Grand stategy for teaching listening

[lucy black]

I might get some interesting advice given my recent posts, but I'll go ahead and ask this on this forum in any case

I recently went for an interview at a Chinese school run by Middlesex university, and I was asked a series of questions - "What is your strategy for teaching reading/writing/speaking/listening?". I hadn't really mentally prepared for that kind of question (it's not what I would ask myself) and I don't think I answered very satisfactorily.

I guess, particularly, that they didn't like my responses to the listening question - I said that I tend to really break down pieces of dialogue and use a lot of repetition, and that I sometimes teach other skills in a "listening class" in order to make things more interesting! In general, I think the best idea - the prevailing fashion - would be to talk about how to teach students to pick things out of long stretches of dialogue, but really I disagree with that approach. I think that skill is somewhat unteachable, and also exam questions are often set up to trip students up if they listen in that way.

Since I assume that I am saying the wrong thing, I have tried to look at a few sites that give advice on teaching listening, but they never really seem to give any practical advice on what to do with classroom time (I'll give an example below). I wonder if anyone has a practical but orthodox grand strategy for listening, something that sounds good in an interview that they would like to share?

Kenneth Beare, writing for About.Com says:

Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher. This is because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. It's frustrating for students because there are no rules as in grammar teaching. Speaking and writing also have very specific exercises that can lead to improved skills. This is not to say that there are not ways of improving listening skills, however they are difficult to quantify.
One of the largest inhibitors for students is often mental block. While listening, a student suddenly decides that he or she doesn't understand what is being said. At this point, many students just tune out or get caught up in an internal dialogue trying translate a specific word. Some students convince themselves that they are not able to understand spoken English well and create problems for themselves.

They key to helping students improve their listening skills is to convince them that not understanding is OK. This is more of an attitude adjustment than anything else, and it is easier for some students to accept than others. Another important point that I try to teach my students (with differing amounts of success) is that they need to listen to English as often as possible, but for short periods of time.
I like to use this analogy: Imagine you want to get in shape. You decide to begin jogging. The very first day you go out and jog seven miles. If you are lucky, you might even be able to jog the seven miles. However, chances are good that you will not soon go out jogging again. Fitness trainers have taught us that we must begin with little steps. Begin jogging short distances and walk some as well, over time you can build up the distance. Using this approach, you'll be much more likely to continue jogging and get fit.
Students need to apply the same approach to listening skills. Encourage them to get a film, or listen to an English radio station, but not to watch an entire film or listen for two hours. Students should often listen, but they should listen for short periods - five to ten minutes. This should happen four or five times a week. Even if they don't understand anything, five to ten minutes is a minor investment. However, for this strategy to work, students must not expect improved understanding too quickly. The brain is capable of amazing things if given time, students must have the patience to wait for results. If a student continues this exercise over two to three months their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve

[ouyang]

I taught a listening class at a univ. in Fujian for a couple of months. They used BBC and Voice of America newscasts on tape along with a textbook based on transcripts. The teacher's text contained the full transcripts, but the students' didn't. I don't consider myself a Listening English teacher, but I do have strong opinions about the subject.

I agree with the exercise analogy, in that a graduated approach is necessary. I don't agree that it's productive for students to spend a lot of time listening to speech that they cannot understand. People who believe in making use of the "Language Acquisition Device" often claim that students can naturally learn a second language simply by being immersed in it without any cues for meanings. Often these teachers haven't a clue as to how students actually acquire a second language.

One of the keys to listening comprehension is the rate of speech. Newscasts use the maximum rate of natural speech. You may have heard faster rates at an auction, but this is for information that is expected. Everybody knows what is going to happen, it's just a matter of who and how much.

In my class, I read the transcripts of the tapes at a much slower rate, before I played the actual tapes. It's similar to learning how to dance or play the piano. You slow the tempo and break the material into digestable chunks. I was trained by a teacher who referred to slowed speech as classese. Class-ese was an unnatural and unproductive part of language learning in his opinion. If a dance or piano instructor wouldn't allow his students to first practice their lessons at a slower tempo, he would be considered a nut.

Before you can slow the tempo, you must teach vocabulary. Newscasts are a bad choice in this respect because they often contain a lot of advanced vocabulary. A language teacher must always be aware of how and whether meaning is being conveyed to students. Expecting students to infer the meaning of a great many new words simply by their context is a common delusion of poor teachers.

How are you going to teach the thirty new vocabulary words that accompany each lesson? By the direct method? How much time do you think that will take? You could give students homework assignments for leaning vocabulary on their own before class.

More importantly, most of the new vocabulary in these newscasts is useless to anyone who is not already fluent in the language. There are many fundamental constructions that most university students haven't mastered. IMO, proper materials would utilize them, before burdening the students with heaps of new vocabulary.

So selection of appropriate media is the other key in my opinion. I don't think you can get around analyzing the level of syntax and vocabulary of the media in a listening class. Media that has been produced for children is usually more appropriate for students' language level, but you also have to balance the natural interests of students. Older students are not going to be motivated to follow or be stimulated by many children's stories.

[ouyang]

Another aspect of teaching listening is variations in pronunciation. The reality of human speech is that many people are not very good at producing it. In fact, pretty much everyone omits or distorts a small percentage of sounds during an extended conversation. Because of shyness, nervous temperments, or an actual speech impediment, some people are particularly difficult to understand. This is one reason why there are professional annoucers.

Over time, we develop the skill of understanding people whose rhythms, tones, and acoustical output are different from those who taught us to speak. The process repeats itself when we encounter strong accents from different countries. Many teachers are unaware that they even had to develop these listening skills.

Combine this with the fact that if an anouncer with whom you were perfectly attuned was explaining a technical process about which you were unfamiliar with jargon you didn't know, you would quickly tune him out. By repeatedly listening to such a recording, you might be able to slightly increase your comprehension, but not by much.

We often 'hear' what we're expecting to hear. We often rely on viewing the mouth and lips of a poor speaker to understand what they're saying.

In the past, people were much better at reading handwriting. Have you ever tried to read the original Declaration of Independence or letters from the 19th or 18th centuries. People tend to take offense, when you point out that their writing or speech varies from what is standard. An important aspect of Listening skills is the ability to process variations in speech.

Hearing the same words spoken by a number of different speakers would be the ideal. Being able to vary your own rate, tone, and accent as a teacher in the classroom is the next best thing. The focus should be doing this with different sentence patterns and not with new vocabulary. Doing this with a story enables you to easily test for comprehension with who, what, where, when, and why questions.

[lolwhites]

It's a huge area because there are so many different reasons for learning a language, and different students will need to develop different skills, but one general principle IMO is that we shouldn't treat the skills in isolation. So instead of having a "Listening" lesson, or a "Listening and Speaking" lesson, try combining as many skills as you can. For example, students can read an article, at home maybe, and listen to a podcast on the same topic which contains much of the same language. You improve listening and reading skills while widening vocabulary - (at least) three birds with one stone.

I don't know what equipment you have, but these days many students have mp3 players and can take home a copy of whatever extract you used in class providing the format is digital. In my last job we encouraged students to bring blank tapes for the old cassette lab, but very few of them knew how to use them. That made me feel very old!

BTW have you checked out Breaking News English? You'll find news broadcasts read at a slower speed for learners.

[Sally Olsen]

If you are teaching for a particular listening test it is helpful to get the students used to reading teh questions before they listen. It takes just a few seconds to scan the questions even if they are multiple choice. Then the student is prepared for some of the vocabulary that they will hear. I found that students had the most trouble with names because they weren't familiar with English sounding names and to see the names in the answers helped them pick out those words. They also can get a general idea of where the conversation is taking place and thus as lolwhites said, are prepared to hear something they know about and can anitcipate the types of things that might be said.

I always used transcripts of the news along with a video or tape recording of the announcer. I don't know if all announcers use shortcuts when they write out their transcripts but I always found it interesting and the students found the shortcuts very practical - much like people are doing now for texting messages - u for you, IMO for In my opinion.

I also tape lessons and type them out for the students to read over on a chat line. I correct student's errors so it appears that they have said things "correctly", both so they won't be embarassed by their mistakes and to give them a good model.

I like the idea of giving them a reading, a listening exercise, and another reading with all the same new vocabulary and then letting them use the vocabulary in their own writing and speaking be it a report, a poster session, a graffitti exercise, a formal essay, etc.

Whenever they get too frustrated with listening or speaking, I get them to speak on the same topoic in their language for 5 minutes until their brains get up to speed again in their language. I think it helps us all to remember that they are competant in their own language and can be in the new one. It is kind of selfish too because then I can hear their language on a topic I know about for my own language studies.

[zorro (3)]

The first thing that I thought of when reading some of the above posts, was that the listening material seems too difficult for your students. There are different listening skills that need to be developed by the students and it completely depends on your focus within the class. Most listening exercise have a gist section followed by a detail section. These are the areas that most EAL coursebooks tends to focus on.

My problem is how to make a listening class varied from week to week. Surely the students get tired of doing the same old exercises - gist and then detail? Perhaps I need to ask my students how they feel about the activities that they do in class....

Then there is the added problem of finding interesting listening material!!! It's not easy being an EAL teacher is it! I like the fact that the OP is researching listening and how to improve his/her approach. Fair play to you and post here if you find any practical ways to improve.

[fluffyhamster]

Listening to e.g. news excerpts may be a good way to get used to the general sound of English, but anyone who imagines that they'll be able to understand anything they might later encounter purely on the basis of a few top-down "strategy" lessons (and those, with pre-taught vocab) is in for a nasty shock; it would take hundreds if not thousands of such lessons (or, shock horror, some decontextualized/less contextualized, more honest pen-and-paper learning) to get to the necessary level. Those who say otherwise are either exceptional learners or have had the wool pulled over their eyes (and ears) with all the "cramming" for the listening "tests" that they've "passed".

Teaching listening according to the standard line is okay so long as nobody asks, 'But what about the vocabulary that isn't in this text?'. The challenge then for the teacher is to try to ensure that the number and types of text studied are covering a fair bit of all that other vocab (in rough order of frequency).

[lolwhites]

You also have to remember that listening to disembodied voices talking about a topic is probably one of the most artificial things you can ask students to do. Even when I listen to the radio, I have the context of knowing what was in the news yesterday or what was in last weeks programme about abalones or whatever.

When I was doing A-levels in languages, my teachers advised me to keep up with current affairs and have a good level of "general culture" so that when I had to do listening tests I'd be able to use my knowledge of the world around me to help me tune in.

[lucy black]

I agree with almost everything here, there are some very good new ideas, and I already use texts beforehand, try to use simple material, and contextualize as much as possible.

The trouble is that I think that people working for universities, in general, believe this sort of approach to be "wrong". I would really like to hear is what somebody would say if somebody actually felt that having students often listen to stretches of speech that they could scarcely understand was a good idea.

[Sally Olsen]

Here is a discussion on listening that took a different turn:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... =listening

[lucy black]

Thanks for the link Sally

Actually, it makes me wonder a similar thing. Like a lot of posters in that conversation, I think TTT has its place, I think the teacher-as-model has his/her place.

What on earth would I say, therefore, if I had an interview to be a CELTA trainer, or something of the sort? I don't think they would like that

[JuanTwoThree]

Having students often listen to stretches of speech that they could scarcely understand:

I don't see its place in class but the fact remains that a lot of us are dropped into situations where we do listen to a language that we scarcely understand from dawn till dusk (and later), when we first arrive in a country to teach. And we gradually piece together meaning.

Mind you it's painfully slow and sometimes hilariously wrong. A bit like being the Simpsons' dog: "Blah blah blah sit blah blah blah", after months of training.

Something else that's worth mentioning is that I wonder if we aren't largely off the hook in the developed world, thanks to technology. Students only need to change the language on a dvd, or turn on a computer or watch a digital tv programme to get hours of practice, whereas before the only thing they had was those weird things on dodgy cassette recorders during which they had to be reading and even writing, knowing that a posh voice was going to say "Now listen again" for them to have another bash. Which, as lolwhites points out, is just like.........well, like nothing at all.

Saying "I don't much bother with listening because nowadays students can go and do plenty for themselves" won't endear anybody to an interviewer though, and it doesn't help with beginners too much.

[ouyang]

I had some additional thoughts about listening to language that we can't understand. I would agree that that the teacher should promote a positive attitude that the meaning will eventually come. When a foreigner speaks Mandarin with the Chinese, it is very important that they maintain this sort of attitude.

A taxi driver will go into panic mode and ask you to get out, if he concludes that you expect him to understand unintelligible mandarin. You can prevent this by initially disregarding the words that are causing the problem and change the communication to something much more simple, such as 'go straight. I will show you". As he adjusts to your strange mandarin and the pressure is taken off, then he often figures out what you initially said, as you repeat it in a non-critical context.

The same approach is relevant to the classroom. Yes, students can infer meaning from repeated speech that they initially can't understand, and the experience can be a very worthwhile part of their development. However, the repetition needs to be combined with some additional speech or visual communication that is intelligible.

Have you ever witnessed a foreigner who becomes frutstrated with not being able to communicate and begins to shout a simple phrase over and over in their own language? I would compare replaying audio that students can't understand without providing any additional cues for meaning with this type of behavior.

I would still maintain that the number of new words that you expect them to figure out must be limited. With Chinese students, it is very important to recognize that irregular forms of verbs are like new vocabulary, but they're the sort of sentence components whose meaning can be deduced, if the students know the infinitive form. Also, you should be able to score points in any interview in China, if you indicate that you are sensitive to the problems students have here with inflections of both verbs and nouns.

I also remembered a listening activity that I have used successfully in oral English classes. I write the lyrics to a chorus of a popular western song on the board, but I omit about a dozen of the words and replace them with blank lines. Then I divide the class in teams and give them turns to fill in the blanks. I replay the audio up to five or six times, until they figure it out.

A surprising aspect of this activity is how few words the Chinese are actually hearing and understanding in some English songs with which they are familiar. They appear to be able sing along to these songs, if they do it in unison, but in actuality they often haven't connected the sounds that they are making with words that are already part of their vocabularies.

[Lotus]

It seems to me that everyone who has posted has a good grasp of the problem and some interesting ways to teach listening. One thing that I have not seen, and that I have used effectively, is realia, especially for beginner and intermediate classes. It is much easier to figure out what is being talked about if there are some concrete visual aids to go along with the talk. Involving students by having them handle the realia while either listening or participating in a re-enactment of the talk is quite beneficial as well. Realia can also be quite effective in pre-teaching vocabulary before the listening exercise.

[Linda T.]

I am currently trying to learn Spanish. My daughter, who is fluent in Spanish, told me that the key to learning another language is to NOT translate it into your own. In order to do this, one has to stop actively trying to attach meaning to the words. You just have to listen for word-recognition regardless of whether you instinctively recall (or ever knew) the meaning of the words. This is really difficult to do because words mean nothing without the meaning, yet . . . maybe it's the only way to allow the word to be the meaning in its own language instead of just a symbol for another word in the native language which is where one is forced to go to get the meaning. There must be some types of activities which would best encourage this type of listening. I've never taught this type of listening (but I want to!!!). Does anybody know how to go about it?

Oh . . . and about interviews . . . don't feel so bad if you didn't give the answer they were looking for. I've had many jobs in many different professions. At first, I used to try to be the person I thought the boss wanted me to be during the interview. The down side of that, though, is that, if you get the job, the whole time you work for that boss, you feel like you have to be the person you think they want you to be. Now, I'm just myself. I let them know my strengths, as well as my weaknesses. I even joke around a little during the interview (just to make sure they have a sense of humor . . . . nothing worse than working in an atmosphere without humor). If they ask you how you would teach listening and you can't think of any technique you're crazy about, maybe tell them your goal in teaching listening and how you are open to any and all suggestions for achieving that goal because you feel that your students potential has not been fully realized by any of the techniques you have been exposed to so far. This lets the employer know that you are a teacher who wants to continually learn and improve. If that's not the type of teacher they want, then it's probably not the type of place you would want to work at anyway.