Contents introduction chapter theoretical bases of teaching listening

2.3 Language techniques in listening assessing proficiency

Listening is one of the more difficult aspects of the language arts to assess. It cannot be easily observed and can be measured only through inference. However, there are both informal and formal strategies and instruments that teachers can use to help them in their assessments. You can use post-listening activities to check comprehension, evaluate listening skills and use of listening strategies, and extend the knowledge gained to other contexts. A post-listening activity may relate to a pre-listening activity, such as predicting; may expand on the topic or the language of the listening text; or may transfer what has been learned to reading, speaking, or writing activities.

In order to provide authentic assessment of students' listening proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through listening. It must have a purpose other than assessment. It must require students to demonstrate their level of listening comprehension by completing some task. To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that listening to a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after listening to a weather report one might decide what to wear the next day; after listening to a set of instructions, one might repeat them to someone else; after watching and listening to a play or video, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-listening tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the aural text. (See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.). For example, for listening practice you have students listen to a weather report. Their purpose for listening is to be able to advise a friend what to wear the next day. As a post-listening activity, you ask students to select appropriate items of clothing from a collection you have assembled, or write a note telling the friend what to wear, or provide oral advice to another student (who has not heard the weather report). To evaluate listening comprehension, you use a checklist containing specific features of the forecast, marking those that are reflected in the student's clothing recommendations.
Good listening lessons go beyond the listening task itself with related activities before and after the listening. Here is the basic structure:
Before Listening
Prepare your learners by introducing the topic and finding out what they already know about it. A good way to do this is to have a brainstorming session and some discussion questions related to the topic. Then provide any necessary background information and new vocabulary they will need for the listening activity. (See Appendix A).
During Listening
Be specific about what students need to listen for. They can listen for selective details or general content, or for an emotional tone such as happy, surprised, or angry. If they are not marking answers or otherwise responding while listening, tell them ahead of time what will be required afterward. (See Appendix A).
After Listening
Finish with an activity to extend the topic and help students remember new vocabulary. This could be a discussion group, craft project, writing task, game, etc. The following ideas will help make our listening activities successful. (See Appendix A).
Noise Reduce distractions and noise during the listening segment. You may need to close doors or windows or ask children in the room to be quiet for a few minutes.
Equipment If you are using a cassette player, make sure it produces acceptable sound quality. A counter on the machine will aid tremendously in cueing up tapes. Bring extra batteries or an extension cord with you.
Repetition Read or play the text a total of 2-3 times. Tell students in advance you will repeat it. This will reduce their anxiety about not catching it all the first time. You can also ask them to listen for different information each time through.
Content Unless your text is merely a list of items, talk about the content as well as specific language used. The material should be interesting and appropriate for your class level in topic, speed, and vocabulary. You may need to explain reductions (like 'gonna' for 'going to') and fillers (like 'um' or 'uh-huh').
Recording Your Own Tape
Write appropriate text (or use something from your textbook) and have another English speaker read it onto tape. Copy the recording three times so you don't need to rewind. The reader should not simply read three times, because students want to hear exact repetition of the pronunciation, intonation, and pace, not just the words.
Video You can play a video clip with the sound off and ask students to make predictions about what dialog is taking place. Then play it again with sound and discuss why they were right or wrong in their predictions. You can also play the sound without the video first, and show the video after students have guessed what is going on.
Homework Give students a listening task to do between classes. Encourage them to listen to public announcements in airports, bus stations, supermarkets, etc. and try to write down what they heard. Tell them the telephone number of a cinema and ask them to write down the playing times of a specific movie. Give them a tape recording of yourself with questions, dictation, or a worksheet to complete. When a word ends in a consonant sound and the next word starts with a vowel the words link together. The ending consonant "jumps over" to the next word.
This is one of the trickiest problems when listening to English. A basic listening skill is being able to pick out words, being able to understand words as words; being able to understand where the word boundaries are; where words start and finish. Liaison, the way English links together makes this tough.
The Weak Vowel. The Central Vowel
This is the most important vowel you can teach your students. The "upside down e" in their dictionaries. This is the central vowel. Second language learners often have difficulty with English weak vowels. Although some languages do have a system of weakening vowels, many languages do not. Students need to be taught about weak vowels. Many listening classes don't teach students about the central vowel. And students need to understand this to understand English!!
Sometimes when two consonant sounds come together, one at the end of one word and one at the beginning of another. They mix to form a new sound.
The "d" and the "y" mix together and make a new sound that sounds like a "j" sound. The sentence sounds like.
Words can disappear
Not only do sounds disappear but often entire words are not said. (see Appendix B(4). In casual speech auxiliary verbs in questions are often not enunciated. In casual speech the above might be spoken as: You got the time? This is called ellipsis and it's a common feature of casual speech. Perhaps if you were chatting with Queen Elizabeth you might not speak like this. However the average speaker certainly talks like this, especially if chatting with friends.
"Have you got the time?" becomes "Got the time?"
"Did you see her last night?" becomes "You see 'er las' nigh'. "
You might think this is lazy English, or perhaps even bad English. But it's not. It's just plain old simple natural English. And our students need to know. Teach your students about ellipsis.
Helping Sounds
When a word ends in a vowel and the next word starts with a vowel, a "helping sound" comes between them so they are easier to say (see Appendix B(5)). English uses helping sounds, usually a y (/j/), w or r . These sounds come between vowel sounds at word boundaries.
"Sea Otter" sounds like "Sea Yotter" "No agreement" sounds like "No wagreement" "Canada is" sounds like "Canada ris" (but this last one is more common with British English)
Intonation drops when we finish a speaking turn.
Falling tones tell the listener that the speaker has finished (see Appendix B(6)). In the first example, intonation goes up, which signals that the speaker wishes to continue. In the second sentence, intonation goes down signaling that the speaker is giving up their turn.
You don't need to hear/understand every word being spoken. We need to tell our students this! Prominent sentence stress signals that information is new or pertinent. Knowledge of stress and intonation prominence helps your students listen. Have students listen for the stressed words. These are the words with important meaning. Students do NOT have to hear and understand all the words in a sentence to understand. Say I listen to the following sentence, "They go to the lake at the end of the summer". But say I only hear (see Appendix B(7)). I can nonetheless understand the message being spoken. Teach your students about stress and prominence. And encourage your students to guess what they don't catch. Knowledge of how important words and grammar words are actually spoken will help. Your students need to know. Use your knowledge of grammar to guess what you don't hear. Grammar helps us guess what we don't hear clearly. Once students have been taught about the schwa, (the weak or central vowel), they should next be taught to use their understanding of grammar to help them guess. It is impossible to hear clearly everything that is said, because often natural speech is NOT clearly enunciated.
When our students listen to English there are many holes, many places where they don't know what's being said. These holes are usually the grammar words, the function words that are pronounced weakly. (see Appendix B(8)).
In the above, the students hear clearly the meaning words, (the verbs, adjectives, nouns). But the middle part is not enunciated clearly. Well in the above sentence we know it's a question because it starts with "where", so we can guess what's missing easily. We're missing an auxiliary verb and a pronoun. Since it's "last night", we know we've got a past tense auxiliary. Students can easily guess what's missing here. (see Appendix B(9)).
To make listening more interesting and effective you can use a different interesting computer program connected with the
Internet. Nowadays there are a lot of special sites including interesting and useful programs aimed at developing students' listening skills. (see Appendix C )
One of the effective methods of teaching listening is using games and songs. Following activities also are given in the Internet recourses. For example, MED-EL’s online resource center. They have set up this service to provide parents, therapists, and teachers with ideas for follow-up activities that can be used at home, in the clinic, or in the classroom. These ideas are not only useful, but also can be fun for children.
The online game introduces the song, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" using 8 animals – sheep, cow, cat, pig, snake, mouse, dog, and donkey and the noises associated with each of the animals. For example, you could imitate an animal’s sound rather than use the words. Songs are a very important part of early childhood learning, and "Old MacDonald" is one that most children love. (see Appendix D)
It is important to promote and motivate students to understand the foreign language comprehension. Improving the process of teaching listening has all preconditions: techniques in modern times are developing rapidly, and teachers have more opportunities to use different types of technical training.