Constituents of a successful listening lesson in high school

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Constituents of a successful listening lesson in high school

D. Reviakina, L. Lukianenko

It is common knowledge that communication is central to the learning process. Without it no learning could make place. With the communicative approach to teac hing foreign languages listening becomes essential not only as a receptive skill, but also as a very effective means of spoken language proficiency development. In fact, listening plays a crucial role in mastering a foreign language. It is one of the most important sources of increasing vocabulary. Besides, it effectively helps to improve a qualitative level of both speaking and comprehension. During the ordinary day, we deploy listening four times as much as reading and writing and twice as much as speaking [6, 1]. Research shows that in the process of communication listening takes 40-50% of our time, speaking - 25-30%, reading - 10-15%, and writing - less than 10% [4, 9].

Notwithstanding the obvious importance of mastering the skill of listening comprehension, it was poorly taught in schools until recently. Previously it was co n- sidered to be the skill which did not need any special training as it could be acquired naturally. Today the situation is changing and the problem of teaching listening comprehension is attracting interest of a large number of scholars and methodologists. Among them are S. Gaponova, S. Nikolayeva, L. Miller, J. Morley, W.M. Richards, J. Harmer and others.

Unfortunately, although a good deal has been written and said about how best to use class time, much of the time in many language classrooms is still devoted entirely to the exercises in the course textbooks which do not include high-quality listening comprehension exercises or activities. Moreover, some of these activities and listening materials, not being stimulating and challenging, do not agree with learners' interest and are sometimes not appropriate for all levels without being graded. Some EFL teachers, accustomed to following exactly the exercises and tasks provided in a basic textbook, have little time to prepare additional activities and look on new original activities as extra work and a burden. Nevertheless, an effort must be made to get both students and teachers into the active learning and teaching process.

The purpose of this article is to treat some of the most important aspects of teaching listening comprehension to EFL students in the language classroom which are constituents of the success in teaching this communication skill, in particular the choice of listening material and the use of a variety of techniques and activities at the pre-, while- and post-listening stages which would improve students' motivation in the process of learning the target language and make a listening lesson successful.

The material basis of listening comprehension is an audiotext, which should meet a number of requirements to be a suitable one. S. Nikolayeva believes that the most important traits which an audiotext should possess are its information content and an interesting plot [1, 122]. According to the recent Foreign Language Syllabus, the audiotext which is designed for senior secondary school steudents should have a strict composition, comprise monothematic information, last no more than 3-4 minutes and contain 4-5% of unknown words the meaning of which might be guessed from context [2]. While choosing an appropriate audiotext for a listening lesson, for EFL teachers it is recommended to pay special attention to authentic and learner- authentic materials.

The text is considered to be authentic if it is not supposed to be used for educational purposes. J. Harmer believes that authentic materials are those with `real' la n- guage produced by real speakers for a real audience [3, 198]. Announcements, advertisements, songs, poems, interviews, etc. are traditionally considered to be authentic materials. Apart from interesting content and usefulness, authentic texts have a number of other advantages. The majority of them, for instance, reflect typical natural situations and contain information of national specificity of native speakers. It is an extremely important factor since lack of such knowledge makes communication with a foreigner almost impossible. Besides, authentic texts represent natural speech, including a variety of accents, paraphrasing, hesitations and other characteristics of spoken discourse.

However, the use of only authentic materials in teaching process is methodically unreal. Linguistically difficult texts are unlikely to be suitable for developing most skills, especially if they result in the use of translation or any kind of substantial intervention from the teacher. The experience shows that in educational process it is necessary to use learner-authentic materials which are simplified texts which do not misrepresent the natural use of language. They retain as much as possible of the textual quality and discourse organization of the original. The most significant advantage of these texts is that they correspond not only to standards and aims of natural communication, but also to methodological demands, to students' intellectual and language level.

The use of both authentic and learner-authentic texts, which are informative, coherent and diverse in subject matter, makes them an important part of a successful listening process. Nevertheless, the text itself is only one element in listening activity. Equally important is how you approach it and the activities you use with it. As authenticity can be viewed from different angles, listening tasks and activities should also be authentic and stimulating listeners' cognitive interest. It is desirable that teachers design task-oriented exercises to engage the students' interest, to encourage them to use different kinds of listening skills and strategies.

EFL teachers can make listening practice more interesting, challenging and realistic by following specific stages of listening comprehension: pre-listening, whilelistening and post-listening.

The pre-listening stage is supposed to prepare students for listening an audiotext. This stage plays an important role in the whole process. First of all, it should clear up a direct task in order to help students to focus on the understanding of the content of the passage. Secondly, this stage should arouse students' interest in the topic which will be represented in the audiotext. Thus, pre-listening tasks are suppoused to generate learners' interest, to build their confidence and facilitate their comprehension of the audiotext [5]. There are a number of factors which should be taken into account by the teacher while choosing listening material and preparing tasks for this material. Among them are pondering on the students' interest, checking whether all the activities are suitable, adjusting the level of difficulty of the tasks, thinking of the subjects and content of an audiotext, preparing visual support and other equipment if necessary.

There are a number of pre-listening activities which can help students to cope successfully with listening tasks. The EFL teacher should understand that there are a lot of factors which may prevent students from understanding the material of an aud i- otext. The most important and, perhaps, necessary in the pre-listening stage is setting the context. It means that the teacher should give students basic information about the person who will present the text and the circumstances. This makes the listening process closer to the real life because while listening to someone we normally know who it is and what they are talking about. Sometimes students can have limited knowledge about a topic of an audiotext they are going to listen to. In this case, providing students with some facts concerning the topic can raise their confidence in dealing with the task.

The teacher can also ask students to make predictions about the words, phrases and expressions they will probably hear. It can help to rehearse the vocabulary of the topic and guess what is going to be presented in the passage. Pre-listening activities prepare learners with language to use at while- and post listening stages. New vocabulary can be presented in different ways. Such techniques as matching, synonyms and guessing from context can help high school students to get acquainted with the new words [5].

The while-listening stage includes direct listening to the audiotext and doing some tasks in the process of listening which can help students understand the audiotext. To make listening successful, it is necessary to listen to the passage several times. During the first listening students should gain global understanding of the text. Then, while listening to the passage for the second, or the third if necessary, they should focus on more detailed and specific information. The while -listening stage is presented by a number of various activities, such as filling in the gaps, comparing, ticking off items, putting lines into the correct order, matching people to the statements, detecting mistakes, etc. After finishing listening to the passage, students can also compare its content with their predictions which they made during the prelistening stage.

The final stage, post-listening, can aid both the teacher and students to evaluate success in coping with the task [6, 4]. It also helps learners to connect what they have heard with their own ideas and experience. At this final stage the following techniques and activities can be suggested:

1. Answering to show comprehension of messages. Students are asked to do multiple-choice or true/false tests as well as to answer some comprehension questions.

2. Summarizing. Learners are given several possible summary-sentences and asked to say which of them fits a recorded text.

3. Jigsaw listening. Different groups of students listen to different but connected passages, each of which supplies some part of what they need to know. Then they come together to exchange information in order to complete a story or perform a task [7, 195].

Post-listening activities also allow the teacher to move to practicing other communication skills - writing or speaking. For instance, the teacher can suggest writing a letter, a postcard or composition related to the passage. Role-playing a similar interaction, debating, problem-solving, giving opinions and other activities can help in practicing speaking skills.

To sum up, there are some recommendations for EFL teachers who want to make their listening lessons successful. Firstly, students should be motivated while listening to authentic or learner-authentic texts. Secondly, choosing activities which would be both challenging and interesting for them, corresponding to their level of proficiency can also contribute to a success of a listening lesson. Finally, dividing a lesson into three stages - pre-, while- and post-listening - will make it more structured and arouse students' interest.

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References

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2. Програма для загальноосвітніх навчальних закладів. Англійська мова 10-11 класів. Академічний рівень. - Київ, 2016. [Електронний ресур]. - Режим доступу: http://www.mon.gov.ua/

3. Harmer J. The Practice of English Language Teaching / J. Harmer. - [3rd ed.] - Essex : Pearson Education Limited, 2004. - 371 p.

4. Mendelsohn D. J. Learning to Listen: A Strategy-based Approach for the Second Language Learner / D. J. Mendelsohn. - San Diego: Dominie Press, 1994. - 141 p.

5. Pre-listening activities [Електронний ресурс]. - Режим доступу: https://www.teachingenglish.ore.uk/article/pre-listening-activities

6. Van Dozer C. Improving ESL Learners' Listening Skills: At the Workplace and Beyond / C. Van Dozer. - Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, 1997. - 6 p.

7. Yagang F. Listening: Problems and solutions / F. Yagang // Teacher Development Making the Right Moves. Selected articles from the English Teaching Forum 19891993 / Ed. by T. Kral. - English Language Programs Division United States Information Agency Washington. D.C., 1994. - P. 189-196.

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