Teaching Methods & Listening Comprehension

Method of Teaching

1. Learners

The first to consider when choosing a method is the characteristics & nature of the students.
Number, age, maturity,
grade level, abilities, interests, growth, health, problems should be considered for learning to take
place.

2. Subject Matter

This factor deals with the nature of the content to be learned which may be difficult or uninteresting,
hence, the teacher
must be able to use/choose the methods/strategy that will make learning effective & meaningful.

3. Objectives

The expected outcome of the lesson also dictates the strategy to be used. It must be one that will
ensure full
achievement of the set objectives.

4. Time Allotment

How much time does the teacher have to teach the lesson? The strategy must be able to help target
the desired outcomes
within the time frame.

5. Teacher (you)

The teacher's style, academic preparation, skills, interest & abilities are also points of consideration.
It is important
that he/she could effectively execute the method/strategy of his/her choice to ensure success of
learning.
6. School Equipment & Facilities

The availability of materials, devices & technologies needed should be considered for the lack of
them may hinder the
achievement of the target.

Eclectic Method

Specialists in FL learning and teaching conclude that no single ELT method can meet all teaching
and learning needs, thus
teachers need to adapt their teaching procedures to the specific circumstances of the learning and
teaching process.

Depending on what teachers teach in a unit and the activities that they propose, they will use one
method or another.
Besides, not all students learn the same way, so teachers must draw on the strengths of each
method to ensure that their
students can learn.

The idea that each teacher creates his/her own method means taking those parts of the different
methods that may not be
very important when separated, but inputting the parts together would lead to a satisfactory
implementation and optimization
of learning.

Eclecticism

Because of what is mentioned, many come to the conclusion that in teaching practice, there is a
favor of eclecticism.

Eclectic approach is a method of foreign language teaching that combines various approaches and
methodologies to teach
language depending on the aims of the lesson and the abilities of the learners. i.e. different teaching
methods are borrowed
and adapted to suit the requirement of the learners.

The term comes from the Greek " (eklektikos), literally "choosing the best" and that from (eklektos),
"picked out, select".

Listening Comprehension

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.

Listening is the ability to understand the meaning of the words he hears and to relate to them in
some way.

Listening comprehension is a complex process in which listeners play an active role in discriminating
between sounds,
understanding vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpreting intonation and stress, and finally,
making use of all the
skills mentioned above, interpreting the utterance within the socio-cultural context.

The Importance of Listening

1. Listening is the most common communicative activity in daily life: "we can expect to listen twice
as much as we speak,
four times more than we read, and five times more than we write." (Morley, 1991: 82)

2. Listening is also important for obtaining comprehensible input that is necessary for language
development.

3. Students hear different accents and varieties.

4. Listening helps students to acquire language subconsciously.

What is involved in listening comprehension?

1. Speech perception (e.g., sound discrimination, recognize stress patterns, intonation, pauses,
etc.).

2. Word recognition (e.g., recognize the sound pattern as a word, locate the word in the lexicon,
retrieve lexical,
grammatical and semantic information about the word, etc.).
3. Sentence processing (parsing; e.g., detect sentence constituents, building a structure frame,
etc.).

4. Construct the literal meaning of the sentence (select the relevant meaning in case of ambiguous
words).

5. Hold the information in short-term memory.

6. Recognize cohesive devices in discourse.

7. Infer the implied meaning and intention (speech act).

8. Predict what is to be said.

9. Decide how to respond.

Advices for teaching listening

1. Use plenty of recorded material.

2. Prepare the learners for listening by setting the scene, introducing the characters, pre-teaching
vocabulary, etc.

3. Before the learners listen, set a listening task which directs them to an overall 'gist' understanding
of the passage.

4. Check the answers to this task, playing the recording again if necessary.

5. Set a further task, or tasks, which direct learners to a more detailed understanding.

6. Only use the tape script (if there is one!) as a last resort.

7. Make the recording, and the tasks, as 'authentic' as possible.

Guidelines for Designing Listening Activities

The following are guidelines for designing listening activities:

2. Videos/texts should last from two to five minutes.

3. Tasks for each text/video should be arranged from easy to difficult.

4. Texts/videos should be presented three to four times to students, with a different task each time.

5. In teaching listening, homework is a must.

6. Speaking and listening should be paired.

7. Video clips are highly recommended for arousing students' interest.

Difficulties in Listening

Students may face issues such as:

- Trying to understand every word.

- Going back trying to understand previous words.

- Not recognizing known words.

- Struggling with different accents.

- Getting tired or mentally blocked.

- Being distracted.

- Needing images to support understanding.

- Having hearing problems.

Framework of a Listening Lesson

A listening lesson can be divided into three main stages:

2. While-listening: Completing tasks based on the listening material.

3. Post-listening: Discussing, analyzing, or expanding on what was heard.