Listening is receiving language through the ears.

Listening involves
identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and
sentences. When we listen, we use our ears to receive individual sounds
(letters, stress, rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to convert these into
messages that mean something to us.

Listening in any language requires focus and attention. It is a skill that some
people need to work at harder than others. People who have difficulty
concentrating are typically poor listeners. Listening in a second language
requires even greater focus.

Abstract
Teaching listening skills in today's classroom environments is often
misunderstood or completely omitted. Each classroom contains a unique set of
listening barriers that affect learning and cause undesired outcomes for both the
student and the instructor. In an effort to alleviate these barriers, tailored listening
skills assignments for each classroom provide instructors with the tools to
enhance student learning. This introduction establishes a framework for
understanding how listening skill assignments can increase critical thinking and
effect positive student learning outcomes within the classroom environment.

The teaching of listening has attracted a greater level of interest in recent years
than it did in the past. Now, university entrance exams, exit exams, and other
examinations often include a listening component, acknowledging that listening
skills are a core component of second-language proficiency, and also reflecting the
assumption that if listening isn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it.

Earlier views of listening showed it as the mastery of discrete skills or microskills,

such as recognizing reduced forms of words, recognizing cohesive devices in texts,
and identifying key words in a text, and that these skills should form the focus of
teaching. Later views of listening drew on the field of cognitive psychology, which
introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and brought attention
to the role of prior knowledge and schema in comprehension. Listening came to be
seen as an interpretive process. At the same time, the fields of discourse analysis
and conversational analysis revealed a great deal about the nature and
organization of spoken discourse and led to a realization that reading written texts
aloud could not provide a suitable basis for developing the abilities needed to
process real-time authentic discourse. Hence, current views of listening emphasize
the role of the listener, who is seen as an active participant in listening, employing
strategies to facilitate, monitor, and evaluate his or her listening.

In recent years, listening has also been examined in relation not only to
comprehension but also to language learning. Since listening can provide much of
the input and data that learners receive in language learning, an important question
is: How can attention to the language the listener hears facilitate second language
learning? This raises the issue of the role “noticing” and conscious awa reness of
language form play, and how noticing can be part of the process by which learners
can incorporate new word forms and structures into their developing
communicative competence.

TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS IN THE

CLASSROOM
As teachers, we always hope that our students are listening carefully to our
lessons and assignment instructions. Unfortunately, we find that sometimes
they aren’t paying close attention to what we’re saying and this can affect their
learning. This becomes a problem when they miss key information during
instruction. It’s a good idea to take some time to explicitly teach listening skills
so that students retain more of the information we are giving them.

How do we do that? Well, in this post I’m going to share with you 7 strategies
for teaching listening skills in the classroom.

These 7 actionable ways to teach listening skills in the classroom will be just
the ideas that you need. Your students will gain knowledge of what it looks
like and feels like to be an active listener, engaged and responsive to a
speaker, and able to complete a task by following directions. By taking the
time to practice good listening skills with your students, I’m sure you will find
your job just a little bit easier.

6 STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING LISTENING

SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM
 1. MODEL GOOD LISTENING STRATEGIES
In front of the classroom, play a short game of Simon Says with one child
volunteering to be “Simon” and you are the game player. Model good listening
strategies such as looking the speaker in the eye, repeating the directions to
yourself (aloud so they can hear you), not starting until you’ve heard all the
instructions (say aloud, “Ok, he’s finished giving me the instructions so now I
may begin”), and speak aloud what you’re going to do as if you were picturing
it in your mind before doing it. After “Simon” gives you a few short instructions,
ask the class to tell you what they witnessed you did well. Write their answers
in a thinking map on the board.

Classroom meetings are another great opportunity to model and practice

listening skills. The class sits together in the circle and takes turns sharing
their thoughts and feelings on the topic being discussed. Children are
encouraged to look at the speaker and listen to what they say.
 2. PARTNER CONVERSATIONS
Pair children up and give them a general discussion topic. Each child takes
turns being the speaker or the listener. When the speaker is finished
speaking, have the listener repeat one of the speaker’s main points, and offer
them a compliment. Having “Think, Pair, Shares” during lessons and
discussions is a great way to practice receiving and sharing what is heard.
 3. TEACH “WHOLE BODY LISTENING”
A much-used concept in the early primary grades is “whole body listening.” In
whole body listening, a student practices keeping particular key parts of their
body focused on the speaker. Their eyes are watching, ears are listening,
brain is focused on the speaker’s information, mouth is closed, shoulders are
squared toward the speaker, heart is caring about the message, hands are
folded or in lap, feet are still on the floor.

In other words, they are actively “listening” with their entire bodies. Teach your
whole class this concept and practice it as a group, before expecting them to
put it into practice. I use this book, Whole Body Listening Larry at
School by Elizabeth Sautter, to teach this concept. More go-to books for
reinforcing listening skills are Listen, Buddy, Listen and Learn, and My Mouth
is a Volcano.

You can grab a fantastic FREE whole body listening pack from Erica Bohrer to
help teach your students this important skill.

4. DAILY SKILL PRACTICE

One way to see a marked improvement in your students’ listening skills is to
give them short, daily skills practice. Any daily practice should be fun, and
practical. In this case, the skills should include encouraging kids to focus on
oral instructions, visualizing the tasks given, and completing them accurately.
Give them short instructions verbally for completing a task, or two or three
tasks in succession (depending on their age/cognitive development), and
have them practice listening and completing the tasks without repeating the
instructions.

One idea for this activity is to have them pull out a blank sheet of paper and
give them instructions. For example, “Draw a large brown oval in the center of
your paper. Add an orange letter V in the center. Use a black crayon to draw
two large circles, side by side, above the V” (and they end up with a basic
sketch of an owl on their paper that they can finish drawing details and color
on their own). Want some pre-made activities for daily practice such as this?
Try my HUGE assortment of Listening Mats, perfect for any time of the
year.
 5. THE STORYTELLING GAME
In this game, you start a story with a beginning phrase, and then each child in
the classroom adds one word to the story in turn. Students must be active
participants and follow the story closely so that when their time comes to add
a word, the story will make sense. Another way to practice this is by playing a
traditional game of Telephone where a message is passed around the room to
see if it stays the same.
 6. STORYTELLING PODS
Sort children into groups of three. In these “pods,” they are to play the
storytelling game, only in successive story events rather than one-word. For
example, the first student starts with an event such as “The rabbit found a
carrot in the garden.” Then the second student adds an event that happens
afterward in the story, such as “The carrot was too big to carry.” The third
student adds, “So the rabbit put it in a wagon to pull it to his burrow.” After
time is given for the pods to come up with their three-event stories, instruct the
students to move to a new pod. In those groups, they must retell their stories
with perfect accuracy to their new pod members.

7. 20 QUESTIONS
In this classic game, lots of listening skills are practiced without even explicitly
calling it a “lesson in listening skills”. Play this game any time you feel you
need subject review, and practicing listening skills at the same time! For
instance, tell the class you are an item that starts with a certain letter, a
fictional character, or a Science object you’ve recently learned about. Have
them ask you 20 yes/no questions to try to figure out what you are.
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 In 'real-life' listening, our students will have to use a combination of the two
processes, with more emphasis on 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' listening depending on
their reasons for listening.

Author:
Catherine Morley, Teacher, Teacher trainer, Mexico

 Top-down vs. bottom-up listening

 In the classroom

 Top-down listening activities

 Bottom-up listening activities

 Conclusion

Top-down vs. bottom-up listening

Imagine the following situations:

Over lunch, your friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster.
You listen with interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express
surprise or sympathy.

That evening, another friend calls to invite you to a party at her house the following
Saturday. As you’ve never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You
listen carefully and make notes.

How do you listen in each case? Are there any differences? With the holiday anecdote,
your main concern was probably understanding the general idea and knowing when
some response was expected. In contrast, when listening to the directions to a party,
understanding the exact words is likely to be more important – if you want to get there
without incident, that is!

The way you listened to the holiday anecdote could be characterised as top-down
listening. This refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning
of the message. Background knowledge consists of context, that is, the situation and
topic, and co-text, in other words, what came before and after. The context of chatting
to a friend in a casual environment itself narrows down the range of possible topics.
Once the topic of a holiday has been established, our knowledge of the kind of things
that can happen on holiday comes into play and helps us to ‘match’ the incoming sound
signal against our expectations of what we might hear and to fill out specific details.
In contrast, when listening to directions to a friend’s house, comprehension is achieved
by dividing and decoding the sound signal bit by bit. The ability to separate the stream
of speech into individual words becomes more important here, if we are to recognise,
for example, the name of a street or an instruction to take a particular bus.

In reality, fluent listening normally depends on the use of both processes operating
simultaneously. Think about talking to your friends (in your first language) in a noisy
bar. It is likely that you ‘guess’ the content of large sections of the conversation, based
on your knowledge of the topic and what has already been said. In this way, you rely
more on top-down processing to make up for unreliability in the sound signal, which
forms an obstacle to bottom-up processing. Similarly, second-language listeners often
revert to their knowledge of the topic and situation when faced with unfamiliar
vocabulary or structures, so using top-down processing to compensate for difficulties in
bottom-up processing. On the other hand, if a listener is unable to understand anything
of what she hears, she will not even be able to establish the topic of conversation, so
top-down processing will also be very limited.

In the classroom
In real-life listening, our students will have to use a combination of the two processes,
with more emphasis on top-down or bottom-up listening depending on their reasons for
listening. However, the two types of listening can also be practised separately, as the
skills involved are quite different.

Top-down listening activities

Do you ever get your students to predict the content of a listening activity beforehand,
maybe using information about the topic or situation, pictures, or key words? If so, you
are already helping them to develop their top-down processing skills, by encouraging
them to use their knowledge of the topic to help them understand the content. This is
an essential skill given that, in a real-life listening situation, even advanced learners are
likely to come across some unknown vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context
and co-text, they should either be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or
understand the general idea without getting distracted by it.

Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a series of

pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and identifying where
they take place, reading information about a topic then listening to find whether or not
the same points are mentioned, or inferring the relationships between the people
involved.

Bottom-up listening activities

The emphasis in EFL listening materials in recent years has been on developing top-
down listening processes. There are good reasons for this given that learners need to
be able to listen effectively even when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary or structures.
However, if the learner understands very few words from the incoming signal, even
 knowledge about the context may not be sufficient for her to understand what is
happening, and she can easily get lost. Of course, low-level learners may simply not
have enough vocabulary or knowledge of the language yet, but most teachers will be
familiar with the situation in which higher-level students fail to recognise known words
in the stream of fast connected speech. Bottom-up listening activities can help learners
to understand enough linguistic elements of what they hear to then be able to use their
top-down skills to fill in the gaps.

The following procedure for developing bottom-up listening skills draws on dictogloss,
and is designed to help learners recognise the divisions between words, an important
bottom-up listening skill. The teacher reads out a number of sentences, and asks
learners to write down how many words there would be in the written form. While the
task might sound easy, for learners the weak forms in normal connected speech can
make it problematic, so it is very important for the teacher to say the sentences in a
very natural way, rather than dictating them word-by-word.

Some suitable sentences are:

 I’m going to the shop.

 Do you want some chocolate?

 Let’s have a party!

 I’d better go soon.

 You shouldn’t have told him.

 What are you doing?

 There isn’t any coffee.

 What have you got?

 He doesn’t like it.

 It’s quite a long way.

 Why did you think you’d be able to?

 Can you tell him I called?

Learners can be asked to compare their answers in pairs, before listening again to
check. While listening a third time, they could write what they hear, before
reconstructing the complete sentences in pairs or groups. By comparing their version
with the correct sentences, learners will become more aware of the sounds of normal
spoken English, and how this is different from the written or carefully spoken form. This
will help them to develop the skill of recognising known words and identifying word
divisions in fast connected speech.

Conclusion
Successful listening depends on the ability to combine these two types of processing.
Activities which work on each strategy separately should help students to combine top-
down and bottom-up processes to become more effective listeners in real-life situations
or longer classroom listenings.

Repeated listening

Repetition was especially stressed by all teachers as an effective as well as common

strategy employed in their L2 listening lessons. According to these teachers,
repeated listening to the input material could help make the information more
comprehensible to the learners. Usually, the repetition took place in conjunction
with paused play, especially when the sentences were long. The following
description is typical of such a practice:

I just ask my students to listen to the materials many times, maybe three times. If
they still fail to understand… I play the tape paragraph by paragraph and
sometimes even sentence by sentence. Although some listening passages are quite
difficult to understand, chances are that students understand some parts… So when
they listen again, they can focus on the other parts that they fail to understand
earlier. (Minqiu)

Repetition has always been an important strategy in second language learning and
teaching since it provides more processing time and clarifies the relationship of
syntactic forms (Hatch, 1983). Field (2008), for instance, points out that replaying
the recording not only allows attention to be given to the forms of language, but
also enables the learner to build increasingly on the information that is extracted.
Preferred Approaches to Coping with Processing Factor

As mentioned above, processing variables constitute another major source of L2

listening problems. Difficulties related to word segmentation and recognition skills
as well as attention were especially stressed by the participants in this study.
During the interviews, the teachers elaborated on five approaches, namely
pronunciation instruction, focused activities on phonetic variations, aural-written
verification, repeated listening and dictation to enhance their students’ word
discrimination skills, the development of which was deemed essential to tackle the
attention/working memory problems commonly associated with L2 listening.

Pronunciation instruction

Incorrect pronunciation is widely considered a factor that contributes to many L2

listeners’ inability to recognize known words (e.g., Liu, 2003). Teachers in this
study believed that oftentimes students could not recognize the spoken form of
certain words because they pronounced those words in a substantially different
manner from the speakers in the listening passage. The instructional activity
suggested by teachers to address this problem was to integrate the process of
listening practice, pronunciation practice, reading (aloud) and teacher correction.
Below is one example:

Sometimes I ask my students to read short text involving words that Chinese
students often pronounce wrongly and then correct their pronunciation. Students
can then realize that their pronunciation is incorrect. I often remind them to imitate
the speaker while listening… I ask them to imitate the speakers after listening.
(Jigeng)

Focused practice on phonetic variations

The importance of familiarizing students with English phonetic variations was

especially highlighted by the teachers, who believed such speech phenomena to
beone of the major reasons contributing to students’ failure to recognize some
known words in the listening materials. The common strategy adopted by teachers
was to sensitize students to such phenomena, as was illustrated by the following
remark:

I often point out the phenomena involving phonetic variations such as assimilation
for my students. To raise their awareness, I would highlight the parts by having
them carry out repeated listening. (Juntong)

However, it was pointed out by a few teachers that all of the spoken texts included
in the textbook used in most Chinese colleges were prepared passages read out by
native English speakers with predetermined scripts, which limited the occurrence of
phonetic variations. They thus suggested the need to supplement authentic
listening materials abundant with these speech features of English for focused
practice.

To familiarize my students with these phonetic phenomena, I sometimes expose

them to focused practice. I think this can help my students to recognize these
phenomena more easily. However, since we have to cover the content of the
textbook, we don’t have much time for such practice. (Lingcai)

According to Brown (1995), word recognition problems are often related to the way
English sounds are squashed closely together or stretched in speech. The influence
of neighboring words in fast speech can be so great as to make an individual word
unrecognizable (Cauldwell, 1996). In addition, L2 listeners tend to segment on the
basis of their L1 segmentation procedures (Cutler, 2001); as a result, the learners
whose L1 is based on different rhythms and tones are likely to have greater
problems in this respect. If this assumption is correct, Chinese EFL learners appear
to operate under an unfavorable English language learning circumstance in that
Mandarin, as a syllable-timed language, is rhythmically very different from English,
which is a stress-timed language (Platt et al., 1984). English learners with Chinese
background

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might not have been used to hearing speech in which some syllables are given
more stress than others; rather, they might expect to hear every word, including
the words that the speakers deliberately produce with less emphasis (Goh, 1999).
Thus, instructional activities that sensitize the students to segmentation cues, as
suggested by the teachers in this study, can be devised to help learners recognize
lexical boundaries in normal speech. With repeated practice, learners can develop
fluency and automaticity in this important aspect of listening.

Aural-written verification

Resorting to transcripts of the listening materials was advocated by some of the

teacher interviewees as a necessary step to help learners comprehend aural text.
Typically, these teachers would direct students’ attention to the difficult parts that
they failed to decipher earlier. These teachers believed that noticing the
discrepancies between what students heard and what was actually said would be
extremely helpful in familiarizing them with the sound system of the target
language. The following statement is representative of such a view:

I would ask my students to listen to the material many times, carry out some group
discussions about what they have heard...If students still fail to understand, I will
show them the transcripts of the materials. Focusing on the difficult parts involving
phonetic variations is especially useful to familiarize students’ ear to English sound.
(Xiahong)

The use of transcript advocated by teacher interviewees has been confirmed

empirically by Mareschal (2007), who found that aural-written verification practice
was particularly valuable for the low-proficiency group to develop their auditory
discrimination and for high-proficiency students to refine word recognition skills.
Taking a pedagogical angle, Field (2008) also maintains that checking against
written transcript after several hearings of the listening materials is a valuable
activity in that it allows learners, on an individual basis, to clarify sections of the
recording which they have not so far succeeded in decoding. Moreover, such

Effective Approaches to Teaching Listening: Chinese EFL Teachers’ Perspectives

96
practice can enable learners to notice, for instance, the presence of the weak forms
of function words which they would otherwise have missed.

Dictation

Dictation is an activity in which the learners receive some spoken input, hold this in
their working memory, and then write what they heard. This writing is affected by
the learner’s listening skills, command of the target language, and ability to retain
what they have heard in their memory (Field, 2008). Although often associated with
more traditional teaching methods (Oller & Streiff, 1975), dictation remains a
valuable teaching technique, and variations on dictation such as dictogloss and
running dictation are very popular with learners and teachers (Field, 2008; Nation &
Newton, 2009; Wilson, 2003). Empirical evidence has been provided in support of
the effect of dictation in enhancing L2 listening comprehension ability. For instance,
Kiany and Shiramiry (2002) found that frequent dictation had a significant effect on
the listening comprehension ability of their EFL learners. They contend that
dictation a) compelled the subjects to listen more attentively to decode the foreign
speech, b) helped strengthen learner memory, and c) familiarized students with
native speaker English. The majority of the teachers in the present study held a
similar view regarding dictation. They believed that the use of dictation could
promote students’ consciousness about their gaps in perception. One example is as
follows:

Doing dictation is helpful for students to grasp the main idea of the listening
passage and the details in particular since students have to focus on every word
being said… they can be more aware of the parts that they fail to catch. (Leixia)

Repeated listening

Teachers in this study viewed repeated listening as an effective means to help

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their students deal with text-related variables such as fast speed and syntactically
complex sentences. Here, repeated listening was suggested by the teachers as an
important method to familiarize students with the intonation patterns of English,
which they believed could facilitate their automatic processing of the aural
information as the speech signal unfolds in time. The following comment represents
such an opinion:

I think repeated listening is very important. During the process, students can be
more familiar with English phonetic rules and phonetic variations. After some time,
students can listen more quickly and accurately. So I think repeated listening is
very important. (Jigeng)

Strategy-based instruction

The feasibility of teaching listening strategies to students as a way of enhancing

their overall listening comprehension ability was also brought up by several
teachers during the interviews. Interestingly, only the five teacher participants who
had had overseas training experience anchored their discussion of the pros and
cons of strategy-instruction in the latest theory in applied linguistics, whereas the
other five either demonstrated scanty knowledge of what listening strategies were
or wrongly equated listening strategies with test-taking strategies. The following
discussion focused on the views expressed by the teachers who had received formal
training on teaching listening strategies and thus had clearer understanding of what
listening strategies referred to. Among the five teachers, Xiahong, a recent
graduate of a teacher training programme abroad, believed in the power of
teaching strategies and was eager to try it out in her own teaching context:

I used to feel that it would take quite a long time of practice for language learners
to improve their listening comprehension skill. Sometimes, the process was so slow
that students tended to give up before tangible progress could be seen. As the
teaching of listening strategies has the

Effective Approaches to Teaching Listening: Chinese EFL Teachers’ Perspectives

98

potential to speed up the process, I do want to have a try after I come back
teaching. (Xiahong)
Minqiu, who had spent one year overseas, was also convinced of the possibility of
teaching listening strategies to facilitate students’ listening comprehension.
However, he expressed uncertainties as to how to actually implement the teaching
of listening strategies in classroom context:

I think teaching listening strategies will be useful if we relate them to actual

practice. But I just do not know how to teach certain specific strategies, such as
cognitive, meta-cognitive and socio-affective ones…which ones to teach, how to
teach them and how much time we should spend on these strategies. I’m not sure
whether we should mention the term strategies to students specifically or just
integrate them in everyday teaching---this is also something that I do not know
about. (Minqiu)

In addition, Minqiu also pointed out that for lower-proficiency students, the bulk of
instructional time should be allocated to engaging them in listening activities, rather
than encouraging an overdependence on strategies.

You know, when students are told, for instance, that they should guess the
meaning from the context, they may guess in various ways. Besides, if we spend
too much time on strategies, we will definitely have less time for listening practice.
For lower-proficiency students who do not often practice listening after class, this
might not be very good… So for this group of students, I think the focus should be
on listening practice. (Minqiu)

This opinion was echoed by Xiangdi and Qinzhen who talked about the necessity of
teaching listening strategies according to students’ proficiency level. They
suggested that for students who had weak linguistic background or who had
considerable difficulty in word recognition, the focus of listening instruction should

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be on training students’ bottom-up perception skills, although they would not

refrain from mentioning these strategies to students. The opinion is represented by
the following remark:
I think both listening practice and strategy instruction are important, but linguistic
proficiency should be given priority…strategy knowledge will be of no use if the
students have not reached a certain level of linguistic proficiency. Strategy use is
based on linguistic foundation. For instance, the strategy of guessing meaning of
unknown words should be based on understanding of the context. If the linguistic
proficiency is too low and students can understand little, strategy use such as
“evaluating hypothesis” will be meaningless. (Qinzhen)

Guorui, on the other hand, expressed quite firm belief against teaching listening
strategies and believed that training students L2 perception skills was the key to
achieving observable progress in listening:

I think my students’ major problems lie in their poor “decoding skills”… Students
need to be able to recognize the words in spoken form, for instance, from doing
dictation and checking against the transcript...How can they think about strategies
when they are still struggling with decoding what is said by the speaker… Strategy
might be of some use for the reading skill as students have time to read again and
again. But in listening, everything goes so fast that students won’t be able to utilize
the strategies. Anyway, the whole idea of teaching strategies does not sound very
sensible to me.

The lack of agreement regarding the effect of strategy-based instruction among

teachers is of little surprise in that conflicting views also exist in the L2 listening
literature (Field, 2000; Ridgway, 2000). Some researchers fully embrace the notion
of strategy-based instruction in compensating for linguistic weaknesses (Hasan,
2000; Rubin, 1994) while others maintain that there is little point in training

Effective Approaches to Teaching Listening: Chinese EFL Teachers’ Perspectives

100

learners in listening strategies given the fact that the here-and-now nature of
listening can render strategy use unrealistic and inapplicable (Renandya, 2012;
Renandya & Farrell, 2011; Ridgway, 2000; Swan, 2008). Different opinions have
also been voiced with respect to the proportion of instructional time allocated to the
teaching of strategies—whether to make it the focus of the listening lesson or a
supplement of it, and the manner of how it should be taught—whether it should be
integrated into the listening lesson or to be taught separately (Macaro et al, 2007).
McDonough (2006) in particular expresses valid concerns that strategy training may
take valuable time away from the actual language teaching in the classroom.
Obviously, further research is needed to resolve this issue.

CONCLUSION

The findings derived from the interviews in this study show that teachers in general
share similar opinions towards what constitutes effective approaches to helping EFL
learners deal with their listening comprehension difficulties (i.e., Text factor and
Processing factor), which primarily reflect a bottom-up orientation. Specifically,
vocabulary instruction, topic preparation, slowing down the rate of speech
mechanically and repeated listening are deemed to be effective approaches to
facilitating learner comprehension of the L2 spoken text. What is worth noting is
that although empirical studies in general support the benefits of the above-
mentioned approaches in facilitating L2 listening comprehension, there is also
evidence that weak listeners, hampered by deficiency in their linguistic knowledge,
particularly lexical gaps, need a combination of different forms of listening support
to achieve comprehension. In terms of helping listeners develop better processing
skills when engaged in L2 listening events, pronunciation instruction, focused
activity to familiarize learners with the intonation patterns of English, repeated
listening, dictation, aural-written verification after multiple-listening are believed to
be useful in the classroom. These approaches are arguably, at least from the
perspectives of the teachers in this study, quite effective in helping students
develop word recognition and segmentation skills. Interestingly, repeated listening
is reported by participants to be particularly helpful in dealing with both text-related
and processing-related listening difficulties. This belief corresponds to Chang and
Read’s (2006) position that repeated listening cannot only facilitate one-time
comprehension of certain listening materials, but also help students become better
listeners in the long run by habituating them to the rhythms and intonation
patterns of the target language, which is essential for the development of listening
comprehension fluency (see also Renandya, 2011). Strategy-based approach is the
only proposal that has sparked divergent views among teachers regarding its effect
on listening comprehension, especially where low-proficiency students are
concerned. The results of the present study show that although practitioners differ
quite considerably in terms of their conceptualization of listening strategies and
their belief in the effectiveness of strategy-based

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102

instruction, the majority of them who have received formal training in this aspect
support the argument that learners need to be proficient in basic bottom-up
processing skills before we teach them listening strategies. To sum up, cognizant
of their students’ major L2 listening comprehension problems, teachers interviewed
in this study suggest solutions to these problems that highlight the development of
students’ bottom-up processing competence, with the underlying rationale that EFL
learners, who have limited access to target language use in daily life, need to
achieve a level of automaticity that facilitates more fluent and faster processing of
spoken language. Once this level of automaticity is achieved, we can expect our L2
listeners to be “... more capable of dealing with unusual topics, meanings and
words” (Field, 2009, p. 14). Although this study focuses on a specific group of
students and teachers, its findings have implications for wider contexts, particularly
in those situations where students mainly learn a language through formal
classroom instruction and have limited access to authentic language use.

5- Recommended ELT Listening Activities

Listening in ELT, as the other macro- skills, is most effective when the teacher is
able to prepare suitable and appropriate listening materials, in addition to listening
activities to make students more active during class. In this session I will
recommend some listening activities that I think are essential for all ELT listening
classes. These activities are: story-telling, drama, dialogue, music, listening to the
radio, films and telephone.

5.1- Story- telling

People normally love stories because they contain something of interest. Celce-
Murcia and Hilles (1988: 51) state that stories are used in contemporary ESL
materials to promote communication and expression in the classroom. This
suggests that stories are important, even in the classroom. Thus, when the teacher
selects a story to be told it is necessary that he/she has the student’s interest in
mind.

Listening to a story in the ELT classroom requires on the part of the teller a clear
and loud voice, if not the listener may lose interest for the story. The teacher is the
first resource that students have in the classroom; therefore the teacher must have
the necessary skill to be a good story-teller. This helps students to become
effective listeners. A story can be told by the teacher or it can be recorded.
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The following activity is recommended: The teacher presents a short story that
illustrates a structure - Present Perfect, for example. First, this story may appear to
students with blanks. The teacher asks students to listen and complete the story
using the Present Perfect. Finally have them reconstruct the story and one of them
can retell it to the class. Another task that the teacher can add to the activity is to
replay the story and ask them comprehension questions. Students naturally like to
listen to stories, especially if the theme is interesting. It is good to watch the
student’s face to check his/her reaction during the telling of the story.

5.2- Drama

Another successful listening activity is drama. Drama permits teachers to match

structures and functions when they teach grammar, for example. Dramatic
activities are believed to be vital and an effective tool when teaching second-
language communication and phonology. Drama can be integrated with role-play
and simulation, which makes it even more effective. Johnson and Morrow (1981)
state that:” Drama can stimulate the imagination and motivate the student to use
and experiment with the language he has already learned (131).” Activities based
on drama are helpful because they increase students’ motivation, raise their
selfesteem, and make them feel integrated. As we can see, these factors are
necessary if the teacher wants his students to get more involved in the class, i.e.,
in the listening-speaking process. A role-playing activity may illustrate this
listening-speaking process.

The following activity is recommended: The teacher asks students to work in pairs
or small groups. In turns, he/shehas each student in the pair or group pick up an
imaginary object from the floor but should not say anything. The other classmates
can try to guess what the object is. They can ask questions like: “Is it heavy?”, “Is
it smooth?”, “ Do you like it?” “Do you have one?”,etc. According to the given
answers the students may guess what the object is. They can also guess from the
gestures the student makes. 5.3- Dialogue

Dialogue can be considered one of the most important activities in practicing

listening. It is an active way to practice listening because during this activity the
listener has to listen carefully to what the speaker is saying so that he/she can
respond to what he/she hears.

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Dialogue is a kind of role-playing activity in which the listener and the speaker
change roles according to the dialogue’s needs. The use of dialogues brings the
following advantages:

.The spoken language is presented directly in the most common situations;

.The student feels motivated to practice the language;

.When the teacher uses dialogues in class, students are encouraged to active
participation in the lesson.

When the teacher presents a dialogue to students, he/she should think of specific
criteria. Byrne (1988:23) suggests the following criteria:

.The language should be relevant and appropriate;

.The situation should be realistic and relevant;

.The dialogue should not be too long;

.The dialogue should be interesting.

If the dialogue meets these criteria, the student will be motivated to take part in
the dialogue. While the student participates in the dialogue he/she learns
pronunciation by both listening and speaking.

The following activity is recommended:

Teacher must carefully select his/her dialogues according to the student’s level and
interest. So, the teacher can read the text aloud by him/herself or bring native
speakers to the class. Teacher asks students to listen to it attentively. While
listening, have students take notes on what they heard from each character and
next act it out in pairs, using the same gestures and facial expressions and
imitating the same tone of voice. All these elements together help students work
more effectively with dialogues.

5.4- Listening to Music

Music is a way through which languages are spread worldwide. Music contributes to
enrich the culture of a country because it expresses people’s feelings. In Cape
Verde many people listen to music/song with English lyrics. There are two types of
listeners: those who listen because they have some knowledge of the language and
want to improve it and those who have little or no knowledge of the language and
want to listen to the music simply for the

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fact that the singer’s voice is nice or the melody is beautiful. Even a person with no
knowledge of English tries to understand the pronunciation of the verses and sings
as the music is being played. For example in the 1980´s and 1990´s Capeverdian
young people were very influenced by Bob Marley’s Reggae and Michael Jackson’s
Pop music.

Music normally reflects real life situations and therefore can be very useful in the
classroom. According to my questionnaire conducted with teachers and students,
both the groups stated that music is an important tool to teach and learn English.
Music motivates language learners. When student sings he/she repeats the lyrics.
This repetition suggests that he/she is listening attentively. Dubin was cited in
Celce-Murcia and Hilles (1988) and stated that: “Songs can be utilized as
presentation contexts; reinforcement materials; vehicles through which to teach all
language skills; and as a medium through which to present some of the most
important cultural themes which pervade modern life (116).”

The following activity is recommended:

The teacher chooses a song from a well- known singer that draws the students’
attention. Teacher tells students about the theme they are about to listen, then
asks students to listen to the song about HIV-AIDS. While listening they write down
what they are listening to and next they sing the song following the melody. After
that the teacher gives new vocabulary on HIV-AIDS. Students sit in small groups
and write a short song that should be sung to the class.

5.5- Listening to the Radio

Radio is a medium that permits us to listen to news, dramas, advertisements,

sports, music etc. People have different interests in listening to the radio. When we
listen to the radio we have to double our attention because in case we do not
understand what is said, there is not a second chance for repetition. However it is
fundamental that we focus our attention on the most important words that will
provide us an image of what we need to listen to. When we listen to the radio we
listen mainly for general understanding. This is discussed in section 4.1. The
activities broadcasted on radio require a lot on the part of the student to
understand once there is no image just sound to help him/her with comprehension.

The teacher can plan a lesson based on a radio program that will be broadcasted
during class time. If it is impossible to do so, the teacher should use a recorded
program. With recorded material, the student has the opportunity to listen more
than once to understand the activity,

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but as soon as he/she familiarizes him/herself with this type of activity he/she
should be able to perform a task by listening once or twice. Krashen and Terrell
(1988) reinforce this idea by saying that: “Some students will understand the
recorded material after two or three repetitions, others may need up to thirty
repetitions (154).” Despite what has been said above, it is important to admit that
human beings learn differently, so it is normal that sometimes a student needs to
listen more than once, especially if he has to listen to the radio. In addition the
number of times needed for a listening activity varies from the lowest to the highest
level.

The following activity is recommended:

Teacher brings the radio to class. Tells students to listen very carefully because
there is no chance for a second time. The selected program can be about
meteorological information of eight Western European Capitals broadcasted by the
BBC. Teacher provides the names of the capitals and have students write down
what they are listening. Students should be separated in groups of eight and each
member has to give information about heat, wind, sea and sky in each capital. For
example “A” members – capital “A”; “B” members – “B” capital, and so forth. After
performing the task the teacher asks students to read the notes for the class. It is
important that the teacher records the information for any doubts.

5.6- Watching films

Watching films is a demanding yet interesting listening activity. In any listening
activity teacher considers student’s level and this aspect may bring success to the
ELT class. While student listens to the radio he/she has to make a great level of
effort to understand what is being said because he/she only listens to different
people speaking but when he/she watches a film the level of effort is less because
he/she has a set of images that helps him/her understand what is heard from the
characters. Moreover student is able to understand most of the details in the film
given that he/she can hear what a character is saying and see how the character
expresses him/herself. According to his/her body or facial expressions and tone of
voice the character provides the listener better comprehension. When there are
visual images the listening activity is more interesting and the student feels more
involved in such an activity. Ryan (1998) points out that “Students will often
express an interest in using movies as a medium for language learning…” Watching
films is not an easy task because our students are not so used to viewing/listening
to films but reading the translation in Portuguese. Third cycle students who are
expected to have an acceptable language

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background should not read translation, just view the film paying attention to the
voices. The studies show that most of the students surveyed suggested film as a
way to learn English.

The following activity is recommended:

The teacher chooses a short romantic film. Tells students that the theme is about a
poor boy who intended to marry a rich girl who loved each other very much. Sets
pre-listening questions like: What do you expect to see in the film?, After answering
the pre-questions have they listen to the film , after that teacher sets
comprehension questions like: Did the boy and the girl really get married?, and
have students answer these questions. If the teacher has time he/she could ask
students to verbally summarize the film.

5.7- Listening on the Telephone

The telephone is an effective tool for practicing listening. It requires more effort on
the part of the listener because there is no face-to-face communication. He/she can
not see the speaker’s gestures or facial expressions that are helpful in listening
comprehension. However, not like the radio, conversation on the telephone can be
controlled because the listener can ask for repetition or clarification if h/she does
not understand any point. When listening to the radio, for example, the listener has
to double his concentration because there is no repetition of misheard words or
utterances. It is possible that many students have a mobile phone; therefore they
can use them for practicing communication during class.

The following activity is recommended:

The teacher gives students a two-minute activity. Have them work in pairs. Teacher
tells them they can talk about anything that is interesting for them. For example
their conversation can be about what each one did or is going to do on his/her
weekend. They can also talk about free times, holidays, football, etc. If there are
not enough mobile phones the students can cooperate with the classmates by
lending them the phones for a two-minute period. It is necessary that students do
not talk with a loud voice. Each one has to listen on the phone.

5.8- Overall Recommendations

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These activities were provided to assist teachers in developing their own along
these lines. Teachers should look for ways of using and improving these activities
taking into consideration the students listening background. It is important to
remember that these types of activity may be difficult for some students, mainly
when they have to listen to a recorded story, the radio, films, music and the
telephone , because the listener does not have a speaker in front of him/her. In
order to make these activities attractive to students teachers must carefully choose
them before going into the class.
6- CONCLUSION

Throughout this research paper we had analyzed best ways to teaching listening
skills and focused on the problems teachers face in the Capeverdian classroom.
When there are problems teachers should see the problems as challenges and look
for solutions. In today’s world English is a language spoken worldwide, so if we
want our students to compete we should provide them with strong speaking skills
which imply good listening skills.

Listening is not an easy task to teach. It demands a great deal of concentration on

the part of the student. Teachers will not give successful listening classes if they do
not have appropriate equipment, classroom environment and students motivation
and interest. But we must remember that even when the equipment is appropriate
it is also necessary to have access to listening materials which should be selected
according to students grades and needs. After the teacher has these conditions
done he/she has to decide which techniques can be used and which listening
activities best help students to learn language in an effective

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way. If we teach students according to methodologies we contribute to make of

them effective listeners and consequently effective speakers.

This research paper is a kind of teaching tool teachers have at hands that may help
them when teaching students through listening. They will find in the work
suggestions for how teachers can improve listening skills teaching in Capeverdian
classroom.

It is necessary that all teachers be well trained in speaking skills. If listening

depends on good pronunciation then it is necessary that we have a good command
of pronunciation which will make of the students better listeners. It is also
necessary to have a listening laboratory on the school grounds with all necessary
conditions for listening classes, more and improved listening equipment like radio,
tape-recorder, television, CD player, etc. Teachers themselves need to practice the
language with the intent to improve their listening skills as well as other skills. This
can be done by practicing language skills in coordination meetings, preparing
lessons to be presented to fellow teachers in the coordination meetings for feed-
back. Creating study practice habits where students have time to speak “English
only”. Listening to music, documentaries and news on the radio and television,
talking to native speakers face to face or on the Internet also helps.

Teachers need to participate in exchange programs where Capeverdian teachers

can visit every summer an English-speaking country to practice the language and
know the AngloSaxon cultures. Teachers also need in- service training to retain
specific listening skills and creative methodologies. It is very important to gather
our efforts in order to make NETA become a strong English teachers association
because NETA will work as the English teachers´ voice in Cape Verde.

For colleagues who are interested in this topic I would suggest further research in
the following areas:

1- The effectiveness of specific listening techniques on different cycle students;

2- Creating local resources to teach listening skills

With all this said and done, I believe that teachers will agree that it is possible to
improve how listening skills are taught in Capeverdian EFL classrooms in order to
produce fluent English speakers. This should be our goals.