Developing Listening Skills We cannot take part in a conversation if we do not understand what is said to us.

Developing speaking skills implies developing listening skills. We also teach listening because our students acquire language by listening. Listening implies active involvement. Listening has long been considered a passive skill, which is not true. In oreder to decode the message, the speaker is sending, the listener has to use his linguistic knowledge and divide the stream of sounds into meaningful units, and then compare these units with the shared knowledge between himself and the speaker, in order to get the meaning of the sentence. Listening is a complex skill which deserves special attention.When speaking, it is the student who selects the language and can compensate for his deficiencies.When listening, he cannot exercise any control over the language that is used.He must be prepared to cope with a wide range of situational and performance factors which are outside his control (background noise, distance, accent, dialects).He must also become familiar with the characteristics of the spoken language. In real life we often listen to something while doing another activity(casual listening). But in most cases we have a definite purpose.We listen because we want information or because what we are listening to is interesting and useful. This is the rationale behind much material for teaching listening. The listening activity involves the following stages: Pre-listening: before getting the class to listen we should introduce the topic of the listening material.This is of vital importance because it will set our students in the mood for listening and will arouse the students interest in the subject and increase their motivation to listen. It will also help the students to predict what the material will be about. While-listening: we could give them one or two guiding questions to focus their attention on the main points. At this stage the students listen and then answer the guiding questions.This will allow students to listen to the tape with only a very general task to perform.They will concentrate on the general meaning which will help them to understand the listening material.On a second listening we can give our students a task to check detailed comprehension.The students listen for particular points, which require careful listening. Post-listening: the listening activity should be accompanied by a follow-up phase.The students can reflect on what they heard or use the material as a starting point for discussion, or written work. Types of listening activities There are different ways of classifying listening activities. Penny Ur(1984) classified them by how the learners are asked to respond to the listening material.The need to produce a response provides students with immediate motivation for listening and it also directs them towards certain kinds of meaning and therefore structures their listening activity. No response: - stories, jokes: told by the teacher or played on the cassette recorder; - songs: students enjoy them without understanding all the words; - films: if they are well chosen students will have fun watching them; Short responses:

identifying which picture is being talked about while-listening:students are given three or four pictures and they have to identify the one which is being described on the tape; - spotting differences between listening and visual material: students have to detect the differences between the picture and the description on the tape; - identifying and ordering pictures: students are given a picture story; while listening they have to put the pictures in order; - obeing instructions: students are given commands and they have to do what they are told to do; - following a route according to a map; - ticking off items: students tick off words as theyhear them in a story; - drawing-picture dictation: students listen to a description and draw the scene; - true/false: students are given a number of true and false statements, then they listen and tick the true statements - cloze: listening texts have silence gaps, which the students have to fill in. Long responses: - skimming and scanning: students are asked to identify the main idea (skimming) or to extract specific information (scanning); - answering questions given by the teacher in advance. Students listen to a tape and then answear the questions based on the listening material; - note-taking: learners write down notes from a short talk; - summarising: students write a brief summary of the material they are listening to; - filling in: students are given a grid with column headings to complete; students listen to an interview and fill in an application form; - predictions: students hear sound effects and they have to construct a story and compare it with the tape; students are given a topic of the material or key words and they have to predict what the passage will be about; students listen to the beginning of the material and they have to predict what is going to happen - filling gaps: students are asked to fill in missing phrases or sentences; students listen to a dialogue; they hear only the speeches of one participants and are asked to reconstruct those of the other. - jigsaw listening: in three different groups students listen to three different tapes about the same mystery / the same crime. By comparing notes and exchanging their information they have to reconstruct the story and find out the truth; - problem solving: students hear the information based on a problem and they have to solve it (puzlles, dilemmas, detective stories); - interpreting: students listen to poems, which they have to discuss and analyse.

Listening Tasks

In real life we listen with a purpose. Listening activities are more effective if they are built round a task. We must conceive tasks as means of helping students to focus on the information. A wellconstructed task must be fun and challenging to stir interest, success-oriented (grading language), demanding simple preparation and administration. It should require little writing from the students and should be in the form of short questions, simple grids to fill in, ticks, crosses, imposing little writing upon the students. Through the task the students are encouraged to listen selectively, extracting only the necessary information. Students get used to the idea that successful listening means not understanding every word but getting enough meanings in order to satisfy the communicative purpose. Authentic or Non-Authentic Listening Material An authentic material is designed for native speakers (newspaper articles, radio programmes, interviews). A non-authentic material is specially written for language students and it may focus on a language item that students have to learn or the language may be simplified, cleaned-up, less background noise, less overlap of speakers. Example: Read the following text: A : Where are you going ? B : I am going to school. A : Are you going by car ? B : No, I am not going by car. I am walking. A : What animals do you like ? B : I like dogs. Now tick the statements which indicate that the text uses artificial language. 1. Both speakers use full sentences all the time. 2. Speakers repeat certain structures. 3. Students do not know all the words. 4. The language presents speech phenomena (interruption, hesitation, rephrasing). 5. Speakers change the topic in a sudden and artificial way. Do you think that such materials can teach listening skills? What kind of materials should we use? On one hand students need exposure to materials which recycle what they have already learned. But on the other hand they have to be exposed to listening materials which are close to real life. They should help students to get familiar with features of everyday speech, get used to understand ing meaning from the context without knowing all the words. What we need are realistic materials whose general meaning students can understand, whose language students can handle even though it is above their productive level. The materials must simulate authenticity. What Problems May Arise while Teaching Listening ?
Training students in listening skills presents problems for both teachers and students. We can help students to listen better: by raising their awareness about the characteristics of spontaneous speech; by teaching them how to construct from key words and use the context and their knowledge of English to help (hem understand the message; by raising our students' awareness about the importance of making predictions; by using visual support for the tape (pictures, sketches), contextualizing the listening situation; by playing the tape more than once. It is advisable to play the tape all the way through on the first listening, so that the students can get the main idea and get accustomed to the voices ;

 by letting students check their answers in pairs before the class feedback. How would you help your students to cope with longer extracts? Do not play all the tape. Play half of it and get your students to predict what is going to happen next. Give students the first third of the tape script to read at home and then in class discuss what is going to happen. Teach vocabulary, give your students the key words and get them to guess what is going to happen. Read the first third of the tape script before listening. Cut the tape script into smaller pieces which students have to put in the right order as they listen to the tape.

Conclusions Learning a foreign language is a gradual process. It is our job as teachers to : design speaking and listening activities which will enable students to progress from the noncommunicative end of the continuum to the communicative end, and cope with the real world situation; provide opportunities for students to practise and focus on items that they want to internalize; provide opportunities for students to use language to communicate; set achievable goals and tasks which will motivate students to learn and move on to the next stage in learning ; adapt language activities to the needs of our students ; ensure that our students get a variety of activities which will enhance their interest, involvement and motivation.