Teaching Listening

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.
Section Contents
and Techniques for Teaching
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
Ask for help
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)
Speeches and lectures
Telephone customer service recordings
Procedure:
Help students identify the listening goal: to obtain specific information; to decide whether to continue listening