That is to say, the students are required to do something in response to what they hear that will demonstrate their understanding.” She has suggested some such tasks: expressing agreement or disagreement, taking notes, marking a picture or diagram according to instructions, and answering questions. Design task-oriented exercises to engage the students’ interest and help them learn listening skills subconsciously.Īs Ur (1984:25) has said, “Listening exercises are most effective if they are constructed round a task. Nevertheless, the materials should progress step by step from semi-authenticity that displays most of the linguistic features of natural speech to total authenticity, because the final aim is to understand natural speech in real life. It is true that natural speech is hard to grade and it is difficult for students to identify the different voices and cope with frequent overlaps. Grade listening materials according to the students’ level, and provide authentic materials rather than idealized, filtered samples. They find it hard to understand speakers with other accents. Learners tend to be used to their teacher’s accent or to the standard variety of British or American English.
It may make it more difficult for beginners to understand what the speaker is saying on the other hand, it may give advanced students more time to “tune in” to the speaker’s voice and speech style. They may omit elements of sentences or add something redundant. In spontaneous conversations people sometimes use ungrammatical sentences because of nervousness or hesitation.
Students who have been exposed mainly to formal or bookish English may not be familiar with these expressions. If listening materials are made up of everyday conversation, they may contain a lot of colloquial words and expressions, such as stuff for material, guy for man, etc., as well as slang. The vital question is how to bridge the gap between an analysis of listening and actual classroom teaching. It is essential for a teacher to have an overall understanding of what listening is, why it is difficult for foreign-language learners, and what some solutions may be. In teaching listening comprehension we must be careful not to go to extremes, either by being concerned too exclusively with theories without thinking about their application to teaching, or by obstinately following frozen routines-opening the textbook and explaining new words, playing the tape recorder, and asking/answering questions.
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