Teaching Listening

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Teaching Listening Speaking

• Prepared by Dr Sabariah Md Rashid

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Is listening a component of speaking?
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Key Questions about Listening

• What are listeners doing when they listen?
• What factors affect good listening?
• What are characteristics of real life
  listening?
• What are the many things listeners listen for?
• What are some principles for designing listening
  techniques?
• How can listening techniques be interactive?
• What are some common techniques for teaching
  listening?

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What makes listening difficult?

• Clustering
• Redundancy
• Reduced forms
• Performance variables
• Colloquial language
• Rate of delivery
• Stress, rhythm, and intonation
• Interaction

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What types of listening skills are developed?

• Microskills
• - attending to smaller bits of language
  involving bottom-up approach to listening
  comprehension
• - is achieved by dividing and decoding the
  sound signal bit by bit. the ability to separate
  the stream of speech into individual words

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What types of listening skills are developed?
(contd)

• Macroskills
• - focusing on larger elements involving top-
• down approach to listening (listening for
  
• general idea use of background
  knowledge)

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What kinds of listening skills are taught?

• Reactive (listen and repeat)
• Intensive (listen on a focused sound)
• Responsive (listen and respond briefly)
• Selective (listen for particular items in a
  longer passage)
• Extensive (listen for interactive/responsive
  purposes)
• Interactive (listen to discuss, respond, debate)

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Principles for teaching listening

• Integrate listening into the course
• Appeal to students personal goals
• Use authentic language and contexts
• Consider how students will respond
• Teach listening strategies
• Include both bottom-up top-down listening

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Common listening strategies

• Looking for key words
• Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
• Predicting a speakers purpose by the context
• Activating background knowledge
• Guessing at meanings
• Seeking clarification
• Listening for the gist
• Developing test-taking strategies for listening

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Activity(Take a break!)

• With a partner/group, consider some listening
  strategies. Briefly plan how you might teach
  these strategies to students.
• Report back to the whole group on at least two of
  the activities.

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Current issues in teaching oral skills

• Conversational discourse
• Teaching pronunciation
• Accuracy and fluency
• Affective factors
• Interaction effect
• Questions about intelligibility
• Questions about what is correct speech

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What makes speaking difficult?

• The same things that make listening difficult
• Clustering
• Redundancy
• Reduced forms
• Performance variables
• Colloquial language
• Rate of delivery
• Stress, rhythm, and intonation
• Interaction

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Types of classroom performance

• Imitative (this should be limited)repetition
  drill
• Intensive practise a grammatical/ phonological
  feature
• Responsive to respond to a question
• Transactional (dialogue) to convey information
• Interpersonal (dialogue) to interact socially
• Extensive monologue (intermediate/advanced)

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Do drills have a place?

• Yes, BUT.

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Guidelines for Drills

• Keep them short
• Keep them simple
• Keep them snappy
• Ensure that students know WHY they are doing the
  drill
• Limit the drill to phonological/grammatical
  points
• Ensure that they lead to a communicative goal
• DONT OVERUSE THEM
• (Excessive use becomes poisonous)

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Principles for Teaching Speaking

• Focus on fluency and accuracy (depending on
  objective)
• Use intrinsically motivating techniques
• Use authentic language in meaningful contexts
• Provide appropriate feedback and correction
• Optimize the natural link between listening and
  speaking (and other skills)
• Give students the opportunity to initiate oral
  communication.
• Develop speaking strategies.

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Sample activities for teaching conversation

• Interviews
• Guessing games
• Jigsaw tasks
• Ranking exercises
• Discussions
• Values clarification
• Problem-solving activities
• Role plays
• Simulations

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Should we teach pronunciation?

• According to Wong (1987), sounds are less
  crucial for understanding than the way they are
  organized (as cited in Brown, 2008, p. 339).
• Native speakers rely more on stress and
  intonation than accurate articulation of a
  particular sound.

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Factors that affect pronunciation

• Native language
• Age
• Exposure
• Innate phonetic ability
• Identity and language ego
• Motivation/concern for good pronunciation

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When and how should I correct errors?

• Global errors
• - affect meaning hinder communication
• - prevent listeners to comprehend some/all
  aspects of the conveyed message
• Local errors
• - do not prevent message from being
  understood
• - minor violation of a segment of a
  sentence
• Performance slip or competence error
• - e.g. slip of the tongue, spoonerisms

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Question to ponder on!

• What is your attitude towards errors/mistakes (in
  speech/writing)?
• To what extent has your teaching or learning been
  characterised by a progression of noticing and
  repairing?
• How does your approach affect your pupils?

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Common speaking strategies

• Asking for clarification (what?)
• Asking someone to repeat something
• Using fillers
• Using conversation maintenance cues (uh-huh,
  right, yeah, okay, hm)
• Getting someones attention
• Using paraphrases for structures one cannot
  produce
• Appealing for assistance from the interlocutor
• Using formulaic expressions
• Using mime and nonverbal expressions

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References

• Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by principles An
  interactive approach to language pedagogy (3rd
  ed). White Plains, NY Pearson Education.
• Richard-Amato, P.A. (2003). Making it happen
  From interactive to participatory language
  teaching theory and practice (3rd ed.). White
  Plains, NY Pearson Education.