Types of

Classroom
Listening
Performance
 Types of Classroom Listening
Performance
• Reactive
• Intensive
• Responsive
• Selective
• Extensive
• Interactive
 Reactive Listening
☻requires little meaningful processing
☻This role of the listener as merely “tape
recorder” (Nunan, 1991b:18) must be very
limited, otherwise the listener as a
generator of meaning does not reach
fruition.
☻ the only role that this performance
can play in an interactive classroom is in
brief choral or individual drills that
focus on pronunciation
 Intensive Listening
☻ Techniques whose only focus is to focus
on components (phonemes, words,
intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of
discourse
☻ Include bottom-up skills

☻ refers to using the incoming input as the

basis for understanding the message
 Examples of intensive listening
performance:
• Students listen for cues in certain choral
or individual drills
• The teacher repeats a word or sentence
several times to “imprint” it in the
student’s mind
☻ The teacher asks students to listen to a
sentence or a longer stretch of discourse
and to notice a specified element, e.g.,
intonation, stress, a contraction, a
grammatical structure, etc.
 Responsive Listening
☻A significant proportion of classroom listening
activity consists of short stretches of teacher
language designed to elicit immediate responses.
☻The students’ task in such listening is
to process the teacher talk immediately and
to fashion an appropriate reply.
Examples include:

☻Asking questions
☻Giving commands
☻Seeking clarification
☻Checking comprehension
 Selective Listening
☻Task of the student is not to
process everything that was said but
rather to scan the material selectively for
certain information
☻Requires field independence on the part of
the listener
☻ Differs from intensive listening in that
the discourse is in relatively long lengths
• Examples of such discourse include:
☻speeches
☻media broadcasts
☻stories and anecdotes
☻conversation in which learners are
eavesdroppers
 Techniques promoting selective listening skills
could ask students to listen for:
☻peoples names
☻dates
☻certain facts or events
☻location, situation, context, etc.
☻main ideas and/or conclusion
 Extensive Listening

☻could range from listening to lengthy lectures

to listening to a conversation and deriving
a comprehensive message or purpose
☻aims to develop a top-down, global
understanding of spoken language

☻refers to the use of background

knowledge in understanding the meaning of
a message
☻may require the student to invoke other
interactive skills (e.g., note taking,
discussion) for full comprehension
 Interactive Listening
☻include all five of the above types
as learners actively participate in discussions,
debates, conversations, role-plays, and other
pair and group work.
☻their listening performance must be
intricately integrated with speaking (and
perhaps other) skills in the authentic give and
take of communicative interchange
 References
Hedge, T. (2001). Teaching and learning in the language
classroom. New York: Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. C. (2008). Teaching listening and speaking from
theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wallace, T. (2004). Teaching speaking, listening and writing.
Switzerland: International Academy of Education.
Osada, N. (2004). Listening comprehension research: A brief
review of the past thirty years. Retrieved November 24,
2011 from http://talkwaseda.net/dialogue/no03_2004
/2004dialogue03_k4.pdf
• Meskill, C. (n.d.). Listening skills development through
multimedia. Retrieved November 25, 2011 from
http://www.albany.edu/etap/faculty/CarlaMeskill/publicatio
n/TESLIST.pdf
***END***
Thank You

☻ ☻