Teaching listening in the EFL context
Angie Vanessa Jiménez Sánchez
Teaching Language as Communication
TLC_301 Listening
November 9th, 2023
Universidad Veracruzana
Schema theory
Theory about
knowledge
It focuses on how knowledge is represented
How this representation facilitates
its use in specific ways
What we understand of something is a function of our past experiences and our background
Two simultaneous processes
Bottom-up processing
The movement of data from the page to the brain.
It triggers certain past experiences or perceptions about the topic.
Top-down processing
An attempt by the brain to find an existing knowledge structure.
Apply the knowledge to incoming data, facilitating the assimilation of new information.
Strategies that
EFL teachers can do
Comprehension
activities
Learners can evaluate their efforts and abilities
Opportunities for assessing and
revising what they have achieved.
Focusing on specific goals for listening
Focus on meaning
Learn new and important content
Attention to accuracy and
an analysis of form
Listening to perceive
sounds and words accurately
Work on meaning-oriented activities
Learners can make steady progress
They gain confidence in listening for meaning.
The strategies that the teacher uses in the classroom are fundamental and have a great impact on how the student's confidence in his or her listening skills develops. I say this in terms of my own experience with both capable teachers and those who do not care as much about these aspects of their teaching.
Listening comprehension
Involving individual
linguistic units
Phonemes
Words
Grammatical structures
Background knowledge
Strategies and
expectations
Linguistic and
cognitive skills
Difficulties in listening to English in EFL classroom
Four main areas
(Rixon)
Weak relationship between English sounds and meaning in language expressions.
Changes in sounds in rapid, connected speech with various tones.
Rhythm pattern of English speech.
Different ways of pronouncing the "same" sound.
Several
categories (Ur)
Problem of sounds
Lacking the ability to skim
Inability to keep up with redundancy, noise, and the inability to guess
Lacking exposure and practice
Limited practice and exposure to different kinds of accents and colloquial vocabulary.
In a language center where I studied there used to be foreigners from different parts of the world for us to practice our communication skills and I remember that it was very difficult for me to understand what an Australian guy was saying as I was not used to hearing his kind of accent.
Inability to link words to the context
Lack of skill in using strategies to summarize heard information at both macro and micro levels.
Listening process
Aural reception
of an utterance
First Stage - Sensory Store
The sounds go into a sensory store, often called the “echoic” memory.
The sounds are organized into meaningful units, according to the knowledge of the language the listener already possesses.
Second Stage - Short-Term Memory Processing
The processing of the information by the short-term memory.
Words or groups of words are checked and compared with information already held in the long-term memory.
Final Stage - Meaning Construction
The listener is able to construct a meaning from the utterance if not fully.
The listener may transfer the information to the long-term memory for later use.
Foreign language
Challenges
The listening process does not flow that smoothly.
The listener lacks language skills or has limited knowledge of the language.
Difficulty in organizing the stream of sounds into meaningful units.
Difficulty to reach the second stage of information processing and final stage of transferring it to the long-term memory.
Self-access and
exposure
Study materials
Videos
DVDs
Tapes
Exposure
Learners enjoy listening for pleasure
As an English language learner,
I have found that by using self-access
materials and getting as much
exposure to the language
as I can, I genuinely enjoy
practicing my listening skills.
After-class activities
Listening variety
Watch conversation shows
Watch films from the video collection
Watch live English radio broadcasts
English stories
Follow-up activities
Speaking reports
Oral presentations