English listening and its importance - (LUẬN văn T- 123docz.net

1.1.1. Theoretical background of listening and listening comprehension

When discussing „Listening as comprehension‟ in his book, Richards (2008:3) indicates that listening comprehension is the traditional thought of the listening nature.

He points out “in most methodology manuals listening and listening comprehension are synonymous”. He explains this point of view based on “ the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse.”

There are many definitions of listening with variable viewpoints have been suggested by scholars for years. Vygotsky (1962) as cited in Kuo (2009) states his own ideas about listening that listening is considered as the first intake that “involves thoughts delivered to human‟s mind through speech” in order to gain the language output and listening comprehension. Lynch & Mendelsohn (2002) ensure that in the past listening was considered as a passive process that our ears just received information and the listener passively registered the massage. However, they also give a new point of view of listening at present, they think that now listening is as an active process and good listeners are active when listening like native speakers.

Bentley & Bacon (1996) also defined listening as an active process during which the listener constructs meaning from oral input. Purdy (1997:8) has the same idea as Bentley & Bacon by giving a definition of listening, "the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the

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expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings". Having the same idea, Thomlison (1984) indicates that listening is an ability to identify and understand others‟ speech. This process includes understanding speakers‟ accent or pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and meaning comprehension.

An able listener has ability to do all four things simultaneously. Whereas, Underwood (1989:1) simply defines listening as "the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear".

Some researchers state that listening comprehension is considered as a channel for comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985) and as an important aspect of interlanguage communication in language acquisition (Swain, 1985). Hasan (2000:138) also emphasizes the role of listening comprehension as “listening comprehension provides the right conditions for language acquisition and development of other language skills”. Talk about listening comprehension, Murphy (1991:56) described it as an

“interactive, interpretive process in which listeners engage in a dynamic construction of meaning”.

Listening comprehension is regarded as a complex, interactive process in which listeners are involved in a dynamic construction of meaning. Listeners understand the oral input from sound discrimination, prior knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, as well as other use linguistic, paralinguistic, or even non-linguistic clues in contextual utterance (Rost, 2002).

Vandergrift also defines listening comprehension as

“a complex active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structure, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all the above and interpret it with the immediate as well as the larger sociocultural context of the utterance”. (Vandergrift, 1999: 168)

1.1.2. The importance of listening

Wolvin & Coakley (1988) states that listening comes before speaking, reading and writing and it is the first skill developed. Feyten (1991) also emphasizes the importance of listening in communication by giving specific data in his research. He points out in the four skills, listening provides the largest percentage (more than 45%) of our total communicative competence, followed by speaking (30%), reading (16%), and writing (9%). Goh (2000) thinks listening is the primary means by which incoming ideas and information are taken in. Brett (1997: 39) also states that "listening is a key language skill. It has a vital role in the language acquisition process". Vandergrift (2007) emphasizes the importance of listening as the heart of language learning and the important skill to develop second language acquisition Rost (2002) also indicates that the ability of learners to use listening as a means of acquisition is a key difference between more successful and less successful acquirers. Besides, Rost states that progress in listening will provide a foundation for development of other language skills. Harmer (2007) also shares the same opinion with Rost. According to Hammer, listening is not alone in its process; it also contains and supports the other skills.

Moreover, he confirms that listening skill can help student to improve pronunciation, intonation and the sounds of not only individual words but also those which go together in connected speech.