Teaching listening.

Listening skill as a major component in language learning and teaching interested educators as it arose in 1977 by James Asher with his work Total Physical Response (TPR). In TPR the role of comprehension was given importance as learners were given great quantities of language to listen to before they were encouraged to respond orally. There was also the Natural Approach which learners listened carefully and they were not force to speak before they were ready to do so. Other research studies proved that input in second language acquisition was very important. For example, according to Stephen Krashen (1985), the understanding of first language acquisition gave the significant effect to the auditory reception of language. Later pedagogical research on listening comprehension made significant improvement in the process of listening. Some researcher proved that a number of different contextual characteristics affected the speed and efficiency of processing auditory language. Rubin (1994) identified five such factors: text, interlocutor (speaker), task, listener, and process characteristics. For example, the listener characteristics of proficiency, memory, attention, affect, age, gender, background schemata, and even learning disabilities in the L1 all affect the process of listening. Even more recently, great attention has been devoted to strategy-based instruction of listening comprehension. Studies tend to agree that listening, especially for academic and personal contexts, is a highly sophisticated skill that requires a learners attention to a battery of strategies of strategies extracting meaning from texts. All of these issues encourage teachers to consider some specific questions about listening comprehension: What are listeners doing when they listen? What factors affect good listening? What are the many things listeners listen for? What are some principles for designing listening techniques? How can listening techniques be interactive? What are some common techniques for teaching listening?

AN INTERACTIVE MODEL OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION Listening is the psychomotor process of receiving sound waves through the ear and transmitting nerve impulse to the brain, but it just the first step of the listening process. The following eight processes are all involved in comprehension (Clark&Clark 1977). These processes are in terms of microsecond. 1. Process the raw speech (the actual phrases, clauses, etc.) 2. Determine the type of speech (conversation, speech, etc.) 3. Infer the objectives of the speaker (to persuade, request, etc.) 4. Recall schemata (own background knowledge) 5. Assign literal meaning to utterance 6. Assign intended meaning to utterance 7. Determine whether information should be retained in short-term or long-term memory 8. Delete the form in which the message was received All of these processes are important to keep in our mind as we teach. They are all relevant to a learners purpose for listening, to performance factors that may cause difficulty in processing speech, to overall principles of effective listening techniques, and to the choices you to make of what techniques to use and when to use them in your classroom. TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE Forms of spoken languages are important to incorporate into teaching listening comprehension. The classification of types of oral language can be shown in these diagrams.
DIALOGUE

MONOLOGUE
interpersonal transactional

familiar

familiar unfamiliar

Planned

unplanned
unfamiliar

a. a,b. types of oral language

b.

In monologues, when a speaker uses spoken language for any length of time, the hearer must process long stretches of speech without interruption. Planned monologues usually express little redundancy and are therefore relatively difficult to comprehend. Unplanned monologues exhibit more redundancy, which makes for ease in comprehension. Dialogues involve two or more speakers and can be subdivided into those exchanges that promote social relationship (interpersonal) and those for which the purpose is to convey propositional or factual information (transactional). In conversations between or among participants who are unfamiliar with each other, references and meaning have to be made more explicit to convince effective comprehension. THE FACTORS WHICH MAKE LISTENING DIFFICULT According to several sources ( Dunkel 1991; Richards 1983; Ur 1984), there are eight characteristic of spoken language. 1. Clustering. In spoken language, because of memory limitations and our tendency of clustering, we break down speech into smaller groups of word. 2. Redundancy. Spoken language, unlike most written language, has a good deal of redundancy. Listeners have to aware that not every new sentence contains new information 3. Reduced forms. 4. Performance variables In spoken language, except for planned discourse, hesitation, false starts, pauses and correction are common. 5. Informal language. Idiom, slang, reduced forms, and shared cultural knowledge are all applied at some point in conversation. 6. Rate of delivery. 7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation. 8. Interaction

TYPES OF CLASSROOM LISTENING PERFORMANCE 1. Intensive. Listening for perception of the components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of a larger stretch of language. 2. Responsive. Listening to a relatively short stretch of language (a greeting, question, command, comprehension check, etc.) in order to make an equal short response. 3. Selective.

Processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for several minutes in order to "scan" for certain information. The purpose of such performance is not necessarily to look for global or general meanings, but to be able to comprehend designated information in a context of longer stretches of spoken language (such as classroom directions from a teacher or radio news items, or stories). Assessment tasks in selective listening could ask students, for example, to listen for names, numbers, a grammatical category, directions (in a map exercise), or certain facts and events. 4. Extensive. Listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken language. Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose. Listening for the gist, for the main idea, and making inferences are all part of extensive listening. MICROSKILL OF LISTENING a) Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English b) Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory. c) Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, intonational contours, and their role in signaling information. d) Recognize reduced forms of words. e) Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance. f) Process speech at different rates of delivery g) Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables. h) Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns rules, and elliptical forms. i) Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents. j) Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms. k) Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse. l) Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, goals. m) Infer situations, participants, goals, using real-world knowledge. n) From events, ideas, etc., described, predict outcomes, infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. o) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings. p) Use facial, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings. q) Develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, guessing the meaning of words form context, appeal for help, and signaling comprehension or lack thereof.

PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING LISTENING TECHNIQUES 1. In an interactive, four-skill curriculum, make sure that you dont over-look the importance of techniques develop listening comprehension competence. 2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating. 3. Utilize authentic language and contexts. 4. Carefully consider the form of listeners responses. 5. Encourage the development of listening strategies. 6. Include both bottom-up and top-down listening techniques.