Issues in development of listening skills

C. Passing on Cultural Knowledge in Language Teaching is the understanding that language is controlled by particular cultural experiences and a necessity for the language learner. If the cultural differences between the students‘ own culture and that of the language they are to learn is excessive, learners will usually keep some distance from the target language in their efforts to maintain their psychological comfort level. As a consequence, the operating processes of memory and input will certainly be limited. Thus, teachers need to be aware that breaking down the barriers is a significant part of cultural teaching and forms an important aspect of the whole process of language teaching. The aspect of cultural knowledge transmission is an equal part of language improvement and development of work in listening development has the potential for achieving a powerful influence on the formulation of students‘ thinking habits and the application of foreign language expressions. Cultural teaching, then, has direct and concrete influences on intercultural communication. When students gain an intimate knowledge of the culture of the target language they begin to understand how the language is used to reflect the thoughts, behaviors and customs of that society. In teaching English listening, teachers need to develop students‘ consciousness about intercultural communication and they need to energize students‘ capacity for wanting to engage with a different culture. Great care needs to be taken when selecting listening material and auxiliary texts, since these are a crucial aspect of the cultural factors in listening teaching. The selection of material related to British and American cultural background knowledge is of particular importance, since these tend to be the focus of much of the classroom time when students‘ thinking ability and intercultural awareness is being cultivated.²³
D. Combining “Intensive Listening” with “Extensive Listening”; Focusing on Listening: Intensive listening requires students to understand the meaning of each discourse and, ultimately, to understand every sentence and word. Generally, intensive listening requires students to listen to a text several times, or divide the text into paragraphs and sentences to understand each one; or by doing dictation word by word. The goal is for students to understand every sentence. Alternatively, extensive listening does not require students to understand every sentence, and every word, instead, students are encouraged to grasp the general meaning of the passage. The key point of listening is to understand the content. The purpose of intensive listening is to build basic listening skills, while extensive listening is to strengthen and enlarge effectiveness of intensive listening in order to improve overall listening ability. In listening teaching, both intensive and extensive listening should be combined with cultivating students‘ basic skills, the development of the productive listening habits of active thinking and the ability to understand the text. Therefore, teachers must encourage students to engage in intensive listening in class, requiring students to understand the general meaning and also to become familiarized with English pronunciation, intonation and the changes in language flow. In activities outside the class students need to engage in extensive listening; listening to many different variety of language phenomena and gaining more knowledge through TV programs, radio, the Internet and as many other kinds of exposure to listening training they can find. Exposure to demands of listening should include aspects of everyday life, science and technology, and academic lectures. Teachers must create language-learning environments that stimulate students‘ interests and raise students‘ passion and enthusiasm for learning English. ²⁴
E. Combining Listening with Other Skills: According to language acquisition theory, human capacity for discrimination between language intention and language content is a crucial step in the language acquisition process. Thus listening comprehensive ability plays an important role in acquisition and improvement of language skills. Therefore, in listening teaching, there is a need to combine the development of listening ability with the development of other skills such as reading. In order to improve listening ability it is necessary to listen frequently to a teacher reading well, since it is very difficult to generate a high quality output without appropriate input. Secondly, students need to practice reading aloud among themselves. By such activity students will learn to combine the act of listening with reading. Students must be actively engaged in producing language of high quality if they are to improve their English proficiency levels. Similarly, by combining listening with writing, teachers can divide the work into two parts. First, students might answer teachers‘ questions in written English after listening to spoken language material. It is also important to remember that good listening entails recalling the essence of the material rather than the precise detail. Thirdly, teachers should combine listening activities with speaking in ways that bring out the basics of oral communication. Inevitably, listeners will lose the information resources without speaking; speaking will lose its objective without careful listening and, as a result, speaking ability will not be acquired. Listening and speaking rely on each other and regulate each other. It is important to strengthen listening through speaking and to improve speaking through listening. Students need to retell and discuss the material they have just heard in order to synthesize their understanding. In this way they learn to combine listening with speaking properly. Students who are able to do this are able to overcome their passive response to the situation and gradually they learn to feel safe when they respond. In order for this to happen, a truly interactive and penalty free listening class is required. Teacher/student and students/student exchanges should be emphasized as opportunities for a free exchange of opinions when participants can consolidate their listening approaches and skills during the process of communication. Through a variety of listening-reading, listening-writing and listening-speaking activities, students can not only strengthen their language skills but also sharpen their interests and raise their motivation to improve their learning efficiency.
To solve the problem with teaching and comprehending listening, it is necessary for teachers to reconsider the roles of a teacher in a listening class. According to Field’s opinion, first of all, the role of teachers in listening classes is a guide, who is to give their students some help, including skills, in the process. Then, the teacher should be a diagnoser, who can identify listening problems and put them right (Field, 2002, p.7).
At this point, “wrong answers are more informative than right ones; it makes sense to spend time finding out where and how understanding broke down.” (Field, 2002, p.9) Thirdly, he should be a designer who is able to elect or design suitable texts and tasks for his students. It is commonly suggested that pieces of authentic listening be introduced at the early stage of listening, alongside scripted texts, to help the learners get familiar with the cadences of the target language(Field, 1998, p.12).
Some possible modifications are given to the listening passage, if it is beyond the students’ level; such as to record a simplified version or to reduce the length of text by playing just one paragraph (Lynch, 1996, p.17). To design suitable task, teachers can adjust the complexity of the task to match the students’ level (Lynch, 1996,p.8 ). Sometimes one’s native language can be used to report the answer, or just ask the students to choose the answer from a list if the listening passage is too difficult (Lynch, 1996,p.7). Otherwise, if the listening passage is easier, we can ask the students to repeat the whole sentences. Lastly, a listening teacher should try his best to be a motivator who can get his students more involved in their listening classes and learn more listening skills.
To enhance motivation, the following suggestions might be helpful to teachers:
(1) Give a purpose of listening.
(2) “Make sure there is sufficient variety of listening materials, of pace and intensity, and of activity to allow to work in their style and with their own strategies” (Hedge, 2002,p.10).
(3) Acknowledge that listening is quite difficult to non-native speakers, and be sure to give reassurance (Hedge, 2002,p.20).
Obviously, the role of a listening teacher is quite different from what I thought he should be. I have a lot of things to do besides teaching words and grammar. Now I can safely conclude that I should teach more listening strategies in my future listening classes.