Unit 8 Teaching Listening

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Unit 8 Teaching Listening
Welcome
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Teaching Objectives

• 1. The importance of listening class
• 2. The problems in listening of the Chinese
  students
• 3. What do we listen to in everyday life?
• 4. The characteristics of the listening process
• 5. The principles of teaching listening
• 6. The common activities in teaching listening.

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I. The importance of listening class

• 1. Listening is one of the main ways in
  communication
• 2. Listening is one of the four abilities of a
  language.
• 3. Listening is becoming more and more necessary
  to understand spoken English in many situations
  such as face-to-face conversations, telephone
  calls, business meetings, lectures, speeches,
  television, and so on.
• 4. Among the four skills (listening, speaking,
  reading, and writing), listening is the input
  skill.

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II. The problems in listening of the Chinese
students

• 1. Listening is often neglected in language
  teaching
• 1)Lack of teaching materials equipment
  training in how to use the equipment real-life
  situations where language learners need to
  understand spoken English
• 2) Listening is not included on many
  important tests
• 3) Lessons tend to test rather than to train
  students listening skills.
• 2. Linguistic problems
• 1) Phonetics problems
• 2) Lexical problems
• 3) Grammar problems

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• 3. Cultural problems
• 1) Frank---mild and runabout/tactful
• 2) Thinking style
• 3) Local conditions and customs
• 4. Psychological problems
• 1) Fear of difficulties
• 2) Lack of confidence
• 3) Care about faces
• 4) No need of listening skills

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III. What do we listen to in everyday life?

• 1.How many situations can you think of where you
  listen to other people in our native language?
  (Task 2)
• 2.Situations where Chinese people may need to
  listen to English
• loudspeaker announcements,telephone
  conversations, radio news, interview, lesson,
  lecture, shoppingconversation,
  gossip story-telling, instructions, meetings,
  watching television, negotiations,watching
  movies, theatre show

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IV. Characteristics of the listening process

• 1. The criteria of listening situations
• Formal or informal?
• Rehearsed or non-rehearsed?
• Can the listener interact with the speaker or
  not?

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• 2. Generally speaking, listening in real life has
  the following characteristics (adapted from Ur,
  19961067)
• 1) Spontaneity
• While some of the things that we listen to
  are rehearsed, e.g. radio news, television news
  and shows, movies, theatre, and some formal
  lectures, most of the time during an average day
  we listen to people speaking spontaneously and
  informally without rehearsing what they are
  going to say ahead of time.

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• 2) Context
• The context of listening is usually known in
  real life. In other words, we know the
  relationship between the listener and the
  speaker. Therefore, the situation helps us to
  predict What we are going to hear.

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• 3) Visual Clue
• Most of the time we can see the person we are
  listening to. This means we can see his facial
  expressions, gestures and other body language as
  well as the surrounding environment, which is
  relevant when, for example, people point at
  objects or in certain directions. These visual
  clues help us understand and predict what we
  bear. Of course there are situations where we
  cannot see the speaker, such as when we listen to
  
• the radio or use the telephone.

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• 4) Listeners response
• Most of the listening in daily life allows the
  listener to respond to the speaker, such as in a
  conversation. This means we can interrupt the
  speakers and ask for repetition or clarification.

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• 5) Speakers adjustment
• In most cases, the speaker is talking
  directly to the listener, so he or she can adjust
  the way of speaking according to the listeners
  reactions. For example, if the listener
  indicates that he or she does not understand
  what is being said, the speaker may rephrase or
  elaborate.

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V. Principles for teaching listening

• 1. Two major purposes in listening
• for social reasons
• to exchange information
• 2. Principles for teaching listening
• 1) Focus on process
• 2) Combine listening and peaking
• 3) Focus on comprehending meaning
• 4) Grade difficult level appropriately

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VI. Pre-Listening activities

• 1. Visual aids attract students attention and
  help and encourage them to focus on the subject
  in hand.
• 2. To set the scene for the students.
• 3. Listening for the gist.
• 4. Listening for specific information.

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VII. While-listening activities

• Many different kinds of tasks for students to
  do while they are listening to a passage
• 1. No specific responses
• 2. Listen and tick
• 3. Listen and sequence
• 4. Listen and act
• 5. Listen and draw
• 6. Listen and fill
• 7. Listen and guess

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VIII. Postlistening activities

• 1. Multiple choice questions
• 2. Answering questions
• 3. Note-taking and gap-filling
• 4. Dictogloss

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VIII. Conclusion

• We have discussed the followings
• 1.The importance of listening
• 2. The nature of listening, both in real language
  use and in language classroom.
• 3.The difficulties that students experience
• in developing listening skills.
• 4.A variety of activities in teaching
• listening.

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IX. Assignments

• 1. Review the text do all the exercises.
• 2. Write a teaching plan of listening.
• 3. Prepare a class of 10 minutes of mini
  teaching of listening.

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• Thank you !
• Good bye !