Tập huấn hè 2008_3

TEACHING LISTENING
PRESENTED BY

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What kinds of listening should be used in
class?
2. Point out some listening problems faced by
your students. Suggest possible solutions
to these problems.
3. Discuss the bottom-up and top-down
processing in teaching listening.
4. Follow-up activity

KINDS OF LISTENING
According to Harmer (1998:98), there are two
kinds of listening material:

Authentic listening material is unscripted
material or pre-recorded announcements,
telephone messages, lectures, plays, news
broadcasts, interviews, other radio program
stories read aloud, etc.

Realistic listening material is scripted
material.

KINDS OF LISTENING (continued)
NOTE
Authentic listening material may cause
problems to students, especially to beginners

because they won’t understand a word;
however it can give students a feel for the
sound of the language and becomes
accustomed to the authentic language that
will facilitate their communication in real life
later on.

KINDS OF LISTENING (continued)
Doff (1995:199) notes that in real life there are
two kinds of listening:

Casual listening: People listen with no
particular purpose in mind , and often without
much concentration (i.e. they do not listen
very closely, and may not remember much of
what they heard)
e.g. Listening to the radio while doing some
housework; chatting to a friend.

KINDS OF LISTENING (continued)

Focused listening: People listen for a particular purpose to find
out information they need to know (i.e. they listen much more
closely for the most important points or for particular information)
e.g. Listening to a piece of important news on the radio.
Listening to someone explaining how to operate a machine.
NOTE:
According to him, the kind of listening used in class should be
focused listening. Teachers expect students to listen closely and
remember afterwards what they heard.

SOME LISTENING PROBLEMS FACED BY
THE STUDENTS

Students have to go with the speed of the
voice (s) when listening. If they fail to
recognize a word or phrase they have not
understood and stop to think about it, they
often miss the next part of the tape and are
falling behind in terms of comprehension.

SOME LISTENING PROBLEMS FACED BY
THE STUDENTS (continued)

Students might meet problems caused by informal spoken
language which has a number of unique features including the
use of
- Incomplete of utterances (e.g. Dinner? Instead of “Is
dinner ready?”)
- Repetitions (e.g. I’m absolutely sure, absolutely sure you
know that she’s right)
- Hesitations (e.g. yes, well, umm, yes, possibly, but, er…)
- Tone of the voice (high pitch or low pitch)
- The intonation used by the speakers
- Accent
- Background noise