Teaching-listening.ppt

1、中学英语教学法 Unit 8 Teaching Listening,Unit 8 Teaching Listening,Issues for discussion: Why is listening so difficult for students? What do we listen to in everyday life? What are the characteristics of the listening process? What are the principles of teaching listening? What are the common activities i

2、n teaching listening?,8.1 Why does listening seem so difficult?,It is becoming more and more necessary to understand spoken English in many situations, e.g. face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, business meetings, lectures, speeches, television, etc. Among the four skills, foreign language le

3、arners often complain that listening is the most difficult to acquire.,Reasons why listening is often neglected in language teaching,Lack of teaching materials; Lack of equipment; Lack of training in how to use the equipment; Listening is not included on many important tests; Lack of real-life situa

4、tions where language learners need to understand spoken English; Lessons tend to test rather than to train student listening skills.,Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than reading because:,Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways

5、, e.g. dialects and accents, stress, rhythms, intonations, mispronunciations, etc.; The listener has little/no control over the speed of the input of the spoken material; The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material); -,The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning;

6、Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. round the classroom) or the media that transmit sounds; The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.,8.2 What do we listen to in everyday life?,Since we are teaching our stu

7、dents English not only to help them pass exams, but also to prepare them to use English in real life, it is important to think about the situations they will listen to English in real life and then think about the listening exercises we do in class.,Even at the beginning stage, we need to give our s

8、tudents a variety of listening exercises to prepare them for real life use of language. In most cases, the listening materials in the classroom are daily conversations or stories, but in reality we listen to far more things. e.g.,Telephone conversations about business; Lessons or lectures given in E

9、nglish; Instructions in English; Watching movies in English; Dealing with tourists; Interviews with foreign-enterprises; Socializing with foreigners; Listening to English songs; -,Radio news in English; Conversations with foreigners; Watching television programmes in English; Shop assistants who sel

10、l goods to foreigners; International trade fairs; Negotiations with foreign businessmen; Hotel and restaurant services.,8.3 Characteristics of the listening process,It is important to understand the characteristics or process behind these listening situations so that we as teachers can design approp

11、riate activities to help our students to develop effective listening habits and strategies.,Formal or informal? Rehearsed or non-rehearsed? Can the listener interact with the speaker nor not? Listening to English songs Socializing with foreigners Radio news in English Watching television programmes

12、in English Negotiations with foreign businessmen Hotel and restaurant services,Characteristics of the listening: (Ur 1996:106-7),Spontaneity. We listen to people peaking spontaneously and informally without rehearsing what whey are going to say ahead of time. Context. While listening, we know the re

13、lationship between the listener and the speaker. The situation helps to predict what we are going to hear. Visual clues. Facial expression, gestures, and other body language, and the surrounding environment, these visual clues help us predict and understand what we hear. -,Listeners response. In a c

14、onversation, we can interrupt the speaker and ask for repetition or clarification. Speakers adjustment. The speaker can adjust the way of speaking according to the listeners reaction, e.g. he/she may rephrase or elaborate (to put it in more details).,8.4 Principles of teaching listening,Focus on pro

15、cess. Combine listening and speaking. Focus on comprehending meaning. Grade difficulty level appropriately.,Focus on process,Listening is not a passive activity. We must do many things to process information that we are receiving. Paying attention. Constructing meaningful messages in the mind by rel

16、ating what we hear to what we already know (previous knowledge). So it is very important to design tasks the performance of which show how well the students have comprehended the listening material.,Combine listening and speaking,Two problems with the traditional listening classroom: No opportunitie

17、s to practise listening and speaking skills together; The questions only test the students, rather than train the students how to listen or how to develop listening strategies.,Focus on comprehending meaning,In the traditional textbooks, the listening exercises are to test the students memory, not t

18、heir listening comprehension. Psycholinguistic studies have shown that people do not remember the exact form of the message they hear, i.e., they dont remember what they hear word for word, rather, they remember the meaning.,Grade difficulty level appropriately,Three factors that may affect the diff

19、iculty level of listening tasks: Type of language used; Task or purpose in listening; Context in which the listening occurs.,Which of the following would you use for intermediate middle school students? In what order?,A videotape of a talk by a native speaker about the school life of middle school s

20、tudents in the United States; A live talk by a competent English-speaking Chinese psychologist about effective study habits; An audiotape of an interview with a native English speaker talking about her experiences living in China; An audiotape of the news from CRI (China Radio International) -,The t

21、eacher need to evaluate the tasks provided in textbooks, adapt and design tasks to provide more variety. Variety does not only help students remain interested and motivated to learn, but also provide practise in the many types of listening situations which learners will encounter in real life.,Commo

22、n activities in teaching listening,Pre-listening activities While-listening activities Post-listening activities,Pre-listening activities,Predicting Setting the scene Listening for the gist Listening for specific information,Predicting,Good listeners are good predictors. There are many different act

23、ivities that can be used to encourage students to predict the content of what they are about to hear. Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students comprehension. “They attract students attention and help and encourage them to focus on the subject in hand” (Ur, 1984:30).,Using pictures for pr

24、ediction,In the beginning the students may have difficulty in predicting. In this case the teacher can help them by asking leading questions. e.g.,e.g. 1,T: Where are they? What are they doing? What is the relationship between them?,e.g. 2,T: What do you see in the picture? What is behind the trees?

25、 What is in the tree? What is in the river?,Another type of predicting task is to let students read the listening comprehension questions before they listen.,Setting the scene,The teacher can help provide the background information to activate learners schema, so they will be better prepared to unde

26、rstand what they hear. e.g. A passage about Michael Jackson,Listening for the gist,Listening for the gist is similar to skimming a passage in reading. The key is to ask students one or two questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage. Notice that students can answer

27、 the gist questions even though they do not understand every word or phrase in the passage.,Listening for specific information,There are situations in real life where we listen only for some specific details and ignore the rest of the entire message. e.g. weather forecast, announcements in train sta

28、tions/airports It is important to expose our students to a variety of types of listening texts for a variety of purposes so that they will develop a variety of listening strategies to use for different situations.,Summary on pre-listening activities,We may use more than one kind of pre-listening act

29、ivity; Pre-listening tasks should not take much time; The purpose of pre-listening activities is to activate the students schema, i.e. to provide context.,8.6 While-listening activities,The while-listening stage is the most difficult for the teacher to control, because this is where the students nee

30、d to pay attention and process the information actively. Some tasks for while-listening activities:,No specific responses,For stories, or anything that is interesting, humourous, or dramatic, we just have the students listen and enjoy it.,Listen and tick,Listen and sequence,Listen and act,Total Phys

31、ical Response: for beginners “Stand up”, “Point to the ”; for intermediate learners “Pretend youre (doing something)”,Listen and draw (p. 91),Listen and fill,It is important NOT to overdo this type of tasks, since it gives students the impression that they need to understand every word. We may ask t

32、he students to fill in the blanks with function words, say, prepositions.,Listen and guess,e.g. For height, appearance, and personalities Four clues about an animal,Advantages of the above listening activities,They personalize the lesson and make the listening interesting. They integrate listening w

33、ith the other skills, especially speaking.,Summary on while-listening activities,Most of the time, it is helpful to provide a task for the students to do something while they are listening. By providing a variety of types of tasks, students learn to listen for a variety of purposes, which better pre

34、pares them for listening in the real world outside the classroom.,8.7 Post-listening activities,The post-listening stage is where the teacher can determine how well the students have understood what they listened to. One important point to keep in mind is whether we are testing the students listening comprehension or their memory. It is more common for people to understand more than they can remember.,S