Techniques the teacher uses to develop listening skills

1. Conducting a lesson in a FL gives the teacher an opportunity to develop pupils’ abilities in listening, to demonstrate the language as a means of communication, to provide favorable conditions for the assimilation of the language.

2 The teacher uses drill and speech exercises to develop listening comprehension.

3 The teacher organizes activities in listening to texts

Guidelines for organizing listening activities

1. Listening texts

Informal talk. Most listening texts should be based on discourse that is either genuine improvised, spontaneous speech, or at least a fair imitation of it. A typical written text that is read aloud as a basis for classroom listening activity is unlikely to incorporate the characteristics of informal speech and will thus provide the learners with no practice in understanding the most common form of spoken discourse.

Speaker visibility; direct speaker-listener interaction. The fact that in most listening situations the speaker is visible and directly interacting with the listener should make us think twice about the conventional use of audio recordings for listening comprehension exercises. It is useful to the learners if you improvise at least some of the listening texts yourself in their presence (or, if feasible, get another competent speaker of the language to do so). Video also makes a positive contribution to the effectiveness of listening practice, in that it supplies the aspect of speaker visibility and the general visual environment of the text.

Single exposure. If real-life discourse is rarely 'replayed' then learners should be encouraged to develop the ability to extract the information they need from a single hearing. The discourse, therefore, must be redundant enough to provide this information more than once within the original text; and where possible hearers should be able to stop the speaker to request a repeat or explanation.

2. Listening tasks

Expectations. Learners should have in advance some idea about the kind of text they are going to hear. Thus the mere instruction 'Listen to the passage ...' is less useful than something like: 'You are going to hear a husband and wife discussing their plans for the summer ...'. The latter instruction activates learners' relevant schemata (their own previous knowledge and concepts of facts, scenes, events, etc.) and enables them to use this previous knowledge to build anticipatory 'scaffolding' that will help them understand.

Purpose. Similarly, a listening purpose should be provided by the definition of a pre-set task, which should involve some kind of clear visible or audible response. Thus, rather than say simply: 'Listen and understand ...' we should give a specific instruction such as: 'Listen and find out where the family are going for their summer holidays. Mark the places on your map.' The definition of a purpose enables the listener to listen selectively for significant information - easier, as well as more natural, than trying to understand everything.

Ongoing listener response. Finally, the task should usually involve intermittent responses during the listening; learners should be encouraged to respond to the information they are looking for as they hear it, not to wait to the end.

Listening to texts

Before pupils are invited to listen to the text the teacher should ensure that all the words and grammar are familiar to the pupils. If there are some important words the teacher introduces them beforehand (the words on the board in the sequence they appear in the text). Then the teacher should direct his pupils’ attention to what they are going to listen to. This stimulates their thinking and facilitates their comprehension of the text.

Pre-listening tasks stimulate the pupil’s attention:

- Try to grasp the main idea

- Make a plan of the story

- Try to finish the story

Pictures can facilitate comprehension. After they have listened, the teacher may ask questions; make statements on the text for pupils to agree or reject them.