What's
so special about listening?
Many
commentators think that of all the skills listening is the
one that is most neglected by writers and methodologists.
Yet this is a pity since listening is a vital classroom
skill not only because the more they do it, the better students
become at it, but also because through listening students
learn more about how the language is used and how it sounds.
Listening
can take many forms, of course. For a start students listen
to their teachers and to each other all the time, and this
satisfies both of the conditions we have mentioned above.
But we also get them to listen to a variety of taped material
because we think the variety of voices and accents this
provides will give them an idea of the variety of spoken
English.
However,
none of this is easy! Students often find practising the
listening skill extremely difficult. We have to recognise
this and make allowances for it. We also need to be sure
what we want students to listen to and what they should
do with it when they hear it.
Why
do students find listening difficult?
Students
find taped material especially difficult to deal with. There
are a number of reasons for this. In the first place the
tape runs at its own speed and not at the students'. This
makes it very different from reading, where it is up to
the reader to determine how fast to go. In the second place
there is something artificial about listening, in a group,
to a taped extract; it is very difficult to interact with.
This
suggests that we need to be especially careful when getting
students to do listening exercises. First of all we need
to take account of the difference between taped listening
and 'live' listening. Whereas the former has many advantages
in terms of language variety, for example, the latter -
using the teacher and/or bringing visitors to class - is
a vital way of practising interactive listening. Then we
need to look at how we get students to listen, taking into
account the value of prediction, and ways in which we can
get students to really engage with the content and the use
of language when they listen.
What
kind of listening should students be involved with?
Maybe
we need to change our approach to listening both in terms
of the activities which students are asked to undertake.
What for example should our attitude be to the pre-teaching
of vocabulary? If students are practising the skill of listening
surely they should learn how to deal with unknown words.
But it all depends, perhaps, on how many of them there are.
We will need to replace the testing-type questions of some
listenings with tasks which promote the skill of listening.
As
with reading, a perennial question hovers over what we can
get students to listen to. Can they cope with authentic
material? Is 'just' talking all they need to hear? A case
is made in the development pack in this module for the use
of music both with and without words, and for the appropriacy
of soap operas - useful, the author claims, even for fairly
low level students.
These
issues are covered in this month's Development
Pack. Join me and other members in the next live chat
session to discuss these issues further in The
Forum on 29th April at 17h00 GMT.
If
you can't be there, send in any
questions you would like answered.
Jeremy Harmer
