1. Unit 9 Teaching Listening

2. Teaching objectives  1. know characteristics of the listening process  2. grasp principles for teaching listening  3. know about Pre-listening activities  4. know about While-listening activities  5. know about Post-listening activities

3. Teaching contents  Why does listening seem so difficult?  What do we listening to in everyday life?  Characteristics of the listening process  Principles for teaching listening  Pre-listening activities  While-listening activities  Post-listening activities

4. 1. Why does listening seem so difficult?  1.1 Lead-in activities  Ask students to discuss the following questions:  1) In your English learning experiences, did you find listening more difficult than the other throe skills?  2) Can you think of any reasons why listening is often considered to be more difficult?

5. 1. Why does listening seem so difficult?  1.2 Reasons for students' poor listening skill  1) Lack of teaching materials (audio and video tapes);  2) Lack of equipment (tape players, VCRs, VCDs, computers);  3) Lack of training in how to use the equipment;  4) Listening is not included on many important tests;  5) Lack of real-life situations where language learners need to understand spoken English;  6) Lessons tend to test rather than to train students' listening skills.

6. 1. Why does listening seem so difficult?  1.3 Reasons why listening can be more difficult than reading  Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways;  The listener has little or no control over the speed of the input of spoken material;  Spoken material is often heard only once.  The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning of the heard material ;  Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise or the media that transmit sounds.  The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening.

7. 2. What do we listen to in everyday life?  2.1 Task 2  2.1.1 Lead-in activities  Ask students to discuss how many situations they can think of where they listen to other people in their native language? And then work with a partner and think about all the different situations where they need to listen in a routine day.  2.1.2 One reason for students' unsatisfactory listening abilities  One reason for students' unsatisfactory listening abilities is that there is not enough variety in the materials that they listen to.

8. 2.2 Task 3  Ask students to choose eight situations that they think are the most frequent.  [ ] telephone conversations about business  [ ] radio news in English  [ ] lessons or lectures given in English  [ ] conversations with foreigners  [ ] instructions in English  [ ] watching television in English  [ ] watching movies in English  [ ] shop assistants who sell goods to  [ ] deal with tourists  [ ] interviews with foreign-enterprises  [ ] international trade fairs  [ ] socialize with foreigners  [ ] negotiations with foreign businesses  [ ] listening to English songs  [ ] hotel and restaurant services

9. 3. Characteristics of the listening process  Spontaneity  Context  Visual clues  Listener’s response  Speaker’s adjustment back

10. 4. Principles for teaching listening  Focus on process  Combine listening with other skills  Focus on comprehending meaning  Grade difficult level appropriately  The bottom-up process  The top-down process  back back

11. Focus on process  People must do many things to process information that they are receiving. First they have to hear what is being said, and then they have to pay attention, and construct a meaningful message in their mind by relating what they hear to what they already know.  back back

12. Focus on comprehending meaning It is important to design tasks that do not ask learners to remember details that they wouldn't even remember in their native language. In fact, psycholinguistic studies have shown that people do not remember the exact form of the message they hear; that is, they don't remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning.  back back

13. Grade difficult level appropriately There are a large number of factors that affect the difficulty level of listening tasks, but they fall into three main categories according to Anderson and Lynch (1988:46): l) type of language used; 2) task or purpose in listening; 3) context in which the listening occurs.  back back

14. The bottom-up process Two models have been set up in the psychological studies of nature of the listening process: the bottom-up processing model and the up-down processing model. In the bottom-up model, listening comprehension is believed to start with sound and meaning recognitions.

15. The top-down process The alternative top-down view suggests that the listener actively constructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues. In this reconstruction process, the listener uses prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening takes place to make sense of what he or she hears.  back back

16. 5. Pre-listening activities  Predicting  Setting the scene  Listening for the gist  Listening for specific information

17. 6. While-listening activities  Nonspecific responses  Listen and tick  Listen and fill  Listen and guess

18. 7. Post-listening activities  Multiple-choice questions  Answering questions  Note-taking and gap-filling  Dictogloss :  1)Preparation 2)Dictation 3)Reconstruction 4)Analysis and correction

19. Thank you