Section 1 Teaching Listening

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I.Thinking

【Case Reflection】

Mr A has an English listening class for senior middle school students, using news about global petroleum conflicts. First he asks the students to listen to the news twice, and then answer questions. But nobody has the correct answer. He has to replay the news and show them the original text before students can find the correct answer.

Please identify what problems the Mr A has in the teaching practice and make some helpful suggestions.

II.Listening and Listening Comprehension

When people communicate with each other, their basic problem is to understand what each of them is talking about. Listening is the key to this communication. If people lack the necessary listening competence, communication will stop. Listening has, not surprisingly, become a focus for many who learn a foreign language. But what is listening? What is the subject matter of listening comprehension? What are the differences between listening in daily life and listening in teaching practice?

(I) Contents of listening and listening comprehension

Listening is a process of receiving and understanding sounds, and a process where listeners decode what speakers transmit. Listening comprehension is complex and there is still no consensus on what subskills are needed for listening comprehension.

C. Kenneth believes that listening comprehension is made up of five subskills: discrimination, perception of messages, auditory memory, decoding messages and using or storing messages. Each subskill builds on the former. According to J.K. Anderson, there are three interrelated and recurrent stages of listening comprehension: perception, analysis and usage. H.D. Brown believes listening comprehension includes nine basic processes. They are (1) to identify the reason for listening, since having a clear goal leads to better understanding; (2) to store the speech in short-term memory; (3) to organize, select and filter the information based on the type of speech (dialogue, public address, broadcast, etc.) and function (persuasion, statement, plea, etc.) ; (4) to anticipate the information in order to help understand the speech, and improve the overall comprehension; (5) to recall related background knowledge to help understand the information; (6) to impart meaning to the information, so as to strengthen the retention and understanding of the information; (7) to check, confirm and ensure the information is correctly understood; (8) to store the processed information in long-term memory, transforming it into one's own knowledge; (9) to delete the original speech in the short-term memory, and maintain the processed information in the brain, etc.

Although experts differ to some degree, their fundamental belief is the same: listening comprehension includes four steps: receiving, focusing, understanding meaning and memorizing.

(II) Factors affecting listening comprehension

Years of experience in teaching practice has shown that listening is the biggest challenge that Chinese students face. There are many reasons for their listening difficulties, including the following:

1.Listening materials

●There are many types of listening materials covering a wide range of content. Shohamy and Inbar (1991) have found that listening materials based on the news are the most difficult, followed by speeches, with dialogues being the easiest. In addition, descriptive materials in chronological order are easier than those out of chronological order.

●Speed of listening material: if the speed is too fast, students will not be able to process the words; on the other hand, if the speed is too slow, the material will lose its authenticity, which may bore the students. Many scholars consider the normal speed of native English-speakers to be 165-180 words per minute, but the speed varies depending on the circumstances.

●Familiarity of listening material: if students are familiar with the topic of the listening material, it is easy to process the information with the help of common sense and imagination. Thus, listening comprehension becomes easier. But if the topic of the listening material is new or foreign to the students, and comprehension completely depends on the listening material, the level of comprehension will be reduced.

●In addition, speaker accent, background noise, etc. will affect listening comprehension.

2.Task factor

The difficulty of listening tasks has a great influence on student listening comprehension competence, and different types of tasks will elicit different responses from the students. For example, students find multiple choice questions easier than gapfill questions. Shohamy and Inbar (1991) have found that tasks based on concrete questions are easier to answer than gist questions.

3.Learner factors

●Student linguistic level is usually revealed in pronunciation, grammar and lexis. The size of vocabulary and fluency in usage directly affects the students' listening comprehension competence. For example, unless learners know the word “book” can also be used as a verb, meaning “to reserve”, they will not understand the meaning of the sentence “I'd like to book a room.” In addition, pronunciation competence will have an influence on listening comprehension as well. For example, some students may hear “I went to school” as “I one to school” instead.

●Learner emotion model: In Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis, he points out that negative emotions, such as anxiety, self-doubt and lack of motivation, will restrict language acquisition, acting like filters. In listening comprehension, learners are often hindered by affective factors meaning they may not be able to fully comprehend the language input.

(III) Approaches to listening comprehension

1.Text-driven approach

The text-driven approach, which is a bottom-up listening approach, assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sounds which one hears. Listeners analyse sounds, then words, then sentences and use their own knowledge to understand the listening material. Comprehension is a gradual process of understanding phonemes, words, sentences and finally, text.

2.Schema-driven approach

The schema-driven approach, which is a top-down listening approach, explains the process of listening comprehension from the perspective of listener schematic and contextual knowledge, and is considered a macro processing approach. The approach assumes that listening is not only a process of decoding sounds, but also a process of prediction, inspection and validation. In this approach, listeners use non-linguistic media to predict, analyse and process listening material so that they can have a better and fuller understanding of the information. The non-linguistic media include cultural, practical, social, strategic and topic knowledge, the listening material, the speakers and the context.

3.Interactive approach

The interactive approach regards listening comprehension as a dynamic process, in which the schematic knowledge in the long-term memory interacts with the information conveyed by the listening materials. In other words, learners do not only use linguistic information, but also draw on related background knowledge to process what they hear, so that they can fully grasp the meaning of the listening material. This is the integration of the micro and the macro processing models.

III.Teaching Listening

(I) Goals of teaching listening

The goals of teaching listening are to train student communicative competence in daily life, enabling accomplishment of tasks in the real-world with the help of listening, and to accelerate learning and development. With further development of cognitive capacity, the requirements for listening capacity increase, so the goals of listening teaching are different in different learning stages. The National Curriculum Standards lists the specific requirements for each level. The following table introduces the goals for level two of elementary school, level five of junior school and level eight of senior school. See Table 10-1.

Table 10-1 Listening Skills in the National Curriculum Standards

(II) Principles of teaching listening

1.Combination of analytical and integrated listening

Analytical listening is based on words, phrases and sentences, emphasizing detailed content; while integrated listening focuses on gist, and stresses the understanding of the whole text. Teaching listening is about how to integrate them organically, and analytical listening is the basis of this integration. According to this principle, teaching listening should include listening practice that combines analytical and integrated listening to foster student listening competence.

2.Combination of teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing

Developing listening competence cannot be restricted to listening. Teaching listening should be combined with teaching speaking, reading and writing. This is also an effective way to make listening more engaging and interactive.

3.Combination of process-focus and meaning-focus

In the process of teaching listening, focusing on process rather than results stresses the development of listening skills; while focusing on meaning rather than linguistic form stresses the content of listening material. This organic combination is an efficient way to improve overall listening skills.

4.Combination of auditory perceptive ability and ability to speculate

Listening should not only focus on words or grammar, but also foster the ability to understand the relationship between sound, grammar and lexis, as well as a capacity to infer and determine relationships between sentences.

(III) Content of teaching listening

1.Listening knowledge

Listening knowledge includes phonetics, knowledge of strategy, culture and language use. Though the principal task of listening is to decode sounds, phonetics does not only belong in teaching phonetic content, but also in teaching listening content. Students therefore have to grasp pronunciation, stress, liaison, meaning groups and intonation.

For listening comprehension, knowledge of strategy, culture and language use is necessary. Without strategic knowledge, it will be difficult to select the appropriate listening approach; without cultural understanding, it will be easy to misunderstand the content; without knowledge of language use, it is impossible to understand any connotation. As a result, communication will be negatively impacted.

2.Listening skills

(1) Basic listening skills:

The goals of teaching listening differ according to student needs and teaching stages. In particular we need to focus on the following skills:

●Discrimination: This is the most basic skill in listening comprehension. It involves identifying phonemes, stress, meaning groups, intonation and tones, etc.

●Recognizing communication signals: The key to effective communication is to cultivate the ability to recognize communication signals, which includes signals for new information, examples, end of a topic, taking turns etc.

●Gist listening: This includes understanding the theme and intention of dialogues, monologues, etc.

●Listening for specific information: This refers to the ability to capture detailed information.

●Word-guessing: This refers to the capacity to guess the meaning of new words, difficult words, etc

●Inferring: By inferring and determining the subtext, we can further understand speaker intentions, relationships, emotions, attitudes, etc.

●Predicting: This refers to anticipating the content of what will be said next so as to confirm the chronological order or causality.

●Evaluating: This refers to evaluating what is heard and expressing one's opinions.

●Note-taking: This refers to selecting the appropriate means of note-taking based on the listening objectives. Appropriate note-taking is beneficial to absorbing the information.

●Selecting focus: This refers to selectively focusing attention on the important points based on the listening objectives.

(2) Listening techniques

In general, techniques and skills can be used interchangeably, as can techniques and strategies. For example, listening for gist can be a listening skill or a technique or a strategy. At the same time, it also can be one of the listening objectives. However, in some situations, they work on different levels and cover different content. A technique is a concrete implementation; for example, being able to guess the meaning of a new word easily is a kind of skill. When guessing the meaning of a word, people may apply a variety of techniques, such as, guessing from the context, or from the speaker's expressions, gestures, etc. These techniques help realize the listening objectives. If a technique is appropriately applied, it can become a listening strategy, which aids understanding. Otherwise, it is just a technique.

3.Content of listening comprehension

Listening comprehension involves literal understanding and connotative understanding, and includes five steps: identification, analysis, reconstruction, evaluation and application. Any level of teaching listening must move from identification to analysis and end with application, thus improving listening competence gradually. Otherwise, listening teaching will not be effective.

(1) Discrimination and identification

Discrimination and identification form the foundational level on which the development and enhancement of the succeeding levels are based. These include sound identification, information identification and symbol identification etc. Teachers can train and test students using true or false, matching, and outline questions etc. For example, teacher can mix the order of the sentences in the listening material and ask students to arrange the sentences into the correct order. Of course, the task can be graded. Sound identification is the fundamental requirement, while the identification of speaker intention is the highest.

(2) Transferring

Information transfer belongs to the second level. It requires students to transfer the information they hear into diagrams or tables. This involves information analysis and output. It requires students to identify phrases or sentences, which helps students to understand everyday conversations. It also has different levels of difficulties, including transferring information verbatim or in students' own words or by filling in tables or diagrams.

(3) Reformulation and reproduction

The first and second level belong to the category of information gathering. But the third level requires students to reconstruct the information gathered and express it in spoken or written form. At this stage, the students' problem is understanding the new words related to the topic. Teachers should expose students to a great deal of related lexis and ask the students to retell the information from what they have noted in the tables or diagrams.

(4) Evaluation and application

Listening should serve communication, and communication to be effective and appropriate rests in understanding the social implications which it carries. Analysis of context (matching pictures with the listening, for example) raises awareness of social implication reflecting the register of the speech, and should give students some coherent sense of the context.

(5) Evaluation and application

The highest skill level, evaluation and application, is one in which students not only need to understand and relay information, but also to evaluate and apply it. Understanding speaker intention so that we can further communicate, exchange information, or solve problems is the final goal of listening. This, therefore, is one of our major goals, and to this end, we can conduct discussion, debates and problem-solving etc. in the teaching process. Of course, even if student listening competence has reached this stage, it may still regress to the former stages. In order to help students remain active listeners at this stage, teachers should help students to absorb new words and new knowledge.

(IV) Models of teaching listening

Listening is considered a priority in language teaching, but in today's classrooms, many teachers are still used to the process of playing tapes, repeating, doing exercises, checking answers and then listening again, or simply adding listening comprehension as part of another lesson. The process and social aspect of teaching listening, the authenticity of the listening activities and the subjectivity of the students' learning are not sufficiently considered and may prevent the students from improving their integrated language skills. Hence, it is necessary to understand the basic models of teaching listening, so that effective teaching can be implemented.

1.Text-driven model, schema-driven model and interaction-driven model

Based on how the brain processes information, teaching listening can be divided into three models: text-driven, schema-driven and interaction-driven.

(1) Text-driven model

This model emphasizes the role of language knowledge in the listening comprehension process. It considers understanding of spoken language as a linear process, which is from part to whole; that is, to first understand the sounds that form the words, then the words that form phrases or sentences, then phrases or sentences that form texts. As a result, before listening practice, it is necessary to conduct subskills practice of vocabulary and grammar. The teaching content mainly includes pronunciation practice, such as, minimal pairs, stress; decoding sounds, building from words to phrases; vocabulary and syntactic structure etc. However, students may still not be able to understand the content of what they hear even if they have no gaps in their language knowledge. Therefore, as a method of teaching listening, the text-driven model has its merits and shortcomings.

(2) Schema-driven model

The schema-driven model addresses the weaknesses of the text-driven model of teaching listening. It stresses the importance of activating listener schematic knowledge and emphasizes background knowledge related to listening materials and speaker intention, attitude etc. Instead of practicing sounds, vocabulary and syntax before teaching listening comprehension, background knowledge is activated to guide students to predict the listening content and to understand the whole picture. But this model excessively focuses on the importance of schematic knowledge.

(3) Interaction model

Listening is a complicated physiological and psychological process. Recognizing this, the interactive model requires students to use existing language and schematic knowledge as well as appropriate listening strategies to process information and to understand speaker intention, and thereby improve their listening competence. The interactive listening model combines the advantages of the text-driven and the schema-driven models, and focuses on having sufficient language and schematic knowledge to carry out the teaching of listening.

2.PWP teaching model

The PWP teaching model includes Pre-listening, While-listening and Post-listening. The teacher's main task in the Pre-listening stage is to help students to set up a new schema or activate students' schema; establish listening expectations; activate background knowledge; exhibit topic; and raise motivation, as well as using basic skills training for language and pronunciation. Activities such as predicting, brainstorming, questioning and discovering are usually preferred. While-listening is the key stage of listening and emphasizes information comprehension and skill development. Teachers should assist students to master listening techniques and strategies to strengthen their understanding and memory. Post-listening is the consolidation stage, in which creative language output, such as post-speaking, post-writing and post-gapfill provide the platform for further improving listening and other skills. This teaching model stresses the function of background knowledge in listening comprehension, and uses Pre-listening and While-listening to improve the effectiveness of listening class.

3.Task-driven model

This model stresses the authenticity of learning tasks and improves listening comprehension by completing authentic listening tasks. It includes three stages: pre-task, while-task and post-task. Pre-task listening sets tasks that are relevant to the listening material. While-task is about preparing for listening tasks individually or in groups and then presenting the results of the listening tasks. Post-task addresses the common problems in vocabulary, grammar and listening strategies that the students encountered during the presentation and provides targeted practice to help students. Listening tasks can be divided into small tasks in class and project tasks outside of class. Listening tasks can take the following forms:

●Citing examples: Students are asked to list related facts from the listening materials.

●Ordering and Classifying: Students are asked to put events or actions in the listening materials in chronological order, or organize them by cause and effect. Teachers can also mix the order of paragraphs, important summaries or pictures of a text, and then ask students to reorder them.

●Comparing: Students are asked to compare similar items in the listening material and find the similarities and differences between them.

●Problem-solving: Based on the content of the listening materials and prior knowledge, students are asked to solve problems posed by the listening materials and real life experiences.

●Sharing personal experiences and creative learning tasks.

A task-driven model in listening has the advantage of developing student cooperation and a sense of exploration, in addition to improving student learning strategies.

Listening practice is more effective with well-designed tasks, such as drawing pictures according to instructions, making diagrams, writing proposals, evaluating the listening material, agreeing or disagreeing and answering questions etc. Please give an example of this.

(VI) Activities in teaching listening

In teaching listening, designing listening activities is the first step towards effective teaching, so it is necessary to understand the functions of various teaching activities. The following table lists a number of common listening activities.

Table 10-2 Common listening activities