Assessing Listening (Listening comprehension has not always drawn the attention of educators. Human beings have a natural tendency to look at speaking.)

Listening Comprehension in Pedagogical Research -Listening emergence: Listening emerged for language teaching in the late 1970s with James Asher’s work on TPR. - Natural approach: In Natural Approach, the language learners are in the security of listening without the anxiety of speaking. -Comprehensible input: The aural reception of language which is beyond the learner’s present ability was posed by Stephen Krashen(1985) -Researchers ’emphasis: Recent scholars like Rubin(1994)and Mendelsohn(1998) have emphasized on the importance of listening comprehension.

Interactive Models of Listening Comprehension (Clark & Clark 1977 & Richards 1983) 1-The hearer processes the constituents what we call raw speech 2- The hearer determines the type of speech event 3- The hearer infers the objectives of speaker through the type of speech event, the context and the content 4- The hearer uses schemata to perform cognitive association. 5- The hearer assigns a literal meaning to the utterance 6- The hearer assigns an intended meaning to the utterance 7- The hearer determines whether information should be retained in short-term memory or long-term memory. 8- The hearer deletes the form of the message but the content is retained.

Types of spoken language Monologue: One speaker uses spoken language like presenting lecture, readings and reporting news Planned monologues: Like speeches and prewritten material/Little redundancy/Difficult for comprehension Unplanned monologues: Like impromptu lectures/More redundancy/Easy for comprehension Dialogues: It involves two speakers Interpersonal dialogues: Promoting social relationships(between people) Transactional dialogues: Factual information

What makes listening difficult? 1.Clustering: The division of utterances into parts or breaking down speech into groups and memory limitation (Contrast with written language). 2.Redundancy: Spoken language unlike written language, has a great deal of redundancy to comprehend like repetitions, rephrasing, elaborations and insertions like I mean or you know. 3.Reduced forms:Spoken language contains many reduced forms like phonology(Djeetyet? For Did you eat yet?),morphology(contractions like I’ll),syntax(elliptical forms like When will you be back? Tomorrow maybe)/----Difficulty for classroom learners 4.Performance variable: In spoken language(except for planned speeches) we have some variables like hesitations, false starts, pauses and corrections that make comprehension difficult. But, uh-I also-with this of course if you playing well- if you are playing well then you get uptight about your game. 5.Colloquial language: Using idioms, slang, reduced forms and cultural knowledge in colloquial language make comprehension difficult./ Learners with standard lg = Difficulty in colloquial lg 6.Rate of delivery: The speed at which a person speaks or the number and the length of pauses.(Unlike reading) 7.Stress,rhythm and intonation: The prosodic features are important for comprehension. 8.Interaction:Listening in conversation needs some rules of interaction like negotiation, clarification, signals, turn-taking and termination.  

Types of classroom listening performance 1.Reactive: Listening should react and process meaning. 2.Intensive:Listening should be intensive and have bottom-up skills.(Here the focus is on some components like phonemes, words, Intonation and discourse that students single out or select some elements of the spoken language, for example, -The students listen for some cues -The teacher repeat a word or sentence several times for them to imprint in the mind -The teacher asks the students to listen to a sentence and notice a point 3.Responsive: Students should listen and be responsive. Using techniques to find their reaction. /Asking questions, Giving commands, Seeking clarification, Checking comprehension 4.Selective: Some techniques promoting selective listening skills are as follows: -people’s names -dates -certain facts or events -situation, context -main ideas/conclusions

5.Extensive: EL involves (On top-down basis not bottom up basis) EL involves -listening to massive amounts of texts which learners can understand reasonably -high levels of comprehension listening without being constrained by pretest questions or tasks- -listening at or below one’s comfortable fluent listening ability 6. Interactive: It involves all five of previous mentioned activities like participating in discussions, debates, conversations, role-playing and so on. Listening should be integrated with speaking.  

Principles for designing listening techniques 1. Use techniques that cause motivating 2.Utilize authentic language and contexts. 3.Consider the form of listeners’ responses. - the listener respond physically to a command - the listener select from alternatives such as pictures or objects - the listener draw a picture of what is heard - the listener take notes on a lecture 4.Encourage the development of listening strategies. -looking for key words -looking for non verbal clues to meaning -predicting a speakers purpose of spoken discourse -activating background knowledge -guessing meaning -seeking clarification 5.Use techniques that develop listening comprehension competence. 6.Include both bottom-up and top-down listening techniques