1

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. General Concept of Listening
Listening is probably the least explicit of the four languageskills, making
it the most difficult one to learn. It is evident that children listen and respond
to language before they learn to talk.1 When it is time for children to learn to
read, they still have to listen so that they gain knowledge and information to
follow directions. In the classroom, students have to listen carefully and
attentively to lectures and class discussions in order to understand and to
retain the information for later recall.
Shelton defines listening is a demanding process. Learners must be able
to deal with different accents or pronunciations, unfamiliar lexical items and
syntactic structures, competing background noise, and also make a conscious
effort to not switch off or become distracted while listening. All of this
must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to
identify and understand the meaning in any given message.2
Furthermore, Purdy (1991) offers a definition of listening as giving an
assign meaning to the stimuli received from the brain. 3 It allows learners to
build relationship, develop intellectually, and control their environment.
Listening is an active, conscious process that requires pattern recognition and
differencing.
Moreover, Nunan (1989 as cited in Richards and Renandya) assumes that
listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning. Listening is

1 Ghaderpanahi, Leila, Using Authentic Aural Material to Develop Listening

Comprehension in the EFL Classroom. English Language Teaching vol. 5 (2012): 146.
2 Shelton, Scott, Teaching Listening for Advanced Learners: Problem and Solution,
retrieved from:
<http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/list1_scott.htm>, accessed on
October 19, 2014.
3 Tomorszki, Kristen R., Developing Listening Comprehension with Internet Resources,
(Washington: George Washington University, 2013), p. 2.

assuming greater and greater importance in foreign language classrooms. 4 In

addition to this, as Rost (1994, p. 141-142) points out, listening is vital in the
language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without
understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.
The importance of listening in language learning can hardly be
overestimated. In classrooms, students always do more listening than
speaking.5 Listening comprehension is universally larger than speaking
competence. It has not always drawn the attention of education than recently.
B. Definition of Teaching Listening for Advanced
Teaching listening for advanced is derived from three main words,
namely teaching, listening and advanced.
According to Oxford Dictionary,
1
teaching is the act of giving lessons to students in a school, college or
university in order to help them learn something by giving information about
it. While listening is defined as taking noticed and paying attention to what
somebody says. Lastly, advanced is the state off being at a high or difficult
level.6 Then, it can be assumed that teaching listening for advanced is the
process of giving listening lessons for the highest level of learners i.e.
advanced level.
Teaching listening can be hard for both teachers and students. Students
who are fine with speaking at their own pace and reading may have trouble
listening to a recording that is a regular-speed conversation. Listening is often
confusing for an English learner.
The pedagogy of listening is one of the least understood, least explored
areas in the field of EFL/ESL. Listening is often referred to as outher most
important language skill, perhaps because of the considerable amount of time
spent on doing it. The importance of listening and listening skills
4 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Methodology in Language Teaching,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 238.
5 Brown, H. Douglas, Teaching by Principle: An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents, 1994), p. 233.
6 Hornby, A S. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, 8th Edition. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010), p. 1531, 21, 868.

development in the process of acquiring language proficiency features

prominently in the scholarly literature of EFL/ESL.7
Teaching listening for advanced is not as easy as pie. The majority of
advanced learners have many of the same problems that beginners and
intermediate learners have. They may understand more as a general rule, but
still have gaps in their understanding and experience difficulties in
comprehension in less than optimum listening situation. Ur (1984) points out
several potential problems areas that may be faced by advanced learners in
listening comprehension course, namely:
1. Listening the sounds
2. Understanding intonation and stress
3. Coping with redundancy and noise
4. Predicting
5. Understanding vocabulary (mostly colloquial)
6. Understanding different accents
7. (Not) using visual or environmental clues
8. Fatigue. 8
In conclusion, as one of the major subjects in language teaching, listening
does need to be given more attention. Not only does listening lead all other
courses such as speaking, reading and writing, but also it is always being the
main part in their everyday lives.

7 Laclare, Elton & Rowberry, Jon, Using Moodle for Listening Skills Development.
Proceedings of Moodle Moot Japan 2014, Moodle Association of Japan, 2014, p. 337.
8 Ur, Penny, Teaching Listening comprehension, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), p. 20.

CHAPTER II
EXPLANATION
A. Kind of Teaching Listening for Advanced
Harmer (2007) in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching,
stated that there are two kinds of teaching listening for advanced, namely
extensive and intensive listening. Learners can improve their listening skills,
along with gaining valuable language input, through a combination of
extensive and intensive listening material and procedures. Listening of both
kind is especially important since it provides the perfect opportunity to listen
voices other than the teachers, enables learners to acquire good speaking
habits as a result of the spoken English they absorb, and helps improve their
pronunciation.
1. Extensive listening
Extensive listening involves a teacher that encourages the learners to
choose for themselves what they listen to and to do so for pleasure and
general language improvement. Extensive listening helps learners acquire
vocabulary and grammar and also make them better listeners. Extensive
listening will usually take place outside the classroom such as in the
students home, car, or on personal MP3 players which they can bring any
time.
Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of
sources. One of the most effective materials is an audio version of reading
text on cassette or CD. These provide ideal sources of listening material.
Many students will enjoy reading and listening at the same time, using a
source both in a book form and on an audio track.
In order to encourage extensive listening teacher can have students
perform a number of tasks. They can record their responses to what they
have heard in a personal journal, or fill in the report forms which we have
prepared, asking them to list the topic, assess the level of difficulty, and
summarize the contents of a recording. The purpose of this or any other
tasks is to give students more and more reasons to listen. If they can then

share their information with colleagues, they will feel they have
contributed to the progress of the whole group. The motivational power of
such feelings should not be underestimated.
2. Intensive listening
In the intensive listening, teacher might employ audio materials.
However, using audio material still has advantages and disadvantages.
Despite the disadvantages, teacher still need to use recorded material at
4
various stages in a sequence of lessons. In order to counteract some of the
potential problems, teacher need to check audio and machine quality
before taking them into class.
Another way of ensuring genuine communication is live listening,
where the teacher and/or visitors to the class to talk to the students. This
has obvious advantages since it allows them to practice listening in faceto-face interactions. Students can also, by their expressions and demeanor,
indicate if the speaker is going too fast or too slowly. Above all, they can
see who they are listing to and respond not just to the sound of someones
voice, but also to all sort of prosodic and paralinguistic clues. 9
For advanced learners, teacher might use several forms of live
listening such as story-telling, interviews, conversations, and reading
aloud. Live listening is also required certain roles of the teacher. Although
this is purposed for advanced learners, the teacher should also take
important roles such as the organizer, machine operator, feedback
organizer, and prompter.
B. Type of Teaching Listening for Advanced
There are many types of listening, which can be classified according to a
number of variables, including purpose for listening, the role of the listeners,
and the type of text being listened to. These variables are mixed in many
different configurations, each of which will require a particular strategy on
the part of the listener. Listening purpose is an important variable. In
designing listening tasks, it is important to teach learners to adopt a flexible

9 Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching, 4th Edition. (England:
Pearson Education Longman, 2007), p. 303-307.

range of listening strategies. This can be done by holding the listening text
constant and getting learners to listen to the text several times.10
On the other hand, Purdy (1991) offers five types of listening employed
in varying conditions as follows:
1. Discriminative, having an awareness of the speakers mood and intention.
2. Comprehensive, for understanding and learning.
3. Critical/evaluative, for making a decision and assessing the logic of what
is heard.
4. Therapeutic, showing empathy without judging and helping others feel
better.
5. Appreciative, for enjoyment and relaxation.11
Furthermore, exercise types of listening for advanced learners can be
divided up into several goals, among others:
1. Use features of sentence stress and volume to identify important
information for note taking. The learners listen to a number of sentences
and extract the content words, which are read with greater stress. Then,
they write down the content words as notes.
2. Become aware of sentence level features in lecture text. The learners
listen to a segment of a lecture while reading a transcript of the material.
They are supposed to notice the incomplete sentences, pauses, and verbal
fillers.
3. Become aware of organizational cues in lecture text. The learners look
at a lecture transcript and circle all the cue words used to enumerate the
main points. Then they listen to the lecture segment and note the
organizational cues.
4. Become aware of lexical and supra-segmental marker for definitions.
The learners read a list of lexical cues that signal a definition. Moreover
they also listen to signals of the speakers intent such as rhetorical
questions.
5. Identify specific points of information. The learners read a skeleton
outline of a lecture in which the main categories are given but the specific
10 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 239.
11 Tomorszki, Kristen R., Op. cit, p. 2-3.

examples are left blank. Then, they are supposed to listen to the lecture
and find the information that belongs to the blanks.
6. Use the introduction to the lecture to predict its focus and direction.
The learners listen to the introductory section of a lecture then reading a
number of topics on the answer sheet and choosing the topic that best
expresses what the lecture will discuss.
7. Use the lecture transcript to predict the content of the next section.
The learners read a section of a lecture transcript. They are supposed to
stop reading at a juncture point and predict what will come next then they
read on to confirm the prediction.
8. Find a main idea of a lecture segment. The learners listen to a section of
a lecture that describes a statistical trend. While listening, look at three
graphs that show a change over time and select the graph that best
illustrates the lecture.
9. Use incoming details to determine the accuracy of predictions about
content. The learners listen to the introductory sentences to predict some
of the main ideas they expect to hear in the lecture. Then they listen to the
lecture as it played. They are supposed to note whether the instructor talks
about the points they predicted. If she/he does, then they note a detail
about the point.
10. Determine the main ideas of section of a lecture by analysis of the
details in that section. The learners listen to a section of a lecture and
take notes on the important details. Then they relate the details to form an
understanding of the main points in that section.
11. Make inferences by identifying ideas on the sentence level on that
lead to evaluative statements. The learners listen to a statement and take
notes on the important words. They indicate what further meaning can be
inferred from the statement. They also indicate the words in the original
statement then decide which one serves to cue the interference.
12. Use knowledge of the text and the lecture content to fill in missing
information. The learners listen to lecture segment to get the gist. Then
they listen to a statement from which words have been omitted. They are

required to use their knowledge of the text and of the general content,
then fill the missing information.
13. Use knowledge of the text and the lecture content to discover the
lecturers misstatements and to supply the ideas that he/she meant to
say. The learners listen to a lecture segment that contains an incorrect
term. Then, they write the incorrect term and the term that the lecturer
should have used. Finally, the learners indicate what clues helped them
find the misstatement. 12
C. Characteristics of Teaching Listening for Advanced
The theoretical, empirical, and practical aspects

of

listening

comprehension should have been set out. Listening classrooms need to

develop both bottom-up and top-down listening skills in learners. Such an
approach is particularly important in classrooms where students are exposed
to substantial amounts of authentic data, because they will not (and should not
expect to) understand every word. In summary, an effective listening course
will be characterized by the following features.
1. The materials should be based on a wide range of authentic texts,
including both monologues and dialogues.
2. Schema-building tasks should precede the listening.
3. Strategies for effective listening should be incorporated into the materials.
4. Learners should be given opportunities to progressively structure their
listening by listening to a text several times and by working through
increasingly challenging listening tasks.
5. Learners should know what they are listening for and why.
6. The task should include opportunities for learners to play an active role in
their own learning.
7. Content should be personalized.13
The role of the teacher and the learners should both understand those
characteristics in order to make the learning process run well. Moreover, these
characteristics should also be the main guideline for both learners and teacher.

12 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 249-250.

13 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 251.

D. Principles of Teaching Listening for Advanced

There are several principles underlying the process in teaching as follow.
1. In an interactive, four-skill curriculum, make sure that you dont
overlook the importance of techniques that specifically develop
listening comprehension competence.
If the curriculum is strongly content-based, or otherwise dedicated to
the integration of skills. Remember that each of the separate skills
deserves special focus in appropriate doses. It is easy to adopt a
philosophy of just let-ting students experience language without careful
attention to component skills. Because aural comprehension itself cannot
be overly observe, teacher something incorrectly assume that the input
provided in the classroom will always be converted into intake. The
creation of effective listening techniques requires studied attention to all
the principles of listening already summarized in this chapter.
2. Techniques should be intrinsically motivation.
Appeal to listener personal interests and goals. Since background
information (schemata) is an important factor in listening, take into fill
account the experiences and goals and abilities of your students can be
both facilitating and interfering in the process of listening. Then, once a
technique is launched, try to feel self-propelled toward its final objective.
3. Techniques should utilize authentic language and context.
Authentic language and real-world task enable students to see the
relevance of classroom activity to their long term communicative goals.
By introducing natural text rather than concocted, artificial material,
students will more readily dive in to the activity.
4. Carefully consider the form to listeners responses
Comprehension itself is not externally observable. We cannot peer into
a learners brain through a little window of some kind and empirically
observe exactly what is stored there after someone else has said
something. We can overt responses (verbal or nonverbal) to speech. It is
therefore important for teacher to design techniques in such a way that
students responses indicate different ways that we can check listeners
comprehension:

10

Doing-the listener respond physically to a command

Choosing- the listener selects from alternatives such as picture,

object, texts
Transferring-the listener draws a picture of what is heard
Answering- the listener answer questions about the message
Condensing-the listener outlines or takes notes on a lecture
Extending-the listener provides an ending to a story heard
Duplicating-the listener translates the message into the native

language or repeats it verbatim

Modeling-the listener orders a meal, for example, after listening to

a model order.
Conversing-the listener engages in a conversation that indicates

appropriate processing of information.

5. Encourage the development of listening strategies.
Most foreign language students are simply not aware of how to listen
one of your jobs is to equip them with listening strategies that extend
beyond the classroom, draw their attention to the value of such strategies
as:

Looking for keywords

Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning
Predicting a speakers purpose by the context of the spoken

discourse
Associating information with ones existing cognitive structure

(activating schemata)
Guessing at meanings
Seeking clarification
Listening for the general gist
For tests of listening comprehension various test-taking strategies.
6. Include both bottom-up top-down listening techniques
Speech processing theory distinguishes between two types of
processing in both listening and reading comprehension. Bottom-up
processing proceed from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to
lexical meaning. Etc....to a final message. Top-down processing is
evoked from a bank of prior knowledge and global expectations
(Morley. 1991:87) and other background information that the listener
brings to the text. Bottom-up techniques typically focus on sounds. Word,

11

intonation, grammatical structures. And other components of spoken

language. Top-down techniques are more concerned with the activation of
schemata. With deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the
interpretation of a text. It is important for learners to operate from both
directions since both can offer keys to determining the meaning of spoken
discourse.14
However, this principles, in a communicative, interactive context, teacher
is supposed to dwell too heavily on the bottom-up. For to do so may hamper
the development of a learners all-important automaticity in processing
speech.

E. Procedures of Teaching Listening for Advanced

From the late 1960s, practitioners recognized the importance of listening
and began to set aside time for practicing the skill. A relatively standard
format for the listening lesson developed at this time:
- Pre-listening. Pre-teaching of all important new vocabulary in the
-

passage.
Listening. Includes extensive listening (followed by general questions
establishing context) and intensive listening (followed by detailed

comprehension questions).
Post-listening. Analysis of the language in the text (Why did the speaker
use the present perfect?) Listen and repeat: teacher pauses the tape,
learners repeat words.15
However, the following eight processes are the procedures offered by

Brown are all involved in comprehension, with the exception of the initial and
final processes below, no sequence is implied here; they all occur. If not
14 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 244-246.
15 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 242.

12

simultaneously, then in extremely rapid succession. Neurological time must

be viewed in term of microsecond.
1. The hearer processes what well call raw speech and holds an image
of it in short-term memory. This image consist of the constituents (phrases,
clauses, cohesive markers, intonation and stress patterns) of a stream of
speech.
2. The hearer determines the type of speech event that is being processed.
The hearer must, for example, ascertain whether this is a conversation, a
speech, a radio, broadcast, etc., and then appropriately color the
interpretation of the perceived message.
3. The hearer infers the objectives of the speaker through consideration of the
type of speech event, the context and content. So, for examples, one
determines whether the speaker wishes to persuade. To request, to
exchange pleasantries, to affirm, to deny, to inform, and so forth. Thus the
function of the message in inferred.
4. The hearer recall background information (or- schemata- see chapter 16
for more on this) relevant to the particular context and subject matter. A
lifetime of experiences and knowledge are used to perform cognitive
associations in order to bring a plausible interpretation to the message.
5. The hearer assigns a literal meaning to the utterance, this process involves
a set of semantic interpretations of the surface strings that the ear has
perceived. In many instances, literal and intended meanings match. So, for
example, if one of your students walks into your office as you are madly
grading papers and says she has a question that she would appreciate your
answering. Then says do you have the time? the literal meaning (do you
possess enough time now to answer me) is appropriate however, this
process may take on a peripheral role in cases where literal meanings are
irrelevant to the message, is in metaphorical or idiomatic language. If,
for example, a stranger sitting beside you in a bus has been silent for a
period of time and then says. Do you have the time the appropriate
response is not a yes or a no but rather its quarter to nine or
whatever second language learners must, in interpret correctly.

13

6. The hearer assigns an intended meaning to the utterance. The person on

the bus intended to find out what time of day it was, even though the literal
meaning

didnt

directly

convey

that

message.

How

often

do

misunderstandings stem from false assumptions that are made on the

hearers part about the intended meaning of the speaker? A key to human
communication is the ability to match perceived meaning with intended
meaning. This match-making. Of course, can extend well beyond simple
metaphorical and its breakdown can be caused by careless speech,
inattention of the hearer, conceptual complexity, contextual miscues,
psychological barriers, and a host of other performance variables.
7. The hearer determines whether information should be retained is shortterm or long-term memory. Short-term memory-a matter of a few secondis appropriate, for example, in contexts that simply call for a quick oral
response from hearer. Long-term memory is more common when, say you
are processing information in a lecture. There are, of course, many points
in between.
8. The hearer deletes the form in which the message was originally received.
The

words

and

phrase

and

sentences

themselves

are

quickly

forgotten-pruned-in 99 percent of speech acts. You have no need to

retain this short of cognitive clutter. Instead the important information, if
any is retained conceptually.16
In addition, it should be clear from the foregoing that listening
comprehension is an interactive process. After the initial reception of sound,
we human beings perform at least seven other major operations on that set of
sound waves in conversational setting, of course, immediately after the
listening stage, further interaction takes place as the hearer then becomes
speaker in a response of some kind. All of these processes are important for
you to keep in mind as teaching. They are all relevant to a learners for
listening, to performance factors that may cause difficulty in processing

16 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 235-236.

14

speech, to overall principles of effective listening techniques, and to the

choices you make of what techniques to use and when in your classroom.
F. How to Apply Teaching Listening for Advanced
Teaching listening for advanced is considered the highest level of
teaching listening. In the teaching listening for advanced, the learners would
focus on teaching listening as comprehension, also called proficiency level.
This view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of
listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken
discourse. Two different kinds of processes are involved in understanding
spoken discourse. These are often referred to as bottom-up and top-down
processing.17
1. Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up processing refers to using the incoming input as the basis
for understanding the message. Comprehension begin with the received
data that is analyzed as successive levels of organization sounds, words,
clauses, sentences, texts until the meaning is derived. Comprehension is
viewed as a process of decoding. The listeners lexical and grammatical
competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing.
The input is scanned for familiar words, and grammatical knowledge is
used to work out the relationship between elements of sentences. Clark
and Clark (1997) summarize this vies of listening in the following way:
a. Learners take in raw speech and hold a phonological representation of
it in working memory.
b. They immediately attempt to organize the phonological representation
into constituents, identifying their content and function.
c. They identify each constituent and then construct underlying
propositions, building continually onto hierarchical representation of
propositions.
d. Once they have identified the propositions for a constituent, they
retain them in working memory and at some point purge memory of
17 Richards, Jack C., Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 4.

15

the phonological representation. In doing this, they forgot the exact

wording and retain the meaning.18
However, teaching bottom-up processing to the advanced learners
requires the learners to have a large vocabulary and a good working
knowledge of sentence structure to process texts bottom-up. Exercise that
develop bottom-up processing help the learner to do such thing as the
following:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Retain input while it is being processed

Recognize word and clause divisions
Recognize key words
Recognize key transitions in a discourse
Recognize grammatical relationship between key elements in

sentences
f. Use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence functions.
Furthermore, in the language classroom, examples of the kind of tasks
that develop bottom-up listening skills require listeners to do the
following kinds of things:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.

Identify the referents of pronouns in an utterance

Recognize the time reference of an utterance
Distinguish between positive and negative statements
Recognize the order in which words occurred in an utterance
Identify sequence markers
Identify key words that occurred in a spoken text
Identify which modal verbs occurred in a spoken text.

2. Top-down processing
Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of
background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message.
Whereas bottom-up processing goes from language to meaning, top-down
processing goes from meaning to language. The background knowledge
required for top-down processing may be previous knowledge about the
topic of discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, or knowledge in
18 Clark and Clark, Psychology and Language: An introduction to Psycholinguistics,
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 49.

16

the form of schemata or scripts plans about the overall structure of

events and the relationship between them.
Much of humans knowledge of the world consist of knowledge about
specific situations, the people that someone might expect to encounter in
such situations, what their goals and purposes are, and how typically
accomplish them. Likewise, the knowledge of thousands of topics and
concepts, their associated meanings, and links to other topics and
concepts. In applying this prior knowledge about things, concepts, people,
and events to a particular utterance, comprehension can often proceed
from the top-down. The actual discourse heard is used to confirm
expectations and to fill out details.
In addition, teaching top-down processing for advanced learners
involves several exercises that may develop the learners ability to do the
following:
a. Use the key words to construct the schema of a discourse
b. Infer the setting for a text
c. Infer the role of the participants and their goals
d. Infer causes and effects
e. Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation
Besides, the following activities develop top-down listening skills:
a. Students generate a set of questions they expect to hear about a topic,
then listen to see if they are answered.
b. Students generate a list of things they already know about a topic and
things they would like to learn more about, then listen and compare.
c. Students read one speakers part in a conversation, predict the other
speakers part, then listen and compare.
d. Students read a list of key points to be covered in a talk, then listen to
see which ones are mentioned.
e. Students listen to part of a story, complete the story ending, then listen
and compare endings.
f. Students read news headlines, guess what happened, then listen to the
full news items and compare.
In real-world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing
generally occur together. Moreover, successful listeners use both bottom-up

17

and top-down strategies.19 The extent to which one or the other dominates
depends on the learners familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the
density of information in a text, the text type, and the learners purpose in
listening. A typical lesson in current teaching materials involves a three-part
sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening and
contains activities that link bottom-up and top-down listening (Field, 1998).
The pre-listening phase prepares students for both top-down and bottomup processing through activities involving activating prior knowledge,
making pre-dictions, and reviewing key vocabulary. The while-listening
phase focuses on comprehension through exercises that require selective
listening, gist listening, sequencing, etc. The post-listening phase typically
involves a response to comprehension and may require students to give
opinions about a topic. However, it can also include a bottom-up focus if the
teacher and the listeners examine the texts or parts of the text in detail,
focusing on sections that students could not follow. This may involve a
microanalysis of sections of the text to enable students to recognize such
features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken
discourse that they were unable to process or recognize.
In addition, successful listening can also be looked at in terms of the
strategies the listener uses when listening. Does the learner focus mainly on
the content of a text, or does he or she also consider how to listen? A focus on
how to listen raises the issues of listening strategies. Strategies can be thought
of as the ways in which a learner approaches and manages a task, and
listeners can be taught effective ways of approaching and managing their
listening. These activities seek to involve listeners actively in the process of
listening.
Buck (2001) identifies two kinds of strategies in teaching listening for
advanced, as follows:
19 Nunan, David, Language Teaching Methodology, (London: Prentice Hall, 1998), p.
25

18

1. Cognitive strategies: Mental activities related to comprehending and

storing input in working memory or long-term memory for later retrieval.
2. Metacognitive strategies: Those conscious or unconscious mental
activities that perform an executive function in the management of
cognitive strategies. 20
Another approach to incorporating listening strategies in a listening
lesson for advanced involves a cycle of activities. There are five steps in
guided metacognitive sequence in a listening lesson from Goh and Yusnita
(2006), namely:
1. Step 1 Pre-listening activity. In pairs, students predict the possible
words and phrases that they might hear. They write down their
predictions. They may write some words in their first language.
2. Step 2 First listen. As they are listening to the text, students underline
or circle those words or phrases (including first-language equivalents) that
they have predicted correctly. They also write down new information they
hear.
3. Step 3 Pair process-based discussion. In pairs, students compare what
they have understood so far and explain how they arrived at the
understanding. They identify the parts that caused confusion and
disagreement and make a note of the parts of the text that will require
special attention in the second listen.
4. Step 4 Second listen. Students listen to those parts that have caused
confusion or disagreement areas and make notes of any new information
they hear.
5. Step 5 Whole-class process-based discussion. The teacher leads a
discussion to confirm comprehension before discussing with students the
strategies that they reported using.21

20 Buck, G, Assessing Listening, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.

104.
21 Richards, Jack C., Op. cit., p. 13-14.

19

G. Example of Teaching Listening for Advanced

A lesson plan is a framework for a lesson. 22 In the teaching listening for
advanced, the example of the lesson plan would be as follow.
Lesson Plan
Level: Advanced level
Time: 60 minutes
Aims and objectives:
1. Main aim: To provide input on listening tasks through the vehicle of a
listening task itself, i.e. "Loop input", and provide practice in listening for
specific information in an exam type format.
2. Subsidiary aims: To raise awareness of exam strategies for the listening
portion of the exam, provide practice in listening for gist, predicting
before listening, collaborative speaking and intensive reading.
3. Assumed knowledge: A general familiarity with listening task procedures
derived from previous in-class practice.
Teaching planning:
1. Some of the students in attendance have joined the group recently, and
have not had as much exposure to and practice with the listening portion
of the exam format as others who have been with the group since October.
Teacher suspects that in the warmer stage, where he will ask the students
to discuss what they know about it, the newer ones may have little to say
and have a difficult time coming up with any tips for others. The solution
will be pairing or grouping the newer and less experienced students with
the ones who have been in the class longer, as they should be able to
provide some of the information that the others may lack. It should be
noted, as well, that it is not essential nor even desirable that everyone be
completely familiar with the exam format in great detail, as the absence of
knowledge should encourage them to listen carefully to others that have
ideas and remain engaged throughout the lesson.
22 Robertson, Cullum and Acklam, Richar, Action Plan for Teachers: A Guide to
Teaching English, (English: British Broadcasting Publishing, 2000), p.7.

20

2. The recording that is going to be used in the lesson is homemade and the
quality may be less than what the students are used to listening to, and
therefore this may make it more difficult to understand and follow. The
conversation is also quite natural and contains many of the features of
natural conversational speech that the students often find difficult, such as
topic shift, turn taking, colloquialisms, redundancy, false starts, and
features of connected speech. Although not all of these potentially
difficult features are ones that can be compensated for in the lesson itself,
teacher is supposed to reduce the difficulties inherent in following a
recorded conversation on a potentially unfamiliar subject by giving the
class the opportunity to activate any background knowledge they do have
(collectively) in the warmer stage, and in that way make it easier on them
when they listen for the first time, activating their 'schemata', or 'script' to
aid their understanding. In the same way, by giving them very general
information 'gist' questions to focus on before the first listening, and
allowing them to predict associated lexical items, teacher is supposed to
give them a purpose for listening as well as aids to better follow and
understand the conversation.
3. The multiple choice task, which is in exam-style format, may prove to be
quite difficult for some of the 'weaker' students as the questioning is
purposefully somewhat complicated. And as teacher has previously
mentioned, the conversation is quite natural in speed and in
conversational speech features that may make it difficult for the weaker
students to easily 'pull out', as it were, the information required to answer
the questions. By breaking down the five main topics covered
chronologically in the taped conversation into five questions, teacher is
supposed to make the task reasonably accessible even for the 'weaker'
students in the class. Also, by encouraging everyone to predict and
underline key words in the time before they listen a second time, teacher
is supposed to simplify the processing load and improve their chances of
success. In the unlikely event that the majority of the class found the

21

taped conversation and listening tasks simply too hard to do, the teacher
might have to make adjustments. One such adjustment could be to break
down the tape into sections and play each one at a time. This would
potentially throw the timing of the lesson off but because the students
must come first, it could turn out to be the appropriate action to take.
4. In the course of the lesson, there are several different activities that
require time, such as pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening
activities and there is always the possibility that time management will
become an issue. The teacher is supposed to compensate for this
eventuality by allowing reasonable timing for each activity, at times
explicitly telling the class how much time they have for each activity, and
by providing feedback on an OHT in order to save time.
5. In the second listening task, the teacher is asking the class to follow the
flow of turn- taking and recognize which speaker is making which
statement. When they check their answers in the transcript, it may be
difficult and time consuming to pinpoint the information in the text,
having such a large amount of text to deal with. By providing the line
number in the transcript, teacher is supposed to aid the students in
locating the information quickly in order to check their answers. As
mentioned above, if the listening task and recording prove, or have proven
to be much too difficult, at this point. A possible solution could be to
break down the recording into sections, pausing after each question, and
in that way help the class deal with the unforeseen difficulties.
6. In the final part of the lesson, the teacher asks the class to take on roles
and briefly act out a short exchange using information learned in the
lesson. Some students may be overloaded by now and not be able to think
on their feet. If time allows, the teacher will ask the students playing the
same roles to work together and think of or predict a few problems or
answers to problems in order to make the brief activity more
communicative and with the idea that two heads are sometimes better than
one. In the event that time is running too short to allow this kind of
interaction, teacher will simply provide each student with a few problems

22

or prompts to anticipate problems and ask them to get on with it after they
have had time to think on their own for a minute.
H. Material of Teaching Listening for Advanced
Porter and Roberts (1981) stated that teacher cannot expect learners to
handle types of language they have never, or hardly ever been exposed to. 23 It
would be nice if teacher could only use authentic listening materials in the
classroom. One way to approach this is to use materials which are very close
to real English, but take into account some of the weaknesses or problems
that learners at advanced level are likely to have.
In most classrooms, CDs are now replacing tapes as the main way to
present listening materials. There are many reasons for this; CDs are cheap,
easy to use and can be used to expose the students to a wide range of accents
and listening situations.24 However, there is no reason to limit ourselves to
only using recorded materials. Consider for a moment that in most real-life
listening situations, we can actually see the person who is speaking. The
speaker's body language also provides a myriad of additional hints to help us
understand what is being said. Movies or television shows, or even an invited
speaker can be used to add spice to the classroom and to make the listening
more real for the students.
Furthermore, teaching listening for advanced based on the lesson plan
mentioned above requires the following materials:
1. A 'homemade' recording of two teaching colleagues discussing tips and
advice for students preparing for the advanced listening exam.
2. Two 'homemade' handouts in the style and format of the advanced
listening exam, section C, based on the recording.
3. A copy of the transcript, transcribed as faithfully as possible, by the
teacher.
I. Media of Teaching Listening for Advanced
23 Porter, D. & Roberts, J., Authentic Listening Activities, in M.H. Long &J.C. Richards
(Eds.), Methodology in TESOL, (Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, 1981), p. 179.
24 Howell, Simon, Teaching Listening Comprehension. Listening Good Listeners
Internet Listening, 119.

23

Nowadays, many media can be used for teaching listening. As Ur (1984)

puts it into clear that both recorded and live speech should have a placed in
the classroom.25 Moreover, the following media is required to fulfill the
lesson plan initially explained:
1. An OHP and OHTs of the two handouts with the answers for feedback
purposes.
2. Prompts on card for the warmer and post listening discussion.
3. A tape recorder to play the recording, obviously.

CHAPTER III
CLOSING
A. Conclusion
Teaching is not merely transfer knowledge from teacher to the learners.
Rather, teaching is assisting learners in order to be able to do something.
Teaching listening is one of the four skills most required in English. The
25 Ur, Penny, Op. cit, p. 25.

24

highest level of listening is the advanced. Therefore, teaching listening for

advanced is the process of giving listening lessons for the highest level of
learners.
There are two kinds of teaching listening for advanced, namely extensive
listening and intensive listening. On the other hand, the types of teaching
listening

advanced

learners

occupies

five

different

types,

namely

discriminative, comprehensive, critical/evaluative, therapeutic, appreciative.

There are many strategies, approaches, methods, or techniques that can
be employed. In this paper, the teaching process involves cognitive strategies
and metacognitive strategies. The technique being occupied is bottom-up and
top-down processing.
Teaching listening for advanced requires many elements, including media
and the materials. The materials could be transcript of the listening while the
media definitely employs tape recorder or CD player.
B. Suggestion
May this paper be of some benefits for all the readers or teachers that
intend to conduct or compile a teaching listening at advanced level of the
learners?

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25

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