Teaching Listening Skills

Teaching Listening Skills Presented by: Abdul Hanan

Listening: as a communication skill • Listening is one of the most important communication skills • We probably spend more time using our Listening Skills than any other kind of skill. • Like other skills, Listening needs practice • Real Listening is an active process. • Listening requires attention.

Importance of Listening The importance of listening extends far beyond academic and professional settings. Understanding how to practice good communication even in your day to day life, among friends, family, and is important for a number of other reasons: fostering good self-esteem, maximizing productivity, improving relationships, and even becoming a better speaker.

The following saying summarizes the importance of listening: "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Why does listening seem so difficult? Students: • Quickly forget what is heard. • Do not recognise words they know. • Understand the words but not intended message. • Neglect the next part when thinking about meaning. • Come across colloquial language • Can not cope with rate of delivery.

The listening process • Bottom-up processing– It suggests that the meaning is contained in the words we hear or the meaning and the message are all contained in the language that we hear. (That also means we work at the level of words and sentences and then we extract the meaning from it.) • Top-down processing– It suggests that we start from meaning and work towards language, based on the context, world knowledge etc. (It means we bring to comprehension background knowledge, ideas, information, expectation) e.g I’m going to tell you about the earthquake ……

The Process of Listening can be categorized into 4 main areas • Hear • Clarify • Interpret • Respond

Hear To listen actively and effectively, one must be a good hearer. Hearing involves picking up the sounds of the speaker by performing these actions: • Allow the other person to talk. • Avoid interruptions. • Focus on the speaker; e.g., maintain eye contact. • Listen to what is said and not how it is said. • Observe nonverbal behavior as well as what is said. • Use open-ended questions to encourage the speaker to continue talking.

Clarify Often, what is said is not completely or accurately heard. Although the speaker has the responsibility to ensure that what he or she said is understood, the reality is that the listener must make some effort, too. Here are some steps to help clarify what was said: • Ask open-end questions to probe for further detail. • Avoid asking leading questions to get the desired comment or response. • Avoid coming to conclusions before the speaker finishes. • Keep all of your questions relevant to the topic. • Maintain two-way communication. • Try to separate assumptions from facts and data.

Interpret After clarifying what the speaker said, be ready to interpret the message. Interpretation requires an understanding of what was said. Here are some steps for interpreting a speaker's remarks: • Concentrate on facts and data, not perceptions. • Distinguish between assumptions, and facts and data. • Identify the main ideas. • Pay attention to nonverbal communications to determine sincerity about what is said.

Respond Respond to what the speaker says. Of the four steps, this one is optional. Here are some steps to respond effectively: • Be sincere. • Exhibit verbal and nonverbal cues that build bridges rather than walls between the project manager and the speaker. • Seek feedback on your response.

Principles of teaching listening • Focus on process. • Combine listening with other skills. • Focus on the comprehension of meaning. • Grade difficulty level appropriately.

Principles of teaching listening • Pre-listening activities • While listening activities • Post-listening activities

Pre listening activities RATIONALE: • Motivating students by making the topic relevant and interesting • Activating existing knowledge for new knowledge to be built upon • Introducing key vocabulary and key structures, that students need in order to understand the text

Pre-listening activities • Predicting (eg. “What are these people doing? What are they saying to each other?”) • Setting the scene - introduce people/ places. • Gist listening • Listening for specific information

While listening activities • No response • Tick boxes • Sequencing • Act • Draw • Gap fill • Take notes

Final thoughts • Don’t expect learners to remember more than a native speaker would! • Testing understanding rather than memory

Post-listening activities • Multiple-choice questions. • Answering questions • Note-taking and gap-filling • Role play • Debate • Discussion 19

Listening Exercises

Activities • Describing similar pictures. (The teacher will provide the students with similar pictures and give the description of one of those than let the students to find it out) • Bingo ( Students have list of words on the chart, while listening they tick these words, those who finish first says Bingo)

Form story by ordering the pictures (Students are provided with pictures, while listening to the recorded story they are asked to arrange the pictures in order to make picture story.) • Prediction (While students are listening to the story teacher pauses it and asks the students to predict what will happen next…..finally he/she let them listen to it.)

Ordering events (The teacher prints out the main events and cuts them into strips. Students listen to the recording and put the events in order)

The End Thanks for listening

Teaching Listening Skills