Facilitating Listening Comprehension in ELT

— Building A Communicative Student-centered Listening Class

by

Zhang Qing

(No.1 Middle School, Jiaxing)

Date: May 2001

Facilitating Listening Comprehension in ELT

— Building A Communicative Student-centered Listening Class

Outline:

1. Introduction

2. Listening as a crucial skill

3. The need for building a communicative student-centered listening class

3.1 The inefficiency of traditional listening class

3.2 Main factors in the inefficiency

3.2.1 Lack of appropriate materials

3.2.2 Teacher-dominated class

3.2.3 Too much anxiety generated in students

4. Building a communicative student-centered listening class

4.1 The role of classroom atmosphere

4.2 The teacher-student relationship

4.2.1The teacher's role

4.2.2The students' role

4.3 Incorporating pre-listening and post-listening activities

4.3.1 Pre-listening activities

4.3.2 Post-listening activities

4.4 The selection and use of communicative teaching materials

4.4.1Using the course listening materials 4.4.2 Using authentic materials

4.4.2.1The use of audio materials

4.4.2.2The use of visual materials

5. Conclusion

Facilitating listening Comprehension in ELT
— Building A Communicative Student-centered Listening Class

Abstract: This paper presents arguments for an emphasis on listening comprehension in English language teaching/learning. The significance of listening is presented first, and then being discussed is the inefficiency in the traditional structure of listening. The major parts of this paper presents and discusses listening comprehension in a communicative student-centered class with warm classroom atmosphere and good teacher-student relationship, and an emphasis on sound teaching procedure and authentic material using.

Key words: listening comprehension communicative student-centered listening skills authentic materials

1. Introduction

The world is now in the 21st century. English as a global language, plays an increasingly important role in the communicating world. In our country, the demand for people who can successfully communicate in English is becoming more important as China faces ever increasing international investment opportunities and the entering of WTO. Enhancing the listening and speaking components of English learning is thus strongly advocated. Students are required to learn English even in some primary schools. Yet, some students still find many difficulties in the process of learning English. They often “tend to panic when they hear native speakers in conversations, radio broadcasts, films, or other natural context”. (Hadley1997: 175) Even Chinese university graduates often find themselves in embarrassing situations when they are required to speak in English or listen to native speakers, often they could not manage one fluent sentence or understand what is being said. Listening is an important skill “Listening comprehension can enhance the process of language learning acquisition.” (Vandergrift1998: 168) Listening is also an active process. Copper (1995:44) points out that “it (listening) requires practice and concentration”. It also requires the active involvement of the teacher and students. Building a communicative student-centered class might be a good way to achieve better listening comprehension in school education, especially at college level. The aim of this approach is to promote interactive listening.

2. Listening as a crucial skill

Listening, as Hunt (1995:47) points out, means “getting and understanding the message”. It suggests that listening is more than just perception of sound, it also requires comprehension of meaning in that message. Listening quite possibly, is the most important of language skills. Experts estimate that half of people's communication time is spent in listening. It is also the medium through which much significant foreign cultural information is conveyed. Listening will also give an opportunity to get a “feel” for the language and will help students to improve their overall ability in it, for “listening comprehension is a highly integrative skill”, and “it plays an important role in the process of language learning/acquisition, facilitating the emergence of other language skills.”(Vandergrift1999:170) In the process of language learning, the difficulties of listening are highlighted in students. To make students better listeners, teachers should train students to acquire certain skills/strategies, such as compensatory strategies (Field2000:30), micro-strategies or subskills (Field2000: 33), and matacognitive strategies.(Vandergrift1999:170)

3. The need for building a communicative student-centered listening class

Listening is a crucial skill in English language learning. Teachers and students have now spent more time and energies in improving the listening ability and skills. Even with much practice, college students often find that they are good at doing listening tests, but unable to understand what is spoken in the tape as a whole. Who should take the blame?

3.1The inefficiency of traditional listening class

It is not uncommon to find a listening class or a language-lab where, for example: the students are busy baking notes or doing various kinds of listening exercises such as multiple choice, gap filling, etc. The teacher, on the other hand, controls the tape and checks answers afterwards. The social structure of the classroom is powerfully teacher-centered. It is not a favorable condition for the development of listening ability and skills. Students work alone with tapes. The listening topic is also teacher or program-controlled. Listening is just treated as an isolated skill.

4. 2Main factors in the inefficiency

Many factors influence the listening process. Here three main factors which cause the inefficiency of listening are to be discussed: a) lack of appropriate materials b) teacher-dominated class and c) too much anxiety generated in students.

4.2.1Lack of appropriate materials

In the classroom situation, there are many ready-made materials. Some ready-made listening materials are not always suitable for particular subjects or disciplines. Some are found to be too elementary or advanced for students, or take an approach that may not suit the mode of teaching and learning, class-sizes, and the duration of the courses. Many current commercial materials, however, are often spoken at an artificially slow pace, in prestige dialects that are not typical of ordinary speech. Some are quite often oral readings of written material spoken by an actor (he or she may be a native speaker or not) and recorded in a studio. Still other materials are test-oriented which make students frustrated. The teachers, however, need to take caution while using the listening materials. In appropriate material will destroy students' interests and confidence in listening.

3.2.2Teacher-dominated class

One barrier lies in the inefficiency of listening class is teachers' inadequate understanding the harm of exams and the concept: “practice makes it perfect”. They require students do various kinds of exercises in each class. Students are in a passive situation and often feel tired and bored, and too often, teachers only use listening activities to “test listening skills, rather than developing good listening skills”(Miller2000:25), which leads to anxiety and apprehension.

In the teacher-dominated listening class, the teacher serves as a monitor and answer giver. The selection of listening materials depends entirely on the teacher if there are no prescribed ones. The lesson is easy to conduct and requires minimal preparation. The disadvantage of this kind of listening class is the lack of the explicit teaching of listening strategies and absence of communicative listening tasks. Students may feel uncertain about themselves, their place in the group, and their learning abilities.

3.2.3Too much anxiety generated in students

Anxiety researches show that in language classroom, two kinds of anxiety: facilitating and debilitating anxiety, affect the process of language learning. Facilitating anxiety can be useful in keeping student alert while listening; debilitating anxiety can generate student escape from the listening task. Research on the relationship between anxiety and listening comprehension shows that facilitating anxiety and listening comprehension is positively related, while debilitating anxiety is negatively related. ( 杨晋 2000: 54) The anxiety discussed below is actually debilitating anxiety.

The listening class is easy to cause anxiety in students. “Serious anxiety occurs when students feel they can not handle a listening task.”(Scarcella & Oxford1992: 149) The teacher-controlled structure often extends the state of anxiety with the feeling of a vague fear and apprehension. While listening, students always tend to stop when they hear an unfamiliar word or phrases and try to understand every word they hear. When they fail, they might also become frightened, discouraged, tired, and develop a sense of failure.

4. Building a communicative student-centered listening class

The language must be spoken to be heard, heard to be learned. Students are the essential part of the listening process and need to interact with the class input (listening materials) and the teacher. A teaching approach which focused on the effectiveness of listening comprehension requires a warm, relaxed classroom atmosphere. The roles as teacher and students are significant considerations. The communicative listening material and sound procedures as two key features of listening class are also discussed.

4.1The role of classroom atmosphere

“The classroom provides the context for the enactment of the teacher and students.”(Widdowson1991: 182) A successful English class is one which does not simply pass on knowledge, but arouse students' enthusiasm for knowledge. A warm atmosphere is thus needed to keep students active and motivated. Borich and Tombari have observed four types of classroom atmosphere. (1995:304)

A High control

Low warmth
 B High control

High warmth
 C Low control

High warmth
 D Low control

Low warmth
 
High task orientation
 Clearly identified and frequent use of rewards for desirable behavior
 Frequent use of praise and reinforcement
 Frequent scolding and criticizing
 
Frequent use of punishment or humiliation
 Unsolicited student responses discouraged
 Informal classroom rules
 Few classroom rules
 
Lake of praise, reward, or reinforcement
 High task orientation
 Students have say in establishing limits of their behavior
 Student frequently call out
 
Mostly teacher-initiated interchanges
 Mostly teacher initiated interchanged
 Students spontaneity and risk-taking behavior allowing
 Teacher talk focuses on minimizing misbehavior
 
High amount of time devoted to teacher talk
 High amount of time devoted to teacher talk
 Teacher acts as moderator or participant
 Frequent delays for classroom management and reprimands
 

They also point out that an effective classroom management blends warmth and control. (Borich & Tombari1995: 304) That is to say, it puts the best parts of quadrants B and C together to create a classroom management that balances warmth and control.

Listening class provides students to have a feel of the language and requires active responses, for “the process of listening is not completed until the participants made some active response verbal and/or nonverbal” (Cooper1995: 44) Real communication is a shared activity which requires the active involvement of its participates, who must all exercise communicating initiative in guiding that communication. Teacher's responses, as well as students', therefore, can have an important impact on the communicative climate.

A warn, positive classroom atmosphere can “have a beneficial effect on the morale, motivation, and self-image of its members”, and thus significantly affect their learning, by developing in them “a positive attitude to language being learned, to learning process and to themselves as language learner”. (Hadfield1998: 14)

By creating a warm, supportive, and co-operative atmosphere in the listening class, students can execute a more active role and be kept motivated, interested and confident.

4.2 The teacher-student relationship

“Teaching is nothing if it is not relationships”.(Spoulding1992: 65) The first goal teachers should be is to build a positive, friendly, supportive relationship with students. In the listening class, a communicative student-centered approach is suggested to adopt, while there appears to be an assumed incompatibility between learner-centered teaching and the teacher's control to direct class. Stevick (1998:32-33) addresses this point directly by making a decision between teacher “control” and student “initiative” and proposes that there is a way to allow the teacher to keep nearly 100 percent of “control” while at the same time the teacher is exercising nearly 100 percent of the “initiative”. Control, he suggests, consists of two elements: the structuring of classroom activity and the making of the constructive feedback for the learners, Srevick also contrasts control with initiative, which, he says (1998:33) “refers to decisions about who says what to whom and when”. He argues that control and initiative could be adjusted independently of each other. (Stevick1998: 33-34)

In the communicative listening class, student-centeredness does not require that the teacher abdicate authority, but increase students' “initiative”.

4.2.1 Teacher's role

The teacher is “central for setting the interpersonal atmosphere in the class, and for conveying enthusiasm and conviction”. (Stevick1998: 34) So teachers must make an investment in students' feelings, pay attention to emotional factors and using sincerity to arouse sympathy and understanding, in the process of listening, for example, help students doing deep breathing, using music to relax and saying positive statements, and providing guessing strategies and hypothesis so students can feel comfortable in the listening class. The teacher should not be an authority or supervisor, but a stage designer and a friend. Tudor elaborates a further role--learning counselor (1993:24) in the student-centered approach, the teacher may be seen as performing five main functions:(a) Preparing learners (b) Analyzing learner needs (c)Selecting methodology (d)Transferring responsibility (e)Involving learners. (Tudor1993: 24-28)

He also suggests that teachers who are friendly, understanding and sensitive to learners' needs, and who also have high cultural awareness, will be more likely to create a good learning atmosphere and to hold discussion with learners on material content, teaching methodology, and evaluation. (Tudor1993: 28-29)

In the communicative student-centered listening class, the teacher surrenders his place as the giver of knowledge (background knowledge, vocabulary, listening skills/strategies, etc) and becomes more of a facilitator or classroom counselor.

4.2.2 Students' role

The essence of learner is the fact that “every learner of a foreign language is an individual”. (Long&Richards1987: 15) In the listening class, teachers also need to be aware of individual student's strength and weakness. It is true that advice from books and teachers plays an important role in the study of English, but in most cases, no one knows more about what works best for students than students themselves. Students know better than teachers which listening practice exercises are at their level and what the teacher has done makes their English listening class more enjoyable. Good listening, therefore, requires that the students play the leading roles. Students may learn from some books or materials, but all of these should be tested and modified constantly according to he learner's needs. This view is supported by Clark (1989:133), who points out that learner influence on the language teaching process is potentially significant both at the macro level of syllabus design and at the micro level of what is done within each lesson.

4.3 Incorporating pre-listening and post-listening activities

In teaching listening comprehension, “our aim is to provide comprehensible, focused input and purposeful listening tasks which develop competence in particular listening abilities. (Richards1983: 233) The development of learner's listening ability not only needs comprehensible input (authentic materials), but also sound listening strategies. Field (2000:34) points out that “the brief that listeners will understand everything if we provide them material that is within their range of vocabulary and grammar is a myth”. Emphasizing on the application of listening strategies enables students capitalize in the language input they receive and achieve.

Experts (Richards1983, Vandergrift1999, Field2000) suggest that listeners can use strategies to facilitate the listening process. Vandergrift proposes to use matacognitive strategies, which “involve thinking about the language learning process” and “include planning, monitoring, and evaluating". (Vandergrift1999: 170)

The format for listening procedure can be designed in three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening activities. In the process of teaching listening comprehension, teachers often put emphasis in the while listening procedure, and pay little attention or might neglect the pre-listening and post-listening activities. Discussed below are the pre-listening and post-listening activities. (Examples can be seen in 4.4)

4.3.1 Pre-listening activities

The most important thing in the pre-listening stage is to teach students to “plan for the successful completion of a listening task". (Vandergrift1999: 172) Pre-listening is a kind of warm-up preparing for students to “tune in” to the purpose of the listening passage. First, students need to establish a framework for listening so that learners do not approach the listening practice with no points of reference. This perspective is clearly in line with the use of prior knowledge or schema and establishing of a favorable context. Second, a purposeful listening should be established so that students will know what they will hear and what they are expected to do clearly.

Pre-listening activities may take the form of discussion, questions, brainstorming, predicting, and pre-teaching vocabulary, etc. Such activities are aimed to generate language, activate the learner script and set a purpose for listening.

4.3.2 Post-listening activities

Post-listening activities is a part that is often neglected by many teacher, Activities include interactive group work, pair work, role plays, discussions, and other communicative tasks within the classroom to develop oral proficiency in response to the listening practice.

Instead of spending time examining the grammar of the listening text, post-listening can be taken as a means of developing communication abilities and skills in the real world. The best units are those that include application tasks motivating students outside the classroom into the real-life communication situation, such as surveying, interview activities or just small talks, for the understanding of words, stories or events deepens the more students relate them to their prior knowledge and personal experiences, the more students express their developing understanding through creative actions, and the more can they achieve better listening.

In the post-listening period, the teacher and students need to evaluate their output, The communicative student-centered listening advocates self-evaluation--evaluation between peers. It provides an opportunity to share their work and to learn from one another. It also gives some indication of their strengths and weaknesses in their listening. The evaluation process shows the teacher the impact of the listening materials and the whole listening process in the students.

In sum, incorporating pre-listening and post-listening will make the listening task more enjoyable and less frustrating for students.

4.4 The selection and use of communicative teaching materials

Listening in the real world is interactive. The listener is supposed to make suitable responses in the basis of what is understood and interpretation, adaptation, and addition of new information is required, Communicative teaching materials are thus needed to model this kind of situation. They can be materials from course books or other suitable authentic materials provided by teacher or students.

4.4.1 Using the course listening materials

An effective listening class requires adequate preparation. First, teachers need to familiarize themselves with the listening material to determine whether it is suitable or not. Generally speaking, the course book listening materials are designed to match the teaching process, and most of them give helpful directions for developing listening skills, and contain certain listening activities of one kind or another. But in some cases, the material is inappropriate for certain reasons, for example, materials contain too many difficult words and expressions or unusually structured sentences that nay hinder the students' understanding. The teacher however, may need to find other materials or supplement the material to make it more interesting for students.

4.4.2 Using authentic materials

Teachers might find that their course books do not contain any material or that the listening materials are inadequate or inappropriate for one reason or another. (It is already discussed in 2.1) More materials are thus needed to help students become thoughtful participants in a socially rich environment for learning and that feature everyday use of English. So to fill this gap, the teachers should introduce students those features of real world speech materials--the authentic materials.

There are a variety of definitions for the term “authentic materials”. In this paper, it is used to refer to materials which are used in genuine communication in the real world. Authentic listening materials around real life include radio and television programs, lectures, speeches, films, interviews, plays, etc.

There are three reasons for taking authentic listening materials into the communicative student-centered class: The first is “spontaneous authentic materials manifest the characteristics of natural everyday speech in a way that real-around text do not”. (Field2000: 29) In real life, daily communication situations, ordinary speech contains many ungrammatical reduced, or incomplete forms. It also includes phonological features such as hesitations, false starts, repetitions, fillers, and pauses rather than systematically to mark punctuation at the end of a clause. Different from those purposefully designed records, authentic materials prepare students with comprehensible input similar to the encounters in the real life.

The second reason in favor of using authentic materials is that learners need practice in the real-life task of exacting meaning from utterances where much of the language is beyond their current state of knowledge. This leads to a different type of listening-a type of listening where learners have to accept that not every word would be recognized and understood. In real life encounters, understanding is likely to be less than complete. In able to recognize every word in a text is not a mark of failure. By providing practices for real life situations, students will have to fend for themselves. Further more, the value of such materials are in the light of Krashen's proposal that authentic learning experiences should provide an opportunity for acquisition, that is, they should provide comprehensible input a little beyond the students' current level of competence.

The third reason for using authentic materials is that they can serve effectively to promote students' interests in language learning. Interesting and instructive materials will certainly arouse students' curiosity and enthusiasms. Students may find it easier to relate the events to their own background knowledge and be able to appreciate the use of language in those materials. Such materials can be called “learner authentic materials”, which are “mainly learner-centered”, and “they can serve effectively to promote learner's interest in language learning”. (Lee1995: 323) They can provide not only with a chance to develop their listening skills/strategies, but also enrich students' experience in the learning of English, sensitize them to the use of English in the real world, and enable them to use appropriate style in different communicative context.

There are usually two kinds of authentic materials: The audio type (tapes, CDs, etc.) and the visual type.(Videos, films, etc.) The selection and use of audio and visual material will be discussed with examples and incorporate listening procedure in the communicative student-centered listening class.

4.4.2.1 The use of audio materials

The sample presets below is learner-controlled dictation.

a. The choice of the text

The choice of the text is important. If teacher chooses the text, then it should be relevant to the group of students in length, level and content. It is recommend that teacher provide several materials for a student, whose listening ability is at the middle level of the class, to choose and let him or her control the tape-recorder while listening later. It is advised to an upper limit of 5 minutes' recording time, even for advanced students, as the activity requires the sort of intense concentration that results in fatigue. Better to finish earlier to set time for follow-up activities. The text should be a sample of real, unscripted language. It is important for the text not to be directly related to what the teacher is currently teaching, as this gives it a special, even an enjoyable status. One way to make use of natural, spontaneous speech is for the students to collect their own materials and ask a native speaker to record it if possible. This makes the task even more autonomous and builds in interests.

b. The task

In class, teacher gives the students full control of the audio-tape player, that is, teacher chooses one student to operate the controls, and another to put the text in board. The rest of the class can either follow the tape to dictation, or just check what the student writes down on the board and try to find the errors he or she makes and take notes. The teacher, then, can just sit at the back of the room with a note taped to watch the action, The task thus will be completed satisfactory to both sides While doing this kind of task, everyone listens and takes note of what the other said while correction is required. Most of the students assumed the teacher's role at least once. Also remarkable is student's sustained recycle of the text phrase by phrase without becoming bored. It is interesting to note that errors disappeared as a result of peer correction.

c. Follow-up activities

The task will provide plenty of material for follow-up work, for example, errors that many students tend to make will be addressed at length. Students begin to work together and learn to argue about the correctness of a sentence. English becomes more than an artificial classroom language--a vehicle by which they could express their thoughts ad opinions. Because students are responsible for correcting mistakes, they begin to rely upon themselves each other. They operate to achieve common goals, rather than competing for teacher's attention, or sitting silently, waiting for the teacher to give correct answers.

This activity will be successful because it departs from the norm of teacher-fronted presentations. Students become their own authorities in language learning.

4.4.2.2 The use of visual materials

Students today have a strong visual orientation because of their contact with television, movies and videos. It is a part of their lives, if used carefully, it can be employed to the learner's and teacher's advantage. Materials with visual support often make students easier to follow what is being said.

Video, for example, has many used in classroom. This medium makes explanations clearer, grabs the students' interests, and is very adaptable to all level of students and many different lessons for the material of listening. The primary purpose of viewing a video film is aid students to listen and understand the film.

a. Suitable films

The first thing teacher has to do is to choose a film, or the teacher can give students the free right to list films they want to see, Since not all films are suitable, teacher should judge what type of film students would appropriate, but there are a few hits to be considered:

--Choose films with a strong story line.

--Choose films with clearly drawn main characters.

--Avoid films with lots of dialect.

--Avoid long slow-moving films.

--Avoid films that assume detailed background knowledge of a subject or culture, which students do not have.

b. Teacher's preparation for viewing the film “The Lion King”

View the film and note down important themes, characters development, and other essential elements of the film as a whole. In addition, note the length of each scene, and write scene-specific questions.

c. Pre-film activities

a) Tell students to imagine the creatures in the forests. Ask them in pairs, to note them down according to the cycle of the land, Get students to form larger groups and explain their lists to one another. Tell them they are going to watch a film about the growth of a lion to king of the plain.

b) Introduce the main characters and write these names in the board: Mufasa, Simba, Sarab.

c) Post-film activities

The teacher needs a further worksheet to give out after viewing the entire film. The discussion which it generate is the end product of the note-taking the students have been doing throughout the different strands of the film and appreciate it as a whole. The follow-up worksheet should consist of a) questions and tasks for discussion based on the information the students have collected on the film, and b) students reactions to and appraisal of the main themes, favorite scenes and characters. In the film “The Lion King”, students can exchange their ideas about the differences and similarities between this film and Shakespeare's “Hamlet” if they know this drama, or discuss the animal protection, etc.

5.Conclusion

This paper has suggested that, in current teaching of listening comprehension, teachers focus too much on testing skills and too little on the developmental nature of comprehension. The solution it proposes features a communicative student-centered listening class, which can be employed by carefully using suitable communicative materials and train students to become “strategy smarts” during the whole process of listening, while keeping them highly motivated, interested and confident.

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