Creating listening activities -listening is a skill/process related to but also distinct from hearing

Creating listening activities
-Listening is a skill/process related to but also distinct from hearing (merely perceiving sound in a passive way), as it implies an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds. (Cf. seeing and reading)

-Listening has a volitional component: the desire, not only the capability, to listen; → ‘hearing and understanding what we hear at the same time’ (is it really simultaneous?)

-aiming for a successful recognition and analysis of the sounds (comprehension)

-identify the steps involved in hearing and in listening (from source/input to understanding)

2 Component skills involved:
• discriminating between sounds/phonemes,
• recognizing morphemes/words,
• identifying grammatical groupings of words (parses),
• identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning,
• connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues,
• using background knowledge/experience (database) to predict and (later) to confirm meaning.

3 A listener, as a processor of language, goes through 3 processes, using 3 types of skills:

a. Processing sound / Perception skills:

Listeners first

segment the stream of sound to

detect word boundaries, contracted forms, vocabulary, sentence and clause boundaries, stress on longer words and effect on the rest of the words, the significance of intonation and other language-related (prosodic) features, changes in pitch, tone and speed of delivery, word order pattern(s), grammatical word classes, key words, basic syntactic patterns, cohesive devices, etc.
b. Processing meaning / Analysis skills:
Syntax is lost to memory within a very short time, whereas meaning is retained for much longer. (‘memory works with propositions, not with sentences’)

While listening, listeners

categorize the received speech into meaningful sections,

identify redundant material,

keep hold of chunks of the sentences,

think ahead and use language data to anticipate what a speaker may be going to say,

accumulate information in the memory by organizing it to avoid too much immediate detail.
c. Processing knowledge and context / Synthesis skills:
context: physical setting; the number of listeners & speakers, their roles and relationship to each other

linguistic knowledge: knowledge of the target lg brought to the listening experience.

Every context has its individual frame of reference, social attitude and topics. So, members of a particular culture have particular rules of spoken behavior and particular topics which instigate particular understanding. Listening is thought as ‘interplay’ between language and brain, which requires the “activation of contextual information and previous knowledge” where listeners guess, organize and confirm meaning from the context.

However, none of the above 3 micro-skills is either used or effective in isolation or is called listening! Successful listening comprises the integration/coordination of these component skills

4 Dichotomies in the nature of listening (as a skill):

‘receptive’ or ‘productive’?

Reading and writing are one-way skills (i.e. learners do not get direct feedback).

In speaking and listening, however, understanding and reproduction may be checked instantly.
‘one-way reception’ or ‘interactive reception’?

Traditionally, reading and listening are labeled as “passive” skills.

Yet, good readers and listeners are involved in guessing, anticipating, checking, interpreting, interacting and organizing by associating and accommodating their prior knowledge of meaning and form.

In other words, listeners “co-author” the discourse and they construct it by their responses.

“product” or “process”?

Listening is more a process than a product, instantly shaping the understanding and utterances of the learners.

5 The importance of listening:

Listening is the most common communicative activity in daily life.

“We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write” (Morley 1991).

Listening, as a skill, is assuming more weight in SL or FL classrooms than ever before: “listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin. Listening is thus fundamental to speaking” (Rost 1994).

6 Strategies for Listening:
Two types of strategies, according to the ways of processing the text while listening:
a. In Bottom-up processing like reading, learners utilize their linguistic knowledge to identify linguistic elements in an order from the smallest linguistic unit like phonemes (bottom) to the largest one like complete texts (top). Linking the smaller units of the language together to form the larger parts in a linear process, meaning is arrived at in the last stage (applied while using minimal pairs, taking pronunciation tests, listening for specific details, recognizing cognates and word-order pattern).
b. Top-down interpretation requires learners to go to the listening with their prior knowledge of topic, context, and type of text as well as knowledge of language to reconstruct the meaning by using the sounds as clues. The background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next (used in activities like listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing).

7 Types of listening

According to the types of situation in which the understanding takes place, listening can be:

a. Reciprocal or interactive listening: the listener is required to take part in the interaction > alternately listens and speaks. Interactive listening situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which listeners have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from a conversation partner.
b. Non-reciprocal or non-interactive listening: the listener is engaged in listening passively to a monologue or speech or even conversation. Some non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures, etc. > no opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition.
c. Semi-reciprocal listening: the students are expected to respond while checking their understanding through question-answer tasks or discussion and clarification in written or oral form.

8 The importance of pre-listening activities:
a. Introducing the topic and assessing background knowledge through commenting on a picture or photograph.
b. Activating existing knowledge through discussion. Reading through comprehension questions in advance, working out own opinion on a topic, predicting content from the title, etc.
c. Clarifying any necessary contextual information and vocabulary to comprehend the text.
d. Info on the type of text, its role, purposes of the listening, etc.
e. Predicting activities before listening so that students can monitor their comprehension as they listen.
Aims and types of pre-listening tasks

Selection criteria

Why do pre-listening tasks?

In real life it is unusual for people to listen to something without having some idea of what they are going to hear. When listening to a radio phone-in show, they will probably know which topic is being discussed. When listening to an interview with a famous person, they probably know something about that person already. A waiter knows the menu from which the diner is choosing their food.

In our first language we rarely have trouble understanding listening. But, in a second language, it is one of the harder skills to develop - dealing at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures. This is even more difficult if we do not know the topic under discussion, or who is speaking to whom.
So, simply asking the students to listen to something and answer some questions is a little unfair, and makes developing listening skills much harder.
Many students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something but feel they understand very little. It is also harder to concentrate on listening if you have little interest in a topic or situation.
Pre-listening tasks aim to deal with all of these issues: to generate interest, build confidence and to facilitate comprehension.
Aims and types of pre-listening tasks
Setting the context

This is perhaps the most important thing to do - even most exams give an idea about who is speaking, where and why. In normal life we normally have some idea of the context of something we are listening to.

Generating interest

Motivating our students is a key task for us. If they are to do a listening about sports, looking at some dramatic pictures of sports players or events will raise their interest or remind them of why they (hopefully) like sports. Personalisation activities are very important here. A pair-work discussion about the sports they play or watch, and why, will bring them into the topic, and make them more willing to listen.

Activating current knowledge - what do you know about…?

'You are going to listen to an ecological campaigner talk about the destruction of the rainforest'. This sets the context, but if you go straight in to the listening, the students have had no time to transfer or activate their knowledge (which may have been learnt in their first language) in the second language. What do they know about rainforests? - Where are they? What are they? What problems do they face? Why are they important? What might an ecological campaigner do? What organisations campaign for ecological issues?

Acquiring knowledge

Students may have limited general knowledge about a topic. Providing knowledge input will build their confidence for dealing with a listening. This could be done by giving a related text to read, or, a little more fun, a quiz.

Activating vocabulary / language

Just as activating topic knowledge is important, so is activating the language that may be used in the listening. Knowledge-based activities can serve this purpose, but there are other things that can be done. If students are going to listen to a dialogue between a parent and a teenager who wants to stay overnight at a friend's, why not get your students to role play the situation before listening. They can brainstorm language before hand, and then perform the scene. By having the time to think about the language needs of a situation, they will be excellently prepared to cope with the listening.

Predicting content

Once we know the context for something, we are able to predict possible content. Try giving students a choice of things that they may or may not expect to hear, and ask them to choose those they think will be mentioned.

Pre-learning vocabulary

When we listen in our first language we can usually concentrate on the overall meaning because we know the meaning of the vocabulary. For students, large numbers of unknown words will often hinder listening, and certainly lower confidence. Select some vocabulary for the students to study before listening, perhaps matching words to definitions, followed by a simple practice activity such as filling the gaps in sentences.

Checking / understanding the listening tasks

By giving your students plenty of time to read and understand the main listening comprehension tasks, you allow them to get some idea of the content of the listening. They may even try to predict answers before listening.

Selection criteria

When planning your lesson you should take the following factors into account when preparing the pre-listening tasks.
The time available

The material available

The ability of the class

The interests of the class

The nature and content of the listening text

The choice of pre-listening task also gives you a chance to grade the listening lesson for different abilities. If you have a class who are generally struggling with listening work, then the more extensive that the pre-listening work is the better. If, however, you wish to make the work very demanding, you could simply do work on the context of the listening. Thus, the same listening text can provide work for different abilities.

Personally, I feel it is important to devote a fair proportion of a lesson to the pre-listening task, should the listening warrant it. For example, the listening about an ecological campaigner lends itself well to extended knowledge and vocabulary activation. However, a listening involving airport announcements may only need a shorter lead-in, as the topic is somewhat narrower.
Overall, training your students to bring their own knowledge and their skills of prediction to their listening work can only help them when listening to the language outside the classroom. These skills are as much a part of listening as understanding pronunciation or listening for details.