General principles in teaching Listening Comprehension

D. Combining “Intensive Listening” with “Extensive Listening”; Focusing on Listening

Intensive listening requires students to understand the meaning of each discourse and, ultimately, to understand every sentence and word. Generally, intensive listening requires students to listen to a text several times, or divide the text into paragraphs and sentences to understand each one; or by doing dictation word by word. The goal is for students to understand every sentence. Alternatively, extensive listening does not require students to understand every sentence, and every word, instead, students are encouraged to grasp the general meaning of the passage. The key point of

listening is to understand the content. The purpose of intensive listening is to build basic listening skills, while extensive listening is to strengthen and enlarge effectiveness of intensive listening in order to improve overall listening ability. In listening teaching, both intensive and extensive listening should be combined with cultivating students‘ basic skills, the development of the productive listening habits of active thinking and the ability to understand the text. Therefore, teachers must encourage students to engage in intensive listening in class, requiring students to understand the general meaning and also to become familiarized with English pronunciation, intonation and the changes in language flow. In activities outside the class students need to engage in extensive listening; listening to many different variety of language phenomena and gaining more knowledge through TV programs, radio, the Internet and as many other kinds of exposure to listening training they can find. Exposure to demands of listening should include aspects of everyday life, science and technology, and academic lectures. Teachers must create language-learning environments that stimulate students‘ interests and raise students‘ passion and enthusiasm for learning English.

E. Combining Listening with Other Skills

According to language acquisition theory, human capacity for discrimination between language intention and language content is a crucial step in the language acquisition process. Thus listening comprehensive ability plays an important role in acquisition and improvement of language skills. Therefore, in listening teaching, there is a need to combine the development of listening ability with the development of other skills such as reading. In order to improve listening ability it is necessary to listen frequently to a teacher reading well, since it is very difficult to generate a high quality output without appropriate input. Secondly, students need to practice reading aloud among themselves. By such activity students will learn to combine the act of listening with reading. Students must be actively engaged in producing language of high quality if they are to improve their English proficiency levels. Similarly, by combining listening with writing, teachers can divide the work into two parts. First, students might answer teachers‘ questions in written English after listening to spoken language material. It is also important to remember that good listening entails recalling the essence of the material rather than the precise detail. Thirdly, teachers should combine listening activities with speaking in ways that bring out the basics of oral communication. Inevitably, listeners will lose the information resources without speaking; speaking will lose its objective without careful listening and, as a result, speaking ability will not be acquired. Listening and speaking rely on each other and regulate each other. It is important to strengthen listening through speaking and to improve speaking through listening. Students need to retell and discuss the material they have just heard in order to synthesize their understanding. In this way they learn to combine listening with speaking properly. Students who are able to do this are able to overcome their passive response to the situation and gradually they learn to feel safe when they respond. In order for this to happen, a truly interactive and penalty free listening class is required. Teacher/student and students/student exchanges should be emphasized as opportunities for a free exchange of opinions when participants can consolidate their listening approaches and skills during the process of communication. Through a variety of listening-reading, listening-writing and listening-speaking activities, students can not only strengthen their language skills but also sharpen their interests and raise their motivation to improve their learning efficiency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II. PRACTICAL USAGE OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION.

2.1 Activities and procedures of  Listening Comprehension.

1. ‘Exposure’ listening.                                                                                                               The material for this will consist mainly of:                                                                           (a)  Stories, anecdotes, jokes, talks, commentaries (i. e. with one speaker only). Most learners need practice in listening to material with a single speaker only, so that they do not have the added difficulty of trying to identify the speakers when they cannot see them. The material may be recorded or improvised by the teacher.           (b)  Conversations, discussions, plays (i. e. with more than one speaker)                        The students will need to be given some background e. g. about the speakers. For plays they may actually need to follow the written text.                                                          (c)  Songs (both traditional and pop)                                                                                         These provide a good form of listening because the students are generally very much concerned to make out the words .                                                                                              (d)  Videos and films                                                                                                           Clearly there is great advantage in using wherever possible recorded material where the students can see what is happening (even if it is only two people talking) as well as listen.                                                                                                                         2. Task listening                                                                                                                       The number of possible activities here is virtually limitless, although it is intended that the list below cover key areas.                                                                                           (a)  Ear-training                                                                                                                     In distinguishing between key sounds, stress and intonation patterns. Most learners need, enjoy and will benefit from activities, which will help to improve their receptive ability in these areas, especially if they are presented in a game-like way.                  (b)  Game-like activities                                                                                                 “Simon says” and variations on the game of ‘Bingo’ are effective ways of getting learners to respond to instructions, listen out for specific items and so on. Many language games depend for their success on students listening .                                                     (c)  Instructions                                                                                                            Activities such as picture dictation, where the students have to draw a picture which the teacher (or another student) talks about without showing them; completing a map or picture; following a route on the map in order to arrive at a particular place; arranging objects (e. g. pictures on an outline scene), involve careful listening without requiring a verbal response (unless the listeners ask for clarification).                                                                                                                            (d)  Completion-type activities                                                                                              For these the students have an incomplete version of a story, a description or a song (words, phrases or sentences omitted) which they have to complete either while they listen or afterwards.                                                                                          (e)  Identifying mistakes or contradictions                                                                                For example an object (thing, person or place - either real or in pictorial form) is described and the students have to listen and note down any mistakes. Similarly a text (a story or description) containing internal contradictions can be used for the same purpose.                                                                                                                         (f)  Finding differences                                                                                                           The students hear, for example, two versions of a story or two accounts of an event and have to identify the points of difference.                                                                            (g)  Problem-solving.                                                                                                                    For example, the students are shown pictures of 3-4 people, places, events and listen to one of these being described. Their task is to decide which item is being talked about. Students may also be asked to categorise on a worksheet items mentioned in a conversation or discussion.                                                                              (h)  Extracting information.                                                                                                This is one of the commonest types of listening tasks. For this the students will probably need a chart of some kind, which they have to fill in according to specific instructions. For example, if they are listening to a broadcast they may be asked to note down the main topics or, on an easier level, decide in what order they occur in the talk. For tasks, which involve extracting information, it is often desirable to define the role of the listener so that he has a clear purpose for carrying out the task listening material comprehension English.                                                                                    3. Listening as a stimulus to other activities                                                                                            The activities in this section are specially designed to lead on to activities involving other skills.                                                                                                                (e)  Jigsaw listening                                                                                                             As its name implies, the basic mechanism underlying this activity is that the information needed to complete a task (such as attending a meeting) has been shared out between 3-4 groups in the class. Each group listens to its own piece of recorded material and notes down on a worksheet the information available. The groups then combine to pool their information.                                                                             (f)  Ambiguous conversations                                                                                           The students hear a short conversation (or an extract from a long conversation), which provides very few clues as to what the speakers are talking about. The students themselves have to decide who the speakers are, where they are, what they are talking about, and, possibly, what will happen next. This type of listening then, leads on naturally to discussion (and, if desired, writing).                                                                   (g)  Decision-making                                                                                                        The students are given some information e. g. about a town (places of interest, facilities etc.) in the form of a talk or conversation, on the basis of which they have to plan a visit. The planning involves discussion and note making. Decision-making activities can also involve, for example, making choices between places, events, activities, for which the background information is made available in recorded form.                                                                                                                            (h)  Pre-reading activity.                                                                                                        The students hear, for example, a conversation about the Loch Ness Monster, as a stimulus to listen to an article or book on the subject. Similarly they can be asked to listen to short reports on books before deciding which one they want to read.                      (i)  Pre-writing activity.                                                                                                            This can be in the form of a communication game. One student describes a picture, which the others in the group are not allowed to see. The students who are listening make notes (and can also ask questions if they want more information). They then use these notes to write a description of the picture .                                                                                 4. Interactive listening                                                                                                             Most interactive listening situations are in the form of discussions and games. Two important points need to be kept in mind. First, these activities form the basis of oral work, where the emphasis is on getting the learners to use language for self expression. It should not be forgotten, however, that listening is an important aspect of these activities. The learners have to listen in order to participate. Secondly, although these activities are normally done in groups, in order to give the students themselves as many opportunities as possible to use language, we should also look for suitable opportunities to interact with the class as a whole, through conversation, discussion and games. This must be regarded as a significant component of the listening comprehension programme.                                                (a)  Discussion-type activities                                                                                                  These provide   good listening practice because they get students to listen to one another, especially if the discussion is geared toward making a decision of some kind. For such activities the student have to listen to one another in order to participate.                                                                                                                                    (b)  Predictive listening                                                                                                         For this activity a text is read aloud sentence-by-sentence. The students are asked to interpret the sentence and to predict what they think will follow. As the text builds up, they can revise their interpretations. Although this is a contrived activity, it encourages very careful listening both to the text itself and to the various interpretations suggested.                                                                                                        (c)  Communication games                                                                                                Many communication games provide excellent practice. For example, Describe and draw where the listeners, whose task is to draw the picture being described, interact with the speaker in order to elicit more information complete it is based on the jigsaw principle. In this case, however, the information is divided up visually among the participants, who have to talk and ask questions in order to build up the complete story. Games, which involve the evaluation of a player’s performance, such as, Use it, also provide purposeful listening practice .                                                                   (d)  Interviews.                                                                                                                         The students can be asked to design questionnaires or surveys, which they use to interview one another or people outside the classroom. Interviewing of this kind involves careful listening and recording of answers .                                                5. Listening material.                                                                                                                         The usage of the authentic listening material is one of the problems in the teaching listening comprehension. The important point, as always, is to meet the needs of the learners. On the short-term basis the learners need to listen to material, which allows them to feel comfortable, perhaps because it is mainly recycling known language. In addition to this, particularly taking their long-term needs into account, the learners have to be exposed to listening material, which is beyond their productive level. Whether this is ‘authentic’ in the early stages is not entirely relevant provided the material gets them used to not understanding every word; encourages them to guess - and, over and above this, stimulates them to talk (or read or write, if these are following-up activities). But, of course, whenever possible, some authentic material should be used, and on an increasing scale as the course progresses. However, it must be kept in mind that the use of authentic material for listening is very different from reading, where, because the learners can work individually and at their own pace, authentic material carries fewer risks. In the typical listening situation, care has to be taken to see that learners are not discouraged by excessive difficulties. In general, authentic materials are best used where the learners themselves are likely to appreciate them and accept them in spite of difficulties.                                                                                                                                      6. Listening comprehension tests                                                                                                   An effective way of developing the listening skill is through the provision of carefully selected practice material. Such material is in many ways similar to that used for testing listening comprehension. Although the auditory skills are closely linked to the oral skills in normal speech situations, it may sometimes be useful to separate the two skills for teaching and testing, since it is possible to develop listening ability much beyond the range of speaking and writing ability if the practice material is not dependent on spoken responses and written exercises. An awareness of the way in which the spoken language differs from the written language is of crucial importance in the testing of the listening skills. For example, the spoken language is much more complex than the written language in certain ways, as a result of the large element of ‘redundancy’ that it contains. Such features of redundancy make it possible for mutilated messages to be understood. Furthermore, the human brain has a limited capacity for the reception of information and it would often be impossible to absorb information at the speed at which it is conveyed through ordinary speech. Such conversational features as repetition, hesitation and grammatical re-patterning are all examples of this type of redundancy. What is the significance of these features for testing purposes? Firstly, the ability to distinguish between phonemes, however important, does not in itself imply an ability to understand verbal messages. Moreover, occasional confusion over selected pairs of phonemes does not matter too greatly because in real-life situations listeners are able to use contextual clues to interpret what they hear. Secondly, impromptu speech is usually easier to understand than carefully prepared (written) material when the latter is read aloud. Written tests generally omit many of the features of redundancy and impart information at a much higher rate than normal speech does. Consequently, it is essential to make provision for restating important points, rewriting and rephrasing them when writing material for aural tests.                                                                                                                                      

2.2 Suggestions for improvement of English Listening Comprehension.                     A. Suggestions on Teaching                                                                                                           1. Listening approach

When students need to use their prior knowledge to interpret the text and to create plausible expectations of what they are about to hear, they will activate knowledge-based processing. On the other hand, they also need to decode the linguistic input rapidly and accurately and to map the input against these expectations to confirm consistencies and to refute implausible interpretations which are referred to as text-based processing. It is acknowledged that listening strategies should be integrated explicitly and treated pedagogically to improve listening ability.

2. Classroom procedure

2. 1. Preparing students to listen

Students can make use of analogy to predict and interpret language with past similar experiences. They have a range of schemata knowledge about particular people, places, situations and text-types which they can call up and use as points of comparison with what is currently being heard and experienced. Prediction is an important process in English listening. EFL learners use their perception of the key features of context and their knowledge of the world to limit the range of possible utterances they are about to hear. This ability helps students to process the message for deviations from what was expected, reducing their memory load in order to monitor the incoming message more efficiently. At the beginning stage, it is the teachers‘ task to guide students to gradually develop how to predict from the known information of the text. Visual support and transcript are two important sources of support to students. In the form of pictures, graphs, diagrams, maps, etc., the visual support can help students to predict incoming listening materials easily by supplying cultural information. It can provide support by reinforcing the aural message and training them to listen to some difficult specific information. To some students, what is heard is kind of ―sound or ―noise instead of meaningful information and they are very reluctant to pay attention to the overall message but understand every single word. For these reasons a transcript is valuable for it allows students to go back after the initial attempt so that they can check to make sure they can hear and understand everything, increasing their interest and confidence in further listening.

2. 2. Providing students with positive feedback

Providing positive feedback for students means ensuring an experience of success, which helps remove the mental block of the type discussed by  Krashen. In contrast, repeated failure can result in a panic and a real psychological barrier to effective listening. If there is a failure for understanding, diagnosing the cause of the failure is so important that remedial action can be taken. Neglecting the failure for a moment is unreasonable for it pushes students to slide into confusion and even into further failure.

3. Raising meta-cognitive awareness

Students are capable of observing their own cognitive processes in their listening and also verbalizing their theories about learning to listen in English. The listening notes by students and pre-listening and post-listening discussions are very helpful in this sense. These activities are very useful by involving students in thinking, not just about the content of listening, but more importantly, about the process of listening. By doing so, they can have chances to share with one another‘s thoughts and strategies so that they can improve their own listening ability. More importantly, they will be aware of what leads to their success and failure and then work out their own effective strategies in listening.

B. Suggestions on Textbooks and Teacher’s Books

(1) Teacher‘s books should introduce some information about theories on listening training, so that teachers can base their teaching on these necessary theories. The information can cover the nature of listening, such as information processing, listening strategies, problems students may face, and how to solve them.

(2) Listening teaching should be a student-training program covering all listening strategies identified to be involved in listening, which should be systematic. Detailed information of the strategies to be practiced should be given for both teachers‘ benefits and students‘ benefits. Suggestions about how to teach each strategy should be as complete as possible, so that even new teachers can have a good lesson plan.

(3) Discourse processing should be encouraged from the very beginning, which is also the way students naturally process a listening text. So the first thing students are asked to do with a text should be to consider it as a whole. Then, exercises can gradually involve more detailed comprehension by analyzing the text to a greater depth.

(4) Textbooks and teacher‘s books should provide or at least suggest a framework of activities which are integrated with listening strategies: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. As the words pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening show, they are to be performed at three different stages in the classroom teaching of a listening text. Pre-listening activities can be subdivided into ―readiness activities and ―guidance activities. Readiness activities aim at activating students‘ prior knowledge by reading the title, new words of the text, sometimes by looking at the pictures given before the exercises in textbooks, and also by asking provocative questions or introducing some background knowledge. Guidance activities are intended to guide students‘ attention to specific aspects of language input by letting them bear certain purposes in mind in advance, that is to say, letting students know what task or tasks they are going to do with the text, or letting students themselves decide what they want to do with the text. As these exercises are designed for students to practice certain strategies, at the beginning stage, teachers should present students with the value and purpose of these strategies, and teach them how to use the strategies and monitor their own use as one part of guidance activities. In the second stage of classroom teaching, while-listening activities are designed for students to practice those strategies considered beneficial when actually receiving acoustic input, and to help to develop a good habit of actively participating in the understanding process instead of just passively receiving what is coming into the ears. At the beginning of strategy training, one activity usually focuses on one strategy so that students can have a good practice of this certain strategy and make full use of it in listening. As time goes by, activities are then designed to integrate with these strategies. By constant controlled practice with strategies integrated with one listening activity, students will gradually have an effective automatic processing of being able to listen to texts by using various listening strategies, and will thus greatly improve their listening ability. The final stage of teaching a text involves post-listening activities, which cover two kinds of activities: ―comprehension activities and evaluation activities. Comprehension activities focus on checking understanding of English itself and interpretation of the text. Students are asked to do some question-oriented exercises, which test students‘ comprehension and memory, and the questions are usually offered by textbooks. Evaluation activities aim at developing students‘ self-evaluation strategy in order to make them more efficient listeners. In order to let students have a chance to practice oral English in a functional situation, we can have one more kind of post-listening activities: production activities, which are intended to promote students oral ability.

2.3 Experimental work.

I spent my teaching practice at school named after Abdrahman Aitiev .  During my practice I tried to develop listening skills and in the way of developing it I used teaching methods for listening comprehension such as Cultivating pupils` listening skills, Textbook – based learning and other listening contexts, passing on cultural knowledge in language teaching, Combining “Intensive listening” with “Extensive listening” and Combining listening with other skills. For the first time we had a lot of problems. The main problem was that the school where I spent my teaching practice had not any  language laboratories. And of course, listening was new for them and they had difficulties in listening. But then we consulted with other English teachers and we decided to buy a tape – recorder.  After  I  began my experiment. I chose the 6^th grade. There were 12 pupils. 8 of them was male and 4 was female. They all were in good condition  i.e  they had not any problems in hearing. At first I gave them easy tasks in order to know their degree on listening. In spite of easiness of the task pupils could not cope with it. Thus I did an observation. Then I spent a lot of time in practicing  their  listening  so, reconstructed them.  The tasks were more difficult than the first tasks. Like add   some more information, write true or false and so on. I took these exercises from the Ayapova. When I gave them the  tasks  I did pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities. These activities helped both to me and to pupils. We had a purpose and it made our experiment easier. In the conclusion I used an exercise like a game.  In these step my pupils could cope with the task and I attained my aim.

1step “Observation” The  text  “Gardening in England”. 6^th grade.

№	Surname, name	Marks of the text “Gardening in England”.
1	Abdaliev Bakdaulet	3
2	Alashbaev Meirbek	3
3	Bakytova Asem	3
4	Bolatbekova Dana	3
5	Baltabaev Farabi	4
6	Zhakypbaev Akylbek	3
7	Zhumadil Beibit	3
8	Kalkan Toraim	4
9	Sydykbaeva Balzina	3
10	Skendir Daryn	5
11	Tazhimetova Nurzhanat	3
12	Turdaly Erkebulan	3

 

Marks	Number of pupils	% of pupils
“5”	1	8.3%
“4”	2	16.7%
“3”	9	75%

 

 

2 step “Reconstruction” the dialogue between Colin and Andrew.

№	Surname, name	The dialogue between Colin and Andrew
1	Abdaliev Bakdaulet	3
2	Alashbaev Meirbek	3
3	Bakytova Asem	3
4	Bolatbekova Dana	3
5	Baltabaev Farabi	4
6	Zhakypbaev Akylbek	4
7	Zhumadil Beibit	3
8	Kalkan Toraim	5
9	Sydykbaeva Balzina	4
10	Skendir Daryn	5
11	Tazhimetova Nurzhanat	3
12	Turdaly Erkebulan	3

 

Marks	Number of pupils	% of pupils
“5”	2	16.7%
“4”	3	25%
“3”	7	58%

 

3 step “Conclusion”  “a guessing game”

№	Surname, name	Marks of the text “A guessing game”.
1	Abdaliev Bakdaulet	3
2	Alashbaev Meirbek	3
3	Bakytova Asem	4
4	Bolatbekova Dana	4
5	Baltabaev Farabi	5
6	Zhakypbaev Akylbek	4
7	Zhumadil Beibit	3
8	Kalkan Toraim	5
9	Sydykbaeva Balzina	4
10	Skendir Daryn	5
11	Tazhimetova Nurzhanat	3
12	Turdaly Erkebulan	4

 

Marks	Number of pupils	% of pupils
“5”	3	25%
“4”	5	42%
“3”	4	33.3%

 

The final results

           

                                       CONCLUSION

           We have outlined the main reasons for teaching listening comprehension in a foreign language. It is now widely accepted that oral communication plays a vital role in second language teaching for it provides an exposure to language which is a fundamental requirement for the learner. Progress in listening guarantees a basis for development of other language skills. Spoken language provides a means of interaction where participation is a significant component of the listening  programme.                                                                                                                                        We have provided a methodological organization of the listening comprehension process and we have discussed the principles of developing receptive skills of the learner. All subtypes of listening provide a natural progression from activities that entail minimal verbal interaction to those that involve a maximum of interaction. The goal of any activity is to provide the optimal challenge for the students. Since learners’ listening abilities vary, teachers should note how the activities could be adapted to the learners’ capabilities.

In showing a considerable variety of listening activities we have explored some of the many ways to help students acquire the confidence to use their skills for self-expression in language situations. Different activities and procedures provide the development of the listening for communicative tasks and for extracting general or certain specific points in the discourse.

We have discussed the use of authentic listening material and stressed the need for authentic-like texts at different levels. The teachers and students may encounter some difficulties not only in the reliability of the listening material, but also in the quality of English language media (TV and radio broadcasts, audio and videotapes, records) with the help of which listening material is presented. The important point is to satisfy the learners’ requirements and to involve their abilities to understand and reproduce the given material.

We have stressed the importance of careful selection of practice material for testing listening skills of the learners. It is necessary to construct different types of practical exercises for students to experience language. Listening comprehension tests present an effective method for developing listening abilities.

                                                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                          BIBLIOGRAPHY

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