There are skills needed and thus by far essential in the learning process of an individual. Out of the [1]four skills, listening skills are vital and is the most frequently used by learners. Speaking and listening are often taught together, and have been working hand-in hand in the learning process of an individual, but with terms of “beginners” specially the non-literate ones, listening must be given more emphasis than speaking practice. With beginner, slower speed in teaching how to speak is necessary though it’s important to speak as close to natural speed as possible. You can make your language easier to comprehend by simplifying your vocabulary without reducing your speaking speed. You can make your vocabulary simple and easier to understand or you can use shorter sentence and you can increase the number and length of pauses while speaking.
[2]Listening is the language modality that is used most frequently. It has been estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of their in-school information through listening to instructors and to one another. Often, however, language learners do not recognize the level of effort that goes into developing listening ability.
[3]Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.
There are a lot of listening activities that you can use. Those that require the students to make or produce language in reply are harder than those that don’t. The students may be asked to respond to a command (for example, “Please, close the window”), choose or select an apposite thing object or picture, box the correct answer on a worksheet, illustrate some directions to a certain destination or fill in some blanks as they are listening. What was heard is more difficult to repeat back, to interpret into national language, take down notes, drafting an outline or to answer questionnaires to test the student’s comprehension. To add more excitement in the process of learning, the students can continue a story wherein they can make an ending to a certain story that the instructor has started telling, they can also solve a problem, perform a similar work with a classmate after listening to a model ( for example, ordering lunch from a fast food chain), or join in an actual discussion.
It is not only the listening tasks itself with relative activities before and after the listening that can make a good listening lesson.
Before listening, the instructor should introduce the topic and sort out what the students already know about the topic. One of the ways to do this is to have some discussion and talk about the questions related to the topic and then the instructor should provide any essential background information and new set of words that they will need for the listening activity.
During Listening, Don’t confuse the students; specify what they need to listen for. They can listen for selective details or general content, or for different emotional tone that shows happiness, feeling of excitement, or anger. If they are not being attentive or not making any replies or response during the activity, the instructor should tell the students in advance that they will be required to do so.
After Listening, the instructor should put up to an activity that would extend the topic and help the student to remember newly learned set of words. The activity could be a group discussion, arts and craft project, or they may even be asked to write an essay about the activity, some fun games and a lot more.
There are a lot of ways to make the listening activities successful.
One of the things that the instructor should take into consideration is the amount of noise that enters the classroom during the listening session. They may need to close the windows or doors or even ask the students not to make unnecessary noise or rather be quiet for a few minutes.
With regards to the equipments that the instructors are using, they should make sure that the audio quality of these equipments is acceptable. They should also be prepared with extra batteries- in case of emergency.
Reading the content or playing the audio files in a total of 2-3 times is good enough. The students should be informed that repetitions and playbacks will be done. This will reduce the student’s anxiety about not trying to catch the information all at once, or they will suffer information overload and the worse, they won’t be able to absorb that much knowledge. The instruction can also ask the students to give emphasis on different parts of the story or on different information in the context from time to time.
Talk about the substance as well as exact language used, Unless your text is merely a list of entry. The objects should be interesting and appropriate for the students’ level in topic, speed and vocabulary. The instructor may need to explain the reductions ( like wanna for “wan to”) and fillers (like ‘um’ or ‘uh-huh’).
It is much better for the teachers or instructors to record their own audio file. Write appropriate text or the instructor can use something from the textbook and have another co-teacher or English speaker to read it onto tape. They may also need to copy the audio file 3 times in a row so they won’t have the need to playback the file. The readers should not simply read three times, because the learners want to hear exact repetition of pronunciation, intonation, and pace, not just the words.
The instructors can make use of a video clip by playing it with the audio turned off and they can ask the students to guess about what happened to the conversations between the character that they have seen and what dialog has taken place. And after the students have their own insights about the video, the instructors may play the video again, but this time with the audio on and they can discuss why or how they come up with their predictions. Or the instructors may choose to play the sound without the video and the teacher may show the video after the students have guessed what happened.
AS part of learning activities, homework should be given out to the students. The instructors may give students a listening task to do between classes. They may also encourage the students to listen to public announcements in ports, stations markets or in any other places similar to those that have been mentioned. The instructors may give the students an audio file of him with questions dictations or a worksheet to complete.
Encourage them to listen to public announcements in airports, bus stations, supermarkets, etc. and try to write down what they heard. Tell them the telephone number of a cinema and ask them to write down the playing times of a specific movie. Give them a tape recording of yourself with questions, dictation, or a worksheet to complete.
[1] http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/esl/listening.cfm
[2] http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/liindex.htm
[3] http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/stratlisten.htm
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