Develop listening skill young learners of preschool and primary education

Develop listening skill young learners of preschool and primary education
The importance of listening skill in the process of learning a foreign language has been emphasized in various models and theories of foreign language learning. Krashen and Terrell, for example, stated that all foreign language acquisition takes place through receiving comprehensible input that is slightly above the learners’ present level, that is, through reading and listening to the foreign language. Some teaching methods, such as Total Physical Response, rely heavily on the listening input at the beginning stages of learning a language. Although listening is very important at the beginner’s level, its importance does not diminish as the learners progress to more advanced levels of language proficiency. Practicing listening at all stages of learning not only develops this skill but also expands and consolidates other elements of language knowledge, such as vocabulary, grammar and intonation. However, while the importance of listening in language learning is widely recognized today, there are different views as to how to approach the teaching of listening. While some authors, such as Krashen and Terrell, believe in the value of mere exposure to spoken language during which learners unconsciously develop their listening skills and acquire other elements of the foreign language, other authors, such as Rost and Ur, agree that in order for learners to benefit from practicing listening, it is necessary to develop this skill in a direct and systematic way.
Listening is an active process. According to Rogers and Farson, ‘active’ means ‘the listener has a very definite responsibility of trying to grasp the facts and feelings in what s/he hears’. From this point of view, it can be concluded that a listener should do her/his best to be a good listener.
Throughout history, effective speaking has been accepted as an important talent. However receptive behavior, in particular listening, matters as well. Several studies give two reasons to support this. First, effective listening allows the listener to have access to other’s beliefs, objectives, knowledge and attitudes as this kind of information is disclosed to an effective listener. Second, effective listening provides important relational assets such as setting up trust, sincerity and creditability between the agent and the listener. Purdy lists seven features for an effective listener:
1. Willingness to listen
2. Focus the attention
3. Being aware (perceptive) during listening
4. Doing interpretation (both verbal and non-verbal cues)
5. Consciously working to remember
6. Responding with feedback
7. Caring about the relationship during listening
During 70’s and early 80’s several researchers investigated ‘the time devoted to listening during daily communication and language learning process’. They all concluded that listening is by far the most important human activity and language skill which merit more extensive concentration.
In their study, Nowrouzi and others have found out that distraction and missing sounds or words linked to perception, chunking complications and sentence dismissing from mind in the process of analysis, also bewilderment about the main idea related to utilization are the first coming problems in listening comprehension activities. EFL listening has always been an ignored skill in both research and practice when compared to reading skill; it is crystal clear that listening is weaker in literature when compared to that of reading comprehension.
Al-Thiyabi formed a need analysis for EFL listening in his study as in the following:

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  need to learn how to take effective notes and how to ask for repetition or clarification in English
  
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  need to identify lengthy description in English and instructions as well
  
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  need to recognize the subject matter of a talk
  
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  need to identify different accents and pronunciation due to the variety of young learners’
  
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  teachers’ background need to learn and use new and different vocabularies and terminologies that are related to different areas.
  

Moreover, Al-Thiyabi puts forward some frequent problems of learners as well as reasons blocking their listening comprehension skill such as hasty speaking, unknown words, and weird pronunciation, adding that such problems are severe and ought to be overcome to enhance learner’s listening competency level. Young learners’ prior knowledge of the second or foreign language, motivation and learning strategies, the teachers’ teaching methods, classroom environment, classroom facilities all form the most crucial parts of the young learners’ views about the origins of their low listening comprehension performance according to what Bennui states. It is crucial that EFL instructors boost learners’ employment of strategies like individual knowledge and mental translation. According to Tyagi listening skill contains some essential elements such as:

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  discriminating between sounds
  
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  recognizing words and understanding their meaning
  
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  identifying grammatical groupings of words,
  
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  identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning,
  
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  connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues,
  
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  using background knowledge to predict and to confirm meaning and
  
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  recalling important words and ideas.
  

In her study, Osuka found out that the most outstanding element that hinders Japanese EFL young learners’ listening comprehension skill appears to be hasty rates of speech and young learners’ incompetence to grasp English sounds. She adds that a slower speech rate could assist learners to understand better, particularly at lower levels. Besides, further ways of enhancing listening skill contain supplying questions connected to the main ideas, and presenting background info as to the topic. Teaching listening skill, particularly for starters, should concentrate on listening practice initially and gradually include speaking practice based on learners’ learning progress.
Every so often, however, listening comes into fashion. In the 1960s, the emphasis on oral language skills gave it a boost. It became fashionable again in the 1980s, when Krashen’s ideas about comprehensible input gained prominence. A short time later, it was reinforced by James Asher’s Total Physical Response, a methodology drawing sustenance from Krashen’s work, and based on the belief that a second language is learned most effectively in the early stages if the pressure for production is taken off the learners. During the 1980s, proponents of listening in a second language were also encouraged by work in the first language field. Here, people such as Gillian Brown were able to demonstrate the importance of developing oracy (the ability to listen and speak) as well as literacy, in school. Prior to this, it was taken for granted that first language speakers needed instruction in how to read and write, but not in how to listen and speak, because these skills were automatically bequeathed to them as native speakers.