What is listening? Listening is one of the four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Like reading, listening is a receptive skill, as it involves responding to language rather than producing it. Listening involves making sense of the meaningful sounds of language. We do this by making use of context, language and our knowledge of the world. Key concepts Listening involves understanding spoken language. Spoken language is different from written language. What differences can you think of between spoken and written language? List some before reading this table. Written language Stays on the page; doesn't disappear. Uses punctuation and capital letters to show sentences. Consists of letters, written words and sentences, and punctuation joined together into text. Often has no visual support. Is usually quite well organised: sentences are complete, follow one another in a logical sequence and are joined to previous or following sentences. Topics are usually separate from one another. Usually uses quite exact vocabulary and more complex grammar. Spoken language Disappears as soon as it is spoken. Sometimes it is spoken fast and sometimes slowly, with or without pauses. Indicates sentences and meaningful groups of words through stress and intonation. Consists of sounds, single words, sentences, utterances (complete sense units) and incomplete sentences joined together in connected speech. The speaker uses body language to support his/her communication; for example, gestures (movements of hands or arms to help people understand us), and facial expressions (the expressions on our faces). Is not so well organised; e.g. it contains interruptions, hesitations (pausing when speaking because you're not sure what to say or how to say it), repetitions and frequent changes of topic. Often uses rather general vocabulary and simple grammar. As we can see, spoken language is generally less planned and less well structured than written language. There are very good reasons for this. When we speak we usually don't have time to organise our thoughts and our language beforehand, so we just say things as we think of them. Also when we listen, we need to listen to simply structured messages. As spoken texts usually disappear as soon as they are said, they need to be simple enough for us to process and understand in the time that is available. We can see that written and spoken language have different features 43
Module 1 because they are produced and understood in different kinds of circumstances. Their features respond to these circumstances. To understand spoken language we need to be able to deal with all the characteristics of spoken language listed in the table above. Here is an example of spoken language. You can see that it can be le~s well organised and less exact than written language: How's your homework? You know, your history? Easy. You sure? It's just... I mean all we need to do is, well, just read some stuff. But d'you understand it? Yeah. Can I go and play with Tom? The conversation contains examples of incomplete sentences, utterances, hesitations, sudden topic change, simple grammar and general vocabulary. We make sense of it partly through our understanding of language but also through making use of the context the language is spoken in and our knowledge of the world. In this example, our knowledge of relationships between fathers and sons, and of children's attitudes to homework, may give us some help in understanding, but if we knew the exact context of the conversation (e.g. where it took place, the father's and son's body language, their attitudes to homework, their relationship), we would understand more. Like written language, spoken language has different text types, e.g. conversations, stories, announcements, songs, instructions, lectures and advertisements. Generally, they contain different ways of organising language and information, different grammatical patterns, a particular range of vocabulary, different interaction patterns, fewer or more participants, ete. Learning to listen involves learning to be able to understand a range of relevant (suitable) text types. Listening also involves understanding different speeds of speech and different accents. Some people speak more slowly and with more pauses. Others speak fast and/or with few pauses. Features such as speed of delivery and accent are part of connected speech, i.e. spoken language in which words join together to form a connected stream of sounds. Other features of connected speech are word and sentence stress, linking sounds and words together and the use of contracted forms. One reason why learners have problems understanding spoken language is because they are not used to dealing with features of connected speech. But we do not listen to everything in the same way. There are several different listening subskills. Which subskill we use depends on our reason for listening. We might listen for gist/global understanding, specific information, detail or to infer attitude (listening to see what attitude a speaker is expressing). Other ways of listening are listening intensively and extensively. Our reason for listening influences the amount and kind of information we need to listen for. So, for example, when listening to a train announcement for specific information we might simply need to hear some times, but when listening to the details of some important news we might want to make sense of every word to find out what exactly happened and why. See Unit 5 Reading, page 31 for an explanation of the terms for the subskills. 44
We can see that listening involves doing many things besides understanding the grammar, vocabulary and functions of what we hear. It also involves dealing with the characteristics of spoken language; using the context and our knowledge of the world; understanding different text types; understanding different speeds of speech and accents, making sense of connected speech and using appropriate listening subskills. Key concepts and the language teaching classroom Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you. In the classroom, we can give learners the opportunity to listen to many sources of spoken language, e.g. the teacher, other learners, visitors, CDs, DVDs. This exposes learners to a range of accents, speeds of delivery, text types and listening skills. When we listen to a recording we can't see the speaker's body language or the context he/she is speaking in, and we can't ask the speaker to repeat or explain what they said. This makes listening to recordings more difficult than listening to live speakers. For this reason, it is a good idea to help students listen to recordings by e.g. pre-teaching key words, setting pre-listening tasks, focusing initially on gist listening to establish context, and playing the recording a second or even a third time. Some listening texts in coursebooks are authentic material. i.e. they contain all the features of real spoken language. Other texts are written especially for language learners and are graded to make them simple enough for particular levels of learners. Authentic texts allow learners to develop strategies for dealing with the challenge of real language, while simplified texts (texts that have been made easier) allow them to build up their confidence. Understanding and showing you have understood are not the same thing. For example, maybe you can understand all of a story, but you can't tell the story. This means that learners may have understood something but be unable to explain what they have understood. Tasks such as completing tables, true/false, ticking correct answers in lists, and putting events in order allow learners to show whether they have understood or not, without needing to use much language. We have seen that there are many different aspects to listening, e.g. identifying different phonemes and other features of connected speech. A teacher can focus on these through a listening text or may sometimes prefer to do short activities just focusing on one of these aspects, e.g. a 5-minute activity on minimal pairs, word stress, sentence stress or dicta tion. We can make a difficult text easier for learners to understand by giving them easy listening tasks, or we can make an easier text more difficult by giving them harder listening tasks. The activities in a listening lesson often follow this pattern: 1 Introductory activities: an introduction to the topic of the text and activities focusing on key vocabulary in the text - to pre-teach important vocabulary, and to encourage learners to activate their knowledge of the world in relation to the topic. 2 Main activities: a series of listening activities developing different listening subskills and moving from general to more detailed listening. 45
Module 1 3 Post-task activities: activities which ask learners to talk about how the topic of the text relates to their own lives or give their opinions on parts of the text. These activities require learners to use some of the language they have met in the text. You may sometimes just want to ask l~arners to listen to something and not give them any task e.g. listen to a story, a song, an explanation. This gives learners the opportunity to listen in a relaxed way and enjoy the experience of listening to a foreign language. See Unit 16 for listening activities and Unit 21 for planning lessons. FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES (See page 239 for answers) Complete this table with at least two examples of each category. Characteristics of Listening text Different accents Features of spoken language types connected speech. Listening subskills REFLECTION Think about this teacher's comments. Which do you agree with and why? 1 To improve their listening, what my students need most is to learn more vocabulary. Learning listening skills won't help them. 2 I don't think my learners should listen to me for listening practice. There is no point in them listening to English spoken with my accent. 3 My learners always try and understand every word when they listen, so I give them transcripts to read as they listen. DISCOVERY ACTIVITIES 1 Find a listening section in your coursebook. Teach it to your learners, and then after the lesson, complete this table in your Teacher Portfolio. What the learners found easy and why What the learners found difficult and why What would you do differently if you taught these activities again? 2 For more information about listening and listening activities, read Chapter 10 of How To Teach English by Jeremy Harmer, Pears on Education Ltd 1998, and Unit 3 of Learning Teaching (Second edition) by Jim Scrivener, Macmillan 2005. 3 Which of these websites could you use in class or ask your learners to browse at home? http://www.eslpartyland.com/teachers/nov/music.htm http://www.lyrics.com 46
http://www. bbc.co. uk/worldservice/learningengiish/teachingenglish I watchandlistenl http://storynory.com/ http://www.freewebs.com/nuanchawee/pronunciationlistening.htm TKT practice task 7 (See page 245 for answers) For questions 1-7, match the teachers' comments with the aspects of listening listed A-H. There is one extra option which you do not need to use. Aspects of listening A listening for specific information B listening extensively C listening for detail D listening for gist E activating students' knowledge of the world F working with authentic texts G deducing meaning from context H dealing with connected speech Teachers' comments 1 My students find it hard to recognise the pronunciation of individual words and sounds when they hear people speak in the street. 2 Students only need to recognise words like numbers and names to practise this subskill. 3 I always ask my students what information they can tell me about the topic before we start listening. 4 I tell my students that they can use the situation to help them understand meaning. 5 It's nice if learners can just listen to a story and enjoy it without doing a task on it. 6 Some listening texts in the coursebook are extracts from real TV programmes and real conversations. The students think they're challenging but useful. 7 The first listening task I give my students is usually one in which they have to decide on the general meaning of the text.............................. 47