Teaching receptive skills
There are four basic skills in any language :reading and listening, and
speaking and writing. Listening and reading are receptive skills, because
learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and
understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. They can
be contrasted with the productive or active skills of speaking and writing.
All are equally important and wherever possible we should try to
incorporate all of them into our lessons if we want to have a balanced
approach. Often we will want to focus more on one particular skill but still
bring others in to create an ‘integrated’ skills lesson.
Often in the process of learning new language, learners begin with receptive
understanding of the new items, then later move on to productive use.
The relationship between receptive and productive skills is a complex one,
with one set of skills naturally supporting another. For example, building
reading skills can contribute to the development of writing.
“ We have two ears and one
mouth so that we can listen
twice as much as we speak.”
Epictetu
1
“
Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf
”
Native American Indian Proverb
The Teaching of Listening
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 (Howatt and Dakin).
An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis
(1981:134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling
skills. They are:
predicting what people are going to talk about
guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic
using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand
identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information
retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing)
recognizing discourse markers, e. g. , Well; Oh, another thing is;
Now, finally; etc.
recognizing cohesive devices, e. g. , such as and which, including
linking words, pronouns, references, etc.
understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc. ,
which give clues to meaning and social setting
understanding inferred information, e. g. , speakers' attitude or
intentions.
According to Bulletin (1952), listening is one of the fundamental language
skills. It's a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a
large portion of their education--their information, their understanding of the
world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their
appreciation. In this day of mass communication (much of it oral), it is of
vital importance that our pupils be taught to listen effectively and critically,
he says.
Listening to and understanding speech involves a number of basic processes,
some depending upon linguistic competence, some depending upon previous
knowledge that is not necessarily of a purely linguistic nature, and some
depending upon psychological variables that affect the mobilization of these
competence and knowledge in the particular task situation. The listener must
have a continuous set to listen and understand, and as he hears the utterance,
2
evaluates the quality of the answer. Round-table discussions, serious
listening to talks, spirited conversation, symphonic music are at the
fourth level. At this stage, listening to music is in the foreground of
attention not in the background as on previous levels (Wittich and
Schuller, 1962).
It is listening on the fourth level that primarily concerns us in our teaching.
Such listening may add an emotional and dramatic quality. Radio and
recordings highlight the importance of listening. Listening is as active as
speaking (the other receptive skill), and in some ways even more difficult. It
well requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination. To improve
our learners' listening skills we should let them (Austin Shrope, 1970):
1. Adopt a positive attitude.
2. Be responsive.
3. Shut out distractions.
4. Listen for the speaker's purpose.
5. Look for the signals of what is to come.
6. Look for summaries of what has gone before.
7. Evaluate the supporting materials.
8. Look for non-verbal clues.
We can call listening a decoding -making sense of the message process.
Each short stretch of meaningful material which is read or heard has to be;
(I) recognised as meaningful and understood on perception
(II) held in the short term memory long enough to be decoded
(III) related to what has gone before and /or what follows.
Out of this process come pieces of information which can be stored in the
long term memory for recall later. We can show the whole process in the
form of a model (Abbott and Wingard, 1985).
1. Perception of sounds, letter shapes, etc.
2. Initial recognition of meaning of short stretches
3. Material held in short term memory
4. Related to material already held in short term memory
5. Related to material arriving in short-term memory
6. Meaning extracted from message and retained in long-term memory
7. Gist recalled later
We can divide the listening process into 3 stages;
1. Pre-listening (purpose must be given at this stage),
4
2. During (in-while) listening,
3. Post -listening (speaking).
There is an association between expectation, purpose, and comprehension,
therefore a purpose should be given to our learners. We should train students
to understand what is being said in conversations to get them to disregard
redundancy, hesitation, and ungrammaticality. The major problem is the
actual way listening material is presented to the students. We should give a
clear lead in what they are going to hear; use some kind of visual back up for
them to understand; give questions and tasks in order to clarify the things in
their minds; and be sure that these tasks help in learning, not confusing.
Students should learn how use the environmental clues; the speaker's facial
expression, posture, eye direction, proximity, gesture, tone of voice, and that
general surroundings contribute information.
In listening activities, we listen for a purpose. We make an immediate
response to what we hear. There are some visual or environmental clues as
to the meaning of what is heard. Stretches of heard discourse come in short
chunks, and most heard discourse is spontaneous, therefore differs from
formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy 'noise' and colloquialisms,
and its auditory character.
In listening to English as a foreign language, the most important features can
be defined as:
1. Coping with the sounds,
2. Understanding intonation and stress,
3. Coping with redundancy and noise,
4. Predicting,
5. Understanding colloquial vocabulary,
6. Fatigue,
7. Understanding different accents,
8. Using visual and environmental clues.
This brings us to the thought that, while planning exercises, listening
materials, task and visual materials should be taken into consideration. The
teacher should produce a suitable discourse while using recordings. A preset
purpose, ongoing learner response, motivation, success, simplicity, and
feedback should be the things considered while preparing the task. Visual
materials are useful for contextualization. We can also categorize the goals
5
