Learning to listen: skills we need, problems, strategies to help

1. Learning to listen: skills we need, problems, strategies to help Demonstration activity Difficulties in learning to listen: skills we need Ideas for supporting learners in learning to listen An interactive listening – speaking – different perspectives

2. Difficulties learners report • I have trouble catching the actual sounds of the language • I have to understand every word – if I miss something I feel I’m failing and get worried and stressed • I can understand if people talk slowly and clearly. I can’t understand fast, natural speech • I find it difficult to ‘keep up’ with all the information I am getting and cannot think ahead or predict. • I need to hear things more than once in order to understand • If the listening goes on a long time, I get tired and find it more and more difficult to concentrate

3. Skills we need: top down Knowledge of the world: using knowledge of a topic to guess what the speaker might be saying about it; Using knowledge about the patterns that certain oral interactions take e.g. ordering in a restaurant; Connecting groups of words to non-linguistic features e.g. expressions, gestures, visuals or objects to help get meaning.

4. Information and language : top down and bottom up Getting the gist Understanding the main points Understanding details Inferring information that has not been stated Identifying words/ ‘chunks of language’ Identifying discourse markers e.g. ‘As I was saying’/ ‘as a matter of fact’/ ‘to start with’

5. Micro-skills: bottom up Recognizing sounds; discriminating between sounds Identifying reduced forms in fast speech Identifying stressed syllables and stressed words Recognising intonation patterns (Adapted from White, 1998)

6. Some ways of supporting learners in learning to listen? Pre- listening stage Activate schemata – ideas, genre, vocabulary, prediction Let students decide the questions they want to ask/ think they’ll find answers to While-listening stage Provide different tasks i.e. different ways of listening Focus on developing micro-skills: sounds, ‘chunks’, contractions Focus on why learners misheard- not what they got right Provide opportunities for learners to discuss what they hear Provide listening in ‘chunks’

7. No emphasis on the accuracy of response Emphasise that native speakers of any language do not listen to every word So perhaps we cannot expect 100% comprehension Don’t give long ‘listening texts’ Provide as much ‘interactive’ listening as possible- listeners play an important and active role in keeping conversations going

8. References Wajnryb, R.(2003) Stories Cambridge: Cambridge University Press White, G. (1998) Listening Cambridge: Cambridge University Press