Listening skills

Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to a

spoken and/ or non-verbal message (International Reading Association)
Nunan (1997) calls the listening skill as the ‘Cinderella Skill’ which is overlooked by its
elder sister speaking in language learning.
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).
Types of Listening
Appreciative Listening
-listening for pleasure and enjoyment, as when we listen to music, to a comedy routine,
or to an entertaining speech
-describes how well speakers choose and use words, use humor, ask questions. tell
stories, and argue persuasively.
Emphatic Listening
-listening to provide emotional support for the speaker, as when a psychiatrist listens to
a patient or when we lend a sympathetic ear to a friend
-focuses on understanding and identifying with a person’s situation, feelings, or motives
-there is an attempt to understand what the other person is feeling
-listener does not necessarily agree or feel the same way with the speaker instead
understand the type and intensity of feelings the speaker is experiencing without
judgment
Comprehensive/ Active Listening
-listening to understand the message of a speaker, as when we attend a classroom
lecture or listen to directions for finding a friend’s house
-focuses on accurately understanding the meaning of the speaker’s words while
simultaneously interpreting non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures,
posture, and vocal quality
Steps in Active Listening
1. listening carefully by using all available senses
2. paraphrasing what is heard both mentally and verbally
3. checking your understanding to ensure accuracy
4. providing feedback
During a question-and-answer sessions, speakers use comprehensive listening skills to
accurately interpret the audience’s questions.
Critical/ Analytical Listening
-listening to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting or rejecting it, as when we
listen to the sales pitch of a used-car dealer or the campaign speech of a political
candidate
-focuses on evaluating whether a message is logical and reasonable
-asks you to make judgments based on your evaluation of the speaker’s arguments
-challenges the speaker’s message by evaluating its accuracy and meaningfulness,
and utility
-uses critical thinking skills
Why some students find listening difficult
1. They are trying to understand every word
One method of tackling this is to show them how to identify the important words that
they need to listen out for. In English this is shown in an easy-to-spot way by which
words in the sentence are stressed (spoken louder and longer).

2. They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant
This is one aspect of the problem above that all people speaking a foreign language
have experienced at one time or another. One training method is to use a listening or
two to get them to concentrate just on guessing words from context. Another is to load
up the tasks even more by adding a logic puzzle or listening and writing task, so that
just listening and trying to remember words seems like an easier option.
3. They just don't know the most important words
doing vocabulary pre-teaching before each listening as a short term solution and
working on the skill of guessing vocabulary from context can help them. The other
solution is simply to build up their vocabulary and teach them how they can do the same
in their own time with vocabulary lists, graded readers, monolingual dictionary use etc.
4. They don't recognize the words that they know
If you have a well-graded textbook for your class, this is probably a more common (and
more tragic) problem than not knowing the vocabulary at all. Apart from just being too
busy thinking about other things and missing a word, common reasons why students
might not recognize a word include not distinguishing between different sounds in
English (e.g. /l/ and /r/ in "led" and "red" for many Asians),

5. They have problems with different accents

In a modern textbook, students have to not only deal with a variety of British, American
and Australian accents, but might also have Indian or French thrown in.

6. They lack listening stamina/ they get tired

You can build up their stamina by also making the speaking tasks longer and longer
during the term, and they can practice the same thing outside class by watching an
English movie with subtitles and taking the subtitles off for longer and longer periods
each time.
7. They have a mental block
This could be not just a case of a student having struggled with badly graded listening
texts in school, exams or self-study materials, but even of a whole national myth that
people from their country find listening to English difficult. Whatever the reason, before
you can build up their skills they need their confidence back. The easiest solution is just
to use much easier texts,

8. They are distracted by background noise

Being able to cope with background noise is another skill that does not easily transfer
from L1 and builds up along with students' listening and general language skills. Boost
their confidence by letting them do the same listening on headphones and showing
them how much easier it is.

9. They can't cope with not having images

Young people nowadays; they just can't cope without multimedia!

10. They have hearing problems

As well as people such as older students who have general difficulty in hearing and
need to be sat close to the cassette, you might also have students who have problems
hearing particular frequencies or who have particular problems with background noise.
11. They can't tell the difference between the different voices.

You can avoid these problems by using texts with one woman and one man, or you can
practice them with tasks where the students only have to count how many times the
speaker changes.

Some solutions

The Message

1. Grade listening materials according to the students’ level, and provide authentic

materials rather than idealized, filtered samples. the materials should progress step by
step from semi authenticity that displays most of the linguistic features of natural speech
to total authenticity, because the final aim is to understand natural speech in real life.

2. Design task-oriented exercises to engage the students’ interest and help them learn

listening skills subconsciously.

3. Provide students with different kinds of input, such as lectures, radio news, films,

TV plays, announcements, everyday conversation, interviews, storytelling, English

songs, and so on.

4. Try to find visual aids or draw pictures and diagrams associated with the listening

topics to help students guess or imagine actively.

The Speaker

1. Make students aware of different native-speaker accents. Of course, strong regional

accents are not suitable for training in listening, but in spontaneous conversation

native speakers do have certain accents

2. Select short, simple listening texts with little redundancy for lower-level students

and complicated authentic materials with more redundancy for advanced learners

The Listener

1. Provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge, such as complex

sentence structures and colloquial words and expressions, as needed.

2. Give, and try to get, as much feedback as possible.

3. Help students develop the skills of listening with anticipation, listening for specific

information, listening for gist, interpretation and inference, listening for intended

meaning, listening for attitude, etc.,