UNIT 7 - LISTENING

UNIT 7 – LISTENING

Listening is a receptive skill that has several definitions, for instance, according to Nordquist (2019),  listening is the process of understanding, receiving and responding to spoken messages. “The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3”  (2011, p. 43), listening involves making sense of meaningful sounds of language.

Listening implies understanding spoken language. Spoken language is a language produced spontaneously, most of the meaning of spoken language is in context. To understand spoken language, it is indispensable to understand the context, the text types like conversations, stories or lectures and the accents and speeds. Listening has different speeds and accents and these are part of the connected speech. Blackwell (2015), explains connected speech can allow modification, deletion, addition or change in pronunciation. It has features like liking sounds, contractions or word and sentence stress. Listening has several subskills that depend on the reason for listening. For instance, listening for gist, specific information, infer attitude and intensive and expensive listening. To practice listening activities is important to follow this pattern: introductory activities, main activities, and post-task activities.

In conclusion, I realized that listening implies making sense of meaningful sounds of language. Listening entails understanding spoken language which is a sign to understand the meaning of the context. Speeds and accents are parts of listening skills. These are related to connected speech that may modify, eliminate and change the pronunciation. Finally, listening has subskills that depend on the reasons for listening.

As English teachers, we know listening is important for communication so there are activities to develop the listening skill.

-          The teacher asks students to work in pairs. The teacher gives each pair a secret phrase and asks them to do a short dialogue and to present it in front of the class. While the dialogue is presented, the rest of the students listen carefully to the dialogue of their classmates and try to guess the secret phrase of that dialogue. The pair who guesses the secret phrase earns a point.

-          The teacher asks a student to sit in a chair in front of his classmates. The teacher gives him a flashcard with a picture of a famous person. The teacher asks the rest of the students to describe the famous person. The student who is sitting in the chair must listen carefully to the description that his classmates give him about his famous character and he has to guess who his famous character is.

References

Blackwell, W. (2015). The Handbook of English Pronunciation. Copyright. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118346952.ch9

Nordquist, R. (2019, 1 6). ThoughtCo. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/listening-communication-term-1691247

Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., & Williams, M. (2011). The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3. Cambirdge: Cambridge University Press.