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Students also need to work with different types of tasks because through one type of task students’ comprehension skills cannot be fully assessed.. For example, if th[r]

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DEPARTEMENT OF DONG NAI PROVINCE PHUOC THIEN HIGH SCHOOL

CODE: ………

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS

Written by: ĐOÀN THỊ HỒNG HOA Research area:

Education management:………  English teaching method: English  Othe fields:……….………  Enclosed with:

Model  software  Film and picture  other related things

CURRICULUM

I PERSONAL INFORMATION

1 Họ Full name: Đoàn Thị Hồng Hoa Date of birth: 20th, June 1977

3 Male / female: female

4 Address: An Phuoc village, Long Thanh district, Dong Nai province Phone number: 0919503336

6 Fax: Email: Career: English Teacher

8 Work at: Phuoc Thien High School II EDUCATION

- University: B.A in English - Year graduated: 1999 - Trained speciality: English III EXPERIENCE

- Experienced professional field: - Year of Teaching : 13

- Recently written theme:

I INTRODUCTION II CONTENTS

A.THEORETICAL BACKGROUND What is listening?

Why teach listening? Two ways of listening B CONTENTS

WARM – UP EXERCISES a Using Pictures

b Questions and Answers c Brainstorm

d Describe the Picture

STAGES OF A LISTENING LESSON a Pre-listening stage

b While-listening stage c Post-listening stage

WHAT IF STUDENTS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE LISTENING TAPE? LISTENING PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES TO DEAL WITH THEM III.CONCLUSION

IV REFERENCES

I.INTRODUCTION

year Most of the students in my class are not good at listening English In discussion with them, I know that they already want to improve their listening skills However, their listening is poor because they not have much time to practise listening Therefore, in order to promote the students’ listening skills, I would like to suggest some strategies for developing listening skills

II.CONTENTS

A.THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1 What is listening?

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Goh, 2002) An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously Willis (1981, p.134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling micro-skills They are:

• guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking • predicting what people are going to talk about

• using one’s own knowledge of the topic to help one understand • identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information • retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing)

• recognizing discourse markers, e.g., Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc • recognizing cohesive devices, e.g., such as and which, including link words, pronouns, references, etc

• understanding inferred information, e.g., speakers’ attitude or intentions

• understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues to meaning and social setting

2 Why teach listening?

Listening is an important skill and probably the most difficult one Getting students to listen to spoken English is to let them hear different accents and varieties apart from their teacher and that way better prepare them for real world listening The main method of exposing them to spoken English other than their teacher’s is using taped material that exemplify a wide range of topic such broadcast news, announcement, advertisement, etc

exposure and they will get information not only vocabulary and structure but also pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress

3 Two ways of listening

In real life, there are two ways in which we often listen:

- ‘Casual’ listening: Sometimes we listen with no particular purpose in mind, and often without much concentration Examples of this kind of listening are : listening to the radio while doing some homework; chatting to a friend Usually we not listen very closely, unless we hear something that particularly interests us, and afterwards we may not remember much of what we hear

- ‘Focussed’ listening: At other times we listen for a particular purpose, to find out information we need to know Examples of this kind of listening are: listening to a piece of information news on the radio; listening to someone explaining how to operate a machine In these situations, we listen much more closely; but we not listen to everything we hear with equal concentration – we listen for the most important points or for particular information Usually, we know beforehand what we are listening for ( the things we want to know), and this helps us to listen

In class, we are usually concerned with the second kind of listening : we expect the students to listen closely and remember afterwards what they heard But if we just ask the class to ‘listen’ and we ask questions afterwards, we are giving them a very difficult task We can make it easier by telling them beforehand what to expect and what to listen for - this will help them to focus their listening

Just as Broughton says, "motivation is a basic principle of all kinds of teaching - the language student is best motivated by practice in which he senses the language is truly communicative, that it is appropriate to its context, that his teacher's skills are moving him forward to a fuller competence in the foreign language." So, how to keep students' interest in learning must be focused Unfortunately, some English teachers often pay more attention to 'filling' the students with many mechanical exercises, ignoring the interest and motivation in class

B CONTENTS

WARM – UP EXERCISES The Importance of Warm-up Exercises

In class, we must try to avoid boring or over-theoretical or mechanical subjects, using as far as possible warm-up exercises we think our students may be interested in, that seem of practical relevance, that may arouse or stimulate them Sometimes, a picture or a humorous story can a great deal towards arousing interest among students However, during the whole listening course, most teachers actually only have a 'while-listening' stage, neglecting the 'pre-listening or warm-up exercise step, which acts as an important role in arousing students' interest and as the preparation stage for the 'while-listening' stage

As a matter of fact, we can say that how well students had done in class depends mostly on how well they had been warmed up From this point of view, English teachers should start taking concrete measures to reconsider the methodology they can apply in their listening courses and try to improve their teaching of listening from a new approach We should use some techniques that are effective and interesting in teaching listening courses, thinking as much as possible about the needs of students concerned

a Using Pictures

I often use pictures in listening class Pictures have the advantage of being easy to prepare, easy to organize, being interesting, meaningful and authentic Pictures can bring images of reality into the unnatural world of the language classroom Pictures are useful in developing students' listening comprehension, particularly 'directed listening' They not only help to guide the student' listening, they can provide a general background and context They especially contribute to interest and motivation For example, try this "spot the similarity" activity

 Tell them that they have pictures that are very different from each other, and ask them to describe these pictures to each other with the aim of finding as many similarities as they can

 After several minutes, ask them to look at the two pictures and see what other similarities they can find

Sometimes, I read descriptions of faces, maps, diagrams for students to draw No matter how well or badly they had done, students were so happy to have the chance to listen, speak, and something interesting in the listening class which they once considered a 'sleeping course'

Unit 11: National Parks ( Grade 10 )

I stick pictures and ask my students to look at these pictures and discuss the questions :

1 Where is Nairobi National park ?

2.Is Everglades National Park a sub-tropical wilderness in southeastern United States ?

Then I introduce the new lesson b Questions and Answers

Before listening to a passage, I always asked some questions so that students would have some ideas about the topic before they listened In this process of doing the warm-up activity, students could build on their prior knowledge and at the same time, use vocabulary and structures that are connected with a particular function

For example , when teaching the students unit 12 in English 10 with the title Music, I encourage my students to discuss the questions below:

1 Do you know Van Cao? What’s his job?

3 When/ where was he born? Is he still alive?

5 When did he die?

6 Which of the songs were written by him?

After that I intruduce the topic : Today you are going to listen to an interview in which Lan Huong, the interviewer, asks Quang Hung, a famous actor about Van Cao

In this way, students can be aware of the purpose of the exercise in general and the nature of the specific task in particular before they listen to the passage The "Question Time" activity can much in listening classes, such as creating a friendly atmosphere between the teacher and the students, building the students' confidence and having the thrill of something spontaneous Above all, it makes students feel interested and gets them involved in the listening activities

c.Brainstorm

I give a topic and ask learners to think of anything related to it I write the responses for all to see, or ask a volunteer to the writing I can use this to elicit vocabulary related to your lesson

Ex : Unit 3: People’s background ( Grade 10 )

I ask my students to work in pairs and talk about Olympic and Olympic Champions

Suggest the questions:

What you know about Olympic ?

What you know about Olympic champions?

Then I gather ideas that my students discuss and give some background information about Olympic and Olympic Champions

d Describe the Picture

I show a picture and have learners take turns saying one descriptive thing about it Beginners can make simple observations like "three cats" while advanced students can make up a story to go with the picture They aren't allowed to repeat what someone else said, so they need to pay attention when each person speaks

Variation for individual: take turns with the teacher

Ex : Unit : The story of my village ( Grade 10 )

I ask students to work in pairs to discuss the differences between the two pictures

STAGES OF A LISTENING LESSON a Pre-listening stage

This stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation before they listen to the texts In other words, it gives students a purpose to listen It also gets students to relate to what they already know about the topic and not least important arouse their interest in listening

There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text These are motivation, contextualization, and preparation

Motivation

It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students' interest and curiosity

Contextualization

When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear Listening to a tape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualize the listening and access their existing knowledge and expectations to help them understand the text

Preparation

expressions that students will need It's vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be act of listening not of understanding what they have to

Pre-tasks can be:

- Introducing general content of the listening passage

- Making use of pictures (if any) to present new vocabulary - Presenting more words/phrases from tape scripts

- Getting students to pronounce words/phrases carefully - Reviewing already-presented grammatical patterns - Presenting new grammatical patterns (if any) - Asking students to predict content of the listening

Ex:Unit 1: A day in the life of (Grade 10)

-I hang the picture of a man who drives a cyclo and introduce:  He has a cyclo

 He works in the streets

 He drives people from one place to another -Then I put a question:

 Who is he?

- After that I lead to the new lesson: Mr Lam is a cyclo driver He is working in HCM city Let’s guess his routine What does he in his job? - I ask students to work in pairs to ask and answer questions in page 16 Answer the questions :

1.Have you ever travelled by cyclo? 2.When was it?

3.Is it interesting to travel by cyclo?

4.Which you prefer, going by cyclo or by bicycle? 5.Give reasons?

I teach some new words

-district(n) ): an administrative division, smaller than a province -Passengers (n): people who travel on a train, bus

-routine(n) -pedal(n)

- food stall(n) : small booth, compartment or kiosk in / near a market where food is sold - drop (v)

This stage gives students a 'guide' or framework to help them practice listening In other words, it helps students to listen better, more accurately, thoroughly through carefully designed comprehension tasks

When we listen to something in our everyday lives we so for a reason Students too need a reason to listen that will focus their attention Ideally the listening tasks that are designed should guide them through the text What the teacher to facilitate students’ comprehension:

- Giving clear instructions for the listening task (rephrasing textbook instructions if necessary)

- Playing the tape once (non-stop) for students to get general content of the listening - Providing other activities from textbook for slower classes

- Moving from simpler tasks (listening for getting key words/phrases, listening for main ideas, matching, deciding on true/false information, numbering pictures, sequencing events…) to more complicated ones (answering MCQs, gap-filling, table/graph completing, answering information questions …)

- Playing the tape several times (non-stop or with pauses if students need help) - Breaking long tapescripts into sections to facilitate the listening

3 Post-listening stage

The Post-stage is like the follow-up stage After students have practiced the target skill in the While-stage, they an extension activity This helps students take the information or whatever they have produced in the While-stage, and something meaningful with it

There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content

Reaction to the text

Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important Again, this is something that we naturally in our everyday lives Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following reaction This could be discussion as a response to what we have heard - they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? - or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard

The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students' listening skills It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work This is a good time to form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier

3 WHAT IF STUDENTS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE LISTENING TAPE?

Introduce interview questions: Questions can be given first and students are

encouraged to role-play the interview before listening This will increase their predictive power

Use ‘jigsaw listening’: Different groups are given different bits of the tapescript.

When the groups hear about each other’s pieces of tapescript, they can get the whole picture

One task only: Non-demanding tasks can be assigned such as listening and deciding

on the sex, age, status of the speaker or the setting of the listening

Use the tapescript: (1) it can be cut into bits for students to put in the right order as

they listen; (2) students can look at the tapescript to gain more confidence and ensure what the tape is about; and (3) students can look at the tapescript before, during, or after they listen The tapescript can also have words or phrases blanked out

c Post-listening stage

The Post-stage is like the follow-up stage After students have practiced the target skill in the While-stage, they an extension activity This helps students take the information or whatever they have produced in the While-stage, and something meaningful with it

There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content

Reaction to the text

as a response to what we have heard - they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? - or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard

Analysis of language

The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students' listening skills It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work This is a good time to form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier

For example , when teaching the students unit in English 10 with the title SCHOOL TALKS I suggest the common problems at school:

 Getting bad marks

 Having difficulty in making friends  Coming to class late

 Be slow at learning…

I ask students to work in groups, discuss the problems they have experienced at school During the discussion, I give students some questions:

 What problems have you got at school?  What is / are the reason (s)?

 What have you done to solve it / them?  Who helps you to solve it?

UNIT 4: SPECIAL EDUCATION / LESSON / LISTENING

- I ask my students to work in groups of to complete the questions and then ask and answer about the Vang Trang Khuyet Club

1/ What/ name/ the club? 2/ Who/ members/ the club? 3/ Where/ they/ come//? 4/ What/ they/ doing/ HaNoi?

5/ How many/ photographs/ display? 6/ What/ their photos/ about?

7/ What/ their passion/ taking photographs/ help/ them? 4 PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING LISTENING

As mentioned earlier, there are different types of learning for different purposes Students thus should consider their reasons for and experience various types of listening from listening for general understanding or specific information, etc

Teach a variety of tasks

Students also need to work with different types of tasks because through one type of task students’ comprehension skills cannot be fully assessed For example, if the teacher gets students to True/False exercise, there will be 50% of chance that they get it right without actually hearing anything from the text

Train students to listen

Some strategies that may help students learn and monitor their learning are predicting;

inferring – listen between the lines; monitoring – notice what they and don’t

understand to clarify by asking questions (e.g What does _ mean?) or giving feedback (e.g I don’t understand); or responding to show what they hear and finally evaluating – check on how well they have understood

The tape recorder is just as important as the tape

As we discussed earlier, the low quality of sound is one of the barrier in listening lesson So the tape recorder should offer an audible sound so that the tape can be heard around the classroom A tape recorder with counter – which helps you see where you are in the tape – is a good idea For long listening texts, noting down the counter numbers will help teachers go back or forward easily without frustration If you want to play music, think of a better machine

Preparation is vital

The teacher should go through the tape before class so that she will be prepared for any problems, noises, accents, etc that come up That way, she can judge if the students are able to cope the tape and the tasks that go with it

Students should be made ready to listen, too That mean they should discuss the topic, look at pictures, etc to be able to predict what is coming They should be engaged to the topic and the task so that they really want to listen

Once will not be enough

The first listening is often used just to give students an idea of what the material sounds like Students will want to hear again to pick up what they missed at the first hearing Besides, the teacher may want to draw attention to language used in the tape However, the students may not want to hear again many more after 2-3 times

The most important part of listening practice is to draw out the meaning, the intended message, what impression it makes on the listeners So ask questions that relate to their own experience e.g “Do you agree?” is as important as “What language he used to

invite her?”

Different stages require different tasks

At pre-stage, questions should be straightforward and rather general to help activate students’ knowledge and language relating to the topic while more complicated and detailed questions should be reserved for later stages

Listening tasks should teach students to listen, not test their listening ability

Many comprehension tasks fall somewhere between teaching and testing In testing, we want to see how well students perform More than few teachers are attempted to expect students to give correct answers right away after a couple of times listening without preparation beforehand and guide along away

5 LISTENING PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES TO DEAL WITH THEM a What are Some Listening Problems?

Content

Unlike reading or speaking where you somewhat control the pace you want to go about the language, when listening to the tape, it just goes at the same speech for all and won't stop even when you are lost And when don’t recognize some words or phrases and stop to think, you miss next part and soon fall behind in terms of comprehension

The listening material may deal with almost any area of life It might include street gossip, proverbs, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the student Also, in a spontaneous conversation speakers frequently change topics

The content is usually not well organized like a reading text

In many cases listeners cannot predict what speakers are going to say, whether it is a news report on the radio, an interviewer’s questions, an everyday conversation, etc

Linguistic features

Liaison (the linking of words in speech when the second word begins with a vowel) and elision (leaving out a sound or sounds, e.g., suppose may be pronounced /spouz/ in rapid speech) are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to distinguish or recognize individual words in the stream of speech They are used to seeing words written as discrete entities in their textbooks

as slang Students who have been exposed mainly to formal or bookish English may not be familiar with these expressions

In spontaneous conversations, people sometimes use ungrammatical sentences because of nervousness or hesitation They may omit elements of sentences or add something redundant This may make it difficult for the listener to understand the meaning

Speaker

Learners tend to be used to their teacher’s accent or to the standard variety of British or American English They find it hard to understand speakers with other accents Spoken prose, as in news broadcasting and reading aloud written texts, is characterized by an even pace, volume, pitch, and intonation Natural dialogues, on the other hand, are full of hesitations, pauses, and uneven intonation Students used to the former kinds of listening material may sometimes find the latter difficult to understand

Listener

Foreign-language students are not familiar enough with clichés and collocations in English to predict a missing word or phrase They cannot, for example, be expected to know that rosy often collocates with cheeks nor to predict the last word will be something like rage when they hear the phrase he was in a towering This is a major problem for students

Lack of socio-cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture (Anderson and Lynch, 1988)

Foreign-language learners usually devote more time to reading than to listening, and so lack exposure to different kinds of listening materials Even our college students majoring in English have no more than four hours’ regular training per week

Physical Setting

Noise, including both background noises on the recording and environmental noises, can take the listener’s mind off the content of the listening passage

Listening material on tape or radio lacks visual and aural environmental clues

Not seeing the speaker’s body language and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker’s meaning

b Some solutions

Not all the problems described above can be overcome Certain features of the message and the speaker, for instance, are inevitable But this does not mean that the teacher can nothing about them S/he can at least provide the students with suitable listening materials, background and linguistic knowledge, enabling skills, pleasant classroom conditions, and useful exercises to help them discover effective listening strategies Here are a few helpful ideas:

Listening text

1 Grade listening materials according to the students’ level, and provide authentic materials Nevertheless, the materials should progress step by step from semi-authenticity that displays most of the linguistic features of natural speech to total authenticity, because the final aim is to understand natural speech in real life

2 Design task-oriented exercises to engage the students’ interest and help them learn listening skills besides the language As Ur (1984:25) has said, “Listening exercises are most effective if they are constructed round a task That is to say, the students are required to something in response to what they hear that will demonstrate their understanding.” Task-based exercises - like expressing agreement or disagreement, taking notes, marking a picture or diagram according to instructions, and answering questions - have an obvious advantage: they not only test the students’ listening comprehension but also encourage them to use different kinds of listening skills and strategies to reach their destination in an active way

3 Provide students with different kinds of input, such as lectures, radio news, films, TV plays, announcements, everyday conversation, interviews, storytelling, English songs, and so on

4 Try to find visual aids or draw pictures and diagrams associated with the listening topics to help students guess or imagine actively

Speaker

1 Give practice in liaisons and elisions in order to help students get used to the acoustic forms of rapid natural speech; include the teaching of such aspects in the lesson

from the British and Australian Therefore, it is necessary to let students deal with different accents, especially in extensive listening

Listener

1 Provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge, such as complex sentence structures and colloquial words and expressions before the listening task, as needed Give, and try to get, as much feedback as possible Throughout the course the teacher should bridge the gap between input and students’ response and between the teacher’s feedback and students’ reaction in order to keep activities purposeful It is important for the listening-class teacher to give students immediate feedback on their performance This not only promotes error correction but also provides encouragement It can help students develop confidence in their ability to deal with listening problems Student feedback can help the teacher judge where the class is going and how it should be guided

3 Help students develop the skills of listening with anticipation, listening for specific information, listening for gist, interpretation and inference, listening for intended meaning, listening for attitude, etc., by providing varied tasks and exercises at different levels with different focuses

III.RESULT

The above activities can be used as strategies for developing listening skills that cultivate students' interest and help students enjoy their listening course The activities have a positive affect on students and make them want to listen and speak more After one year's practice, the students in my class had better understanding and speaking ability Above all, the students had the habit of listening to English after class, such as listening to radio, tapes and so on

IV EXPERIENCE LESSON

There are different methods of teaching English, but the most important thing is that we must use the one that works in a certain situation Actually, various activities in each lesson can help with making students more dynamic and active What I will is to make effective use of all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing I can teach speaking through

reading, listening, speaking, and writing and vice versa One more important thing I should

do is implementing task-based teaching Tasks must be varied, challenging and interesting enough to hold students’ interest in communication Tasks must also be relevant to students’ needs, such as their jobs or target situations

needs of most students No one correct learning strategy will work for all students at all times So, English teachers should have a large battery of different exercises designed to give practice in most of these various skills Moreover, listening should be taught with motivation, interest and variation so students can keep their interest in it As a result, students can make good progress in listening comprehension

V.CONCLUSION

With my little knowledge and study in reference books, I hope to contribute my little ideas in teaching English at senior high school In process of implementation,there should certainly be errors or omissions, so I am looking forward to receiving your comments on my topic so that I may more and more improve my teaching English

Thank you very much VI REFERENCES

-“Listening in a foreign language” by Ana Maria Schwartz, in Modules for the

professional preparation of teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall

Burkart, ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)