Listening

                         NAME                        : NI WAYAN EKAYANI

                         NPM                           : 4512

LISTENING

 Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. Listening is often confused with hearing. Hearing is simply the  act of perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearing-impaired, hearing simply happens. Listening,  however, is something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so that your brain  processes meaning from words and sentences. Listening leads to learning. While hearing is a biological process that can be scientifically explained, listening is a neurological cognitive regarding the processing of auditory stimuli received by the auditory system. Hearing is always occurring, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is the interpretative action taken by the listener in order to understand and potentially make meaning out of the sound waves.

Listening is the foundation of language. Listening is an integral part of the reading process. It helps to build vocabulary, increase fluency and aid in comprehension. Supporting reading through listening enables students to build skills and access curriculum at their grade level. We teach listening because listening is very important to improves relationships, improves our knowledge, improves our understanding, can save money, exchange information, enjoy yourself, and share the feelings. And we teach listening to prepare our students for these situations :

-          Attending a lesson or a lecture. The aim of this activity is to understand the main concept and to be able to distinguish the main information.

-          Listening to announcements, news and weather forecast. In this situation listener’s objective is to get relevant information.

-          Listening to live situation in which one takes no part. This type of situation is usually connected with eavesdropping. The person listening to the conversation is usually unaware of the context so that he or she cannot interfere into the conversation.

-          Listening to or watching plays, watching TV or listening to a radio for pleasure.

-          The aim of this activity is to entertain oneself.

-          Listening to someone giving a speech. The listener is often interested in views and attitudes of the speaker.

-          Following the instructions. The listener’s objective is to accomplish the task successfully .

Teacher’s difficulties in teach listening are :

-          For a student of a foreign language, accurate and intelligent listening is a necessity, and the teacher is responsible to help his / her learners to acquire this skill which provides the very foundation for learning and functioning in a language. That the teacher can observe and isolate the errors in speaking, but could not in listening is a difficulty.

-          Helping the learners to distinguish sounds, teaching to isolate significant content and informational items for concentration may be provided by controlled listening exercises. One exercise is to give him certain performance objectives -to give him general informational questions that he should be able to answer after he listens the material for the first time.

Students’ difficulties in learning listening are :

-          Problems caused by pronunciation. One of the most common problems encountered by students is the way English words are pronounced but unfortunately this aspect of English cannot be overlooked. Students can find it difficult to comprehend with the fact that there are different ways how to pronounce the same sound. Students can encounter a difference between sound and spelling.

-          Problems caused by the lack of control of a speaker’s speech speed. Many students feel that one of the greatest difficulties they have to deal with during listening exercises in comparison with reading exercises is the lack of possibility how to control the speed of speakers’ speech. Students believe that during the listening they can miss important information and in contrast to reading they cannot re-listen to it. Some students can be busy with the meaning of certain words from the first part that they miss important information from the second part or they can stop listening as they are not able to select the correct information so quickly’

-          Problems caused by the inability to get things repeated. Another problem connected with listening is the fact that listeners cannot always make the speaker repeat what they have just said. If the recordings are under the students’ control they can be played over and over again but this is not possible in everyday classroom environment where the teacher decides whether they will listen to the recording again or not.

-          Problems caused by the listeners’ limited word stock

For listeners who do not know all vocabulary used by the speaker, listening can be very stressful as they usually start thinking about the meaning and as a result of this. They miss the following information.

-          Problems caused by the failure to concentrate

There are many factors influencing learners concentration e.g. selection of a good topic is very important as it is easier for students to concentrate if the topic is appealing for them.

-          Problems caused by the language

A majority of recordings played in the classrooms contain language that is slower, formal and speakers speak clearly but the listening outside of the classrooms does not possess these qualities and contains informal colloquial phrases and teachers preparing their students for real-life listening should know about these features.

-          Problems caused by the lack of visual support

In real life listening is not only about hearing some information but also about seeing the other people e.g. their gestures and body language. But in classroom environment teachers usually use audio not video recordings and this can cause problems to some learners since they must focus only on what they hear, which can be restricting for them.

As a teacher, we can help our students to understand a listening text by :

-          Grade listening materials according to the students’ level, and provide authentic materials rather than idealized, filtered samples. It is true that natural speech is hard to grade and it is difficult for students to identify the different voices and cope with frequent overlaps.

-          Design task-oriented exercises to engage the students’ interest and help them learn listening skills subconsciously.

-          Provide students with different kinds of input, such as lectures, radio news, films, TV plays, announcements, everyday conversation, interviews, storytelling, English songs, and so on.

-          Try to find visual aids or draw pictures and diagrams associated with the listening topics to help students guess or imagine actively.

-          Make students aware of different native-speaker accents

-          Select short, simple listening texts with little redundancy for lower-level students and complicated authentic materials with more redundancy for advanced learners

-          Provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge, such as complex sentence structures and colloquial words and expressions, as needed.

-          Give, and try to get, as much feedback as possible. Throughout the course the teacher should bridge the gap between input and students’ response and between the teacher’s feedback and students’ reaction in order to keep activities purposeful. It is important for the listening-class teacher to give students immediate feedback on their performance. This not only promotes error correction but also provides encouragement. It can help students develop confidence in their ability to deal with listening problems. Student feedback can help the teacher judge where the class is going and how it should be guided.

Types of listening exercises

Types of listening exercises can be divided into four main groups listening with no respond, with a limited respond, with a long respond and with an extended respond

A.    Listening without any respond

Listening without any respond involves these activities:

-          A written text- this type contains reading a text and listening to it at the same

time. The advantage of this activity is that students can acquire the

pronunciation of different phrases and words but on the other hand students   will not develop strategies for listening comprehension without any text support.

-          Listening to book based materials- this is mainly based on students’ previous

knowledge about well known stories. Although it is quite difficult to find out

how good or bad the students were in the listening comprehension this type of

activity is useful as hearing a familiar material certainly has value as a sort of

easy transition between listening for perception and listening for comprehension

-          Listening with visual support- the visual support involves pictures, graphs,

maps and so on. While listening to a listening passage students have to follow

the visual aid.

-          Listening for pleasure- such activities contain listening to songs, stories

watching films and TV programs. The advantage of these activities is that

students will enjoy them and the target language is presented in different way

but on the other hand students can just listen for pleasure without any

willingness to understand it .

B.     Listening with a limited respond

Listening with limited respond contains these activities:

-          Following the instructions- students are supposed to act according to the

instructions either by physical movements, drawing a picture this task is more

suitable for beginners.

-          Ticking of the words they heard- students are usually provided with a list of

words or phrases and they must tick them of when they hear them. This activity

is suitable for beginners especially for vocabulary practice.

-          True or false activities- students have to decide whether the information was

true or false.

-          Spotting the difference- students listen to a text and when they hear wrong

information they make a response.

-          Guessing- teachers or students describe somebody or something and the class

guesses what it can be.

-          Describing - in this type of an activity students are given a set of pictures, maps

and so on and they are supposed to either order the pictures or identify the main

features .

C.     Listening with a long respond

Listening with long respond involves these activities:

-          Summarizing, paraphrasing and translating- for these activities students are

demanded to either to summarize the main ideas of the text or retell the story in

their own words in the target language or in their mother tongue.

-          Gap filling- during the listening students are supposed to fill in missing

information according to what they heard.

-          Answering questions- students are asked to answer questions according to the

listening text. The most common form of this exercise is a multiple choice

exercise where only one answer is the correct one. This activity represents one

of the most difficult ones as the listener has to store the information from the

recording for a long time .

D.    Listening with an extended respond

Listening with an extended respond involves these activities:

-          Problem solving- students listen to a text where a problems is mentioned after

listening to the recording they have to discuss the issue and try to find an

appropriate solution to it.

Some technique in teaching listening are :

-          Interpersonal Activities

One effective and nonthreatening way for students to develop stronger listening skills is through interpersonal activities, such as mock interviews and storytelling. Assign the students to small groups of two or three, and then give them a particular listening activity to accomplish. For example, you may have one student interview another for a job with a company or for an article in a newspaper. Even a storytelling activity, such as one that answers the question "What was your favorite movie from last year?" can give students the opportunity to ask one another questions and then to practice active listening skills.

-          Group Activities

Larger group activities also serve as a helpful method for teaching listening skills to students. You can begin with a simple group activity. For the first part, divide students into groups of five or larger and instruct them to learn one hobby or interest of at least two other group members. Encourage them to ask clarifying questions during the activity, and you may allow them to take notes if helpful. However, as time passes and their skills grow, you should limit students to only writing notes after the completion of the first part of the group activity. For the second part, have the students sit in a large circle, and then have each individual student share the name and the hobby or interest of the group members that she or he met. This second part of the group activity can also lend itself to additional listening exercises. For example, you may ask students to name a number of the hobbies and interests identified during the sharing session.

-          Audio Segments

You can also teach listening skills through audio segments of radio programs, online podcasts, instructional lectures and other audio messages. You should model this interactive listening process in class with your students, and then instruct them to repeat the exercise on their own. First, instruct students to prepare for listening by considering anything that they will want to learn from the content of the audio segment. Once they have written down or shared these ideas, then play the audio segment, allowing the students to take notes if helpful. Once they have gained confidence and experience, repeat this activity but instruct students to not take notes until the completion of the audio segment. You can use shorter or longer audio segments, and you can choose more accessible or more challenging material for this type of exercise.

-          Video Segments

Another helpful resource for teaching listening skills are video segments, including short sketches, news programs, documentary films, interview segments, and dramatic and comedic material. As with audio segments, select the portion and length of the video segment based on the skill level of your students. With your students, first watch the segment without any sound and discuss it together. Encourage the students to identify what they think will be the content of the segment. Then, watch the segment again, this time with sound, allowing students to take notes if helpful for their skill level. After the completion of the video segment, you can have students write a brief summary of the segment, or you can take time to discuss as a group how the segment compares with the students' expectations.

-          Instructional Tips

Whatever method you use for teaching listening, keep a few key instructional tips in mind that will help both you and your students navigate the learning process. One, keep your expectations simple, as even the most experienced listener would be unable to completely and accurately recall the entirety of a message. Two, keep your directions accessible and build in opportunities for students not only to ask clarifying questions, but also to make mistakes. Three, help students navigate their communication anxiety by developing activities appropriate to their skill and confidence level, and then strengthen their confidence by celebrating the ways in which they do improve, no matter how small.