21. Improving listening proficiency

24. CREATING PRE- WHILE- AND POST-LISTENING ACTIVITIES
The teaching of listening has attracted a greater level of interest in recent years than it did in the past. Now, university entrance exams, exit exams, and other examinations often include a listening component, acknowledging that listening
skills are a core component of second-language proficiency, and also reflecting the
assumption that if listening isn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it.
Later views of listening drew on the field of cognitive psychology, which introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and brought attention to the role of prior knowledge and schema in comprehension.
To understand the nature of listening processes, we need to consider some of the characteristics of spoken discourse and the special problems they pose for listeners. Spoken discourse has very different characteristics from written discourse, and these differences can add a number of dimensions to our understanding of how we process speech. For example, spoken discourse is usually instantaneous. The listener must process it “online” and there is often no chance to listen to it again
Underwood (1989) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension:
First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery. Underwood says, "Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension, as opposed to reading comprehension, is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks".
Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated. This is a serious learning problem in situations.
Third, listeners have a limited vocabulary. The speaker may choose words the listener does not know.
Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another. In informal situations or spontaneous conversations, signals are vaguer as in pauses, gestures, increased loudness and etc. These signals can easily be missed especially by less proficient listeners.
Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge. Sharing mutual knowledge and common context makes communication easier. Even if listeners understand the surface meaning of the text they may have considerable difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context. Nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, nods, gestures, or tone of voice, can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures.
Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language. Concentration is easier when students find the topic of the listening passage interesting however, students sometimes feel listening is very tiring even if they are interested because it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning.
Seventh and last, students may have established certain learning habits, such as a wish to understand every word. By tradition, teachers want students to understand every word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully. Consequently, students tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word phrase and they will be discouraged by the failure.