often, however, language learners do not recognize
the level of effort that goes into developing listening ability.
Far from passively receiving
and recording aural input, listeners actively involve themselves in
the interpretation of what they hear, bringing their own background
knowledge and linguistic knowledge to bear on the information contained
in the aural text. Not all listening is the same; casual greetings,
for example, require a different sort of listening capability than do
academic lectures. Language learning requires intentional listening
that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from
them.
Listening involves a sender (a
person, radio, television), a message, and a receiver (the listener).
Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are
still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or
looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice
of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. The complexity of the
listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the
receiver also has incomplete control of the language.
Given the importance of listening
in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers
to help their students become effective listeners. In the communicative
approach to language teaching, this means modeling listening strategies
and providing listening practice in authentic situations: those that
learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside
the classroom.
Goals and Techniques for Teaching Listening
Instructors want to produce students
who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an
extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations.
In the case of listening, this means producing students who can use
listening strategies to maximize their comprehension of aural input,
identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than
word-by-word comprehension.
Focus: The Listening Process
To accomplish this goal, instructors
focus on the process of listening rather than on its product.
They develop students' awareness of the listening
process and listening strategies by asking students to think and talk
about how they listen in their native language.
They allow students to practice the full repertoire
of listening strategies by using authentic listening tasks.
They behave as authentic listeners by responding
to student communication as a listener rather than as a teacher.
When working with listening tasks in class, they
show students the strategies that will work best for the listening purpose
and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the
strategies.
They have students practice listening strategies
in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their listening
assignments. They encourage students to be conscious of what they're
doing while they complete listening tape assignments.
They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension
and their strategy use immediately after completing an assignment. They
build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class listening assignments, and periodically
review how and when to use particular strategies.
They encourage the development of listening skills
and the use of listening strategies by using the target language to
conduct classroom business: making announcements, assigning homework,
describing the content and format of tests.
They do not assume that students will transfer strategy
use from one task to another. They explicitly mention how a particular
strategy can be used in a different type of listening task or with another
skill.
By raising students' awareness
of listening as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly
teaching listening strategies, instructors help their students develop
both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations
they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their
students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.
Integrating Metacognitive Strategies
Before listening: Plan for the
listening task
Set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen
for
Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge
is needed
Determine whether to enter the text from the top
down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on
the words and phrases)
During and after listening: Monitor
comprehension
Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
Decide what is and is not important to understand
Listen/view again to check comprehension
After listening: Evaluate comprehension
and strategy use
Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
Evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular
types of listening tasks
Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for
the purpose and for the task
Modify strategies if necessary
Using Authentic Materials and Situations
Authentic materials and situations
prepare students for the types of listening they will need to do when
using the language outside the classroom.
One-Way
Communication
Materials:
Radio and television programs
Public address announcements (airports, train/bus
stations, stores)
Telephone customer service recordings
Procedure:
Help students identify the listening goal: to obtain
specific information; to decide whether to continue listening; to understand
most or all of the message
Help students outline predictable sequences in which
information may be presented: who-what-when-where (news stories); who-flight
number-arriving/departing-gate number (airport announcements); "for
[function], press [number]" (telephone recordings)
Help students identify key words/phrases to listen
for
Two-Way
Communication
In authentic two-way communication,
the listener focuses on the speaker's meaning rather than the speaker's
language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear.
Note the difference between the teacher as teacher and the teacher as
authentic listener in the dialogues in the popup screens.
Strategies for Developing Listening Skills
Language learning depends on
listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis
for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken
communication.
Effective language instructors
show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with
a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They
help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate
strategies to each listening situation.
Listening Strategies
Listening strategies are techniques
or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall
of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the
listener processes the input.
Top-down
strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background
knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text,
and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations
that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what
will come next. Top-down strategies include
listening for the main idea
Bottom-up
strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language
in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar
that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include
listening for specific details
recognizing word-order patterns
Strategic listeners also use metacognitive
strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.
They plan by deciding which listening strategies
will serve best in a particular situation.
They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness
of the selected strategies.
They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved
their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening
strategies selected was an effective one.
Listening for Meaning
To extract meaning from a listening
text, students need to follow four basic steps:
Figure out the purpose for listening. Activate background
knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and
identify appropriate listening strategies.
Attend to the parts of the listening input that are
relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity
enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces
the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory in
order to recognize it.
Select top-down and bottom-up strategies that are
appropriate to the listening task and use them flexibly and interactively.
Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when
they use top-down and bottom-up strategies simultaneously to construct
meaning.
Check comprehension while listening and when the
listening task is over. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect
inconsistencies and comprehension failures, directing them to use alternate
strategies.