DISCOVERY LISTENING TECHNIQUE

1. Nature of Discovery Listening

Speech comes at the learner in a continuous stream of sounds (Roberts, 2012). To

simply capturing the meaning, this process involvesidentifying and distinguishing between
particular sounds andalso isolating stressed and unstressed varieties. Deciding where to pause and
when to continue over words is another part of the process in addition to putting stress and
executing correct intonation. Roberts (2012) states that all of this procedure is particularly hard to
do in English with linking, elision and assimilation.

This can be over-bearing for students at lower level. Such requirements in order to
understanding the meaning areso spinning for those without a wide vocabulary or familiarity with
the features of connected speech. The limitation to fulfill the demand on the listening process will
lead to inability to pick up the pieces into a whole related meaning. Current approaches to
teaching listening have tended to emphasize listening for gist, top-down processing, and listening
strategies (Wilson, 2003). These basically focus on teaching students how to cope with authentic
language and real-life situations, as part of the communicative approach. Bottom-up approaches
that focus on word recognition, on the other hand, have been undervalued. Discovery listening
technique gives balance between focus on meaning generating and attention on form.

In Discovery Listening, Wilson builds on an idea by John Field (2000) in Arun

(2013), of using dictogloss to develop students’ awareness of how they are processing language.
Field’s technique is to carry out a dictogloss, where students listen to as many words as they can
and write them down. They have to generate the meaning and then discuss their understanding
with classmates. The idea was to show how guesswork is applicable to build meaning. Based on
this idea, Wilson directs students to try to be more focused on reconstructing the text more
completely after listening, and then compare their versions carefully with the original one. It’s a
discovery, or ‘noticing’ activity, because students focus on what is missing or they might mishear
during listening and point out the problems.

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2. The Definition of Discovery Listening

The term discovery listening is proposed by Magnus Wilson for a teaching listening that
encourages learners to discover their own difficulties and the causes of the difficulties in the
process of listening (Wilson, 2003). The discovery listening technique is an improvement of
dictoglos approach that emphasizes on teaching bottom-up processing effectively. This technique
retains a learner-centered and task-based format that is compatible with current teaching
methodology.
The students are going to reconstruct the text in order to make their reconstructed text
have meaning as close as possible to the original text. This activity aims to help learners to find
their difficulties in understanding the meaning. After they have finished reconstructing the
spoken text, they compare their reconstructed text to the original one. While doing this, they
circle the difficult words or phrases that make them difficult to understand the meaning.
The task based language teaching concentrates on the learning tasks, not on the nature of
language input (Harmer, 1991). In discovery listening, learners do several tasks before coming to
find out what their problems and the causes of the problems in comprehending the language.
According to Nunan (1999), task-based language teaching is an approach to the design of
language courses, in which the point of departure is not an ordered list of linguistic items, but a
collection of tasks.
In discovery listening, students do several tasks. Wilson (2003) outlines three main phases
in discovery listening. They are listening, reconstructing, and discovering. Description of each
task is as follows:
a) Listening
In this phase, students will listen to the recording three times. The steps are:
 Students listen, without note-taking, to a short spoken text once. Here, the
students are doing intensive listening. After the first listening, students
asses their comprehensive level, based on the learner-centered approach.
 Students listen to the recording two more times while taking notes. Here,
the students are doing selective listening. Students take notes to get the
main ideas.

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 b) Reconstructing
There is only one step in reconstructing. In this phase, students form small groups
and use their notes to attempt to reconstruct the text. They try to reconstruct the
text to make the meaning as similar to the original and as correct as possible. Here,
the students are dong interactive listening. They interact with other students while
reconstructing the text.

c) Discovering
In this phase, students are completing the task in the tasks sheet. There are three
steps in this phase. They are:
 Compare their texts with the original and attempt to classify the cause of
mistakes, by giving information about their problems in understanding the
spoken text.
 Assess the relative importance of their errors. One again, the students are
given information about their difficulties in listening.
 Listen again without reading the text and assess their performance. Here,
the students do the top-down processing and give information about how
well they can understand the spoken language.

3. The Application of Discovery Listening

Baehaqi (2010) promotes the application of Discovery Listening techniques using the
process based approach. According to Baehaqi (010), the improvement of the listening skills
could be seen through the process based underlying Discovery Listening which encompassed 3
stages; training, practicing and reflecting stages. Students start to promote their language
proficiency in the training stage. The activities are:
a) Activating schemata in which listening texts are easily understood when prior
knowledge is known
b) Listening text for gist in which specific instruction on general gist of text focus
listener on contextual meaning rather than merely form.
c) Confirming comprehension on the text in which enthusiast contribution
encourages positive achievement and constructive competition.

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 d) Finding out sources of listening difficulties realizes during listening. Here, the
search increases metacognitive awareness.
e) Listening to segmented clauses and sentences of the text where the cause of
listening problems found in detail.
f) Reproducing the segmented expressions spoken by native speakers. It is expected
that expressive imitation may enhanced their language proficiency.
Meanwhile in the practicing stage, the students performed the tasks which guide them to
the understanding of listening process occurred in their minds,. The activities are as follows:
a) Listening for gist of text without note taking; it forced the students to understand a
whole text using their background knowledge
b) Self-assessing comprehension level; it improved metacognitive awareness
c) Writing down of listening comprehension; confirmation of comprehension in
written form improved language proficiency of grammar and meaning of words by
using contextual clue
d) Listening to segmented clauses and sentences of the text by making use of
individual note taking; the focus on form encouraged them to listen in a more
narrowed context of text
e) Reconstructing text based on the individual notes; in a group, the students were
cooperated to match their own comprehension with other friends
f) Comparing the reconstructed text with the original one; noticing differences of
language features in the text and matching them with their own perception
enhanced
g) Discovering sources of listening difficulties and writing the reasons of
miscomprehension; metacognitive awareness enhanced listening performance.
During the last stage called reflecting stage, students are encouraged to reflect on the
activities they have conducted by pooling knowledge about aspects of teaching and learning and
before closing the lesson, the students listen to an amusement short text such as song or poem for
refreshment and encouragement.

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4. The Strengths and Weaknesses of Discovery Listening
Wilson (2003) states that discovery listening is based on the learner-centered approach.
Discovery listening technique gives students an opportunity to have their own views about the
difficulties they deal with in understanding language. It is in accordance to Nunan (1999) that
using the learner-centered approach will help teachers get information about learners and where
feasible, from learners, will be used to answer key questions of what, how, when and how well.
Meaning to say, by applying discovery listening, teachers can dig out information about what
students’ problems are, what the causes are, and how well they can understand the language. It is
also expected that the use of discovery listening technique can improve the students’ achievement
in listening comprehension class.
There is also a positive aspect that the students really pay attention to the particular
conversation and the words in detail.
However, boredom might occur for the high proficient students during the activity of
discovery listening technique. It happens because the students have to do the tasks regularly
Teacher might be able to avoid the boredom by using various kinds of text, such as: poems, song
lyrics, and anecdotes.
Moreover, the activity might take time since the students have to complete set of tasks,
especially the reconstructing phase, in which they have to discuss with their friends and after that
re-write the text. In order to overcome this condition, the teachers need to adjust the text’s
difficulty with the students’ level of comprehension. Students might bedemotivated if the
listening text is at the wrong level, therefore, the texts in discovery listening are graded (Wilson,
2003). They also need to be aware of the length of the texts as discovery listening is a bit time
consuming.

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5. Discovery approach lesson plan
This lesson plan is dedicated for intermediate-level students. Teachers of Senior High
School or University students may consult with the basic competence written in the syllabus of
the listening skill.

Stage Step Students Teacher Time

Setting up 1 Teacher divides the students into
two groups
2 Groups choose one student to 5’
control the CD player.
( They must work together to write
down every word they can with
correct spelling, and each student
must write)
3 Leave one group in the classroom
with the recording and CD
player; take the group to another
room with the recording and a
CD player.
Listening 4 Students work in groups, listen to Teacher goes back and forth 5-10’
for the gist the entire recording once or twice between groups, observing,
and the discuss the gist making notes and helping if
necessary.
5 Students listen to first sentence/ 30-45’
phrase, stop, discuss, and listen
again if necessary.
6 The secretary in each group
transcribed the recording to the
whiteboard
Discovery 7 Students revise the transcript on Teacher goes back and forth
listening and listen again as necessary between groups, observing,
8 Students then listen to next making notes and helping if
sentence/ phrase, stop, discuss, and necessary.

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 listen again if necessary
9 Repeat step 6-8 until the
transcription is complete.
10 Teacher distributes transcript
11 Students analyze transcript, discuss
and listen again as necessary.
12 Teacher bring both group back
Transcript together 15-20’
analysis/ 13 Students work with partners from Teacher observes pair discussion
feedback the other group and discuss, for
example, what they found most
difficult/ surprising/ useful, etc.
14 Teacher highlights and discusses
interesting problem with the
class.

6. References
Arun, Warszawski. 2013. Discovery Listening-Revisited (Again) Retrieved at
http://pedadodablog.wordpress.com Download Date: 16 June 2013.

Baehaqi, Luqman. 2010. Improving the listening skills of second semester students of English
Departement of Kanjuruhan University of Malang through the discovery listening
technique using podcast: A Thesis. Retrieved at http://library.um.ac.id Download
Date: 28 June 2013

Harmer, Jeremy. 1991. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman Group
UK Limited.

Nunan, David. 1999. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston, Massachusetts:
Heinle&Heinle Publishers.

Rachael, Roberts. 2012. Discovery Listening and Other Ways to Read Your Students Mind.
Retrieved at http://elt-resourceful.com/2012/05/25/discovery-listening-and-other-
ways-to-read-your-students-minds/ Download Date: 27 June 2013.

Wilson, Magnus. 2003. Discovery Listening: Improving Perceptual Processing. ELT Journal
Volume 57/4. Retrieved at http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/57-4-2.pdf Download
Date: 27 June 2013.

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