2. A training session on The listening skill in TEFL
Changing the listening practice
from product to process

3. Objectives By the end of this session, participants are expected to:
Discuss reasons for listening in class and in the real world
Look at the stages and aims of a traditional listening lesson
Analyse the meaning of 'authentic listening' tasks
Think about what 'student autonomy in a listening class' means
Look at motivation for developing listening skills
Study strategies for developing listening skills
Think how to apply these in class

4. Why do some people choose not to listen?

5. Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for an EFL teacher.
Why?

6. 1-This is because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice
2-Listening is sometimes frustrating for learners because there are no rules as in grammar teaching.
3- Speaking and writing also have very specific exercises that can lead to improved skills but this is not the way with listening
4-While listening , the language comes rushing at the listeners , but in reading for example we can skim to get a good idea about the text but listeners can't skim , there is no second chance.

7. What is meant by listening?
Task1
Listen to the next material and try to answer this question:
What is meant by listening?

8. Definitions of listening:
1-Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying .This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary and grasping his meaning.
An able listener is capable of doing those four things at the same time.
2-Listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It provides a foundation for all aspects of language and it plays a life –long role in the processes of learning and communication essential to productive participation in life.

9. How do we listen? What are the listening processes?
When people listen, we process the information we hear both top down and bottom up.
1-Top – down means using our prior knowledge and experience; we know certain things about certain topics and situations and use that information to understand.
2-Bottom-up processing means using the information we have about sounds, word meanings and discourse markers( like first, second and after that) to assemble our understanding of what we read or hear one step at a time .

10. So …What do you think our learners need for listening comprehension, top- down or bottom up processing?.

11. Learners obviously need both processing skills in listening as well
Learners obviously need both processing skills in listening as well. They must hear some sounds , hold them in their working memory long enough to connect them to each other and then interpret what they have just heard before something new comes along . At the same time, listeners use their knowledge to determine meaning with respect to prior knowledge.

12. What do we teach when we teach listening ?
When we teach listening we need to teach not only English but we also need to teach how it is used. We need to teach both:
The language system ( our knowledge of language :grammar and vocabulary etc.) and
The use of the language system (the skills of language use),
Sometimes, the problem with most listening classes is that they get stuck at number1. Many teachers concentrate on the language system and miss the skills of the language.

13. What do we listen to……and why?
We always have a purpose for listening. We may listen to the weather forecast to decide whether to wear a coat or to take an umbrella. We may listen to a song for pleasure. We listen in many different ways based on our purpose. Having a purpose helps us listen more effectively.

14. In the past , listening material was often based on a series of post –listening comprehension questions ,and that was one of the reasons that didn't serve learners very well that they generally had no idea of why they were listening . We can help students listen more effectively if we spend more time teaching them about purposes for listening.

15. Listening Strategies
Therefore, we should have a strategy while dealing with the listening skill in order to ease the burden of comprehension of the listening materials.
The first strategy is to know the purpose of listening because it helps learners organize and reflect on their own learning.
The second strategy is that teachers can help learners understand what they are hearing by activating their prior knowledge, teach or remind them by the words that are useful for the listening task.

16. Stages of listening : Pre-listening stage While-listening stage
Post-listening stage.

17. What are the different types of listening in the primary stage?
Do you think there is something missing ?
Do you think that we are teaching the learners how to listen or we are just checking if they are doing these tasks in a correct way?
Moreover, if they are doing wrong, what do we do then? Performing the listening material repeatedly until they may do it right?! Or practising another technique as we usually do with speaking or reading?
That is our next issue and the most important one for today.

18. What is wrong with the way we teach listening?
Do we really teach listening?
Is listening in our classes a product or a process?

19. Task 2
look at this lesson, tell exactly how teachers are dealing with such listening tasks in our classes .

22. After analyzing these lessons we find out that:
In most listening classes, students are usually given practice in listening but they are not actually taught listening..
Moreover, we do not have time to do much more than see if learners got the answers right or wrong and no time is spent on finding out why and where they went wrong.

23. Developing listening skills with authentic materials …
In other words, how listening can be taught actively and how we can change the listening to a process instead of being a product.

24. What should be the aim of listening tasks inside the classrooms?
*The aim of the listening tasks in our lessons should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context and that means using authentic texts. And I mean by authentic texts, any spoken texts that have not been specially prepared for language learners and they are often delivered via radio, TV and CDs.

25. Out-of-class activities
Stage 1:
Pre-Viewing Task .This weekend there is an English movie on TV. Does anyone know what it is? What time is it on? Which channel is it on? Please write the name, time and channel down, as this is your homework task.

26. Stage 2: While-Viewing Task
     I would like you to watch the movie this weekend, or try to watch as much as you can. Focus on listening to the movie instead of reading the subtitles. Try to collect the following information: kind of movie (comedy, romance, action, horror), names of the main characters (male, female, animal), where does the movie take place (inside, outside, on land, at sea, country), what is the main idea in the movie?

27. Stage 3: Post-Viewing Task (the next lesson)
Who watched the movie last weekend? What can you tell us about it?
once learners have developed the habit of watching and listening to English language movies with some kind of focus, they will get used to this type of exposure to listening for pleasure, and you may then move on to more critical post-viewing tasks--e.g., Do you think we should go to space with each other? (After viewing a space movie).

28. In the classrooms, there are other activities that create involvement in listening situations. (listening for specific information )

29. Task 3
Listen to this song and try to pick up the verbs while listening.

30. To Sir , With Love
Those schoolgirl days of ………..tales and……… nails are………. But in my mind I………..They will still………… on and on . But how do you ………. someone Who has …… me from crayons to perfume. It isn't easy but I'll …… . If you ….…… the sky I would ………… across the sky In letters that would …………… a thousand feet high To sir with love
The time has ………. for…………... books And long last looks must …… . And as I ………. I … That I am ………. my best friend. A friend who
…..………. me right from wrong And weak from strong That's so lot to ………. What can I ……. you in return? If you ……….. the moon I would
…… to ……… the stars But I would rather you …… me …….. my heart. To sir with love .
telling
biting
gone
know
taken
live
thank
try
wanted
write
show
come
closing
end
leave
know
let
leaving
taught
learn
give
wanted
try
make
let
give

31. Task 4
Cut up dialogues :
order the lines of the dialogue you hear, by simply numbering the jumbled text.

32. W: Hello darling ,did you have a good day?
M: It was ok.
W: Would you like a drink?
M: No thanks I am not thirsty.
W: Dinner will be ready at six. Are you hungry?
M: Not really.
W: Oh! Did you pick up the suits from the cleaner’s?
M: Yes, I did
W: Good. Are you going to the pop tonight?
M: Yes, I’ll be back at the same time as usual.

33. Listen to this recorded material and tell
How many things does she do every day?

34. She gets up at 7 o’clock
Drinks a cup of coffee
She showers
Changes
Buys breakfast
Takes it to work to eat
She gets pastries
She leaves to work on the underground.
She arrives at about 8.45.
She talks to her friends for a while
She starts work at 9
She checks her
Spends the rest of day with customers
She leaves for lunch at 12
She goes home or eats outside with friends.
She goes to bed at midnight
She saves her energy for the weekends

35. These activities are good for training the students to listen to everything and to identify individual words.
They are challenging and you will see the improvement of the listening skill if you can do these activities regularly and they needn't take great deal of time.
These activities are called task- based exercises and they have an obvious advantage: they not only test the students' listening comprehension but also encourage them to use different kinds of listening skills to reach their destination in an active way
So listening should be task- oriented and accompanied with effective means of evaluation .

36. Questionnaire
Choose the correct answer:-

37. 1-Are we giving the listening skill due care in teaching, using different methods and techniques as we really do with reading and writing?

38. Yes, it is an active skill and teachers are using different techniques to teach listening and get learners involved
No, it is considered as a passive forgotten skill in our schools .It is only tested not taught
The listening skill is a forgotten skill in our classrooms and is not taught but tested all the times. That's because it was considered long time ago to be a passive skill and it's only practised by hearing repeatedly more than once. Now, it should be actively taught and learners should be involved in learning it.

39. 2-Why is it important to let our learners listen to native speakers while teaching the listening skill?

40. To create a real atmosphere and achieve authenticity inside the classroom that will lead to the proper communicative competence.
To make it clear for the learners that they are going to encounter a difficulty in their real life situations using the language
Our main aim behind teaching the language in general is to help learners communicate and achieve this competence outside the classrooms, so the most important thing we have to do is to create this real atmosphere by using authentic materials

41. 3-Why do you think it is important to help our learners know the purpose of their listening?

42. To be able only to answer the pre-listening question.
To make it easy for them to understand and react to what they listen to.
To be able only to answer the pre-listening question.
First, this will ease the burden of comprehension and it will help them organize and reflect their own learning. Listeners usually listen selectively according to their own purpose

43. 4-Can teachers teach the listening skill in isolation from other skills?

44. Yes, they should do to concentrate on this skill in particular
No, they shouldn't because all skills should be integrated naturally while teaching the language.
Generally, teaching any skill of any language involves integrating the other skills naturally, so we will find ourselves pairing listening with speaking of course and other times with reading or writing.

45. 5- Which orientation do you think should the teacher adapt in the classroom?

46. (I will teach only what I can test.)
(I will find ways to evaluate those skills that are important to learners.)
Involving learners in their own listening assessments would be motivating for them and would help teachers gain insights into what their learners really value. Therefore, we can also rely on the task- based approach in evaluating our learners and changing the listening skill in all its phases to process instead of product.

47. 6-Do you think that our course book listening materials are proper for improving the listening skill?

48. Yes, the materials are helping teachers to involve learners in listening and improve their listening abilities outside the classrooms.
No, the listening materials are lacking some focus on the features of natural talk and on how to develop learner's ability to identify sounds.
In my point of view , most of our course books listening materials deals with listening using top –down skills which we agree to be very important in activating the learners' prior knowledge about the texts but it is lacking the bottom- up skills which are important to develop learners' ability to distinguish sounds and identify words.

49. Thank You