A method for teaching listening skill content I. Introduction II. Main body

3.EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE FOR TEACHING LISTENING TO THE STUDENTS OF TECHNICAL INSTITUTES OF ON THE MATERIAL OF SCALE UP
Innovative methods of teaching listening through authentic materials to the A2 level learners is an important communicative skill. In fact, being an active listener is as important as being an effective speaker for the success of any human verbal exchange. This is due to the fact that conversationalists doing either listening or speaking during an interaction have to keep track of context, pragmatics, intonation, shared knowledge, underlying agendas, stance displays, and pay attention to gaze orientation, facial expressions, hand gestures, displays of affiliation or dis-affiliation—among many other conversational features. Although listening has often been classified as a receptive skill due to the fact that it is a medium for language input, it is clear that listeners are in fact dynamic agents whose cognitive machinery is as busy as that of speakers during conversational exchanges. When it comes to listening in a second or foreign language (L2), this skill becomes even more challenging. A2 level listeners may have varying levels of proficiency and there-fore may be more or less familiar with particular sounds and speech production patterns in that target language. Some of these sounds may require extensive practice before they are mastered and easily recognized. Given the complexity of this task, it favors brains that have not yet completed the process of synapse elimination and therefore are more “plastic.” Synapse elimination, also known as synaptic pruning, occurs between early childhood and the onset of puberty in many mammals. Pruning starts near the time of birth and is completed by the time of sexual maturation in humans. Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, is an umbrella term that encompasses both synaptic plasticity and nonsynaptic plasticity; it refers to changes in neural pathways and in synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions. As a matter of fact, research has shown that certain listening subskills are more easily acquired by younger age groups, though the same subskills may be acquired by older learners through increased exposure and extensive specialized practice.
SLA studies of age-related differences often show that younger learners perform better than adult learners in listening tasks. For example, research has shown that adult A2 level learners cannot perceive A2 segmental sounds as accurately as younger learners or native speakers. Adult speakers of different languages have been shown to be influenced by the phonological inventories of their native languages when they perceive sounds and perform articulatory discriminations. Burstall showed that early starters outperformed late starters in listening comprehension tasks. Oyama suggested that the degree of American English accent and proficiency in listening skills in A2 level learners was related to the age of acquisition. Oyama described subjects who began learning English before the age of 11 and obtained comprehension scores similar to those of native speakers, whereas later learners did less well. Similarly, Seright found that, when adults were placed in similar learning conditions for the same time span, their achievement in A2 listening comprehension declined with increasing age. Finally, Snow and Hoefnagel Höhle found that, even though adolescent and adult subjects performed better than child learners on measures of pronunciation, morphology, vocabulary, sentence repetition, and translation, younger learners caught up with older learners when given more time. In contrast to the body of research that reports a negative correlation between A2 listening comprehension and aging, some studies seem to suggest that adults out-perform children in A2 listening comprehension that involves short-term expo-sure. This better performance demonstrated by adults may be due to their higher cognitive development, an advantage they have over children. For instance, Munoz showed that older learners had an advantage over younger ones on communicative oral and aural interactive tests, though for listening comprehension there were no significant differences. Despite the fact that age is undoubtedly an important condition for the development of listening capabilities, research has shown that not only cognitive, but psychological and environmental factors can influence listeners’ performance in an A2 level. Some of these additional factors are working memory, metacognitive instruction, A2 level proficiency, length of residence and input, amount of A1 and A2 level use, anxiety, accent familiarity, and motivation and aptitude. Recent studies have focused on instructional strategies that help A2 level learners develop their listening skills, taking into account not only age differences but also linguistic background, context, and length and amount of exposure.
Despite the various factors that influence A2 level listening development, extensive listening, strategy training, auditory training in speech perception, and metacognitive instruction can help adults develop their A2 listening comprehension skills and improve performance. When organizing extensive and intensive A2level listening activities for A2 level adult learners, it is important for teachers to introduce resources that can enrich the input and help learners overcome A2 level listening difficulties. Such input should be level appropriate and involve enjoyable activities.
What generally makes A2 level listening more challenging than A1 listening is its reduced amount of practice and the limited variety of the input. Therefore designing activities that enrich the input of A2 level listening tasks is a fundamental requirement for improving A2 level listening performance. In order to create level-appropriate tasks for adult learners, teachers should use reciprocal and nonreciprocal materials of moderate length. Listening materials that are reciprocal involve face-to-face communication, whereas non-reciprocal materials include non-interactive sources of listening input, such as television programs in the target language, radio programs, videos on the Internet, and so on.
A combination of both types of listening input will better prepare adult learners for the challenges of “real-world” A2 level listening performance. Moreover, reciprocal and nonreciprocal listening tasks should comprise moderate-length and engaging listening tasks designed to keep the learners focused and interested. While moderate-length listening activities can promote learner engagement, long and uninteresting activities will cause students to lose focus. In addition to a combination of reciprocal and nonreciprocal listening tasks, teachers should plan tasks aimed to train listening subskills, as these subskills can also increase adults’ listening performance. Focused training strategies can help adult learners overcome their listening comprehension limitations. Among others, such subskill training strategies include hyper-articulation (i.e., exaggerated articulation of speech), training with minimal pairs in initial position, initial-cluster position, medial position, and final position, and using familiar and unfamiliar voices in the listening sources. For example, research has shown that listening materials that make use of multiple speakers lead to better performance in the listening comprehension of new voices. Studies show that there is a strong correlation between strategy use and successful understanding and sustaining of smooth communication, because using such strategies creates an increased level of learner engagement with the instruction.
Adult learners regulate their listening strategies in order to arrive at an understanding of the message being heard. Successful users of A2 listening strategies are inclined to monitor the incoming input and adjust and control their own listening processes. Additionally, they are able to anticipate and make inferences about the material in order to comprehend aural input. Successful A2 level listeners also use bottom-up and top-down processing strategies interactively. ¹¹
This interactive process is known as parallel processing and requires the learner to use background knowledge (top-down) to interpret meaning and to draw on linguistic knowledge in order to discriminate between familiar sounds (bottom-up). The goal is for the language listener to use parallel processing in order to perceive, interpret, and respond to the information being heard. Bottom-up processing must be under a high degree of attentional control until the components of A2 level knowledge become automatic. These processes are parallel and inform each other, but top-down processes could pose a challenge for younger learners because top-down processing strategies require building upon background knowledge so as to make sense of what learners are hearing.
Therefore teachers should be mindful when asking younger learners to make use of such strategies, as younger learners might have limited background experience to refer to. In those cases, teachers should plan tasks that involve background knowledge familiar to younger learners. Metacognitive instruction, a subcomponent of strategy training, is also deemed important for A2 listening achievement. The basic idea underlying metacognitive awareness training is to encourage students’ planning, monitoring, and evaluation of various listening processes. Both young learners and adults can benefit from metacognitive instruction. However, young learners may need more instruction, practice, and help to apply it, since they have limited linguistic experience and are still undergoing cognitive development. In addition, metacognitive instruction may cause problems for young learners, as research suggests that metacognitive capabilities progress over time and depend upon a knowledge base. Vandergrift suggests that, if learners are given the chance to reflect on their listening processes through prediction or evaluation, they will be able to develop the kind of metalinguistic awareness that will assist their A2 level comprehension. There are additional instructional strategies that teachers can use with learners of all age groups in order to increase their performance in listening tasks, for example prediction, preview of key vocabulary, use of audiovisual materials, and activation of students’ schemata. It is usually helpful when learners know in advance what the listening input is going to be about; this makes prediction activities a good place to start in setting up a listening task. It is also useful if learners are already acquainted with key words and phrases that are going to be used in connected speech. A2 level listeners might also take advantage of auditory messages supported by visual images. For instance, comparative studies with audio only and audiovisual input show that audiovisual input is more helpful, especially in content areas of greater difficulty for learners. Audiovisual comparative groups also show better lip-reading abilities after a period of training. Finally, teachers must remember that there are many nonlinguistic factors that also influence the comprehensibility of A2 level listening input at any age. Interference factors that should be minimized or avoided are poor signal quality, background noise, distractions of the listener’s attention, and affective features such as anxiety. The latter is particularly important because, if students feel anxious after failing to recognize a word or a phrase, they might miss the next part of the listening text, as they get stuck in the unrecognized section. Considering the importance of affective factors in language acquisition, teachers should encourage students to listen for general understanding before asking them to focus on detail questions. Achieving general comprehension first decreases anxiety and facilitates listening for specific details the second time they listen to a text. As a general rule, language learners of all ages can benefit from carefully designed activities that aim at increasing their performance in overall listening comprehension tasks. However, a larger amount of research has focused on interventions for adults. This is probably due to the fact that adults struggle with the growing debilitation in their auditory ability, paired with a reduced amount of exposure and opportunities to practice the target language due to work commitments and other responsibilities. The situation reality begs for tested and optimized strategies that could help adults achieve proficiency efficiently. Younger learners, on the other hand, benefit from their capacity to acquire a language less consciously and more or less effortlessly. As a result of adults’ cognitive maturity, their A2 learning process relies more on their reasoning skills, previous linguistic experience, goal significance, self-image, and levels of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.¹²
Any message has two components: the content of the message and the underlying feeling or attitude. Both parts are important and give the message meaning. Listen for both for content and the underlying emotions. Sometimes the real message is in the emotion rather than the content.
By following these tips, you and your child are developing the skills you both need to be better active listeners. Practicing these steps with your child will continue to help him or her improve his or her listening habits.

1. 
   Showing your child how to be an active listener by example is only the first step. It is also important to practice these skills.
   
2. 
   Try these activities to help develop and sharpen your child’s listening skills.
   
3. 
   Read stories to your child. Ask him or her to predict what will happen next. The prediction requires your child to listen to the details to make a logical guess.
   
4. 
   Cook with your child. Read the recipe to him or her, having your child listen to and follow each step to complete the recipe correctly.
   
5. 
   Have conversations about things your child is interested in. This gives your child a chance to engage in a real conversation, practicing both speaking and listening.
   
6. 
   Play the telephone game. Get together with a group and have one person whisper a sentence to the next person. Each person repeats it to the next until the final person. Have this person say the sentence aloud and see how much the two sentences have changed.
   

It takes a lot of concentration and determination to be a better listener. Practicing active listening techniques will help students become better communicators and build listening skills they will use for life.¹³
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