CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Listening is the
basis for the development of all other skills and the main
channel through which
the student makes initial contact with the target
language and its
culture. Through active listening, students acquire vocabulary
and syntax, as well
as better pronunciation, accent and intonation.
Though
listening skill is
very important, for some language learners it is considered to be
the most difficult
language skill.
Communiction happens
if there is an interaction between the speaker and the
listener. Therefore,
listening comprehension activities have a direct and
important
relationship to the amount and quality of speaking skill. Successful
listening for
language learners depends on many factors such as the knowledge
of the language,
background knowledge, etc.
To improve listening
skill, students need to listen to various listening texts for
different
situations, such as short dialog on the phone, annoucement in the
airport, instruction
on how to operate a new machine, speeches, poems, songs,
etc.
The main objective
of listening comprehension practice in junior high school
level is that the
students should learn to function successfully in real life
situations. In
detail, the purpose of listening activity is that the students are able
to do the instruction
or to gain information from different kinds of listening texts
or genres. (for
example; monolog: speech, reports, instruction, poems, songs,
etc, and dialog:
debate, discussion, movie etc). Moreover, they are able to
complete the
information and respond to questions. To reach the goals, the
teacher should
consider several things, such as students’ motivation, interest
and learning style.
B. Objective
The main goal of
this learning material is to improve the participants
competence in teaching
listening.
C. Indicators
Through this
material, the participants are expected to be able to:
a. recognize the types of
listening in real life
b. identify the importance of
teaching listening
c. identify the problems faced by
the students dealing with listening tasks
d. apply how to teach listening.
e. organize listening lessons
with pre, while and post listening activities .
CHAPTER II
TEACHING LISTENING
A. Types of Spoken Language
Before planning the
lessons for listening classroom instruction, it is important to
discuss several
types of spoken language. Nunan (1991) suggested a diagram
to differenciate
types of oral language as follows;
1. Monologue
In monologue the
listener does not require to respond to
message. It is also
called an
informational listening. This is where information is communicated to
the listener.
Monologue can be planned such as speech, news report, weather
forecast or other
prewritten material or unplanned such as description of
something, emergency
announcement etc. Monologues are example of one
way communication.
The speaker usually uses spoken language for any length
of time, as in
speeches, lectures, news etc. The stream of the speech will go on
whether or not the
listeners comprehend.
2. Dialogue
Dialogue involves
two or more speakers and can be subdivided into those
which exchange
expressions that promote social relationship (interpersonal)
and those which
purpose is to convey propositional or factual information
(transactional).
Both types of dialogues can be between or among familiar
people or
unfamiliar.
Dialogue requires
listeners to respond to what is being communicated. The goal
of dialogue is to
develop interaction between people. The listener
communicates
something back to the speaker. For example, greetings between
friends, a
discussion at a business meeting, and giving or receiving instructions
at work.
B.
Why Teach Listening
Everyone knows that
there are four skills in learning a language, namely
listening, speaking,
reading and writing. They are always related in terms of
usage, and speaking
is viewed by learners as the most desirable skill in face-to-
face communication
in the globalization era. However, what is the answer to the
following questions?
What do you have to do before you can
speak?
What does a child learn before he talks?
What do we do before chatting?
Listen , of course!
Naturally, children
begin listening to their parents when they are babies. They
are often greeted,
spoken to and admired without any response expected.
Though nobody knows
if the baby understands the spoken words, the process
continues. Children
automatically acquire such language over some time, and
later on gradually
produce it through actual experience. The production maybe
incomplete at first,
but successful at last. That leads to speaking skill which is
quite applicable to
daily conversation.
In learning English,
listening can help improve speaking considerably. Although
it is the first of
all skills, it is neither the easiest nor the most meaningless. We
need to hear various
types of English repeatedly and continuously if we want to
communicate
properly, meaningfully and naturally.
1. Why is listening good?
a. When listening, we are reviewing a lot of English usage such as
vocabulary,
grammatical structures, intonation, accent and our own
interpretation.
b. We can learn new words and
expressions by hearing them frequently.
c. Besides the English revision,
general knowledge from news, features, or
even advertising
spots is certainly beneficial for regular listeners.
d. We can imitate what we hear
and apply it with great confidence.
e. Listening can be a good ‘hobby’ while we do other things such as
cooking, ironing,
exercising, relaxing etc. In other words, we have no
wasted time at all.
f. Listening is also a great way to
train our attention
2. How can we listen to English?
Nowadays, radio
cassette recorders are household, but we often overlook the
radio function. We
can experience English language radio programmes almost
anywhere in the
world. They are usually picked up on FM bands and aired
particularly for
foreigners. Short wave radio programmes are another option.
Two of the most
easily found English language broadcasters are the BBC and
Voice of America.
C. Problems Faced by Learners Dealing with
Listening Tasks
Here we are going to
discus some problems from the point of view of the
learner. What aspects of listening to a foreign
language are particularly difficult
for learners to cope
with, and what can we, as teachers, do about them?
1. Learner Problems
Stage 1: Defining
some problems
Read through the
list given in Box 1 of some difficulties that learners have with
listening to a
foreign language. Add more if you wish.
Stage 2: Interview
Interview some
learners to find out which of these they consider particularly
problematic, whether
there are any others they can suggest, and what sort of
practice they find
helpful.
Stage 3: Summary
On your own or with
colleagues, try to summarize the main problems and make
some suggestions as
to what the teacher can do to help solve them.
2. Why do those problems happen?
a. Trouble with sounds
Since most listeners
rely mostly on context for comprehension, they are
often themselves
unaware of inaccurate sound perception.
In this case the
teacher can
facilitate them by various activities such as imitation, recording
of learner speech,
choral repetition of drills, jazz chants, tongue
etc.
b. Have to understand every w ord
This is very common
problem, often unconsciously fostered by teachers
and/or listening
comprehension materials which encourage the learner to
believe that
everything that is said bears (equally) important information.
The effort to
understand everything often results in ineffective
comprehension, as
well as feelings of fatigue and failure.
We may need to
give learners
practice in selective ignoring of heard information –
something they do
naturally in their mother tongue. We
should explain this
point to the
learners, and set them occasional tasks that ask them to scan
a relatively long
text for one or two limited items of information.
c. Can’t understand
fast, natural native speech
Learners will often
ask you to slow down and speak clearly – by which they
mean pronounce each
word the way it would sound in isolation; and the
temptation is to do
as they ask. But if you do, you are not
helping them to
learn to cope with
everyday informal speech. They should be
exposed to
as much spontaneous
informal talk as they can successfully understand as
soon as possible;
and it is worth taking the time to explain to them why.
One of the
advantages of teacher-produced talk is that you can provide
them with this sort
of discourse at the right level for them, getting faster
and more fluent as
their listening skills develop.
d. Need to hear things more than once
It may have very
good pedagogical reasons for exposing learners to texts
more than once. But the fact remains that in real life they
are often going
to have to cope with
‘one-off’ listening; and we can certainly make a useful
contribution to
their learning if we can improve their ability to do so. We
can for example, try
to use texts that include ‘redundant’ passages and
within which the
essential information is presented more than once and not
too intensively; and
give learners the opportunity to request clarification or
repetition during
the listening.
e. Find it difficult to keep up
Again, the learner
feels overloaded with incoming information.
The
solution is not (so
much) to slow down the discourse but rather to
encourage them to
relax, stop trying to understand everything, learn to pick
out what is
essential and allow themselves to ignore the rest.
f. Get tired
This is one reason
for not making listening comprehension passages too
long overall, and
for breaking them up into short ‘chunks’ through pause,
listener response or
change of speaker.
D. Types of Listening Activities
1. No Overt Response
The learners do not have to do anything in response to the listening;
however, facial expression and body language often show if they are
following or not.
Stories. Tell a joke or real-life anecdote, retell a
well-known story, read a
story from a book; or play a recording of a story. If the story is well-chosen,
learners are likely to be motivated to attend and understand in order to
enjoy
it.
Songs . Sing a song yourself, or play a recording
one. Note, however, that if
no response is required learners may simply enjoy the music without
understanding the words.
Entertainment :
films, theatre, video. As with
stories, if the content is really
entertaining (interesting, stimulating, humorous, dramatic) learners
will be
motivated to make the effort to understand without the need for any
further
task.
2. Short Responses
Obeying
instructions. Learners perform actions, or draw shapes or
pictures, in response to instructions.
Ticking off items . A list, text or
picture is provided: listeners mark or tick off
words/components as they hear them within a spoken description, story or
simple list of items.
True/False . The listening
passage consists of a number of statements,
some of which are true and some false (possibly based on material the
class
has just learnt). Learners write
ticks or crosses to indicate whether the
statements are right or wrong; or make brief responses (‘True!’ or
‘False!’ for
example); or they may stay silent if the statements are right, say ‘No!’
if they
are wrong.
Detecting mistakes . The teacher
tells a story or describes something the
class knows, but with a number of deliberate mistakes or
inconsistencies.
Listeners raise their hands or call out when they hear something wrong.
Cloze . The listening
text has occasional brief gaps, represented by silence
or some kind of buzz. Learners
write down what they think might be the
missing word. Note that if the
text is recorded, the gaps have to be mush
more widely spaced than in a reading one; otherwise there is not enough
time to listen, understand, think of the answer, and write. If you are
speaking the text yourself, then you can more easily adapt the pace of
your
speech to the speed of leaner responses.
Guessing definitions . The teacher
provides brief oral definitions of a
person, place, thing, action or whatever; learners write down what they
think
it is.
Skimming and scanning . A not-too-long
listening text is given, improvised
or recorded. Learners are asked to identify some general topic or
information (skimming), or certain limited information (scanning) and
note
the answer(s). Written questions
inviting brief answers may be provided in
advance; or a grid, with certain entries missing: or a picture or
diagram to be
altered or completed.
3. Longer Responses.
Answering
questions. One or more questions demanding
fairly full
responses are given in advance, to which the listening text provides the
answer(s). Because of the
relative length of the answers demanded, they
are most conveniently given in writing.
Note-taking. Learners take brief notes from a short lecture
or talk.
Paraphrasing and translating. Learners rewrite the listening text in
different words: either in the same language (paraphrase) or in another
(translation).
Summarizing. Learners write a brief summary of the content
of the
listening passage.
Long gap-filling.
A long gap is left, at the
beginning, middle or end of a
text; learners guess and write down, or say, what they think might be
missing.
4. Extended
Responses
Here, the listening is only a ‘jump-off point’ for extended reading, writing
or
speaking: in other words, these are ‘combined skills’ activities.
Problem-solving. A problem is described orally; learners
discuss hw to deal
with it, and/or write down a suggested solution.
Interpretation. An extract from a piece of dialogue or
monologue is
provided with no previous information; the listeners try to guess from
the
words, kinds of voices, tone and any other evidence what is going
on. At a
more sophisticated level, a piece of literature that is suitable for
reading
aloud (some poetry, for example) can be discussed and analyzed.
E. How to Teach Listening
There are three main
procedures in teaching listening. They are pre-listening
stage,
while-listening stage and post-listening stage.
1. The pre-listening
stage
This is a stage
where students do some activities before they listen to the text.
Underwood (1990)
states that ‘it is unfair to plunge the students straight into the
listening text, even
when testing rather than teaching listening comprehension,
as this makes it
extremely difficult for them to use the natural listening skills
(which we all use in
our native language) of matching what they hear with what
they expect to hear
and using their previous knowledge to make sense of
it.’(Underwood,
1990, p. 30)
Therefore, before
listening, the students should be ‘tuned in’ so that they
know what to expect,
both in general and for particular tasks.
Ideas for
pre-listening activities
There are number
activities that can be used in the pre-listening activities stage.
a. Looking at
pictures before listening
In this activity
students are required to look at a picture or pictures before
listening to the
text. This can be done by question answer or by general or
group discussion.
b. Looking at a list
of items / thoughts etc
This type of
activity is particularly helpful for practicing newly learned vocabulary
with early learners.
The list should have some purpose of its own in the total
listening activity.
It could, for example, be a list on which certain items / ideas
will be ticked /
circled / underlined at the while-listening stage. It should be an
integral part of the
listening activity as far as the students are concerned but can
be exploited as
pre-listening material by the teacher.
c. Making list of
possibilities / ideas / suggestion etc
When a listening
text contains list, even short list, of possibilities/ideas/
suggestion or
whatever, it is often a good idea to use list making as the pre-
listening activity
and than the students can use their own list as the basis for a
while-listening
activity.
d. Reading a text
before listening
Students can be
asked to read a text before listening and than to check certain
facts while
listening. This type of activity is popular with students who feel more
secure when they
have printed texts in front of them.
e. Reading through
questions (to be answered while listening)
Many listening
activities require students to answer questions based on
information they
hear. It is helpful for the students to see the questions before
they begin to listen
to the text.
f. Labeling pictures
This activity can be
used to revise already known language. It is suitable for pair
work and can
generate a lot of discussion. In this activity the students are
required to label a
picture or diagram.
g. Completing part
of a chart
This activity can get
the students involved in a personal way if they are invited
to fill in their own
views, judgments or preferences. It is a challenge and an
opportunity for
students to compare their views and judgment with other people.
How far it assists
students in matching the printed word with the heard word
depends on the
quantity and relevance of the writing used in the chart.
h. Predicting /
speculating
Predicting or
speculating in a more general way can be a pre-listening activity.
Students can be told
something about the speakers and the topic and then
asked to suggest
what they are likely to hear in the listening text.
i. Previewing the
language which will be heard in the listening text
A listening text may
sometimes provide a good example of the use of particular
language forms in an
‘authentic’ situation and which the teacher wants to use
because his / her
class has recently studied these forms. In the pre-listening
stage the teacher
may want to focus on the language itself. This can be done
either through
discussion initiated by the teacher or by using prompts in the
form of a written
text.
j. Informal teacher
talk and class discussion
This is a very
common form of pre-listening activity, particularly when students
are about to hear a
recorder text. Teachers generally give their students some
background
information, begin to talk about the topic and indicate what the
students should
expect to hear.
CHAPTER III
CONCLUION
Listening as one of
the four language skills has an important place in the
teaching of English
in our country. In order to develop the other skills as well,
listening should be
presented in a three-phased technique comprising pre-
listening stage,
while-listening stage and post-listening stage. The teacher
should be creative
in making a variety of activities according to the nature of the
listening text that
are suitable for each stage. The teacher should be able to
make the listening
session more interesting and give the students motivation to
learn English
successfully
REFERENCES
Doff, A and Becket,
C. (1991) Listening 1 ,
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Harmer, J. (1991) The Practice of English Language Teaching
, London:
Longman.
Lewis, M. and Hill,
J. (1990) Practical Techniques for
Language Teaching ,
England: Language
Teaching Publication.
Mathews, A. Listening skills , in At the Chalkface , ed. Mathews, A. et al,
(1991)
Thomas Nelson and
Sons Ltd.
Nunan, D. (1995) Language Teaching Methodology ,
Hertfordshire: Phoenix ELT
Underwood, M. (1990)
Teaching Listening , London:
Longman.
Ur, Penny. (2006) A Course in Language Teaching , Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Wardiman, A, et al.
(2008) English in Focus for Grade VII
. Jakarta: Pusat
Perbukuan Nasional.
Wardiman, A, et al.
2008. English in Focus for Grade IX
. Pusat Perbukuan
Nasional.
1 Teaching Listening - MGMP
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