Contents introduction chapter theoretical bases of teaching listening

The Topicality of this work is due to the fact that the issues of teaching listening at school is studied insufficiently and require more attention and methodological development.
The aim of the present work is to explore the classification of techniques for teaching listening of a foreign language and developing students’ listening comprehension.
The general aims defines the following objectives of the research:
1. To explore listening comprehension peculiarities and fundamental characteristics.
2. To consider listening comprehension methods.
3. To study effective techniques for developing listening skills.
The object of the work is the process of teaching listening.
The subject is the ways of developing students listening skills using a set of teaching materials which provide the formation of listening skills.
The major methods used in the research process are: the method of linguistic description and analysis, which let us create the theoretical basis of the present course paper. The method of continuous selection was used to single the research material out. The structural, formalization methods were used for working with the results got in the research process. The research material of the work is the exercises taken from different modern course books and manuals. The given material presents a broad field for research. It also gives us an opportunity to rich the set goals of the present research.


CHAPTER 1. PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
1.1 Teaching listening as a comprehension

Listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening. Indeed, in most methodology manuals listening and listening comprehension are synonymous. This view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse. We will examine this view of listening in some detail before considering a complementary view of listening – listening as acquisition. This latter view of listening considers how listening can provide input that triggers the further development of second-language proficiency.

To understand the nature of listening processes, we need to consider some of the characteristics of spoken discourse and the special problems they pose for listeners. Spoken discourse has very different characteristics from written discourse, and these differences can add a number of dimensions to our understanding of how we process speech. For example, spoken discourse is usually instantaneous. The listener must process it "online" and there is often no chance to listen to it again. Often, spoken discourse strikes the second-language listener as being very fast, although speech rates vary considerably. Radio monologs may contain 160 words per minute, while conversation can consist of up to 220 words per minute. The impression of faster or slower speech generally results from the amount of intraclausal pausing that speakers make use of. Unlike written discourse, spoken discourse is usually unplanned and often reflects the processes of construction such as hesitations, reduced forms, fillers, and repeats. Spoken discourse has also been described as having a linear structure, compared to a hierarchical structure for written discourse. Whereas the unit of organization of written discourse is the sentence, spoken language is usually delivered one clause at a time, and longer utterances in conversation generally consist of several coordinated clauses. Most of the clauses used are simple conjuncts or adjuncts. Also, spoken texts are often context-dependent and personal, assuming shared background knowledge. Lastly, spoken texts may be spoken with many different accents, from standard or non-standard, regional, non-native, and so on¹.
Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, and television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language².
Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching it is essential for language teachers to help their students become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations: those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the classroom.
Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the case of listening, this means producing students who can use listening strategies to maximize their comprehension of aural input, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension. In Listening classes, students are usually given practice in listening but they are not actually taught listening. Practice is not enough.
Research and case studies have told us many things about how listening should be taught. But often, this knowledge has not made the jump into classroom practice. While many classes are based on the idea of giving students lots of practice with English, research tells us that we also need to teach listening. In addition to giving students plenty of listening practices. We should also break the skill of listening into micro-skill components and make sure that our students are aware of what they need to know to understand how to listen to English.
Students need to know and understand:

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  how words link together (liaison);
  
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  how vowels weaken (the central vowel);
  
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  how sounds mix together (assimilation);
  
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  how sounds disappear (elision);
  
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  how syllables disappear (ellipsis);
  
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  how helping sounds are used between vowel sounds (intrusion);
  
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  how intonation helps with conversational turn taking (intonation);
  
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  how stress signals new information (prominence);
  
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  how to use grammar to help guess meaning (strategies);
  
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  how to use discourse knowledge to help guess meaning (strategies);
  
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  how to use knowledge of intonation and stress to guess meaning (strategies).