Teaching Listening

Teaching Listening

Listening is the receptive use of language, and since the goal is to make sense of the speech, the focus is on meaning rather than language (Cameron 2001). Sarıçoban (1999) states that listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. For learners, listening is how spoken language becomes input (i.e., it is the first stage of learning a new language). In the classroom, this happens by listening to the teacher, a CD, or other learners. It is the process of interpreting messages—what people say.
Two theories of speech perception portray listeners as having very different roles. In the first view, listeners play a passive role and simply recognize and decode sounds, and in the second view, listeners play an active role and perceive sounds by accessing internal articulation rules to decode speech (Crystal 1997). Whether speech perception is active or passive, or a combination of both, Phillips
(1993) says that listening tasks are extremely important in the primary school setting, providing a rich source of language data from which children begin to build up their own ideas of how the foreign language works. This knowledge is a rich source that YLs draw on to produce language.
Listening is the initial stage in first and second language acquisition. According to Sharpe (2001), the promotion of children’s speaking and listening skills lies at the heart of effective learning in all subjects of the primary curriculum. Therefore, EFL teachers have to make the development of children’s listening skills a key aim of primary teaching and equip them with the best strategies for effective listening.
Linse (2005) also considers the teaching of listening skills as foundational to the
development of other language skills. We should, however, be aware that any kind of listening comprehension activity needs to be well guided with clear aims. To this end, Ur (1996) argues that a listening purpose should be provided in the definition of a pre-set task. The definition of a purpose (a defined goal, as in the “wake up” example) enables the listener to listen selectively for significant information. Providing the students with some idea of what they are going to hear and what they are asked to do with it helps them to succeed in the task; it also raises motivation and interest.
The fact that learners are active during the listening, rather than waiting until the end to do something, keeps the learners busy and helps prevent boredom


Teaching young learner (YL) is really very challenging. According to Scott and Yttreberg listening is the first skill that people acquire in their life. Listening is an innate skill, which can be further developed and improved. Brumfit, Moon and Tongue affirm that “studies of young learner’s comprehension skills show that many aspects of listening are mastered at an early age, particularly in supportive, conversational contexts where social skills are highlighted.” They further report that “it is possible to improve children’s ability to listen for understanding in their mother tongue. It seems, therefore, even more important to train children to listen for understanding in a foreign language”.
Teachers are not only to understand methodologies, but also to have skill and teaching competencies. How can teachers scaffold children’s listening comprehension and foreign language acquisition in the beginning stages? More importantly, how can children be taught to use the acquired language for meaningful communication in new contexts?
First of all, teachers should understand listening as a complex interactive process in which meaning is being attached to sound and two-way communication is being achieved (Shin,2011). In order to foster development of listening skills, teachers should include in their lessons a variety of listening activities. These activities should focus on developing micro-skills (described by Richards 1983, in Shin 2011) such as retaining language chunks in short-term memory, discriminating among the English sounds, recognizing English stress patterns, reduced forms, and grammatical word classes, patterns, systems and rules. Listening micro-skills also involve distinguishing word boundaries and interpreting word order patterns, processing speech at different speeds of delivery, detecting sentence components, recognizing cohesive devices and communicative functions, developing listening strategies using nonverbal clues to understand meaning (ibid.).
Activities that support development of these micro-skills in young learners (YL) are songs, chants, role plays and drama, because they provide authentic language and real-world context that make language learning meaningful, motivating and useful (Brown 2001). Arnold (2005) emphasizes the delicacy of choosing appropriate materials for listening activities caused by the fact that such materials “need to have an authentic meaning to young learners“. Davanellos (1999, 13) argues that songs have a great teaching potential because they provide examples of everyday language and present the natural opportunity for meaningful repetition. That is why young learner classes have a variety of fun songs and chants that help children learn vocabulary and grammar while improving their oral skills.
Listening strategies are found to be very important for young learners (YL), especially intelligent guessing like predicting, guessing from context and recognizing discourse patterns and markers (Brewster, Ellis and Girard 2004, in Shin 2011). Shin (ibid.) points out that ‘building that help students improve their listening comprehension beyond the classroom’ is of paramount importance. Listening strategies can be developed by encouraging young learners to guess from context and supporting their listening comprehension by using visuals, mime and facial expressions. Demonstrating language by using realia in contexts that are of interest to children or personalizing a context can also be effective. Total Physical Response (TPR) activities have the power to immediately tell the teacher how successfully children have understood commands because children have to respond to them physically. A very useful and engaging listening activity can be related to teacher’s instructions for making an origami (paper folding) object; it can be a very simple one, but its potential for developing listening skill and engaging all children is great.
In the early learning process the teacher can make use of listening skill, even though children cannot speak. They have a wonderful ability to imitate and learn naturally. They can do completely the same gestures and things as the teacher does. As they get older they can imitate accent and intonation perfectly which is the basic for learning efficient communication of a language, which involves also practising proper pronunciation. Providing them with models of good pronunciation is very important. To promote sustained listening we should provide purposeful listening activities where learners are asked to focus on specific points and that make children curious about what they are going to listen to. By listening activities children should be able to get the message but at the same time we should encourage them that it is not necessary to understand or remember every word of spoken message. For more effective comprehension we can provide children with visual support such as pictures, charts or context clues to make sense of what they hear. Few activities that can be done with children to promote their sustained listening as they are very useful:

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  repeating words or phrases after teacher
  
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  searching for some specific information
  
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  getting the message of the text
  
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  recognising discourse patterns and markers of intonation
  
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  predicting what is the activity (story, record) going to be about – following the sequence of event in a story
  
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  listening to a description of an image (picture, shape) and trying to draw it
  
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  playing listening games (Head, shoulders; I went shopping)
  

There are plenty of listening activities and games for practising specific vocabulary items or grammatical patterns, e.g. performing action (Head, shoulders), drawing (Listen and draw), guessing (yes/no questions), matching, sequencing, transferring information, predicting and problem-solving.
Pronunciation plays the most important role in speech and is a significant aspect of communication and conveying message. Wrong learning of stress, accent or pronunciation can lead to later problems in learning process as well as in communication. If children learn the work in a wrong way, it can come to a misunderstanding between speakers, as they will not be able to understand the message or catch the right meaning. If a speaker changes some vowels or sounds the whole message can be broken. Teaching correct pronunciation should be the ground in language teaching and effective language learning. We strongly believe that small children make mistakes because the teacher makes them first. Children just repeat what they hear. It is essential to correct small pupils constantly. As Sesnan reassures, “children are able to pronounce anything very well as long as it is presented to them in a satisfactory way. When they are as confident in English as they are in their mother tongue, they will automatically begin to speak better”.
What are the principles for designing listening activities?
According to Shin and Crandal (2014), when designing listening activities for young learners, we need to remember the following seven principles:

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  Prepare your lines carefully.
  
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  Use listening activities that reflect real-life learning.
  
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  The listening activities should be developmentally appropriate.
  
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  Use a variety of techniques to make listening input comprehensible.
  
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  Check comprehension using a variety of response types.
  
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  Keep listening active – always give learners a listening task.
  
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  Equip your students with intelligent guesswork strategies.
  

The most effective listening activities activate prior knowledge with pictures or realia. By activating prior knowledge, the children will also review the known vocabulary and pre-teach unknown vocabulary. It is important to prepare students for listening by contextualizing the listening practice, to give them listening tasks to create active learning, to use TPR activities, songs and dramatizations.
Here are some examples of motivating listening activities:

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  Listen and do, listen and show, listen and point, listen and make,
  
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  Using flashcards for pre-teaching new vocabulary,
  
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  Performing silent dramatization during the listening activities.
  

We already mentioned some TPR activities in the form of listen + do, which can be used for listening comprehension. The total physical response approach is very useful when it comes to remembering new vocabulary, since the students use their body to remember. This creates an active learning environment. Learning-by-doing is the most effective activity to check comprehension. There are many other ways to check if the learners understood the language. Lund (1990, p.259) provided a comprehensive list of ways to check students’ comprehension. They include:

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  Listening and doing,
  
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  Choosing and matching pictures or objects,
  
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  Transferring the information to another form,
  
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  Answering questions,
  
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  Problem-solving,
  
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  Role-plays after listening, etc.