Worksheet on “Teaching listening”
1. Think about what makes listening to a foreign language a challenging task for you. List the reasons in the following table.
kly forget what is heard. not recognise words they know. 3. Understand the words but not for the intended message. ect next part when thinking about meaning. le to form a mental representation from words heard. not uderstand subsequent parts of input because of earlier problems. The reasons why such difficulties arise can be quite complicated. However, one major reason for students' poor listening skill is that listening is often neglected in language teaching due to lack of teaching materials, both with print materials and audio or videotapes, lack of equipment (tape players, VCRs, VCDs, computers) in some schools; and lack of real life stions where language learners need to understand spoken English. |
2. What do people listen to in real life and what do EFL learners listen to in classroom? What can you learn from such a discrepancy?
What do people listen to in real life? | What do EFL learners listen to in classroom? |
loudspeaker announcements interview radio news shopping lesson, lecture story-tell conversation, gossip meetings instructions negotiations watching television theater show watching movies | Pre—listening: 1)Predicting 2)Listening for gist 3)Listening for specific information While—listening: 1)Listen and take notes 2)Listen and act 3)Summary Post—listening: 1)Preparation :The students listen to the key words 2)Dictaion:Listen to the tape again and roughly restore the original 3)Reconstruction: Based on their notes, students work ln pairs or groups and reconstruct the text they have heard. 4) Analysis and correction: Students compare their versions of the text with the original and try to identify mistakes. Then they discuss together to find out themistakes. Finally, the text is read again for enhanced comprehension. |
3. Learn about the principles for teaching listening. Take brief notes below.
Focus on process | 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. |
Combine listening with other skills | Most of the time in real life listening occurs together with speaking and it also occurs with writing. |
Focus on the comprehension of meaning | they don't remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning. |
Grade difficulty level | Grade the difficulty of the listening task and design an appropriate level of difficulty· of language used. 2. task or purpose in listening. 3. context in which the listening occurs. |
With such an understanding, try evaluate the two activities on P142-143 and write your comments briefly.
activity2 is more helpful for students to develop skills. 1.1'by ticking the blank , this will be much easy. 1.2this help build up their confidence and prepare them for the real word they hear.1.3this type of activity works very well as an information gap activity between pairs of students , they can compare their pictures to see how similar they are. |
4. Read about the two approaches describing processes of listening on P143. Take notes to facilitate your understanding.
Bottom-up model | Listening comprehension is believed to start with sound and meaning recognition . Listeners construct meaning of what they hear based on the sound they hear. |
Top-down model | Listening comprehension involves 'knowledge that a listener brings to a text. sometimes called inside the head' information. |
5. List some activities used for pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening purposes.
Pre-listening | ① aim to motivate students ,to activate their prior knowledge,and to teach key structures to the students . ② （predicting）encourage students to predict the content of what are about to hear. ③（setting）the teacher can help provide the background information to activate your learner's schema and. with your help , your students will be better prepared to understand what they hear. ④listen for the gist the concept of skimming a passage in reading |
While-listening | ① in the form the students check what they hear. ② the students to find out the order of things based on what they hear. ③the students can concentrate on learning language by listening and responding physically to commands and. directions. ④students can draw pictures ,diagrams ect. on paper |
Post-listening | ①the students do the multiple -choice comprehension question . ②the teacher ask the students open-ended questions . ③ While-listening and post-listening is combined. ④the teacher reads out a paragraph sentence by sentence for students to write down correctly. |
Now do some practice. Complete Task 13 on P154.
Pre-listening | listen for the gist "do you sometimes ask yourself do you sometimes say to yourself do you take care of yourself and your appearance do you talk about yourself a lot " |
While-listening | Ask the students to fill in blanks while listening to Dr. Rizzotto’s analysis. On our birthdays, we receive lots of -------and . If you don’t love yourself, this will probably make you feeland. If you often ask”---------?”IT might be because you do not love yourself. If we can learn to accept our ----without criticising ------,we will learn to ----. If you do not care about -----,it might because you----. If is good to talk about ------and -----,but if we do not ---other people , it might be because we do not really ---anyone . |
Post-listening | Ask the students to use the notes to analyse his/her as well as his/her friends answers to the quiz. Role play the following situation. Student A : You are uto.A student comes to you saying that he/she doesn't like himself/herself at all. Please help him /her to understand himself/herself better so that he/she begins to see his/her strengths and knows how to love himself /herself. StudentB :You don't like yourself at to Dr. Rizzotto for advice to better understand yourself. |