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Teaching Listening Skills

The document discusses developing listening and speaking skills for communication. It argues the main goal of an English course should be developing students' communication abilities rather than just language mastery. Effective communication focuses on ideas over precise language and uses varied vocabulary. The classroom should encourage real communication through interesting topics and establishing English as the main language. When listening, students need support to communicate ideas without constant corrections. The document also outlines debates around developing listening skills and what students need to do to listen effectively through bottom-up and top-down processes. It describes types of listening and implications for classroom activities at different stages.

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Vansh Rathee
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104 views

Teaching Listening Skills

The document discusses developing listening and speaking skills for communication. It argues the main goal of an English course should be developing students' communication abilities rather than just language mastery. Effective communication focuses on ideas over precise language and uses varied vocabulary. The classroom should encourage real communication through interesting topics and establishing English as the main language. When listening, students need support to communicate ideas without constant corrections. The document also outlines debates around developing listening skills and what students need to do to listen effectively through bottom-up and top-down processes. It describes types of listening and implications for classroom activities at different stages.

Uploaded by

Vansh Rathee
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Spoken

Communication Skills
Developing Listening and
Speaking Skills
Communication
 What should be the main goal of an English
language cousre?
 To focus on developing students’ mastery of the
the language form
 OR

 To focus on developing students’ ability to


effectively communicate for study, work or leisure
Features of using language for
communication
 We communicate because we want to or need to,
NOT just to practise the language

 Focus is on what we are communicating NOT on


how we are communicating (ideas vs. language)

 The language that is used is VARİED in grammar


and vocabulary, NOT made of a single structure or a
few structures and NOT normally repeated over and
over again
Communication in the Classroom
 If you want to encourage real communication in
the classroom you need to
 Establish English as the main classroom
language
 Try to use interesting topics and stimulating
activities, which take the learners’ minds off
the language
 Real life events ( weather, the students’ cloths, their
health and mood, pictures and realia brought to
class)
 Events in the world outside ( new films, a circus in
town, national sports victory, the students’ families,
etc.)
 Focus on fluency vs. accuracy

 Support and encourage listeners in their


efforts to communicate their ideas
 Don’t try to control what they say
 Don’t interrupt learners everytime they make a
language mistake to correct them.
Listening Skills
 Listening is not a ‘passive” skill but a
“receptive” skill. It requires as much attention
and mental activity as speaking.

 That of the time an individual is engaged in


communication, approximately 9 per cent is
devoted to writing, 16 per cent to reading, 30
per cent to speaking, and 45 per cent to
listening.
Debates concerning the development
of listening skills
 Debates focusing on the nature of listening input
 Whether or not listening should be made
comprehensible for learners through simplification?

 Debates focusing on the role of listening in the


early ELT curriculum
 Whether teachers should stress the importance of
learners haing a “silent period” in the early stages of
learning and wait for “readiness” to produce the
language
Debates concerning the development
of listening skills
 Debates on the role of listening for
comprehension and development of oracy (the
ability to understand and participate in spoken
communication)
 How can classroom practice rehearse the kinds of
listening purposes and situations that learners will
experience outside the classroom?
 How can we help learners build confidence in dealing
with authentic spoken English?
 What kind of classroom procedures will develop
listening ability?
What do we know about the listening
process?
 There are two types of listening processes
 Bottom-up process
 Top-down process
 Bottom-up:
 We use our knowledge of language and our ability to
process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that
speech presents to us
 Top-down
 We infer meaning from contextual clues and from making
links between the spoken message and various types of
prior knowledge which we hold.
What learners need to be able to
do in order to listen effectively
 Bottom-up processes
 Retain input while it is being processed
 Recognize word divisions
 Recognize key words in utterances
 Recognize key transitions in a discourse
 Another interesting development was…

 One of theproblems was.. / In contrast…

 Recognize grammatical relations between key elements in


sentences
 Recognize the function of word stress in sentences
 Recognize the function of intonation in sentences
What learners need to be able to
do in order to listen effectively
 Top-down processes
 Use key words to construct the schema of discourse
 Infer the role of the participants in a situation
 Infer the topic of a discourse
 Infer the outcome of an event
 Infer the cause and effect of an event
 Infer unstated details of a situation
 Infer the sequence of a series of events
 Infer comparisons
 Distinguish between facts and opinions
Types of Listening
 Participatory Listening
 Interactional (for the purpose of engaging in social rituals)
 Transactional (for the purpose exchanging information)
 İdentification of specific details

 Non-Participatory
 Listening to live conversations without taking part
 Listening to announcements to extract info.
 Listening to or watching films, plays, radio and songs
where purpose is enjoyment
 Following instructions in orderto carry out a talk efficiently
 Attending a lecture or following a lesson
 Liistening someon egive a public address
What are the implications for the
English Language Classroom?
 Creating reasons for listening (motivate students)
 Teachers need to ensure that learners experience a range
of listening purposes, especially those that might be
immediately relevant to their lives outside the classroom.
 What purpose might there be for listening to this particular
text?
 Is thatpurpose similar to the purpose a listener might have
in real life?
 Does the task given to the learner encourage that listening
purpose?
 Which is more authentic?
 Asking learners to listen to a short airport
announcement to obtain information about a
particular flight, as a passenger ?
 OR

 Asking learners to listen for the details of four


different flights ?

 Skills that are practised


 Listening for key words
 Picking out relevant information
 Retaining significant details
Designing listening activities
for the classroom
 The standard procedure used for listening
activities are
 Pre-listening stage

 While-Listening stage

 Post-listening stage
Pre-Listening stage
 The purpose of the pre-listening stage is to
 Prepare the learners for what they are going to hear
by
 activating existing prior knowledge
 introducing necessary schematic knowledge
 Introducing the language which students will encounter
 Objectives
 Contextualize the text
 Provide any information to help learners appreciate the
setting and the role relationships between particiapnts
Activity types for the pre-listening
stage
 Predicting content from the title of a talk
 Talking about a picture which relates to the text
 Discuss relevant experiences
 Discussing the topic
 Answering a set of questions about the topic
 Agreeing or disagreeing with opinions about the
topic
 Associate vocabulary about the yopic
 Predict info. about the topic
 Write questions about the topic
While-Listening Stage
 Purpose of While-listening stage is
 TO HELP learners understand the text
 While learners listen they need to be involved in
an authentic purpose for listening and
encouraged to attend to the text more intensively
While-Listening activities
 Ticking multiple-choice items
 Filling in a chart
 Complete a table, map or picture
 Matching pictures with the text
 Making notes
 Answer questions
 Complete sentences
Post-Listening Activities
 The purpose of post-listening activities is to
help learbners connect what they have heard
with their own ideas and experienxe.
 Helps learners to move easily from listening
to another skill.
Post-listening Activities
 Give opinions
 Relate similar experiences
 Role-play a similar interaction
 Write a brief report
 Write a similar text
 Debate the topic

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