CC BY
285
Section 5. Language and Literacy Learning
Section 5. Language and Literacy Learning
Baimbetova Zhazira Usipbekkyzy L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Postgraduate
Postgraduate, Philology Faculty E-mail: zhazira21@mail.ru
Effective techniques for teaching listening in English classes
Abstract: This article reviews the importance of teaching listening in English classes. Teaching listening is one of the key points in teaching English. Effective methods can be beneficial for learning listening.
Key words: teaching listening, effective methods, reasons, exercises
Listening is ability to distinguish and understand other people speaking, and in studying a foreign language, it is an understanding of the foreign-language speech. It means understanding of accent of speaking, grammatical structures and vocabulary of a foreign language. The problem of training in perception of the authentic speech represents one of the most important aspects of training in foreign-language communication and for this reason development of the technologies of training in listening is very important.
There are very many reasons why people want to be able to understand what people are saying. They want to understand what is said TV or on the radio, in theatres and cinemas, or on tape, CDs or other recorded media. Anything we can do to make that easier will be useful for them. This is especially important, as the way people speak is often significantly different from the way they write.
Listening is good for our students’ pronunciation, too, in that the more they hear and understand English being spoken, the more they absorb appropriate pitch and intonation, stress and the sounds of both individual words and those which blend together in connected speech. Listening texts are good pronunciation models, in other words, and the more students listen, the better they get, not only at understanding speech, but also at speaking themselves. Indeed, it is worth remembering that successful spoken communication depends not just on our ability
to speak, but also on the effectiveness of the way, we listen [1].
We face listening as an independent type of speech activity in various situations of real communication. It occurs when we listen:
• various announcements;
• news of radio and television;
• various instructions and instructions;
• lectures;
• stories of interlocutors;
• speeches of actors;
• the interlocutor on telephone conversation;
The purposes of training in audition can be defined as the following:
• to create certain skills;
• to develop certain speech abilities;
• to train in ability to communicate;
• to develop necessary abilities and mental functions;
• to remember speech material;
• to teach pupils to understand sense of the single statement;
• to teach pupils to allocate the main thing in a flow of information;
• to develop acoustical memory;
• to develop acoustical reaction.
Listening also serves as a powerful tool of training in a foreign language. It gives the chance to seize the sound party of the learned language, its phonetic structure and intonation; rhythm, accent, melody. Through listening, there is an assimilation of lexi-
20
Effective techniques for teaching listening in English classes
cal structure of language and its grammatical structure. At the same time, listening facilitates mastering speaking, reading and the letter. If the student understands the sounding speech, it is easier for him to understand also the graphic speech.
Students show the following abilities while listening:
— Prediction of that people will speak.
— Guess of unknown words and phrases without panic.
— To use the previous knowledge as base for understanding.
— To understand the relation of the conversation speaking to a subject.
— To be able to make entries on listening time.
— To understand intonation and accents.
Listening is connected with memory activity.
The concept memory can be divided into the following components: the short-term — represents a way of storage of information during a short period; the quick — calculated on storage of information during the determined, in advance set term; long-term is the memory capable to store information during almost unlimited term. Listening requires thinking and efforts (therefore, its functioning isn’t limited); the visual memory is connected with preservation and reproduction ofvisions; acoustical memory is a good storing and exact reproduction of various sounds, musical and speech. It is characterized, that the person can quickly and precisely remember sense of the text [2].
The specified types of memory play a fundamental role in training listening, without their sufficient development it is impossible to master language in general, and furthermore the speech. It is possible to draw a conclusion that the main mental processes, which are involved at listening are: memory, imagination, perception and thinking. Thus, when we make these features of mentality of the person active, we develop them, as it is a fundamental factor of allround development of the personality. In addition, it is possible to consider listening as an integral part of the developing training.
Having good listening skills gives the chance to realize the educational and developing purposes. It allows to teach students to listen to the sounding speech attentively, to form ability to anticipate se-
mantic contents of the statement and thus to cultivate culture of hearing not only in foreign, but also in the native language. Educational value of formation of ability to understand the speech aurally is that it positively affects development of memory of the student.
Students face many difficulties when learning listening the foreign language speech. There are difficulties connected with language aspects and the difficulties connected with features of the speech. The difficulties connected with language aspects can be divided into three groups:
1. Phonetic. It can be caused by the lack of a clear boundary between sounds in the word and between words in a flow of the speech. There are two aspects of hearing: phonemic (perception of the separate language phenomena at the level ofwords and structures) and speech, which includes process of recognition whole in a context. It should be noted that when teaching listening on authentic materials it is necessary to develop speech hearing. The individual manner of the speech can be various and present difficulties for perception and understanding. In the native language this difficulty is compensated by huge practice in hearing, however experience of hearing of the foreign-language speech of students is very limited. It is natural that any specific feature of a pronunciation, a voice timbre, rather fast speed and certain defects of the speech will complicate its understanding. To overcome the difficulties connected with understanding of the speech of native speakers it is already necessary to listen since the beginning of training to their speech, gradually reducing number of the educational texts shown by the teacher. It is necessary to remember also that the more native speakers (men, women, and children) will listen trained, the easier he adapts for an individual manner of the speech. Therefore, broad application of educational, authentic, and originally authentic records, including the pragmatical materials is necessary.
2. Grammatical. A number of grammatical difficulties is caused because of different grammar forms not peculiar to Kazakhstan. Perceiving the phrase, the student has to dismember it on separate elements, which are informative signs of the sounding phrase, which are physically expressed by the corre-
21
Section 5. Language and Literacy Learning
sponding speech qualities. There are three physically-expressed speech parameters: intonation, existence of pauses and logical accent. For successful understanding of the foreign-language text it is necessary to pay attention to development in students of skills of adequate perception of intonation, pause and a logical accent.
3. Lexical. There can be many unknown words in the text that students point as to the reason of misunderstanding of the text. It is obviously necessary to us to cover this problem in more detail. The main complexity in perception of the foreign-language speech is that the language form is an unreliable support for semantic forecasting for a long time because students’ attention is concentrated on it and no one can change it. Therefore it is necessary to develop the ability to accept information and in the presence of the unfamiliar language phenomena, by its filtration, selection and approximate judgment.
It is necessary to teach students to understand the material, which contains the unfamiliar vocabulary. Unperceived or perceived incorrect parts of the speech (word, word combination or phrase) can be understood due to possible forecasting (ability to guess a new material based on the known material), consequently, it is necessary to achieve forecasting of the meaning of the material when the form and content form the full unity.
Studying on his land and not having enough contacts with native speakers, a student can face some problems of not mastering the necessary knowledge about the environment of the country of the target language. Therefore, he or she interprets speech behavior of the speaker from the point of his culture and norms of behavior in the definite situations of the communication. This can cause unsufficient understanding of the perceived information. All these things can be reflected in sociocultural and sociolinguistic components of communicative competence.
Sociocultural competence means knowledge of rules and social norms of behavior of native speakers, traditions, stories, culture and social system of the country of the learned language. Therefore, a student has to possess abilities to perceive and understand the oral text from a position of cross-cultural communication for what background knowledge is necessary. Thus, it is obvious that for successful training
listening it is necessary to use the methodical system considering these difficulties and their overcoming.
What materials should to be used for listening practice?
First, the materials for listening practice should be authentic. Then, they have to be authentic educational.
Authentic materials are the materials taken from original sources, which are characterized by naturalness of lexical filling and grammatical forms, by situational adequacy of the used language material. They illustrate cases of authentic word usage that can be used when training in a foreign language.
Educational authentic materials are the materials, which are specially developed taking into account all parameters of authentic educational process and criteria of authenticity and intended for the solution of specific educational objectives.
What requirements have to be imposed to authentic materials?
Material for training listening has to conform the following requirements:
1. Compliance to age features of students and to their speech experience in native and foreign languages.
2. Contents of information, it should be new and interesting to students.
3. Representation of different forms of the speech.
4. Existence of excess elements of information.
5. Naturalness of the situation presented in it, characters and circumstances.
6. Ability of material to cause a reciprocal emotional response.
7. Existence of educational value is desirable.
It is necessary to highlight that training in a natural, modern foreign language is possible only on condition of use of the materials taken from life of native speakers or made taking into account features oftheir culture and mentality according to the accepted and used speech norms. Use of the similar authentic and educational and authentic materials representing the natural speech work created in the methodical purposes will allow to carry out training listening with bigger efficiency, to imitate immersion in the natural speech environment at lessons of a foreign language. A lot of listening is experienced from recorded extracts — on CD, tape or via MP3 players of some
22
Effective techniques for teaching listening in English classes
kind. Frequently this is commercially produced, either as part of a coursebook or as supplementary material. But there is no reason why teachers should not record their own listening materials, using themselves or their friends or colleagues. With modern recording technology available through a range of media, it is quite possible to produce recordings of reasonable quality. We can download a huge amount of extremely useful listening material from the Internet, too, provided that we are not breaking any rules of copyright.
Recorded extracts are quite distinct from live listening, the name given to real-life face-to-face encounters in the classroom. To some extent all teacher talk is live listening, but in particular the term live listening is used to refer to situations in which the teacher brings visitors into the class or, if this is not possible, role-plays different characters for the students to talk and listen to. The main advantage of live listening over recorded extracts is that the students can interact with the speaker on the basis of what they are saying, making the whole listening experience far more dynamic and exciting [2].
In educational process listening acts as the purpose and as means. As means it can be used in quality:
1. Way of the organization of educational process.
2. A way of introduction of language material in an oral form.
3. Tutorials to other types of speech activity.
4. A control device and fixing of the gained knowledge, skills.
Listening is a receptive kind of activity, and mastering receptive kinds of activity is the prerequisite for development the productive abilities and first of all it is speaking.
Listening can be conducted at the beginning, in the middle part, and at the final stage. Work on listening can consist of three stages:
— Pre listening
— Listening
— Post listening
Here are some of the selected tasks used in teaching listening.
Table 1. Selected tasks in teaching listening at university level for different stages
Pre Listening Tasks While Listening Tasks Post Listening Tasks
Look at the pictures and match them with the people. Listen and answer the questions. Describe the people and tell about their favourite food.
Think of two disadvantages of being a professional referee. Listen and choose a, b, c. Listen again and discuss it.
What’s your position in the family? Listen and complete the chart. Describe the chart
What do you know of these words? Listen to the song and complete it with these words. What do you think of the song?
What do you know about the news Bulletin? Listen and fill in the numbers. Discuss
Describe the girls Answer the questions Tell about the girls
Which kind of transport is faster? Listen and mark True and False Compare the information.
Are English people polite? Listen and complete the text Express your ideas
Look at the man and describe him. Listen and think if you were right or not. Listen again, make notes and compare with your partner.
In conclusion, I would like to say that teaching listening is one of the key elements in teaching English. Listening makes a communication basis and mastering oral communication begins with it. Mastering of such type of speech activity as listening allows the person to understand and adequately to react on the speech, helps correctly to state the answer of the speaker. In this case, listening teaches the standard of speech: to listen
to the interlocutor attentively and always to listen up to the end up to the end that is important not only during the conversation in a foreign language, but also during the conversation in a native language.
It is very important to choose the exercises for teaching listening. Effective listening exercises lead to the consolidation of the material that help students to develop speaking based on listening material.
23
Section 5. Language and Literacy Learning
References
1. New Opportunities Russian Addition Pre-Intermediate Teacher’s book Patricia Mugglestone. 2006.
2. Jeremy Harmer How to teach English Longman. 2007
3. Konysheva А. V. Organization of self work of students on a foreign language teaching. “Caro” “Four quarters” Minsk. 2005. http://www.tesol-ua.org/tesol-essentials/teaching-methods/listening.
4. Galskova N. D. Modern methodology of foreign language teaching. Manual for teachers. Moskva. 2004.
5. Slolovova Е. N. Methodology of teaching a foreign language Prosveshenye. Moskva. 2006.
6. Konysheva А. V. English. Modern methods of teaching.
24
