CHAPTER 2: TEACHING EFL IN PRACTICE

UNIT 1. TEACHING LISTENING

Objectives: By the end of this lesson, the students are able to:
- Get to know some basic knowledge in teaching listening: definition,
characteristics, and listening process;
- Know and conduct a variety of listening activities in appropriate
listening lesson stages.

Questions: Read the follow passages and answer the following questions:

1. What is listening? What are the main characteristics of listening?

2. What are two views of listening that have dominated language pedagogy
over the last two decades?

3. What are some typical activities for teaching phase?

4. What are some sample listening activities for young learners? How can
language teachers make use of these activities in a foreign language
classroom?

Reading passages:
1. THEORY ABOUT TEACHING LISTENING
1.1. What is listening?

Listening is a process consisting of three steps: receiving, attending, and

assigning meaning. In the first step, listeners receive the aural stimuli or the
combined aural and visual stimuli provided by the speaker. In the second
step, listeners concentrate on significant stimuli while disregarding other,
distracting stimuli. Since a number of stimuli surround students in the

most prominent information in that message. In the third step, listeners

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1.2. Characteristics of listening

According to Giri (1998), there are seven main characteristics of listening,

which are informality of language, brevity, pronunciation, vocabulary,
grammar, noise, and redundancy.
1. Informality of language: Most of the spoken language we listen to is
casual and natural; the speaker makes it up as s/he goes along rather than
reading aloud reciting from memory.
2. Brevity: It is usually segmented into short chunks. In a conversation, for
instance, people take turns to speak, generally in short turns consisting of a
couple of seconds.
3. Pronunciation: The articulation of words is often slurred, and remarkably
different from the phonological representations given in a dictionary. Some

4. Vocabulary: The vocabulary is often colloquial, that is, in spoken

langua

5. Grammar: Informal speech is inclined to be somewhat ungrammatical.

Utterances may not be divided into sentences logically; a grammatical
structure may change mid-utterance.
6. Noise: There will be some bits of the discourse that are incomprehensible
to the hearer, and therefore meaningless for the hearer. This may occur
because the words are not articulated overtly, or unfamiliar to the hearer, or
because the hearer does not attribute importance to these words.
7. Redundancy: The speaker normally says more than is absolutely
necessary for conveying the message. Redundancy covers such things as

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reiteration, rephrasing, self-correction

1.3. Top-down and bottom-up processing

- -
interpretation view, have dominated language pedagogy over the last two
decades.
In the bottom-up processing model, listening is a process in which
phonemic units are decoded and linked together to make words, words are
linked together to make phrases, phrases are linked together to make
utterances, and utterances are linked together to make complete meaningful
texts. It can be stated that listening is a linear process where meaning itself is
derived as the last step in the process (Nunan, 1999).
In the top-down processing model, the listener utilizes incoming
sounds as clues to actively construct (or, more precisely, reconstruct) the
original meaning of the speaker. In this reconstruction process, the listener
employs prior knowledge of the context and situation where the listening
takes place to understand what he or she hears (Nunan, 1999)

2. TEACHING LISTENING

Three common stages in foreign language teaching lessons are: Pre - While -
Post.

2.1. Pre-listening stage

This phase is made up of things that students do before the listening, to assist
students in getting the most out of what they are going to listen to. To put it
differently, this stage prepares students for the listening activity.
Some pre-listening activities: https://englishpost.org/pre-listening-activities/

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1. Visuals: What Theme is it?
- Show eye-catching images, maps, or diagrams to help students guess the
theme of the listening text.
- Students can write pre-listening comprehension questions, then listen to see
if their questions are answered.
2. Basic Brainstorming
The most basic form of brainstorming consist of revealing the theme of the
listening passage and students make notes on papers before they share their
ideas with the rest of the group
3. Brainstorming: Brain Walking
The teacher pastes posters around the classroom and divides students in small
groups, students go to the poster and talk about what comes to mind after
taking a look at the posters.
5. Brainstorming: Board Writing
- The teacher divides the class in small groups, the groups have to brainstorm
ideas related to the topic given by the teacher.
- The teacher divides the board in small section and one representant of each
group and add the words the group brainstorm.
6. Visuals What Do you Think Happened?
- The teacher shows a picture related to the listening passage and ask to
student to come up with ideas of what happened.
- The students can work in small groups and come up with an idea and share
with the rest of the class.
7. Visuals Make up a Story
- The teacher provides learners with some pictures and they have to place the
pictures in an order that make sense.
- The teacher should ask them to write briefly what they think it happened
8. Visual Time to Draw

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- The teacher provides the learners with the topic and ask them to draw
something related to it.
- The teacher asks them to provide as many details as they can.
- As a follow-up, the teacher may wish to display the illustrations for all to
see. This activity is especially useful for younger learners.
9. Teach me
- The teacher gives each student a couple of words and expressions, then ask
them to explain the words/expressions to one another in pairs.
- The teacher quickly checks with the whole group, and students then make a
short of what they said.
- They can use that list in the while-listening stage and tick the words they
hear in the listening passage.
10. Sing along
- The teacher teach students a short song, a rhyme, or a jazz chant on a topic
related to the text they are going to listen to.
11. Mime it
If there is a dialog in th
interest. The teacher can also ask students to mime small part of it.
https://englishpost.org/pre-listening-activities/

2.2. While-listening stage

The second phase is made up of activities and exercises to be carried out

while the learners listen to the listening text, to direct them to get the main
message of the passage. To put it differently, it is the way the teacher controls
the listening activity.
Most While-listening activities focus on these subskills:
- Listening for the gist
- Listening for specific information

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 -
The teacher should take into consideration these guidelines when
using While-listening Tasks:
- Allow students to listen to the passage two or three times
- Encourage student to focus on global meaning first and let the
questions about details after the first listen.
In teaching EFL to YLL, while listening activities are commonly
presented under four subcategories: (1) Listen and do activities, (2) Listening
for information, (3) Listen and repeat activities, and watching/ listening
stories
2.2.1. Listen and do activities

1. Raise your hand.

Young learners can be asked to raise their hands when they hear a particular
sound, or when the teacher misses a number while counting or when they
hear a new or previously learned word.
http://www.tefllife.com/virtualcourses/teyl/section_2/index.php
2. Listen and mime/ do
The teacher tells the story and the students (and the teacher) do the physical
actions
Teacher reads/ gives instruction and students follow
http://www.tefllife. com/virtualcourses/teyl/section_2/ index.php
3. Touch parts of your body

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4eueDYPTIg and
asks them to touch parts of their body while singing the song.
4. Simon says
Teacher/ One student plays the role of "Simon" who gives command. The
genuine command goes after "Simon says" while the fake does not.

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5. Listen and Draw/ Picture dictation
The teacher dictates/ reads the text/ or tells the students what to draw This
activity is beneficial for developing listening as well as checking vocabulary,

2.2.2. Listening for information

These activities can be used to check what the children know and to give new
information. Listening for the mistake, gap filling, putting things in order,
listening and coloring and identifying are some of the activities focusing on
listening for information.
5. Listening and color
The students can listen to their teacher read the short text aloud and they can
color the picture based on what they hear.
6. Listening for mistakes
The teacher shows a picture to the students and reads a short text related to
the picture. The teacher makes some deliberate mistakes in the text s/he
reads. The students listen to the teacher read a text and try to find out the
mistakes by looking at the picture
7. Gap/ Grid filling
Students can fill in the missing words of a table, a time-table, a song, or a text
8. Listen and Order
Students listen to a recording on routine/ stories/ instructions/schedules/a

9. Listen and choose

Students can listen to the recording and tick the correct picture/ answers by
identification
10. True or False
The teachers tells a story and the students has to determine if the sentences
that he has are true or false statements

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11. Dictation/ Listen and write
Teacher reads the text about at the pace of students' writing; the students
write down what they hear.
The class organization can be changed to create fun atmostphere like in
Running dictation and Picture dictation.
12. Bingo/ Listen and check/ Listen and tick
Teacher gives students a list of numbers/ vocabulary. The students choose a
certain amount of them randomly. The teacher calls out the list one by one.
Students listen and check/ tick/ cross out what they hear. The first student
finishes the list is the winner.

2.2.3. Listen and repeat/ chant

The teacher has the children watch the nursery rhyme/ chanting to practice
the rhythm and intonation of the English language.

-Nursery Rhymes - Kids Songs at

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTjUKu1E3PpOhX8kVhiQmrw
- ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes & Kids Songs ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes
& Kids Songs
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBnZ16ahKA2DZ_T5W0FPUXg

2.2.4. Watching cartoon films/ listening stories

Cartoon films/ stories can be used to teach listening to young learners. A

variety of listening activities of different level of complicacy can be
conducted according to the age/ cognition and language proficiency of the
learners.
- Watch the cartoon film and write names of the characters

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 - Fill in the conversation from the cartoon
- Retell the cartoon
- Role-play

2.3. Post listening/ Follow-up stage

This phase contains activities to be done when the students have learned the
form, meaning and content of the passage and are ready to look back, or to do
some extra work relying on it.
It could be speaking of writing activities to follow what students have
listened/practiced in the While stage.
Since Speaking and Writing activities for children are simple, more
form focused, the Follow-up stage activities can be found in Speaking and
Writing lessons.
Reflective Questions:
1. Which of the listening technique(s) introduced above is/are:
- the least likely applicable
- the most likely applicable
- the least frequently applied
- the most frequently applied
in young teaching YLL?/ in your teaching context? why (not)?
2. Choose a listening text and design activities to teach listening.

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