Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 3: Some listening reflections!

(1st part)

                I consider myself a true admirer of the legacy that we, the new teachers, have received from these great “thinkers” that have been there before us settling priceless role models, which are helpful for any teacher who enjoys growing up as a professional and having things to think about.

Let’s take for example what Mr. H. Douglas Brown said once:

"Listening comprehension is not only the process of sending and receiving sounds, but also the interactive and conscious process to send and transmit the message to the brain which will influence in the process of communication". (H. Douglas Brown: 1994)

              In the process of learning a new language, there is not such an "only way" to make learners understand an issue being the subject of an explanation. When teaching, there is not even a definite way to do it correctly. Teachers have an immeasurable amount of techniques and strategies that can be applied in any educational context, and it is in the teachers' hands to choose the appropriate task/way that relates to their students' needs in order to make them learn any lesson effectively or to help them improve any skill.

               Among the four skills involved in the process of learning a new language, English in this case, the one that gives students extra hard work is the listening comprehension. They, at different levels, find listening activities particularly difficult to manage and understand. Teachers need to pay special attention to the three stages of a listening lesson so that students can make the most out of any listening lesson they are intended to work with.

               This process that H. Douglas Brown refers to in the lines above, requires constant practice and properly guided listening activities, which lead the teacher to follow and complete these so-called three stages of the listening activities that will help students learn for good everything discussed in any listening session.

              The stages of listening lessons are very simple, the first part of any listening has to be the pre-listening stage, which sets students into the topic, preparing them and motivating them for the audio material they are going to hear. There is a second stage done during the listening in which students are asked to complete some tasks while they are listening to the audio being introduced, and finally there is a post-listening stage. In this stage, the teacher and the students work together trying to extend everything learnt from the audio material by using various activities, for example: drawing possible conclusions, comparing personal experiences to the situation heard in the material and/or discussing opinions among others.

               These three sections that any listening class should have, work very well together, and it would be very difficult to give more importance to one of them specifically. Now, I think that every teacher in their classroom should be very emphatic on the post-listening stage. This part of the listening provides extra work and practice in and even outside the classroom, which makes learning a complete process.

              The activities that a teacher could do to work on the post-listening stage have an unlimited reach, for example, if the students are asked to give opinions or draw conclusions using the vocabulary given in the listening, once they start talking it could become a completely different entire class. These activities could also work as motivation for the students when they see the language flowing naturally in a kind of realistic situation.

               On the other hand, post-listening activities are great for those students that are used to practice only in class. Students who think this way, are more likely to forget most of what they learn from listenings and then have weak foundations when further topics related in grammar come up. Teachers have to motivate their students to complete activities after the listening class, either in the classroom or at home, things like giving opinions, paraphrasing, giving different endings to a story and/or re-telling a story are good to practice after a listening class, having students to think of these activities as a good way to "think outside the box", which would develop creativity and fix knowledge a lot better in the students' minds.