Receptive skills, in contrast to productive ones, are mostly taken for granted since they are assumed to be easier to develop. Just by nodding, learners may show they can follow someone’s ideas or that they have “understood,” but can listening be reduced to this? In this article, I would like to mention several aspects that are often overlooked when teaching listening.
One of the most important aspects is that all listening tasks have a purpose, and that students should be trained to achieve this purpose rather than “just understand.” This involves, for example, helping them to distinguish between general and specific when they are listening for gist, or ensuring that they understand how to answer certain types of questions if they are being trained for the listening component of an international examination. There are sub-skills and techniques galore for each particular listening purpose, and we should do our bit of research when planning lessons. What is more, we should think of how those strategies will help them cope in real life.
Another neglected aspect is that of the actual nature of speech as opposed to writing. Many students may expect that the information given in a listening task will come in the same neat way as a reading text; that is, with a clear layout and clear progression. The truth is, spoken language is rarely like this in real life. We incur false starts, we get lost for words, we paraphrase ourselves a bit too often, we use malapropisms, we contradict ourselves… Are our students being trained to deal with these “faults” in spoken communication? Or do they always face listening expecting to visualize every single word, with the consequent frustration of not being able to make them all up?
One final aspect is that spoken English can no longer be neatly labeled as “American vs British.” Currently, the idea of English as the language of a few powerful countries is rather contrived. It is best to think of English as a lingua franca, with proper varieties appearing in every country where it reaches official status or is spoken by a sizable percentage of the population. Each variety will have its own idiosyncrasies, particularly in terms of pronunciation (not just “accent”). I recommend Jennifer Jenkins’ seminal book The phonology of English as an international language: new models, new norms, new goals for further insights). Do our classroom materials reflect this reality in any proportional way? How can we compensate for this dangerous lack of diversity?
All in all, listening provides countless opportunities for improvement. It is not just about pushing play on a recording device and throwing students at the deep end. Rather, it is about developing a set of strategies to cope with pedagogical listening tasks and real-life listening.
Now, it’s YOUR turn
What difficulties do your students find when developing listening skills? What strategies do you provide?
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 24 seconds
