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15ONE OF THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS LISTENING COMPREHENSION PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE LEARNING PROCESS Pulatova N.B.
Pulatova Nodirabegim Bakhtiyarovna - Senior Teacher, DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, TASHKENT ARCHITECTURE AND CIVIL ENGINEERING INSTITUTE, TASHKENT, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract: many studies in language learning have indicated that listening comprehension plays an important role in the learning process. In spite of its importance, listening has been ignored in second language learning, research, and teaching. The purpose of the present article is to define the terms listening and listening comprehension, review the components of listening, explain teachers' role in listening comprehension, and present the general principles of listening comprehension. In addition, the school environment is not always conducive to teaching listening skills noise factor, room set up etc.
Keywords: listening process, value of language, language learning, the components of listening, formulate vocabulary, global language, effectively teaching.
There are many ways to create engaging and interactive lessons that focus on listening skills. People who speak well normally listen well. If this is true, the key to speaking well is learning how to listen effectively.
Listening is a fundamental skill in language acquisition. It is an important skill because it is how we naturally learn a language. Teaching English through speaking can be a difficult task if the teacher can not create the appropriate environment.
Having English as a second language opens up many work opportunities no matter what ethnicity, colour or background a person comes from. Being able to speak English allows parents to teach their own children to speak the language from an early age, making it that much easier for the children to get to grips with the grammar, vocabulary and idiosyncrasies of the language.
This is one of the important reasons why it is so important to be able to speak English because it means your children will benefit too.
Having English as a second language often means a person can command more in the way of salary. Being able to speak English will demonstrate a level of intelligence to others, especially if spoken fluently without hesitation or the need to search for words [1, p. 4].
The fact you may have an accent really does not matter whatsoever as long as your pronunciation is good enough to be understood. In fact, accents are thought of as quite charming by most native speaking English people.
Aldous Huxley (1958) once wrote, "Language has made possible man's progress from animality to civilization". In doing so, he effectively summarized the importance of language in humans' lives.
It is through language that we are civilized. One could argue that nothing is more important to the human species than that.
But Huxley wasn't done there; he continued by explaining the value of language: Language, in other words, is how we think. It's how we process information and remember. It's our operating system.
Vygotsky (1962) suggested that thinking develops into words in a number of phases, moving from imaging to inner speech to inner speaking to speech.
Tracing this idea backward, speech - talk - is the representation of thinking. As such, it seems reasonable to suggest that classrooms should be filled with talk, given that we want them filled with thinking!
Listening is one of the four fundamental skills through which a language is taught. It is one of the two skills that we use when communicating orally.
For example when someone listens to a speaker, he/she processes the information mentally in order to construct an answer. During the listening process the listener is actively engaged. In learning a foreign language, it is important to listen to what is transmitted with a great deal of attention because this helps the listener to reproduce exactly, or almost exactly, what he/she hears.
Listening is the ability to hear attentively and to understand what others are saying. When we define listening it is necessary to consider listening components such as: understanding of the accent; the way words are pronounced; grammar rules; and learning vocabulary which helps us to understand the whole meaning of what the emitter is saying in context [2, р. 98].
Effective listening depends entirely on the relationship between these components. We acquire morphology and syntax because we understand the meaning of what we hear and this is possible thanks to vocabulary.
So students need to acquire vocabulary that should be taught in context as well as teachers should develop strategies to help students expand their vocabulary. We acquire new words when we hear them in phrases or sentences.
Thus we begin to learn our first language by repeating what we hear others say. There are many languages spoken as a result of open borders. English as a global language is taught in the secondary schools. For many reasons, teachers still face problems in effectively teaching listening skills.
These constraints include: lack of innovative methodology, equipment and materials; teachers who lack strong skills in teaching listening comprehension and the lack of student motivation.
References
1. Todd L., 1987. An Introduction to Linguistics. Longman. New York Press.
2. Ur P., 1981. Discussions that Work. CUP. Cambridge.
