Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition
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Extensive listening
Extensive listening can be used for two different purposes. A very basic use is the re-presentation of already known material in a new environment. This could be a recently taught structure or, say, a lexical set which was introduced months before and needs revision. The advantage of exposing the student to old material in this way is that he sees it in action in a genuine, natural environment rather than in the classroom context in which it was probably first presented. Psychologically, extensive listening to the ‘real’ as opposed to purpose-written English is very satisfying since it demonstrates that the student’s efforts in the classroom will pay dividends in life in an English-speaking environment. One of the greatest and most common failures of language teaching is that what the student is taught is totally inadequate for Listening and Speaking 70 dealing with the welter of aural stimuli coming at him from all sides when he first sets foot in England. Extensive listening of this type helps him considerably. The materials he hears need not of course be only a re- presentation of what is already known. Extensive listening can serve the further function of letting the student hear vocabulary items and structures which are as yet unfamiliar to him, interposed in the flow of language which is within his capacity to handle. There might be unknown, rather technical words or an unfamiliar verb form,—for instance, the passive for elementary students or the subjunctive for the advanced. In this way there is unconscious familiarisation with forms which will shortly become teaching points in a language lesson. Story-telling, especially appealing to younger age groups, is an example of extensive listening and often includes a considerable proportion of unknown lexis and some untaught structures. Comprehension is not normally seriously impeded since the compelling interest of the story holds the attention and the familiarity of the great body of the language is enough to provide a sufficiently explanatory setting for the unknown material. The teacher himself is the source of the model in story telling. As one of the aims of extensive listening is to represent old material in a new way, it is often best that this is done by means of authentic tapes of English people talking together (and so providing the model), where the teacher himself is not involved. Of course it is possible to write a script for recording which illustrates the particular points to be made, but this is a highly-skilled task and the student gets enough specially written material in his textbooks anyway. Much more effective and convincing are extracts of real, live English speech. It is surprisingly easy to build up a library of suitable tapes. An expensive way is to buy commercial tapes put out by the big publishing companies. The tapes that accompany Crystal and Davy’s Advanced Conversational English, for instance, are invaluable at the most advanced levels. There is also a Workbook by K.Morrow to help exploit the material. Generally, the best resource for extensive listening passages is going to be the recordings which the teacher makes himself. These can be from a wide variety of sources— Listening and Speaking 71 recordings made whilst in England, recordings of local native English speakers, recordings from local English language TV and radio broadcasts (including advertisements), and, perhaps most accessible of all, recordings from the BBC World Service which can be heard worldwide and has an enormous selection of programmes to choose from. Once a collection of tapes of this nature has been made, they have to be graded according to language level (elementary, intermediate, advanced) and according to the points they illustrate. They also have to be made available to students to listen to. If the teacher wants the whole class to listen to a passage for revision or to prepare the way for future lessons, this can of course be done in the normal sequence of a lesson. One of the advantages of extensive listening passages is that they need not be under the direct control of the teacher but function as back-up material for the student to listen to in his own time at his own speed. At the most sophisticated level, this can be done in the language laboratory, which should have a library facility providing tapes for extensive listening. The language lab. is particularly useful in providing listening rather than speaking practice. Many language classrooms today have one or more tape recorders which can be used for individual or small group listening purposes either during class time (with no disturbance to other people working on other things, if good headphones and a junction box are used) or during a fixed period outside regular hours when supervision is provided. The most flexible system, however, is to make available cassette tapes for home loan, since cassette recorders are commonplace in many parts of the world today. The student can then work when and where he likes, as often as he likes. Whichever system, or mixture of systems, is adopted, even greater benefit is possible if a stencilled sheet of instructions and follow-up questions goes with suitable tapes. Occasionally, notes might be provided to introduce and give a setting for the recording. Some types of tapes lend themselves to reinforcement by visuals—a picture guide to London is a good accompaniment to a conversation about the city, and it can be used in class as a visual form of preparation for the tape itself. |
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