how to teach listening

HOW TO TEACH LISTENING

Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language.

When we teach listening we need to teach not only English, but we also need to teach how it is used. We need to teach both:

1. the language system,(our knowledge of language: grammar and vocabulary etc.)
2. the use of the language system,(the skills of language use)


The problem with most listening classes, is that they get stuck at number 1. Too many classes concentrate on teaching the language system and miss the skills of language, in this case listening.

What Listening Teachers Need to Do

Give students practice in listenings which ask students to interpret and understand meaning, together with listenings which teach learners about how English is actually spoken.

Good listening lessons go beyond the listening task itself with related activities before and after the listening. Here is the basic structure:

• Before Listening
  Prepare your learners by introducing the topic and finding out what they already know about it. A good way to do this is to have a brainstorming session and some discussion questions related to the topic. Then provide any necessary background information and new vocabulary they will need for the listening activity.
• During Listening
  Be specific about what students need to listen for. They can listen for selective details or general content, or for an emotional tone such as happy, surprised, or angry. If they are not marking answers or otherwise responding while listening, tell them ahead of time what will be required afterward.
• After Listening
  Finish with an activity to extend the topic and help students remember new vocabulary. This could be a discussion group, craft project, writing task, game, etc.