This document discusses teaching listening skills. It covers: 1. The objectives of understanding listening skills, mental processes involved in listening, common difficulties students face, and how to design effective listening activities and lessons. 2. The content includes the process of listening and teaching listening. Common listening problems can arise from speaker factors, text factors, and listener factors. 3. Effective teaching involves both bottom-up processing, where students decode sounds and language structures, and top-down processing, where students use context and background knowledge to understand meanings. The document provides examples of classroom activities and tasks to develop both types of listening skills.

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TEACHING
LISTENING
Supervisor: Dr. JenniferTan
SEAMEO – REGIONAL LANGUAGE CENTRE
Prepared by: Nguyen Ha Que Duyen
LE QUY DON SECODARY SCHOOL

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I. Objectives
It is hoped that by the end of the period, you will:
i. Understand the characteristics of listening skills in
teaching/ learning English.
ii. Be familiar with the mental processes that intervene
when listening.
iii. Understand ( main) difficulties students meet
when facing listening activities.
iv. Design and select appropriate activities/ tasks for
listening.
v. Plan and evaluate effective lessons.
II. Content
i. The process of listening
ii. Teaching listening.

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1. Common listening problems
- Listening as a receptive skill: It starts from
an Aural text ( sounds) and it is a decoding
process.
- Listening is influenced by a variety of reasons
that have their sources “ inside” and “ outside”
the head.
Several obstacles that impact comprehension:
- Speaker factors and text factors
- Listener factors.
Outside the head :the tape quality- instructions
* What do you think are these sources?
Inside the head: background knowledge/ schemata
A. THE PROCESS OF LISTENING

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Common listening problems
Speaker/ interlocutor Factors
- Speakers speak too fast.
- Speakers use too many unfamiliar words.
- Speaker accents are unfamiliar
( also fluency, standard, non- standard /
non- native speakers)
* How can you solve it?
Ask students to repeat/ give content words/
do the guessing/ non- verbal gestures…
Explain further/ use synonyms…

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Common listening problems
Text Factors
- Complexity of lexis and syntax.
- Recording are not always clear and are difficult
to follow.
- Density of information contained in the speech
can be too much.
- Excessive load of new terms, concepts,
digressions.
- Too long sentences, and inability to understand
subsequent parts if they missed part of the text.
- Text types- news, radio, lectures, abstract versus
non- abstract topics, etc.
* How can you solve it?

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Task knowledge
- Objectives
- Requirements ( tasks are clear enough – separated)
- Nature of learning to listen to speech ( difference
between speech and writing – For example, speech
is instantaneous , writing on the other hand can be
re-written, edited, checked.)
- How complex a task is influenced by the questions
(literal, inferential), the amount of time given to
complete the task, etc.

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Common listening problems
Listener Factors
- Listeners listen word for word, can’t recognize
words they know when they hear them, fail to
understand main points and logical argument.
- Listeners lack culture or background knowledge/
ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar terms.
- Listening takes too much effort and concentration.
- Listeners may have established certain habits that
impede on their listening.
- Motivation, interests.
* How to overcome the problems?
Simplify/ shorten the text/ make it interesting…
Give clear and relevant tasks.
Use many techniques: games/ simplifying/ giving pictures…

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The Nature of Listening Comprehension
In real life, people listen because they need to.
They listen to understand what was said , and not
HOW it was said, for example – they want
information.
As such the goal for listening would be:
- recognizing and acting on the speaker’s
intentions.
- identifying information from a spoken text
(inside the classroom)

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2. The role of listening
* What should be the goals for teaching listening?
- Listening for comprehension
- Listening for language learning ( acquisition)

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3. Functions of Listening
1. Transactional – to accomplish a function
2. Interactional – for social purposes

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Transactional or Interactional
For speakers of English as a foreign language,
they listen when they are
i. taught to do something which they need or want to
do.
ii. taught to do something useful/ beneficial.
iii. taking part in discussions with friends about topics
of interest and concern.
iv. listening to questions about what they need or want
( supermarket, clinic, bank, etc.)
v. listening to radio, T.V for enjoyment.
vi. listening to announcements.
Transactional
Interactional/ transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Interactional

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B. TEACHING LISTENING
Two different kinds of processes are involved
in understanding spoken discourse

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- Refers to using the incoming input as the basic of
understanding the message.
- Comprehension begins with the data that has been
received. In other words, comprehension is viewed as a
process of decoding.
* In this process:
- We segment speech into sounds.
- We depend on our ability to process acoustic symbols to
make meaning.
- We impose structures on these sounds to interpret them as
words, phrases, clauses sentences.
- We use clues on hands to infer meaning.
- We break down the utterance into its components. This is
referred to as “ chunking”. The listener should be able to
process the first piece of information in his short term memory
before he receive a second “ chunk” of information.
A. Bottom- up Processing

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Example
“My friend from Can Tho who went with me to
university 5 years ago, emailed me late last night
around 11p.m and said that he will be visiting
Rach Gia City next month and needs to find a
place to stay for 3 days. Apparently, he’s coming
down for a job interview but he’s on a very tight
budget.”
* How can we help students in listening?
To understand this utterance, using the
bottom- up processing, we have to break
down the message into components/
chunks?

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+ My friend from CTho who went with me to university 5 years ago.
+ emailed me late last night around 11p.m.
+ and said that he will be visiting RG city next month.
+ and needs to find a place to stay for 3 days.
+ Apparently, he’s coming down for a job interview.
+ but he’s on a very tight budget.
• The chunks help students identify the underlying propositions
the utterances express:
- I received an email
- from my friend in Can Tho
- He’s coming to RG city for an interview.
- And if possible would like to stay with me.
Comprehension parts Remember main/ important parts
Receive the message behind the utterance.

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1. Our knowledge of grammar
2. When we hear the speaker’s intonation and pausing.
3. Once meaning is identified, the “ packaging” is discarded.
HOW TO FIND THE APPROPRIATE CHUNKS?
- Learners need a large vocabulary and good working
knowledge of sentence structures to be able to process texts
bottom- up.
- We need to ensure students have adequate exercises that
develop bottom- up processing.
Ex : + recognizing key words- words and clause divisions.
+ knowledge of vocabulary and syntax.
+ Use stress and intonation to identify words/ sentence
functions.
STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS
IN BOTTOM- UP PROCESS

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1. Identify the referents of pronouns in an utterance.
2. Recognize the time reference of an utterance.
3. Distinguish between positive and negative statements.
4. Recognize word order.
5. Identify sequence markers, key words, etc.
CLASSROOM TASKS/ ACTIVITIES
THAT BUILD BOTTOM- UP PROCESSING

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Examples of listening tasks that
develop bottom- up processing
1. Students listen to positive and negative statements and
choose the appropriate form of agreement.
Students hear Students choose
- That’s a beautiful dress. Yes/ No
- That’s not a very good one. Yes/ No
- This meal is tasty. Yes/ No
- I don’t like you. Yes/ No

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2. Word stress as a marker of information focus of a
sentence.
Students hear Students check
information focus
The bank’s closed
for today.
Where/ When
Are schools open in
September?
Where/ When
I’m going home
tomorrow.
Where/ When

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Example
Developing the ability to identify the key words.
Students hear:
My hometown is beautiful because it’s got the beach, places to
have fresh seafood and lots of cheap shopping…
Students’ task:
Which of these words do you hear? Number them in the order you
hear.
Lots of, fresh seafood, hometown, cheap shopping, beautiful

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More examples
• Silly/ Funny/ Sad Stories
Say “ I’m going to tell you a … story. Every time you hear
something … put up your hand.”
• Auditory memory
Memory game. I went to the market and bought…

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B. Top - down Processing
- Listeners use clues – what they know ( context) and
what they perceive to build meaning ( schema). They
will be able to:
- Infer meaning from:
+ contextual clues- knowledge of the situation
+ who are the speakers?
+ what is the place, time, topic, purpose?
- Making connections between the spoken message
and prior knowledge ( of various topics).

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The Notion of Schemata
-The notion of context has been linked to schemata-
framework of understanding that we develop as
children and continue to develop as adults.
- Schemata is an effective tool for understanding the
world.
- Schemata can influence and hamper the uptake of
new information, leading an individual to “ see” or
“remember” something in a biased manner.
- But students may lack the context/ schema and
identify incorrectly the context/ schema.

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Assessing the initial state of learners
+ What do your students already know?
+ What existing schemata or frameworks do
they already know?
Remember… students come to the class with
their own knowledge and expectations.
Sometimes their own schema distorts with
what the present task requires.

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2. TEACHING TOP- DOWN PROCESSING
• Skills used in top- down processing:
- Use key words to construct the schema of a discourse.
- Infer the setting for a text.
- Infer the role of the participants and their goals.
- Infer causes and effects.
- Infer unstated details of a situation.
- Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation.

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3. ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP
TOP- DOWN LISTENING SKILLS
a, Students generate questions before the listening.
+ a set of questions they expect to hear about a topic
and listen to see if they are answered.
+ a list of things they already know and what they
would like to learn more about.
b, Students read before the listening
+ one speaker’s part and predict the other speaker’
part. Then listen and compare the news/ headlines, then
guess the event.
c, Students listen to a part of a story and then
complete the rest, then listen and compare the
endings.

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As this module intends to be practical
and hands- on, emphasis will be
placed on developing lessons,
selecting and using appropriate
materials and creating effective and
feasible tasks in teaching this skill.