英语教学法论文

英语教学法论文——Teaching Listening

Abstract : In this topic, we started with discussions about the nature of listening, both in real real .language and in language classroom. We believe a better understanding of the listening process and the spoken language will help us to understand the difficulties that the students experience in developing. Listening skills. It will also help us to design better listening activities foe our students. We then focused on a varieties of activities in teaching listening. We have emphasized that teaching listening should focus on the process of listening rather than the result of listening. Listening activities should not merely test the students’ memory as many traditional test-oriented listening exercises do.

Keywords : listening, skills, teaching

As to teaching listening , there are some to be clarified.

Listening always seems very difficult, but why? As technology advanced, and trade and exchange between countries increase, it become more and more necessary to understand spoken English in many situations such as face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, business meetings, lectures, speeches, television, and so on..

Among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing ), foreign language learners often complain that listening is the most difficult to acquire. In foreign language learning, both listening and reading are receptive skills, but

listening can be more difficult than reading. Why? The reasons are as follows: 1. Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways. 2. The listener has little or no control over the speed of input of spoken material. 3. Spoken material is often heard only once. In most case, we can not go back and listen again as we can when we read. 4. The listener can not pause to work out the meeting of the heard material as can be done when reading. 5.Speech is more likely to be distorted background noise or the media that transmit sounds.

Since we are teaching our students English not only to help them pass exams, but also to prepare them to use English in real life, it is import to thank about the situations they will listen to English in real life and then to think about the listening exercise we do in class. Do these exercise help them prepare them for real life use of language? Of course, classroom practice can not always be the same as real life, especially with beginners. We must control the input they receive to some extent, for example, control the vocabulary and the speed, but even at beginning stages, we need to give our students a variety of listening exercise to prepare them for real life use of language.

One reason for students’ unsatisfactory listening abilities is that is there is not enough variety in the materials that they listening to. But in reality we listen to far more things, regardless of which language is used.

Characters of the listening process:

From the previous section we have seen that there is a great variety of

situations where we need to listen to English. It is important under stand the characters or processes behind these listening situation so that we as teachers can design appropriate actives to help our students to develop effective listening habits and strategies.

Generally speaking, listening in real life has the following characters: 1.While some of the things that we listen to are rehearsed, e. g. radio news, television news and shows, movies and some formal lectures, most of the time during an average day we listen to people speaking spontaneously and informally without rehearsing what they are going to say ahead of time. 2.The context of listening is usually known in real life. In other words, we know relationship between the listener and the speaker. Therefore, the situation helps us to predict what we are going to hear. 3.Most of the time we can see the person we are listening to. This means we can see their facial expression_r_r_r_rs, gestures and other body language as well as the surrounding environment, which is relevant when, for example, people point at objects or in certain directions. These visual clues helps us understand and predict what we hear. Of course, there situations where we can not see the speaker, such as when we listen to the radio or use the telephone. 4. Most of the listening in daily life allows the listeners to respond to the speaker, such as in a conversation. This means we can interrupt the speakers and ask for repetition or clarification. 5.In most case, the speaker is talking directly to the listener, so he or she can adjust the way of speaking according to the listeners’ reactions. For example, if the listener indicates that he or she does not understand what is being said, the speaker may rephrase or elaborate.

If we want to teach very well, we should obey some teaching principles. There are two major purpose in listening. The first is for social reasons, like when we have a casual conversation with friends or acquaintances to maintain or build social relationships. The second is to exchange information. The second kind is more difficult, according to Anderson and Lynch, and needs more emphasis in the language classroom, especially at intermediate and advanced levels.

The skills of listening and reading are often thought of as passive skills. However, in reality, they are not at all passive. People must do many things to process information that they are receiving. First they have to hear what is being said, then they have to pay attention, and construct a meaningful message in their mind by relating what they hear to what they already know. We all know that it is possible to hear people talking without paying attention. We also know that if we do not have enough previous knowledge of what is being said, it is more difficult to make sense of what is said. So, listening is as active a skill as speaking. It is simply more difficult for teacher to judge how well the students are comprehending the messages. So it is very important to design task the performance of which show how well the students have comprehended the listening material.

It is also important to develop speaking and listening skills together, because most of the time in real life those two skills are needed at the same time. In the traditional listening classroom, students listen to tapes with headphones and then answer listening comprehension questions. There two problems with this approach. One is that it does not give students chance to practice listening and

speaking skills together. The second problem is that the comprehension question only test the students, but do not train the students how to listen or how to develop effective listening strategies.

Another problem with many listeners exercises in traditional textbooks is what they test students’ memory, not their listening comprehension. It is important to design tasks that do not ask learners to remember details they wouldn’t even remember in their native language. In fact, psycholinguistic studies have shown that people do not remember the exact form of the message they hear, that is, they don’t remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning. The original message is transferred in the brain to a form where the meaning is preserved, but the original surface detail is forgotten.

When designing listening task, it is very important to grade the difficult level of the tasks. There are a large number of factors that affect the difficulty level of listening task, but they fall into three main categories according to Anderson and Lynch,: 1) type of language used; 2) task or purpose in listening; 3)context in which the listening occurs.

Research in listening has shown that good listeners are good predictors. By helping our students become better predictors, we are helping them better listeners. There are many different activities that can be used to encourage students to predict the content of what they are about to hear.

If there is a picture with the listening passage, the students can be asked to

predict what the passage will contain before they listen. If there is no picture, perhaps the teacher can find or draw a picture that fits the text. Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students’ comprehension. “They attract students’ attention and help encourage them to focus on the subject in hand.”

Another type of pre-reading activity is to set the students. As we have said before, listening to passages in the classroom can be more difficult than listening in real life, because of the lack of context. So the teacher can help provide the background information to activate learners’ schema, so they will be better prepared to understand what they hear.

Whether the teacher can effectively set the scene depends on what he or she knows about the topic in question, what he or she has in hand, and also how well he or she knows about the language level of the students he or she is teaching. In the task above, if the teacher himself does not know much about Michael Jackson, he or she will have to relay on what is provided in the textbook. Or if the teacher has collected some photos or albums of the singer, they will be a great aid to set the scene. In addition, the teacher can always ask the students to help set the scene.

The third type of pre-listening activity is listening for the gist. It is very important to give students practice in the area, because in real life, they will be not able to listen to something several times. Therefore, it will be impossible for them to catch all the details, so they need to be comfortable with some ambiguity in listening and realize that they can still learn even when they do not understand

every single word. Listening for the gist is similar to the concept of skimming a passage in reading. The key is to ask students one or two questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage. Notice that students can answer the gist questions even thought they do not understand every word or phrase in the passage. If the passage is recorded well, students will be able to guess the answer simply from the tone of voice of the speakers.

While-listening activities:

The while-listening stage is the most difficult for the teacher to control, because this is where the students need to pay attention and process the information actively. However, if the teacher provides a reason, goal, or task for the learner, this can encourage and help the listener to focus. There are many different kinds of task for students to do while they are listening to a passage. Below are just a few examples:

Recent research has shown that by not given students any task the first time they listen to a passage, it can take any anxiety out of listening. This can work well with any kind of material that is interesting, humourous, or dramatic, because learners are likely to pay attention and try to understand in order to enjoy it.

A large part of what makes a listening task easy or difficult is what the teacher asks the students to do with the material. If all the students need to do is tick items as they hear them, the task will be much easier.

Listen and sequence:

There are many different tasks of this type. The students find out the order of things based on what they hear. Students can successfully complete this type of task even when they do not understand every word they hear. This builds up their confidence and helps prepare them for the real word where they certainly will not be able to understand everything they hear.

Listening and act:

There is a whole method of teaching called Total Physical Response, which concentrates on learning language by listening and response physically to commands or directions. There are many variations of how this can be carried out in a classroom. With beginners, it is easy to start with simple commands such as “Stand up.” “Sit down .” etc. At intermediate levels, the commands can become more complex. Foe example, “ Pretend you are washing through mud.” “ Pretend you are walking through sand.” “ Pretend you are trying your shoes.”