Lesson 1 : teaching listening in english lessons plan

LESSON 4.1 : TEACHING LISTENING IN ENGLISH LESSONS

Plan:
1. The difficulties of listening comprehension in the ELT
2. Ways and stages of forming and developing listening skills

Objectives:

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  to raise participants‘ awareness of typical characteristics of authentic listening texts
  
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  to allow participants to explore the advantages of and possible problems in using authentic listening texts in classrooms
  
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  to expose participants to different types of listening activities
  
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  to help participants explore important tips for developing listening skills
  

Nunan (1997) calls the listening skill as the ‘Cinderella Skill’ which is overlooked by its elder sister speaking in language learning. Listening received little attention in language teaching and learning, because teaching methods emphasized productive skills and listening was characterized as passive activity (Richards&Renandya, 2010). However, researchers have revealed that listening is not a passive skill but an active process of constructing meaning from a stream of sounds. Listening can be considered the fundamental skill to speaking, because without understanding the input at the right level, any learning cannot begin. Some various defnitions of listening are presented below to highlight its different aspects.

Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and/or non-verbal messages (Brownell, 2002).
Listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear (Helgesen, 2003).
Listening comprehension is a highly complex problem-solving activity that can be broken down into a set of distinct sub-skills (Byrnes, 1984).
Listening is an active and interactional process in which a listener receives speech sounds and tries to attach meaning to the spoken words. The listener tries to understand the intended message of the oral text to respond effectively to oral communication. Listening and hearing are considered different process. While hearing is considered as physical, passive and natural process, listening is physical & mental, active and learnt process and is defined as a skill. Although listeners can understand messages presented at a rate of 380 words per minute, an average person speaks at a rate of about 150 words per minute.
The ability to listen and understand a person talking in English to communicate with other people is important. Students who are good at listening will understand more of what the speaker says. Morley (1991, p.82 in Celce-Murcia, n.d.) states that “they expect to listen twice as much as they speak, four times more than they read, and five times more than they write”. Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. “Listening is not only hearing something”. Schwartz (2004, p. 2) argues that “it has been estimated that adults spend almost half of their communication time listening. Students may receive as much as 90% of their information through listening to instructors and to one another”. Listening is the language modality that is used most frequently. Listening must be done in real time. There is no second chance, unless, of course, the listeners specifically ask for repetition when they listen to speakers. Yet, for the language learner who is often unable to process information quickly to make sense of what is said, listening can be a stressful activity (Goh & Taib, 2006, p. 222). Using variety when teaching listening can develop students’ motivation in comprehending the material. Teaching listening in the English department is different from teaching at junior and high schools. The implementation of appropriate methods and techniques by the lecturers in a classroom will influence the outcome for students. For example, by giving suitable listening materials, good classroom atmosphere, appropriate teaching methods and meaningful exercises will help students to achieve good listening skills.
Listening is one of the most important skills. As we know, listening is the skill of understanding spoken language. The skill of listening is an essentisal part of communication and a basis for second language learning.