ENGL 85

Prepared by: MS. SHARONE ANN B. MEDINA Instructor I

THE BASICS OF LISTENING Listening plays a significant role in the classroom and was formerly perceived to be the lowliest in terms of its impact on the learner.

Contributing Factors for the Lack of Attention to Listening in Second Language (L2) Instruction: 1. 2. 3. 4. Focus on speaking a language Listening as a tool to teach speaking not as an instructional goal in itself A long standing assumption that listening was a passive skill Few listening comprehension models from first language (L1) instruction

Requisites to become better listeners: a. employ active thinking b. active attitude about understanding c. active strategies What Listening Is o The ability to identify and understand what others are saying o It involves understanding of a speakers accent or pronunciation, his/her grammar and vocabulary and grasping meaning

Waking Hours 70%

Sleeping Hours 30%

Figure 1 Division of hours spent on some kind of communication (Senatin & Centenera, 2003)

ENGL 85

Prepared by: MS. SHARONE ANN B. MEDINA Instructor I

Assumptions Made about Listening: 1. 2. 3. 4. The activity of learning can be learned and it is well worth learning There is a relationship between listening and intelligence Listening and hearing go hand in hand Practice makes perfect if practiced the right ways

Types of Listening
LISTENING

active listening

passive listening

serious listening

critical listening appreciative listening conversational listening courteous listening

discriminative listening attentive listening retentive listening reflective listening reactive listening

social listening

Figure 2 Types of listening (Senatin & Centenera, 2003)

The Listening Process: (Canale and Swain, 1980)

Grammatical Competence

Sociolinguistic Competence

Discourse Competence

Strategic Competence

knowledge of morphology, syntax, vocabulary and mechanics

knowledge of the social context

interpretation of individual message elements in terms of interconnected ness

the ability to use a number of guessing strategies to compensate for missing knowledge

Figure 3 Four competencies needed to understand any oral message

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ENGL 85

Prepared by: MS. SHARONE ANN B. MEDINA Instructor I

Top-down Processing

Bottom-up Processing

Figure 4 Distinct processes involved in listening

Level 1: physical act semantic

Level 2: lexical

Level

3:

Figure 5 Stages in the listening process (Senatin & Centenera, 2003)

The Role of Attitude: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. It make us profit from the experience of others It builds respect and loyalty It helps us make better decisions It helps make people feel important It confirms and clarifies It gives pleasure and comfort to people It saves time It makes us learn something new or different

Trivia: After having heard something, most of us can remember only 50% of what we heard, and eight (8) hours later we can remember only 25% of the entire message.

ENGL 85

Prepared by: MS. SHARONE ANN B. MEDINA Instructor I

Roadblocks to Effective Listening: (Senatin and Centenera, 2003) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. Prejudging Criticizing the speakers delivery Getting over stimulated Listening only for facts Trying to make an outline of everything you hear Faking attention to the speaker Tolerating distraction out in the audience Evading difficult material Letting emotion Wasting time differential between speech speed and thought speed

Listening Skills: (White, 1998; RBEC, 2002) o o o o o Perception Skills Language Skills Using knowledge of the world Dealing with information Interacting with the speaker

Purposes of Listening: 1. Interactional functions of language 2. Transactional functions of language

Listening Problems: (Nicholas, 1988) a. Redundancy b. Untidiness c. Environmental interference

Characteristics of Real-life Listening: o When listening, we have expectations about how the conversation might go, what we are going to hear, what the interlocutors are going to say Teaching implication: provide pre-listening activities, so that the students are prepared for what they will hear and can predict
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ENGL 85

Prepared by: MS. SHARONE ANN B. MEDINA Instructor I

o We listen to spoken language which is not very well organized, and does not consist of complete sentences, is full of hesitations, like ums and ahs, interruptions and repititions Teaching implication: expose students to a lot of authentic speech as opposed to artificial dialogues and written language read aloud o We see the person we are listening to his/her face, expressions, gestures Teaching implication: use a lot of visuals to help students understand what they are listening to o When we listen, we have a lot of contextual knowledge about the speaker and the situation we are in Teaching implication: encourage students to guess attitudes, roles, register and settings o We have a purpose for listening Teaching implication: give the students a reason for listening and ask them to listen for something specific o A lot of spoken language is simply for social interaction and not for the exchange of information Teaching implication: do not have the students listen for facts all the time, but have them attend to attitudes, feelings, gestures, expressions, body language also

Principles for Developing Listening Ability: 1. Listening ability develops through face to face interaction 2. Listening develops through focusing on meaning and trying to learn new and important content in the target language 3. Listening ability develops through work on comprehension activities 4. Listening develops through attention to accuracy and an analysis of forms Listeners Role: 1. One-way (Uni-directional) Communication 2. Two-way (Bi-directional) Communication 3. Self-dialogue (Auto-directional) Communication