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IMPROVING A STUDENT'S LISTENING SKILLS
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Mahmudov Abror Eshpardayevich
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Kashkadarya region, Guzar district 1st secondary school teacher https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7249095
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Abstract: Teaching listening skills is possibly the hardest part of our job as EFL teachers. It is much harder when you teach listening to Young Learners (YLs) in a non-English-speaking environment. With very little English exposure at home or in mainstream schools in countries where English is not widely spoken, YLs need thorough guidance in approaching listening, particularly, to authentic language. In an English-speaking-environment, where English is everywhere, it is still crucial to teach learners to be effective listeners. YLs need to be engaged and have a good reason for listening and understanding what is being said. Listening plays a key part
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in the YLs' language development, simply because it is their main source of sample
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language and it constitutes the springboard for language acquisition and, hence, their future spoken production. This article describes the teaching approaches needed to improve students 'English listening skills.
Key words: ELT, YLs, animations, games, social media, assignment, listening strategy, sanako, blogs, pinterest.
In current ELT practice, listening skills are more often tested or practised than taught [2]. This is something I have noticed over the years when talking to newly-qualified teachers and many colleagues in a variety of teaching contexts. I admit I have been doing that for a long time myself with frustrating results. I used to pre-teach new vocabulary, to get learners to 'recognize' the words pre-taught and offer some sort of practice extension through listening comprehension questions and that was it. It took me a while before I realized that it's not sufficient to play a CD track to
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get your learners motivated to answer a list of (rather unchallenging) comprehension questions about a fake conversation, in which one of the interlocutors sounds like a YL. Teaching listening effectively takes a lot more than that.
Motivation
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YLs love visuals, animations, games, fun things to watch, listen and do. Their main motivation is expressing their world to others and sharing experiences with
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peers. Listening tasks and materials should raise learners' interest and keep them
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engaged while they are doing things with the language they hear. Listening in class also has to be a chance for YLs to use all their imagination, creativity, curiosity and energy to learn
energy to learn.
Engaging Listening Tasks
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What makes a listening task engaging for YLs? YLs are in the stage of their life in which they are gathering information from their world experience. They are gradually developing the abilities to listen carefully to get something done or just get the gist of what has been said for a purpose. In other words, learners are learning to decode messages purposefully and manage information with confidence. The teacher's job is to create real-life conditions in the language classroom, as much as possible, in order to 'train' YLs to develop effective strategies for understanding oral
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messages that have some connections with their world. Listening tasks must therefore
clearly reflect YLs' real life experiences and everyday new discoveries.
How can teachers make listening tasks more engaging? Think of all the different
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M situations when YLs listen carefully to people around them. In which situations would they listen up for important details? Possibly, when they need to follow instructions to make something, e.g. crafts, or to do something 'fun', e.g. playing a guessing game. In these situations, there is a clear purpose for listening and extracting key information. This is called transactional listening. In this case, YLs' language knowledge can help them understand and select the information needed, which is called 'bottom-up processing'. There is a lot YLs haven't experienced first-hand yet, but, while carrying out realistic tasks, they can still activate the world knowledge they have gained through games, books, stories or simply from parents' or teachers' talk. This is called 'top-down processing': the context and the listener's background knowledge will help understand the message. New things will easily attract YLs. Selecting or designing materials that can feed YLs' endless curiosity and spark their imagination is just vital to make tasks engaging. While keeping learners motivated, listening tasks also need to create the opportunity for meaningful language exposure
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and life experience.
Appropriate YL Materials
Teaching listening involves providing a fair degree of motivation, purpose and engagement to a range of listening tasks that YLs can relate to their real life or their world experience and that will provide training for effective listening. Listening tasks need to be manageable in order to avoid demotivation or information overload for YLs [1]. Authentic materials can offer a chance for real language exposure though
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task grading will be necessary, e.g. through visual aids or pre-listening tasks, not necessarily vocabulary pre-teaching. For instance, you could choose to use an example as a pre-listening task with an immediate response as to build learners' confidence before approaching the actual task. Listening materials surely need to feature motivating tasks, but also they need to provide interesting content and be visually attractive to a child aged 8-11. Selecting listening materials can be hard. You need to walk in your learners' shoes and see the world with their eyes not your own. Talk to your YLs as much as you can to find out about their interests and make a list
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of topics that are age and culturally appropriate to your class, not YLs in general. Materials should always have a fun and competitive element to make the exposure to
real language more enjoyable.
Language educators would be well aware that there are four core language skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Oxford, 1993 argues that listening is" the most fundamental" of these, particularly when we consider that it accounts for about 45% of the time adults spend in communication. This is significantly more than
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speaking, which accounts for 30%, reading (16%) and writing, which accounts for
only 9% [3].
Yet, despite the obvious importance of listening, developing this skill set often
receives less attention from students and language teachers. As Osada (2004) identifies, the other three language skills frequently receive direct and tailored focus from educators, who "often expect students to develop their listening skill by osmosis and without help."
Developing strong listening skills is obviously vital in foreign language learning - the ability to listen is "the gateway to understanding." (Mannion and Mercer, 2020) As the authors argue: "If we explicitly taught listening skills to every child, we would likely see benefits in terms of their ability to acquire knowledge and skills in a range of contexts."
So having outlined the rationale of developing students' listening skills, this blog post outlines how educators can put in place specific, practical strategies to help improve their students' ability to listen. Get planning and preparation right!
Before starting to think about developing specific lesson interventions for teaching listening skills, it is vital to get the basics right. It's therefore worth beginning by thinking about and addressing some of the difficulties that a foreign language learner might have in fully understanding a conversation, a film, or a podcast in their target (or even their first) language. As the British Council identifies: "The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties." So before seeking to teach listening skills, it's vital that educators ensure that the right environment is established in which listening can take place.
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Having created the foundations for success, let's now focus on how educators can help students rapidly develop high-quality listening skills. Dawes (2008) is clear that this can and should be integrated into everyday language classroom activities.
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But what classroom-tested activities are most effective for the purpose? Here are four
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strategies that every language educator can deploy [2]. 1. Go beyond fact-based questions
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Understandably, the majority of listening exercises focus on recognizing factual information from a speaker: What time does the train leave? How do I get to the town hall? Where does Simon's sister live?
But there's a wealth of information that learners can capture and share to demonstrate their understanding beyond simple comprehension. Ask context-based questions about the setting for the conversation and the emotions involved or get students to consider what might have happened next. This all helps students to be more active participants in the conversation and to identify deeper levels of meaning
and understanding.
2. Springboard into other activities
The listening exercise is, of course, of significant value as a stand-alone piece of work. But do bear in mind how it could be used as a lead toward other language learning activities. Students could, for example, answer questions orally or in writing in their target language. The context-based questions outlined above could generate powerful conversations with partners, in small groups, or as a whole-class discussion. Alternatively, students could record themselves speaking their responses as a useful homework exercise after they've had time to gather their thoughts and responses.
3. Don't just press play!
To build confidence and experience, it can be highly beneficial for learners to listen to the audio track more than once! The first listen gives an overall picture of what's going on - this can then be followed by top-level questions. A second listen provides an ideal platform to ask more detailed, specific, follow-up questions.
There may also be occasions where it could be more useful to play the content in chunks and to ask tailored questions on what students have just heard. This can help students to build up a detailed picture of what's happening and provides more time for them to process the information contained.
4. Support better note-taking
Help students develop a listening organizer so that they can focus on the key details when listening to the audio content. This helps them to collate and curate information around key themes rather than just a random collection of thoughts and information. Such techniques allow learners to scaffold their understanding, focus
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their listening, and therefore improve their overall understanding.
Sanako Connect is a powerful browser-based language lab software that helps educators to improve students' listening skills. It enables teachers to [3]:
Create engaging listening exercises using a wide variety of media including sound files, podcasts, presentations, videos, and other digital content.
Assign exercises for students to demonstrate their understanding. Connect offers an easy way to create exercises for model imitation, gap-fill exercises, and much more.
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Easily divide students into pairs or small groups for conversation practice. After all, an effective and enjoyable conversation can only occur if both sides are listening to each other!
Give students access to the exercise/resources from any physical location with internet access, at any time and using any device, including laptops, Chromebooks, or tablets.
Provide detailed feedback via Connect's feedback functionality. Students can immediately see where improvements need to be made and can relisten to the original
audio material to see where they went wrong.
Early childhood and elementary classrooms require constant decision-making and intense structure to employ effective teaching strategies. Strategies that help students listen are imperative in the lower grades. Middle school students often require different strategies for active and effective listening skills. High school students are motivated by their interests in relation to listening and being involved in the learning process.
Early Childhood and Elementary Teachers employ "Call & Response" strategies in their daily instruction. There are a myriad of call and response ideas, and teachers introduce these ideas to their students at the beginning of the year. This idea is effective in that students are called to attention without teachers raising their voices, and their attention is directed to the teacher. Students enjoy this method because they are usually very fun ideas, and they do not realize they are being called to attention [4].
An example of call and response would be for the teacher to clap a specific way
and have the students clap back to them when attention is needed. Other ideas include the teachers saying a "captivating" phrase, and the students respond back. E.g. The teacher says, "Alright, Stop," and the students say, "Collaborate and listen!" This is a lyric from the song, "Ice, Ice Baby," by Vanilla Ice. Students love this and will listen immediately when called in this manner. Call and response strategies are popular in the lower grades and work well with promoting listening in class, in the hallways, and in various other settings. Repetition is so important for younger children, and call and response encourages this skill.
Using signals is a helpful approach to active listening in the classroom. Some teachers use sign language as a way for students to notify the teacher of a need without disrupting the entire class. E.g. students use the sign language symbol for restroom, drink of water, or sharpen pencil instead of the traditional raising of hand to ask a question. This allows the classroom to flow better while the teacher is teaching. It is inevitable that there will be needs in any classroom while the teacher is teaching. Using signals is an effective way to encourage listening and engaging in instruction
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simultaneously. These must also be changed periodically throughout the year to
retain students' attention.
Using cues are another effective way to promote listening and deeper understanding. An example of this would be the teacher saying, "Alright Go," when
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they are ready to allow students to begin working or writing their assignment. This helps students not to begin working too early and listening to the teacher instead of beginning their assignment. If students know their teacher will provide a cue for
them, they will be more suitable to wait to begin working when it is time.
Tone of voice is imperative to activating listening and retaining students' attention when teaching small children. Teachers often use animated voices to engage students, and they enjoy this type of tone because they are captivated. Teachers often say, "The quieter I talk, the more the students have to listen." There are times all teachers must project their tone of voice to allow students to understand the importance of what is being taught [5].
Students in middle school are beginning to develop interests, and they will engage at a higher-level when listening to information that they enjoy. Examples of these listening strategies would be to assign students to listen to specific podcasts or other online recorded stories. Students enjoy listening to assignments with headphones on. An idea would be to have students bring their own headphones from home, and they will already be more invested in the assignment. Listening to audible
books is another assignment that middle school students would enjoy.
When students are in high school, they are taking specific classes in their course of study. Oftentimes, these courses are related to what they want to pursue after high
school. In these courses, teachers may invite guest speakers to speak to students about the specific classwork they are taking. An example of this would be inviting a mechanic to speak to students in an automotive class. Students' listening strategies
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are increased when participating in these classroom activities because they are executing many skills while participating in this activity [4].
Another example would be to assign students to interview someone outside of school for an English, history, or related course. Listening is essential in this type of assignment and is memorable for all involved [6].
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Lastly, an assignment that involves social media in a positive way would be an opportunity for higher-level listening skills. In today's classrooms, there are many ideas for debate, and social media can be a source of information on these topics. Students in high school spend a lot of time on social media, and they can use this as an effective listening strategy.
Social media is a major part of our society today. Students of all ages are using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc. As teachers, we often try to
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incorporate the real world or real world scenarios into our lessons, and social media gives us some of the perfect platforms to do just that.
There are many benefits to using social media in the classroom, as it is an easy way to stay connected and share information in a direct and quick way. There are many learning opportunities on these sites as well with training to help students work remotely in a successful manner. Each different type of social media presents different ways to include students and parents in the daily life of your classroom.
Twitter is a fantastic tool to use in the classroom. Keeping your Twitter page
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connected to your teacher webpage is a great way to motivate and involve students. Tweet about class happenings, field trips, and even homework or projects! Tweet about awesome projects that come into your classroom and make the students "famous"! If you teach students that are the appropriate age to have a Twitter account (13 or older), encourage your students to have an account and tweet you questions, comments, or their thoughts! You can keep a list and have talking points for class [3]. Bbgs
Blogging is a great way to show your students why writing is important! Oftentimes you come across two extremes in the classroom: students that love to write and students that hate to write. Having students create a blog (school appropriate) incorporates the real world into your classroom. There are many free
blogging sites out there, such as edublogs.org, wix.com, and squarespace.com, which students can use to create a blog of their own. Students can be tasked to write a daily or weekly blog that is of a topic of their choosing. It can help students to develop a love of writing when the topics are of interest to them [5].
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Creating a class Facebook page is an awesome idea! Using this page to keep parents involved in class happenings, due dates for assignments, needs for the classroom, spotlighting students, etc., is a great way to stay connected. Parents (and anyone at home) are such an important piece of the puzzle all the time, and especially now, with the hybrid and remote models of learning that are taking over many school districts. For teachers with high school students, you might use the Facebook page for the students and create class updates, etc. giving the students a platform
to be
involved and take more ownership of their learning experience.
Pinterest is a fun way to have students contribute to lesson ideas, not just now, but for the future. You can create boards on Pinterest and students can share with you ideas they find interesting that are relevant to the topic. It includes students in the learning process more and helps them to show ways and share ideas of how teachers can improve their lessons, rather than by just leaving feedback. Teachers are looking
can improve their lessons, rather than by just leaving feedback. Teachers are looking
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for relevant and honest feedback now more than ever, and this platform gives students the ability to share ideas easily.
You can also have students create Pinterest boards in order to save items that are helpful to them. They can save various learning resources that they come across throughout the year. This is a helpful tool for math as students can save helpful tools and anchor charts throughout lessons. This is also helpful for ELA in the same manner, as well as in science and social studies. This can help writing as students can
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save research to boards. This is more intriguing to the students as Pinterest is more
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"fun" than other ways of researching.
Social media is no longer a faux pas in the classroom, but a tool that can be
utilized to increase student engagement and achievement. As teachers, we need to address the needs of students in ways that interest them, and social media is certainly one of them. Mark Zuckerberg stated, "When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place." In this case, give the parents and students a voice and power over their educational experience through social media platforms, and see the benefit in your classroom culture and lessons each and every day. Conclusion
Listening is one of the key language skills for YLs' language development. The
YL listening classroom needs to relate listening tasks and materials to YLs' experiences in real life and help develop strategies to decode messages effectively. In order to teach listening (not testing or practising) effectively, teachers should re-think what they do in the classroom and make choices: use authentic materials as input, design motivating tasks not comprehension questions, make use of textual and contextual resources, make listening purposeful and fun.
References:
1.Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Teaching the spoken language, CUP Krashen, S.D. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second language learning, Pergamon Lynch, T. & Anderson, A. (1988).Listening, OUP
2.Field, J. (2008). Listening in the language classroom, CUP Richards, J. C.
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(1990). The Language teaching matrix, CUP
3.blog.sanako.com
4.thuonline.com
5.hasilcopa.com
6.Bass, Jossey (1999). Listen, listening. Credo. Schmitt, Norbert. (2020). An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. 180-187.
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