Universidad Metropolitana Teaching English as a Foreign Language Teaching Strategies
Teaching Listening This information is addressed to instructors who need to improve their students listening skills. It is a guideline for teachers to design listening activities effectively
ROLE OF SCHEMATA INTRODUCTION Listening in language has undergone considerable changes in recent years. From being a neglected skill, it has become a fundamental course in language programs. The development of good listening skills is considered a support for aspects of language use such as speaking and reading. Instructors want to produce students who can fend for themselves in communication situations. This means students who can use listening strategies to process aural input and identify relevant and nonrelevant information in order to develop effective comprehension. LISTENING AND ITS IMPORTANCE Listening is a skill that features an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds using background knowledge and linguistic and cognitive strategies for comprehension. Listening is important in language learning because it provides input for the learner. THE ROLE OF LISTENING IN EFL SITUATION
Gamboa, Daniel Pereira, Elizabeth Pocaterra, Golmary Caracas, April 1st, 2009
In an EFL situation, students should internalize the information in order to activate and build their skills in using the language.
Schemabuilding tasks are carried out before the listening activity, so students use their background knowledge to have a global understanding of the listening. TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE There are two kinds of spoken languages. Interactional language is the one which refers to social speech. Transactional language is the one whose main purpose is to achieve successful exchange of information. FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE LISTENING PROCESS Listening is affected by factors such as the interest of the listener and the background knowledge about a topic, the way the speaker talks (speed, use of idioms, etc), body language, noise, means of communication (radio, headset, phone) and redundancy. REDUNDANCY IN LISTENING Redundancy in language is characterized by phonological processes (stress, intonation, etc.) and in morphological (synonyms, repetition of words, etc.) and syntactic (grammar structures, etc.) formations, which reinforce the conveying
of meaning and allows the listener to piece the language together. MICROSKILLS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION A listener uses three types of skills when listening. These are called microskills and in order to get a successful listening they have to be integrated. These are: Perception skills: Processing sound. Analysis skills: Processing meaning. Synthesis Skills: Processing knowledge and context. TYPES OF CLASSROOM LISTENING PERFORMANCE AND EXAMPLES Oneway communication Reactive. Listening and repeating back to the instructor. Intensive: Bottomup approach. Singling out elements of spoken language. Partial twoway communication Responsive: processing information and responding. Selective: Scanning for details. Extensive: Topdown approach. Developing thorough understanding. Full twoway communication Interactive: developing competency. PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING LISTENING TECHNIQUES
Listening should be relevant, interesting to learners, with a purpose. Materials should be based on authentic texts to reflect real discourse. Include topdown and bottomup activities. Encourage predicting, clarification and the use of cues for successful listening. Give opportunities to progressively structure students’ listening comprehension. Activities should teach, not test. Learners should play an active role in their own learning. LISTENING TECHNIQUES 1. Prelistening phase (preparation for the listening activity). Show pictures related to the listening. Explain the new vocabulary or grammar structures. Explain students the purpose of the listening activity. Brainstorm students' general knowledge on the topic of the listening. Have students predict the content of the listening. 2. Whilelistening phase (getting the students' attention and monitoring their understanding). Listening to the recording several times for general and specific comprehension. Writing down details featured in the listening.
Filling out graphs, checking off items, cloze exercises, true/false statements, multiplechoice questions. Performing different listening tasks and switch students’ answers and listen again to check their classmates' answers. Identifying specific keywords (nouns, verbs, etc.) in the listening. 3. Postlistening phase (making students integrate the listening with their background knowledge and assessing comprehension). Comparing their notes and discuss the listening. Debating their point of view about the listening. Writing a summary of the main points. Providing a solution, when possible, to the issue discussed. Doing oral presentations, roleplay or a simulation of the listening. Acknowledgments: We would like to thank the class members of the Teaching Strategies Course for providing this information.