UNIVERSITY OF CONSTANTINE THE PHILOSOPHER IN NITRA

FACULTY OF ARTS
Department of English and American Studies

Methodology 3

Teaching listening skills

Alexandra Fintov
VUAjm
2011/2012

Table of contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................1
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Listening as a Language Skill ...........................................................................................3

Bottom-up and Top-down Processing...............................................................................5
Transactional Listening and Interactional Listening.........................................................7
Extensive Listening as Listening as Acquisition...............................................................7
Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening Skills.................................................................9
Intensive Listening as Listening as Comprehension........................................................10
Music and Video as Listening Skill teaching Tools.........................................................12
Practical part
a.) Activity taken from a source.....................................................................14
b.) Modified activity from a stated source.....................................................15
c.) My own activity........................................................................................16

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................17
Bibliography...........................................................................................................................19
Appendix

Introduction
Weve chosen the topic of teaching listening skills as listening is an important part of
any language. Hearing the language is the first thing when we get in touch with it, not just
with foreign languages but also with our mother tongue. As we are not in an English speaking
2

country, most of the time we meet English by hearing it on the TV, radio or in the school.
Language production is rarer this is the reason why this work aims to emphasize the
importance of language acquisition and also language comprehension. This work also intends
deal with the most important issues of teaching listening skills, and to describe and compare
theories and views of different authors on the issues of teaching listening skills.
At first, we would like to introduce listening as a language skill, consider its
importance and place within the other skills by its categorizations. Later on we would like to
introduce two contrasting views on language, namely having purpose to communicate and
being exposed to the language without communicative purpose and consider their importance
in teaching listening skills.
Furthermore, we would like to describe bottom-up and top-down processing by the
points of views of several authors, then analyse Harmers basic methodological model for
teaching receptive skills. We would like to comment also on his suggestions on
appropriateness and difficulty issues of a chosen text in teaching listening skills.
After these two parts, which intends mainly to create a general overview on teaching
listening skills, we would like to go deeper in details by describing and contrasting views on
transactional and interactional listening, then by linking Harmers extensive listening to
Richards listening as acquisition. Here we would like to emphasize the importance of
listening to English language outside the classroom, and show opportunities of using
extensive listening in the classroom by showing some of Richards suggestions to it, including
David Nunans view on this issue.
Still considering the importance of language acquisition, we would like to deal with
drama as a tool for teaching listening skills as it is a tool for creating context to language. This
potential of drama is very important this is the reason why we have chosen to include it in the
work.
As teaching listening skills includes mainly the part of listening comprehension tasks,
we would like to link also Harmers intensive listening to J.C. Richards listening as
comprehension. This part intends to discuss and comment on the main stages in teaching
listening skills, namely the framework of pre-listening, while-listening and post listening; and
also to name some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them.

The last part would deal with the importance of the usage of music and video as these
are most important media in which we and our students can meet the English language. There
would be Nick Peacheys application of the framework for listening to a song which might be
a good example how to use this media in our classroom. There would be also provided some
viewing techniques which might be applicable to watching videos in the classroom.
The practical part would include three activities, one original, one modified, and one
invented. The first activity would focus on listening for gist, the second on listening on
details and the invented activity would be based on the applied framework of Peachy to a
popular song.
In conclusion, this work aims to give the reader a general idea of what teaching
listening skills is and what it includes. It provides examples some issues which can come up
and give some examples of effective tasks and language teaching tools.

1. Listening as a Language Skill

There are four basic language skills listening, speaking, reading and writing - but
from all, listening creates basis for the other skills. Acquisition of the mother tongue can be an
example for proving this statement. Young children babies acquire language through
listening- they listen to our instructions (Look! Come here!) -then they physically respond to
it. By time, they give us the instructions. The method of TPR (Total Physical Respond) is also
based on this theory that children pick up the language at first through commands. The point
is that listening of a language is the first step towards it. This is the reason why it is important
to teach listening skills in teaching English as a foreign language.
These skills are often divided to receptive skills reading and listening where the
focus is on the language input; and to productive skills speaking and writing where
language is produced. Harmer in his book The practice of English Language Teaching (2007)
uses this division and also names this division as passive and active skills. He introduces the
idea of language activation basically the learning by doing principle placing the language
to a meaningful context - any meaning-focused activity provokes language activation. He
also emphasizes that however reading and listening are more passive skills, they also require
language activation as the reader or listener has to make sense from the seen or the heard.
In real communication as it is the point of all language learning the skills are not,
of course, used separately. Listening and speaking go hand in hand as well as reading and
writing. We have to listen if we want to speak, to join a conversation, and of course, when we
are writing we instinctively read through what we have written.
However, not being present while speaking, listening, reading or writing happened to
everyone thinking about the to do list while speaking to the neighbour, thinking about
cooking while listening to a blusterous friend on the phone, reading through two pages
without getting the meaning and starting again while preparing for an exam or writing on a
lecture without realizing what exactly we are writing down. Nunan also says that when we
listen to TV or radio, we usually exclude some information which can be caused by lapse in
concentration, lack of interest, or efficiency in listening. (1991:24)
These two contrasting points of view to a language having purpose to communicate
(so we are listening with the purpose to join a conversation) and being exposed to the
language without a purpose (listening to the TV while tidying up) are both parts of the world
5

and also are present in language learning. On the base of these points, listening can be divided
into listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition.
This division is perfectly pointed out by Jack C. Richards in his work Teaching
Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice (2008) where he is dealing with the
traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening. He says that in most methodologies,
listening is considered to be the synonym to listening comprehension and it is based on that
the function of listening in second language learning is to foster the understanding of spoken
discourse. (Richards, 2008:3). However we should not forget about the importance of
language acquisition.
The time we expend on teaching and learning a second language should be effectively
and demandingly used, to create and absorb a strong and meaningful input of the foreign
language. This means that methodologically appropriate tasks should be prepared, language
should be placed to a meaningful context, so the students could profit from it. It is not true
that there is not profit from listening activities in which the students brain is not switched
on we can still absorb pronunciation of sounds, intonation and also stress. We should think
about our childhoods favourite pop songs we were able to sing them phonetically however
we didnt understand the meaning as our level of English was low but we can still recall the
rhythm and the phonetic sounds. Getting the meaning comes with time or never at all I
personally still have moments when I remember a song and I start to sing, then I realize that
the meaningless syllables have meaning.
All in all, listening as comprehension should create the core of teaching listening
skills, and listening as acquisition should be the side dish because both are natural parts of
any language.

2. Bottom-up and Top-down Processing

Harmer suggests that listening and reading require basically the same procedure. He
talks about two types of tasks, the first is when the focus is on the general understanding of a
text and the second is contains more detailed look on it. This is also called as bottom-up and
top down procedure.
Bottom -up procedure is starting with details and making sense of a text by looking for
specifics. Jack C. Richards points out that the listeners lexical and grammatical competence
in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing (2008:4) which means that it is
more demanding for lower levels as they need large vocabulary and good knowledge of
sentence structures. Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of background
knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message. Whereas bottom-up processing goes
from language to meaning, top-down processing goes from meaning to language. (Richards,
2008:7) On the other hand, David Nunan names two kinds of knowledge: inside the head
knowledge and outside the head knowledge which takes part in interpreting a message. The
use of inside the head knowledge, that is, knowledge which is not directly encoded in words,
is known as the top-down view of listening. (Nunan,1991:18). The usage of both - the inside
head knowledge and the outside head knowledge makes someone a successful listener.
However, Prof. Larry Vandergrift points out that listening comprehension is not either topdown or bottom-up processing, but an interactive, interpretive process, where listeners use
both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages.
(http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67)

Furthermore, Nunan suggests that in the listening process we store meanings, not
linguistic forms (1991:18) - this is the reason why it is important to start a listening activity
with switching on the brain and activating the general knowledge that we all carry.
The methodological model, or procedure that Harmer suggests starts with a lead in
which switches on that general knowledge so basically he would start with top-down
procedure. This concerns mainly general topics different for the proficiency levels or age
groups. For instance: the topic of family, house, towns or people for beginners and maybe the
causes of the global warming for intermediate students. When we look at course books, we
can see that they are built up by these topics. Considering all of this, we have to make
students to get in touch with that knowledge or schema. We can make this by giving them
various key words or showing them pictures.
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In the basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills Harmer furthermore
suggests starting with the first type of tasks where general understanding is in the focus
students have to extract the most general idea of the text maybe by answering some questions.
Then feedback, directed by teacher goes on, which is followed by text-related tasks and
follow up activities. The text has to be recycled using tasks of the second type, using bottomup procedure, where students go deeply into the text.
In teaching listening, we have to be careful choosing appropriate text there might be
some problems with comprehension. Students have to understand most of the words, because
if there is a dominance of unknown words, they could not get the general idea maybe this is
the reason why he would begin with the top-down procedure. However, this barrier can be
erased by pre-teaching vocabulary. On the other hand there should be some words left
unknown, mainly kind of topic words which can be guessed out of the context. This might
develop the ability of students to understand a text, heard or written, without knowing all of
the words. Harmer suggests (2007:272) other kinds of activities in which there are given
unknown words. Students have to find and research the meaning of the words and guess what
topic may contain them. This might be a perfect lead in activity to listening by bottom-up
procedure.
Texts should be appropriate also in difficulty. Although it is important to choose a text
or recording appropriate for the level, more importance is on the appropriateness of the
follow-up activities. According to Nunans suggestion that listening tasks can be classified as
tasks which involve only listening and which demand some form of oral interaction (Nunan,
1991:20), activities should be designed appropriately considering the objectives and the
purpose of listening. If there is need for oral interactions, students should be prepared also for
that. The activities have to be challenging, but they also should be achievable. Harmer has
suggestions for the issue of appropriateness of the activities, he provides the example of a
news broadcast where the language level is very challenging may be entirely appropriate of
the task only asks them at first to try to identify the five main topics in the broadcast.
(Harmer 2007: 275). However, it might make sense just with higher proficiency and age
levels as their higher general knowledge and longer concentration time would make it more
purposeful- to be in a more life-like language situation
In conclusion, in teaching listening skills, we have to be well-prepared and we have to
think through the whole deeply so we would be able to teach effectively. We have to pay
8

attention to pre-listening activities to activate students brain; we have to make sure that the
text is appropriate to age and proficiency levels, and of course that there are appropriate
follow-up activities regardless the chosen procedures.
3. Transactional Listening and Interactional Listening
There is a differentiation between transactional and interactional purpose for
communication by several authors like Richards or Vandergrift but also Joan Morley. The
descriptions are basically the same: Interactional use of language is socially oriented mainly
to satisfy social needs, like small talk and casual conversations, which means that it is highly
contextualized, involving interaction with a speaker. Transactional use of language is, on the
other hand, message oriented and its main function is to communicate information, or giving
instructions, explaining, describing, giving directions, ordering, requesting and verifying
understanding. (Morley, 2001:79) Vandergrift states that the main difference is between the
two that transactional listening requires accurate comprehension of the message without an
opportunity to clarify it with the speaker. On the other hand Morley suggests that the speaker
may contradict the listener if he or she appears to have misunderstood. Furthermore, Morley
claims that the most important difference between them is that interactional language is a
social type talk it is person oriented rather than message oriented.
All in all, the most important thing, in which both authors agree, is that teachers need to
provide practice experiences in both transactional talk and interactional talk and that student
need to know the purpose and the context of listening in order to know what they need to
listen for specifics or meaning.

4. Extensive Listening as Listening as Acquisition

Extensive and intensive listening described by Harmer (2007:303) are kind of similar
to the already mentioned division of listening by Richards, listening as comprehension and
listening as acquisition.
Extensive listening happens outside the classroom we should encourage students to
listen to English language in their free time music, series, CD from their course book, etc.
In this modern world we have plenty of materials to create them the condition to do so. The
motivation is the freedom of choice what they would listen to and it would be good to make
this extensive listening the natural part of our classroom. This would mean that students
9

would be exposed to the language without a specific comprehension purpose; they would be
in an environment in which they can just acquire the language. I dont say, that there wouldnt
be purpose at all we can give the students tasks for example which are suggested by
Richards for listening as acquisition, which are noticing activities and restructuring activities:
Noticing activities involve returning to the listening texts that served as the basis for
comprehension activities and using them as the basis for language awareness. For example,
students can listen again to a recording in order to:
- Identify differences between what they hear and a printed version of the text
- Complete a cloze version of the text
- Complete sentences stems taken from the text
- Check off entries from a list of expressions that occurred in the text
Restructuring activities are oral or written tasks that involve productive use of selected items
from the listening text. Such activities could include:
-

Paired reading of the tape scripts in the case of conversational texts

Written sentence-completion tasks requiring use of expressions and other linguistic

items that occurred in the texts

Dialog practice that incorporates items from the text
Role plays in which students are required to use key language from the texts
(Richards, 2008:16)

Listening without purpose is also discussed by David Nunan in his Language Teaching
Methodology. He suggests that an important factor in interactive listening is whether or not we
are taking part in the interaction. If not, it might seem a waste of time to involve learners in
classroom tasks in which they are just listening to others. However, authentic conversations
can provide learners with insights into ways in which conversations work and also with
strategies for comprehending conversation outside the classroom. (1991:24)
In conclusion, there are plenty of things we can do with our students in order to teach
them a second foreign language and that we can and we have to make the learning of the
foreign language the natural part of their lives, outside the classroom also. We, as teachers
should motivate students and guide them to this direction. As being in an environment full of
language with a purpose to listen or without - is natural in our mother tongue, so we should
try to make it also natural in the foreign language. Making extensive listening part of our
classroom would have this effect and also it would be good for creating positive attitude
towards foreign language learning.
10

5. Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening Skills

Drama is a modern tool in foreign language teaching, and there are lots of
opportunities in it. As it was mentioned before, an important part of language teaching is
creating life-like situations in which the students can use the language naturally. Drama is a
perfect tool for creating this context.
In theatre, the actors have to listen carefully to each other to notice key words by
which they can know what to do on the stage. In the classroom, drama also places huge
importance on listening students have to pay attention to each other and they also have to be
able to follow instructions mainly by key words. This is an important component as it creates
huge motivation for listening; it teaches the students to cooperate and respond to and to
acquire a foreign language.
Other important components of drama are mime and improvisation students have to
use their body in order to communicate and they have limited time for preparation, which
makes classroom situations more natural. Drama, when brought into a learning process,
enlarges the learning experience it helps learners to be more aware of the language in
different situations, it builds up self-confidence, creativity, spontaneity, helps students to be
more able to express their emotions.
Drama stimulates concentrated listening students just have to listen carefully to be
able to react appropriately in a specific situation. These drama activities are most of the times
verbal activities, where other skills, mainly speaking is required. This can be seen - if we want
to categorize as listening as comprehension as the student are required to respond to the
heard language.
On the other hand, drama as listening as acquisition could be non-verbal activities in
which students have to physically respond to instructions or use body language or minimal
language. Here language production is limited, by which students have to raise their natural
instincts and look for key words by which the language acquisition becomes similar to the
acquisition of the mother tongue of children.
Harmer says that "If we are really to teach students what words mean and how they are
used, we need to show them being used, together with other words, in context." (1991: 24).
With bringing drama to our classrooms, they can become different scenes to different actions:
11

a shop, a bus station, a restaurant, a van in a train, etc. These scenes create great contexts not
just for learning vocabulary, but they are also bringing grammatical structures alive.
In conclusion, in the context of listening skills, drama plays an important role in
bringing extensive and intensive listening, or listening as comprehension and listening as
acquisition under the same roof as it provides opportunities in developing both and the most
important is that is creates the context to any language learning.

6. Intensive Listening as Listening as Comprehension

We already discussed intensive listening and listening as comprehension in several
points of views. It is important to discuss the most important stages of listening closely and
the most frequent and effective tasks.
It was also discussed that in teaching listening we should firstly active the students
brain to make them get in touch with their general knowledge. This is called the pre-listening
stage, where there are more steps while we begin with the actual listening task. According to
the article of Nick Peachey, these sub-stages, or as he calls them goals, are motivation,
contextualisation and preparation.
It is very important to choose an up-to-date topic, which fits the interests of our
students. By this, we can motivate them to listen and we can also raise their curiosity. This
motivational stage is tightly linked to the stage of contextualisation. However Harmer
suggests (2007: 304) it is useful to bring authentic listening materials on CD to our
classrooms, because it is important to students to hear the most common accents and different
English from the teachers, he also claims that listening to a recording in a classroom is really
unnatural. Because of this reason, it is very important to create context, which can motivate
the students and contextualize the listening situation. The most effective techniques for this
are drama techniques, but also some discussion about the topic, brainstorming, guiding
questions or games can be effective.
In order to avoid problems in the next stages, we have to prepare students not just to
the topic which we are going to deal with, but to the language also. As it was previously
suggested, at this stage we can pre-teach vocabulary or some phrases. This can make the

12

actual listening more effective, however as it was also suggested, there are opportunities to
teach unknown vocabulary or phrases inductively.
After this preparatory stage is finished, we can move on to the while-listening stage.
As it was discussed before, we should start with the top-down processing, so we have to make
the first task connected with the general idea of the text. As in the first listening the students
are firstly exposed to a new language, with new accent, voice and language, we shouldnt put
pressure on them by demanding tasks. Students should at first get familiar with the voice,
situation, happening and language which is on the recording. We should just give them simple
questions to look for in the first listening as now we are listening with purpose for
example questions of how many characters are talking, where are they, why are they there. It
should be also obvious that as we are listening, students shouldnt have the tape script in front
of them.
The second listening should be more demanding; students should look deeply into the
text and also look for deeper understanding of the meaning. The most typical tasks here are
gap-fills, ticking items, information search, charts, comparing, correcting, matching, etc.
After these tasks, the third listening should come in order to check their answers, and could be
the base for post-listening activities. Evaluation of the results of decisions during a listening
task is a very important part. Prof. Vandergrift suggests that the teacher should encourage selfevaluation and reflection by asking students to assess the effectiveness of strategies that they
used - group or class discussions can also stimulate reflection and evaluation.
Post-listening is focusing mainly to the reaction to the text. We can ask comprehension
questions, students can do problem solving activities; they can summarize or retell the story
and also write or speak about the heard recording in specifics.
This framework of pre-listening activities and post-listening activities create the
complexity and effectiveness of intensive listening. We, as teachers, should not forget about
them, because listening as comprehension would lose its purpose and sense.

7. Music and Video as Listening Skill Teaching Tools

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Music and video is all around us in this modern world and it is a natural part of our
lives. It creates context and they contain much of language. Why not use them also in foreign
language?
Music lyrics in English language are all around us we hear them in TV, in our
favourite movies on the radio, and in our MP3players. When discussing extensive learning,
we emphasized the importance of listening outside the classroom music has a big potential
for this. Students, mainly teenagers are influenced by music, so motivation would be natural.
On the other hand, music can be used also in the classroom. In the already mentioned article
of Peachey, there is an example of the application of the framework for listening to a song:

Pre-listening

1.

Students brainstorm kinds of songs

2.

Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it

3.

Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song

While listening

1.

Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad

2.

Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song

3.

Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in
and correct them.

Post-listening
Focus on content

1.

Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song

2.

Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for

3.

Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website

4.

Write another verse for the song

Focus on form

1.

Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms

2.

Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean

3.

Students make notes of common collocations within the song

(Peachey, Nick: A framework for planning a listening lesson)
As music has several advantages in teaching listening skills, like teaching rhythm,
intonation, phonetics, etc., videos have also pretty much advantages. We can include watching
14

while listening into our lessons and we can encourage students to do so outside the classroom
as in extensive listening.
There are some viewing techniques provided by Harmer (2007: 309) which we would
like to shortly describe: fast forward (to talk about the fast forwarded sequence), Silent
viewing for language (to guess what was said/compare), Silent viewing for music (to guess
the mood), freeze frame (prediction), partial viewing (predicting/guessing).
In conclusion, there are lots of other possibilities in both, using music and video in our
classrooms and also outside it. In my opinion, we should not leave them out of our syllabus,
as they can create positive atmosphere in the classroom and towards the language. I also think
that using them in classrooms would make students more aware of the language which would
give them motivation for learning the language also outside the classroom. Other important
thing is that teachers can stay fresh and up-to date which would support the connection
between them and the students.

15

PRACTICAL PART
1. Activity taken from a source
The following activity is taken from Harmers The Practice of English Language
Teaching, where listening for gist of a story is in the focus.
Sorry Im late
Activity: getting events in the right order
Skills: predicting; listening for gist
Age: Young adult and above
Level: lower intermediate
Procedure:
- Make pairs or groups!
- Discuss what is happening on each picture and try to put pictures into a correct order!
- Discuss your prediction with the other groups. Do not confirm or deny their
predictions.
- Play the recording! (Read the tape script.)
- Students check their answers with each other and then, if necessary, listen again to
ensure that they have the sequence correct.
- Play the recording again or give them the tape script. Note phrases which express
regret and apology and the use of repetition in order to be judgmental.
- Write dialogues /role-play similar scenes in which they have to come up with stories
and excuses for being late for school or work.
Aids: pictures, tape script
(Harmer, 2007:311)

Comments: Ive had chosen this activity because I think that the turning point in the story
would interest the students. I think it would also motivate them that it is not an activity from
the course book which can create the illusion of doing something new. The activity doesnt
need too much preparation on the side of the teacher, which makes it practical. I would like to
use this activity, and some other activities designed on the base of this activity, in my future
classroom. Maybe I would involve some drama techniques, mainly in the follow up activities,
when acting it out. (The same persons would have different characteristics in different groups
(good-working/hysterical), different emotions (happy/tired), different situations (platonic
love), etc.

2. Modified activity from a stated source

16

Lesson Topic: plans, grammar: be going to

Level: elementary
Objectives:

Students will be able to : listen for specific information, create questions and

answers with be going to, use learned vocabulary in context

Age: 11-12
Source: Hutchinson T. Project 2 Students Book
Stage

Procedure
Pre-taught grammar: be going to questions and
short answers, positive and negative sentences

Pre-listening

While
listening

MY MODIFICATION:
Discussion/topic: Plans
What activities do we usually do on Saturdays?
1.) Make pairs! Choose an activity and act it in front
of the others! When guessed, write on the board!
2.) Revision: How do we make questions with
going to? T acts one of the actions written on
the board, Ss ask Qs: Are you going to watch
TV? Who guessed, takes turn.
1.) Listen. What are the people going to do on
Saturday morning? Write the activities. (Fill in
the chart).
1.) Work with a partner. Ask about the people.
2.) Ask and answer with a partner about the
activities.
3.) Ask your partner. What are you going to do at
these times?

Aids

Time

Course
book

5-7
Blackboard
,
chalk
CD player
CD
Course
book
Course
book

5-7

5-7

Post-listening
MY MODIFICATION:
1.) Make pairs and give them the handouts infogap activity. (act. 2+3) English Lesson
Battleship

17

10

MY COMMENTS: The original listening activity remained the same, I added just some prelistening activities and prepared a handout for an information gap activity, which I think is
very suitable for this level - it is entertaining and interesting. They can practice questions and
also short answers in be going to. The pre-listening warm-ups are based on pre-taught
grammar and vocabulary which is practiced with some drama. Adding interesting pre- and
post- listening activities to classic course book activities brings them alive and supports
effective language teaching.
3. My own activity
The following activity is based on the applied framework of Peachy. I would like to apply it
on the popular song: Gotye: Somebody That I Used to know.
Activity: filling the gaps
Skills: listening for specifics, grammar - Past simple
Age: teenagers
Time: 45
Level: Beginners - Pre Intermediate
Stage
Procedure
Pre
-listenin
g

While
-listenin
g

Post
-listenin
g

Aids

Time

1. Discuss the music styles which you know! Collect as

many as you can! Write all of them on the board.
2. Make groups! Each group has to choose one style which
they like and which they dont like. Write 1 sentence as
reasons for each. Discuss them!
3. Students predict some word or expressions that might be
in a love song (Write on the board!)

Blackboar
d
Chalk
Handout 1

1. Listening 1.: Before listening read questions in activity 1.

Ask Ss if they understand the questions.
2. Listening 2.: Give instructions for Activity 2: What they
might talk about? Look for key words, or words that you
understand. Collect them in groups.
3. Listening 3-4: Give students Handout 3. Listening 3 - fill
the gaps!
Students listen again to check their answers.

Handout 2
Handout 3

1. Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song

2. Give instructions! Give handout 3. Do the activities!
Monitor!
3. If there are new words Ss try to guess their meaning of
find them in the dictionary.
4. Write another verse for the song! Use the key words!
(Homework)

Handout 4

18

5
7

10

2
10

My comments: Ive chosen this song because it is very popular nowadays, it has clear and
understandable lyrics. The lyrics contain Past Simple tense which fits the needs of beginners
or lower intermediate students. I was also curious about the application of Peacheys
framework to a song, and I am sure that I would apply it in the future in my classroom, as I
emphasized how important is to use music as a listening skill teaching tool.

Conclusion
The main focus of this work was to deal with the most important issues of teaching
listening skills and describe and compare theories and views of different authors on them.
Furthermore, the work intended to emphasize the importance of language acquisition and also
language comprehension within teaching listening skills.
The first two parts of this work were dealing with listening as a language skill, and we
introduced its categorizations. On the base of considering listening skill as a receptive skill,
two contrasting views were introduced: listening with purpose and without purpose. It was
defined that both are natural parts of any language which puts higher the importance of
bringing both into the teaching of listening skills.
Later on, we described the bottom-up and top-down processing by the points of views
of several authors, then we analysed Harmers basic methodological model for teaching
receptive skills also by commenting on his suggestions on appropriateness and difficulty
issues. We also emphasized the importance of choosing appropriate tasks and texts in order to
prevent problems, and we also provided some solutions to them, like pre-teaching of the
unknown vocabulary.
After these two parts, which intended to create a general overview on teaching
listening skills, we were dealing with describing and contrasting views on transactional and
interactional listening; and with the importance of language acquisition by linking Harmers
extensive listening to Richards listening as acquisition. We provided some of Richards
suggestions on using extensive listening in the classroom including Nunans view on this
issue. We were also dealing with the importance of listening outside the classroom. We have
to motivate students to do so because it might create positive attitude towards language
learning.
19

Because of the importance of language acquisition and the reason that language is
commonly in context, we have to bring context also to our classrooms. This is why we
included in this work drama as a tool for teaching listening skills.
As this work intends not just to emphasize the importance of language acquisition, but
language comprehension, we linked Harmers intensive listening to Richards listening as
comprehension. Here we discussed the most important stages of teaching listening skills ,
namely the framework of pre-listening, while listening and post-listening, and we named
some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them.
Finally, the last part is dealing with music and video and the possibilities of using them
in teaching listening skills. Here we provided Nick Peacheys application of the framework to
a song, which is the base of my own activity in the practical part, which includes also an
activity from a stated source and a modified activity.
In conclusion, the aims of this work were fulfilled as we discussed everything we
intended to. In my opinion, this work gives the reader a general overview on the issues of
teaching listening skills and provides important information like the framework and
methodological model of teaching listening skills and also their possible applications.

20

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex: Longman Group
UK Limited, 1991, 296 p. ISBN 0-582-04656-4.
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education
Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8.
Nunan. D. Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers, Prentice Hall, 1991,
264 p. ISBN 0-13-521469-6
Richards, J.C.Teaching Listening and Speaking From Theory to Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008, 44p. ISBN 13 978-0-521-95776-2
Morley, J. Aural Comprehension Instruction: Principles and Practices. In Celce-Murcia M.
(Ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle and Heinle,
2001, 584 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-8384-1992-2

Online sources:
Peachley, N. A framework for planning a listening skills lesson [online] 10. February, 2010.
[quoted 3. May, 2012.]. < http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/a-framework-planninga-listening-skills-lesson>.
Vandergrift L. Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence
[online] [quoted 5. June, 2012.] <http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67>.
Practical part:
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education
Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8.
Hutchinson T. Project 2 Students Book, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 79p.
ISBN 978 0 19 476305 9
Source of inspiration:
Maley A., Duff. A. Drama Techniques: A resource book of communication activities for
language teachers, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 246 p. ISBN 978-0521-60119-1

21

APPENDIX
Im sorry
1. pictures

2. Tape script

22

Tapescript:

Activity in the coursebook:

23

Place 2 rubbers, 1 ruler, a Project book, 2 pens and 1 homework on the desk.

My Desk

Stay
in bed

Go
swimming

Dance

Speak
English

Play
the
piano

Ride
a bike

Go
shopping

This
evening

A rubber
A ruler
Project book

After
school

A pen

On Sunday
afternoon
Homework

At New
Year
On
Saturday
morning
On your
next
birthday
Tomorro
w
evening

My Partner
s Desk

Stay
in bed

This
evening
After
school
On Sunday
afternoon
At New
Year
On
Saturday
morning
On your
next
birthday
Tomorro
w evening

Call a square!
F.e: Are you going to go shopping on Sunday afternoon?
Your partner answers:
Yes, I am.

24

Go
swimming

Dance

Speak
English

Play
the
piano

Ride a
bike

Go
shopping

HIT - X
No, Im not.
MISS O

Find all the things on your partners desk!

HANDOUT 1

1.) What kinds of music styles do you know? Write down at least 5 of them!

2.) Choose one style which you like and which you dont like in your group! Give reason
why! Write one sentence for each.
We like _____________________________ because________________________________
We dont like_________________________ because ________________________________
3.) What expressions might be in a love song? Suggest at least 5!
___________________________________________________________________________

HANDOUT 2

Listening 1
1.) Answer the questions!
a.) Is the song happy or sad? Why? ___________________________________________
b.) How many characters are there? __________________________________________
c.) What is between them, are they in love?_____________________________________

Listening 2
2.) What are the characters talking about? Look for key words!
25

Write down every word that you understand!

HANDOUT 3 Fill in the gaps!

"Somebody That I Used To Know"
(feat. Kimbra)
[Gotye:]
Now and then I think of when we _______ together
Like when you _______ you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But _________ so lonely in your company
But that was ___________ and it's an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we _____________ that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be ___________
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never __________________ and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and I ___________ so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I _________ to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
[Kimbra:]
Now and then I __________ of all the times you screwed me over
Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You ______________ that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you _____________ know
[Gotye:]
But you _______________ cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we ____________nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough
And you ______________ stoop so low
26

Have your friends collect your records and then _____________ your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
(...)
HANDOUT 4
1.) Make the list of 10 verbs in Past Simple and write their Present Simple form .
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
2.) Find 5 verbs which are in Present Simple!
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
3.) Find the verbs which are in Present Continuous!
___________________________________________________________________________

4.) Work in pairs! Try to guess why they broke up! Write a short dialogue! Act it out!
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
5.) Write another verse for the song! Use the key words in Handout 1/3 and Handout 2/2.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

27

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