The listening skill DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES Why we listen? The skill of listening Sounds , Vowels and Consonants Word stress? Sentence stress? Intonation? Some exercises for the development of listening skill Graded practice exercises Types of classroom listening performance Some principles of teaching listening comprehension Graphical Description Conclusion

1. “The Listening Skill”
“The most basic and
powerful way to connect
to another person is to
listen. Just
listen. Perhaps the most
important thing we ever
give each other is our
attention”
__Rachel Naomi Remen

2. 1.MADIHA SHAUKAT(O1)
2.ALIZEH IMRAN(O2)
3.MASHAL HAYAT (O4)
4.AYESHA KINZUL EMAN(O5)
5.SARA TAHIR(O6)
“ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY OF BAHAWALPUR”
The Department of English
B.A (Hons.) English
5th Semester!
6.Madiha Ahsan (o7)
7.Ishrat Fatima(o8)
8.Taliya Ayaz(o9)
9.Arifa Abid(10)
GROUP #1
Group Leader:
Shajia Shoaib(11)
Group Members:

3. CONTENTS
 The listening skill
 DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES
 Why we listen?
 The skill of listening
 Sounds , Vowels and Consonants
 Word stress?
 Sentence stress?
 Intonation?
 Some exercises for
the development of listening skill
 Graded practice exercises
 Types of classroom listening performance
 Some principles of
teaching listening comprehension
 Graphical Description
 Conclusion

4. The Listening Skill
”Background Knowledge”
All these years it has been assumed that listening
competence will come naturally while learning a
foreign language. So all the focus is given to
teaching and reading skill. But when we encounter
the native language speakers ,we face difficulty in
understanding the language. Because they speak in
natural and informal style which has now become
ordinary conversational style.

5. DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES
 Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret
messages in the communication process.
 Listening is key to all effective
communication, without the ability to listen
effectively, messages are easily misunderstood –
communication breaks down and the sender of the message
can easily become frustrated or irritated.
 Effective listening involves observing body language
and noticing inconsistencies between verbal and non-verbal
messages.
 For example, if someone tells you that they are happy
with their life but through gritted teeth or with tears filling
their eyes, you should consider that the verbal and non-
verbal messages are in conflict, they maybe don't mean
what they say.

6. Listening is Not the Same as Hearing
We Spend a lot of Time
Listening.
“Adults spend an average of 70%
of their time engaged in some sort
of communication, of this an
average of 45% is spent listening
compared to 30% speaking, 16%
reading and 9% writing.”
(Adler, R. et al. 2001).
Hearing refers to the sounds that you hear, whereas
Listening requires more than that: it requires focus. It
means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is
told, the use of language and voice, and how the other
person uses his or her body.

7. WHY WE LISTEN?
Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. How
well you listen has a major impact on your job
effectiveness, and on the quality of your relationships with
others.
When we are listening, we do it because,
 We want to find out information about person or event
 We listen to serious lecture , seminars or discussions in order
to understand them.
 We listen for enjoyment.
 We listen to learn.
To become a good listener we need to have,
 Knowledge of phonology or sound system
 Knowledge of topic or world between speaker and listener.

8. The skill of Listening
A person who understands spoken English can
 Recognize English speech sounds
 Understand the meanings
 Grammatical meanings of structure
 Understand the meaning of sentences by “intonation
patterns”
 Get the theme of the speaker and theme of the discussion
 Become master in guessing meanings
 Predict words to match up with the conversational speed

9. Sounds , Vowels and Consonants
 The process of combination: When we speak, the
listener hears a smooth continuity of combined sounds.
 Flow of speech can be controlled by the teacher in the
classroom but speech heard outside is normally
uncontrolled.
 The difference in vowel sound leads to a difference in
meaning and may result in misunderstanding and
confusion.
 Combination of consonants make difficult clusters
This occurs in Initial, Medial and Final position.
 Vowels and Consonants (technically called, Segmental
phonemes) , Stress and Intonation make up speech.

10. Word Stress?
 Word stress is your magic key to understanding spoken English.
 Let's take 3 words:
photograph, photographer and photographic.
Do they sound the same when spoken?
No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word. And it
is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is
different.
 There are two very important rules about word stress:
 One word, one stress.
 The stress is always on a vowel.
 The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet.
words Syllables Stressed Syllable
PHO TO GRAPH 3 #1
PHO TO GRAPH ER 4 #2
PHO TO GRAPH IC 4 #3

11. Sentence Stress?
 Sentence stress is the music of spoken English.
 Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence.
 Most sentences have two types of words:
 Content words are the key words of a sentence.They are the
important words that carry the meaning or sense.
 Structure words are not very important words. They are small,
simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically.
Will you SELL my CAR because I've GONE to FRANCE
SELL CAR GONE FRANCE
SELL,CAR,GONE and FRANCE are the CONTENT WORDS
while others are STRUCTURE WORDS.

12. INTONATION?
 In linguistics, the use of changing vocal pitch to
convey grammatical information or personal attitude.
 For example if the word 'right' is said with the pitch of the voice
rising, it is likely to be heard as a question or as an invitation to a
speaker to continue, while falling pitch is more likely to be heard
as confirmation or agreement.“
 "Intonation is the melody or music of a language.
 It's raining, isn't it
 It's raining, isn't it?
 Some of this intonational meaning is shown in writing, through
the use of punctuation, but most of it is not. This is why spoken
English, as spoken by native speakers, is richer in information
content than written English.

13. SOME EXERCISES FOR
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LISTENING SKILL
INFORMATION TRANSFER EXERCISES
Information transfer exercises are
very useful here. These involve
receiving information in one form and
transferring it to another.
For Example:
Verbal & transferring the information,
or selected pieces of it, to another form that are diagrams,
graphs, lines on maps, labels etc.

14. ADVANTAGES
1.Straight forward non-verbal responses such as, the drawing
of lines on a diagram, recognizing or writing short labels
involves an absolute minimum of linguistic production.
2. As the task are carried out while the student is listening,
there is no great burden on LTM. Any assessment of
comprehension will be uncontaminated by memory factors.
3.The fact that the student has to do two things at once…
LISTEN & PERFORM a simple task.
4. To perform the task, the student has to select the relevant
information & filter out the rest.

15. GRADED PRACTICE EXERCISES
 Short Completion Exercises:
 Have to provide a likely ending to the unfinished sentence.
 Note-taking Exercises:
 It is a complex and useful activity.
 It combines listening, selecting, summarizing and writing skills.
 Follow-up Exercise:
 Students have to re-manage the summary of the story that is given
in wrong order.
 Close Exercises:
 The exercise in which tenth item is regularly left blank to be filled in
by students.

16. OTHER EXERCISES
 Picture Identification Sheet Picture can be used to great
advantage in listening comprehension. Just by listening the
direction student can draw a picture without looking to other's
drawing. The teacher should make it clear to students that
they are try to draw the picture.
 Question/Answer Exercises The most easy way of
listening comprehension can be practiced but asking the
student to answer the suitable questions. It keeps the children
alert in the class.
 A Simple Check List Some words and/or phrases are
written at random on practice sheet. You read the passage
before writing on note book. Then number the words (e.g.
1,2,3...) while listening in the order they appear in the
passage.

17. Types of Classroom Listening Performance
INTENSIVE LISTENING
☻ Techniques whose only focus is to focus on
components (phonemes, words, intonation,
discourse markers, etc.) of discourse
>Include bottom-up skills
☻refers to using the incoming input as the basis for
understanding the message
Examples of intensive listening performance:
1.Students listen for cues in certain choral or individual drills
2.The teacher repeats a word or sentence several times to “imprint” it in the
student’s mind

18. Types of Classroom Listening Performance
EXTENSIVE LISTENING
☻could range from listening to lengthy lectures to listening to
a conversation and deriving
a comprehensive message or purpose
☻aims to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken
language
☻refers to the use of background
knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message
Examples of extensive listening performance:
may require the student to invoke other interactive skills (e.g., note taking,
discussion) for full comprehension

19. SOME PRINCIPLES OF
TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Christina Bratt and Mary Newton Burder in their book gave
some principles in teaching listening comprehension:
These are:
 Listening comprehension (LC)lessons must have definite goals,
carefully stated. These goals should fit into the overall curriculum
and both teacher and students should be clear about their
objectives.
 Listening comprehension lessons should be constructed carefully
step by step planning. The student should know exactly what the
task is and he is given directions as to “what to listen”.
 LC lesson’s structure should demand active student participation
involves a written response to the listening material, and that
immediate feedback on performance helps keep interest and
motivation at high levels.

20. Other Principles
 Students should be given writing assignment before they listen to the
material. “Listening is receiving, receiving requires thinking and thinking
requires memory; there is no way to separate
listening, thinking, remembering.”
 Listening comprehension should be “teach and not test”. There should be
no pass/fail attitude associated with the correction of the exercises.
 Maximize the use of material that is relevant to students' real life.
 Maximize the use of authentic language.
 Vary the materials in terms of speakers' gender, age, accent, topic, speed.
 Always ask students to listen with a purpose and allow them to show their
comprehension in a task.
 Language material intended to be used for training listening
comprehension should never be presented visually first

21. Graphical Description

22. CONCLUSION
“If we were supposed to talk more than we listen,
we would have two tongues and one ear.” Mark Twain
The four language skills are:
In our own language, listening is usually the
first language skill that we learn.
“ To become a fluent speaker in English, you need to develop strong
listening skills. Listening not only helps you understand what people are
saying to you. It also helps you to speak clearly to other people. It helps
you learn how to pronounce words properly, how to use intonation, and
where to place stress in words and sentences. This makes your speech
easier for other people listening to you to understand! “
Listening Reading
Speaking Writing
“THANKYOU FOR LISTENING ;)”