2. 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.
3. • 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 having a “silent period” in the early stages
of learning and wait for “readiness” to produce the
language
4. 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.
5. 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
6. 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
– Listening to someone give a public address
7. 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 that purpose similar to the purpose a listener might
have in real life?
• Does the task given to the learner encourage that listening
purpose?
8. What learners need to be able to do
in order to listen effectively
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
9. Designing listening activities for the
classroom
• The standard procedure used for listening
activities are
– Pre-listening stage
– While-Listening stage
– Post-listening stage
10. 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
11. • 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 topic
• Predict info. about the topic
• Write questions about the topic
12. 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
13. 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
14. Post-Listening Activities
• The purpose of post-listening activities is to help
learners connect what they have heard with their own
ideas and experienxe.
• Helps learners to move easily from listening to
another skill.
15. Post-listening Activities
• Give opinions
• Relate similar experiences
• Role-play a similar interaction
• Write a brief report
• Write a similar text
• Debate the topic
16. 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.
17. Post-listening Activities
• Give opinions
• Relate similar experiences
• Role-play a similar interaction
• Write a brief report
• Write a similar text
• Debate the topic
