Listening and Speaking in the additional language

Class 3: Listening Strategies and Comprehension

Items
Dear colleagues, welcome to our third lesson of the course Listening and Speaking in the
additional language. In this class we will focus on different types of listening texts and
techniques to implement in our teaching practice as well as on the strategies involved in
the processes of reception of language. At the same time, we will work on aspects to do
with the planning of a listening class further and examine the pros and cons of a variety of
comprehension items in detail, as regards their characteristics and the type of strategy
they aim at developing.

Let’s start off!

Sources of listening texts

As foreign language teachers one of our main endeavors lies in offering our learners
quality and varied exposure to the target language, and even more so when tackling
listening comprehension. The myriad of possibilities and resources of input available to us
ranges, in general terms, from teacher talk, student talk, guest speakers to textbook
audios and videos, podcasts, mass media like television, radio, songs and the Internet.
Some of these are more readily accessible than others, while at the same time, certain
ones require specific equipment or technological availability in the classroom.

Apart from that, another feature that can be applied to them is related to the question of
authenticity, given that those texts that are specially prepared, adapted, planned or
scripted speech can be grouped under the category of pedagogic texts; whereas those
that instantiate real or natural speech belong to the label of authentic ones. In order to
illustrate further, let’s see the common differences between authentic and scripted
speech in the table below (Wilson, 2008: 30).

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 Authentic Scripted
● Overlaps and interruptions between ▪ Little overlap between speakers
speakers ▪ Slower (maybe monotonous) delivery
● Normal rate of speech delivery ▪ Structured language, more like written
● Relatively unstructured language English
● Incomplete sentences, with false starts, ▪ Complete sentences
hesitations, etc. ▪ No background noise
● Background noise and voices ▪ Artificial stops and starts that reflect an
● Natural stops and starts that reflect the idealized version of communication (in
speaker’s train of thought and the which misunderstandings, false stars,
listener’s ongoing response etc. never occur)
● Loosely packed information, padded ▪ Densely packed information
out with fillers

However, the question of authenticity in language teaching and learning materials can be
discussed a little bit more deeply. According to specialists in the field, “there are purists
who insist that only ‘real’ English is worth listening to”, while “… others claim that it isn’t
always worth explaining the false starts, redundancies and irregular features involved in
an authentic dialogue” (Ibid: 32).

And additionally, what about quality authentic listening materials for very low-level
students? Here, Scrivener (2005) can shade some light on the matter, by suggesting
teachers moving from the audio text to the task, by following the premise of “Grading the
task rather than the material”. In practical terms, this implies that the task is the element
that sets the level of the lesson instead of the audio text.

The listening task

The importance of the listening task is also supported by J.J. Wilson, as he states that

…well-designed activities can help students to understand the listening passage. Such
activities:

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 ● Provide a focus, showing students what is important about any given passage;
● Allow them to perceive the text’s structure (causes and effects, problems and
solutions, etc.);
● Help them to ‘chunk’ the listening into sections or units of information;
● Provide clues as to how they might respond;
● Keep them concentrating throughout the passage;
● Contribute towards the entertainment factor of the lesson by highlighting points of
interest, irony, humour, etc. (Wilson, 2008)
Apart from that, tasks allow us teachers to get feedback of our learners’ understanding
and non-understanding, thus giving evidence as regards points where “we need to
intervene, clarify or provide further practice” (ibid: 82).

With respect to the didactic intervention, Scrivener also prompts us to provide the
listening task first and then the audio text, in contrast to the tradition of making students
listen and answer questions or say what they have understood of the text afterwards,
turning, in this way, the task into a memory test rather than a check on comprehension.
Setting the task first, not only gives learners hints on the information they are about to
listen to, but also narrows down the scope of the amount of information they will have to
fish for, maximizing their chances of understanding.

Let’s analyze now some listening activities that we can pick and choose for our listening
lessons in more detail.

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Listening comprehension items
Listening comprehension tasks can be examined according to the type of response they
demand: verbal or non-verbal, that is to say, responses that demand production of
language or responses that involve recognition only. Examples of these activities are
presented in the chart below.

Items that demand non-verbal responses Items that demand verbal responses
● Select, circle, underline or tick the ● Answering questions.
right option. ● Filling with missing information.
● Put information / pictures in order. ● Note-taking.
● True or False. ● Summarizing.
● Multiple choice. ● Completing a chart/ a map/ a
● Listen and Draw. graph.
● Listen and Do. ● Transferring information
● Listen and Match. ● Replying to a comment you hear.
● Follow a route on a map. ● Giving one’s own opinion.
● Identify speakers in a conversation. ● Arguing against/for a proposition.

“With recognition responses, the students have less to do and therefore experience less
distraction from the listening, whereas productive responses demand other skills besides
listening” (Wilson, 2008: 82). Even though this is true, we cannot lose sight of the fact that
the type of response does not correspond directly to the easiness or difficulty of the task
itself as, for example, a non-verbal item like ticking the right option might involve valuing
the information in the text and even understanding certain details, in order to be able to
discern the best alternative; whereas answering personal information questions might
imply attending just to numbers and names.

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Apart from the broad distinction between verbal and non-verbal response items, we can
find other taxonomies of activities in the literature, like the one put forward by Penny Ur
(1998) in which she classifies listening activities according to the response they call for:

1. No overt response: stories, songs, entertainment: films, theatre, video.

2. Short responses: obeying instructions, ticking off items, true/false, detecting
mistakes, cloze (the listening text has occasional gaps represented by silence or
some kind of buzz), guessing definitions, skimming (identifying some general topic
or information) and scanning (identifying limited information or words).
3. Longer responses: answering questions, note-taking, paraphrasing and
translating, summarizing, long gap-filling.
4. Extended responses: problem solving, interpretation.

Or else, according to Lund’s nine ways to check listening comprehension (1990, in Brown
2000: 259), by means of:

▪ Doing - the listener responds physically to a command

▪ Choosing -the listener selects from alternatives such as pictures, objects or texts
▪ Transferring -the listener draws a picture of what is heard
▪ Answering -the listener answers questions about the message
▪ Condensing -the listener outlines or takes notes on a lecture
▪ Extending -the listener provides an ending to a story heard
▪ Duplicating -the listener translates the message into the native language or
repeats it verbatim
▪ Modeling -the listener orders a meal, for example, after listening to a model order
▪ Conversing -the listener engages in a conversation that indicates appropriate
processing of information
The wide variety of comprehension items outlined so far enables us to resort to the most
suitable ones, taking into account the group of learners we are addressing and the specific
listening purposes we are pursuing in a given lesson. For example, when working with very

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young learners, preschoolers and first graders, their literacy skills are not fully developed
yet and therefore, responses that are non-verbal or short ones are more appropriate to
check their comprehension of the text, like listen and do, or listen and draw, or listen and
tick/circle the right option, or follow the route on the map. Similarly, short and non-verbal
response items are also relevant for low-proficiency learners or for the initial stages of the
development of listening comprehension.

On the other hand, verbal and longer responses pose more demands on the learners,
since, apart from dealing with the understanding of the message, they need to verbalize
their comprehension through answering questions, filling gaps in a text, completing a
chart or form, taking notes, summarizing or responding to a prompt.

Another aspect that needs to be addressed here about the use of longer and verbal
responses is how we are going to value and acknowledge valid learners’ responses, for,
more often than not, a learner’s answer may show understanding of the message and is
correct from the point of view of listening comprehension, but it may be inaccurate with
respect to the use of language.

How shall we proceed then? Shall we disregard or dismiss it straight away? Shall we
accept it but holding certain objections, or else, shall we make a point that something is
not that right?

Most probably, if we are focusing on comprehension and it is attained in the answer, we

will accept the response, giving primacy of fluency over accuracy. Furthermore, if we are
using this type of item in a listening test, learners should be informed about what our
policy about the correction of comprehension and use of language will be like. Anyway,
this and further aspects to do with the assessment and evaluation of the oral skills will be
tackled later on in the course.

As it can be seen, it is important to be aware of the different pros and cons of the types of
comprehension items available to us, so as to decide in an informed and reliable way not
only on the purposes they help us to pursue, but also on the aspects and issues we need
to take into account when implementing them in class.

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 Task 1: Assessing listening activities. Read the instructions to the listening tasks
below. A) Determine the type of response they demand. B) Identify the listening
aim of each of the activities. Activities in Word Document 1.
This is an optional activity. Once you complete the task submit the document
through the following link

Teaching Listening Techniques

When teaching listening comprehension, apart from grading the task rather than the
material and providing the task first and then the audio text as relevant features of the
mainstream practice, we often follow one more guideline: “focusing on the process of
listening rather than the product”. In other words, putting emphasis on how much
meaning learners have been able to get from the audio rendering instead of how many
correct responses they have obtained in the set task.

Listening Comprehension Strategies

Apart from the selection and sequencing of tasks, successful listening comprehension
implies the handling of a repertoire of strategies that learners need to be equipped with
to tackle the comprehension of audio texts in and outside the class in an effective way. It
is our responsibility to make students become aware of them and urge them to
implement these strategies in the tasks we provide in our lessons. Some of the most
frequent and useful ones include:

● Getting a general overview of the main story or message of a conversation

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 ● Catching specific details such as names, numbers, addresses, etc.
● Looking for key words
● Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
● Predicting
● Associating information with one’s existing cognitive structure (activating
background knowledge)
● Drawing inferences
● Guessing at meanings
● Seeking clarification
● Summarizing
● Recognizing word-order/cognates
As we foster the development of listening strategies we are teaching our students “learn
how to learn”. As Brown suggests, “helping them (learners) develop their overall strategic
competence, strategies for effective listening can become a highly significant part of their
chances for successful learning” (2000: 259).

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 In this lesson, we have addressed the issue of the use and characteristics of
authentic and educational audio texts and reflected on the importance of
listening tasks, especially as regards their grading according to the teaching
purpose and target learner group we need to address. Then, we have
described a wide range of comprehension items taking into account the
type of behavior and use of language that demand from the learner, as well
as to the listening strategy they aim at developing. Following, we have
examined and discussed in detail some useful listening classroom
techniques and assessed listening tasks from current course books
available. As closure, we have tackled the relevance of the teaching of
listening strategies as an inherent part of the overall development of the
strategic competence in learners.
We are ready now to move onto our next lesson that will address listening’s
counterpart as an oral language ability: Speaking.

Activities
1) Forum 1:
A) Read the following Listening Task and audio script. Outline a brief While Listening
Stage to exploit them, improving on the set task and trying to integrate the aspects
seen in the lessons and discussed in the readings so far.
B) After posting your outline, comment on the similarities and differences in the
proposals shared by your mates and account for your answers, as far as possible.

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Listening Task
Listen to a competition on a radio programme. With a partner, try to write down
the four heroes and icons. (Adapted from New English File Intermediate
MultiPACK B, p.94).

Script
It’s 12.00 noon and so it’s time for today’s competition. Today the topic is ‘Heroes
and Icons’. As usual, the rules are very simple. I’m going to give you clues and you
have to identify the people. If you know all the answers send them to me
straightaway by email. The first person who sends me the correct answers wins a
prize. Today’s prize is two plane tickets to …the Big Apple, New York!
Ok, so let’s get started with those clues. I’ll say each one twice only. And
remember, I always give you the first letter of the word I’m looking for. Today they
are all people’s names.
Let’s start with an easy one. Two letters, B and G. It’s a man who’s probably the
richest man in the world, the founder of Microsoft. That’s BG, the man who
started Microsoft.
Number 2. Two letters again, J and P, although this isn’t the name he was born
with. A man whose humanity made him an icon for millions of people all over the
world. This religious leader was born in Poland but he died in Rome in 2005.
Number 3 begins with M, just one word. It’s the name of a woman who has had a
lot of different jobs. She’s been an actress, she’s even written children’s books, but
she’s most famous as a singer. One word beginning with M.
And number 4. This time it’s a man, and the letters are G and A, though many
people just know him by his surname. He’s an Italian designer whose clothes are
considered among the most elegant in the work, and whose name is also on
perfume bottles everywhere. G and A, for an Italian fashion designer.
So, if you think you’ve got the four correct answers, email them to me now at this

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 address [email protected], that’s [email protected]. And the first
person with the correct answers will win those two tickets to New York.
Time for some music.

2)

Reflection Task (optional):

A) We now invite you to evaluate different listening techniques that
can be implemented in our lessons, taking into account what has
been discussed in the lessons so far and on the basis of your own
teaching experience. Download the following worksheet, complete
the chart and then comment in the forum advantages and/or
disadvantages of any of the techniques analyzed.

Reading materials
NCRLC. “Teaching Listening”. Available on:

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/goalslisten.htm [Access date: December 2016]

Rixon, S. (1981) “The Design of Materials to Foster Particular Listening Strategies”. ELTI,

The British Council. London, pp. 68-76.

The British Council. (1981). The Teaching of Listening Comprehension. ELT 46. Milestones

in ELT. The British Council. TeachingEnglish.

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“Teaching Listening” (N/a), Auburn University, available at
http://www.auburn.edu/~nunnath/engl6240/tlisten.html [Access date: December 2016]

TESOL (N/a). “How Can Teachers Teach Listening”. Available at:

http://www.tesol.org/docs/books/bk_ELTD_Listening_ [Access date: December 2016]

Bibliography
Brown D. H. (2000) Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy. White Plains: NY. Longman.

Harmer, J. (2007) The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th Edition. Harlow. Pearson
Education Limited.

Scrivener, J. (2005) Learning Teaching. Oxford. Macmillan.

Ur, P. (1998) A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge. CUP.

Wilson, JJ. (2008) How to Teach Listening. Harlow. Pearson Education Limited.

Autor/es: Silvana Garófalo y Graciela Jakulj

Cómo citar este texto:

Garófalo, Silvana y Jakulj, Graciela (2017). Clase 3: Listening Strategies and Comprehension Items.
Listening and Speaking in the additional language. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación y
Deportes de la Nación.

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

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