APPLICATION OF THE TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING

APPLICATION OF THE TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING

 LISTENING

BY:

I Wayan Agus Kardana

09-3345

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

THE FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

MAHASARASWATI UNIVERSITY DENPASAR

2012

APPLICATION OF THE TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING

1. How can you help students to improve their listening?

Many teachers lament that many students are fail in listening lesson. In truth, students need to learn how to listen. Actually, we all have listening skills, but we just don't use them often. This reason makes the students are fail in their listening. As a good teacher we should have willing to help our students to improve their listening. There are some ways to help students to improve their listening skill:

a)      Giving the students exercises to watch movie and listen to the radio

Watching movies and listening the music or radio on target language are the effective ways to develop student’s listening skill. Those are very effective because when they’re watching movies or listening to the radio, they will hear how to pronounce the words. If the student continues this exercise over two or three months, their listening will greatly improve as the brain find the concept of the target language.

b)      Don't interrupt

Make sure your students’ habit of not interrupting the person that is talking to them, because that is not good habit. Just realize when we talk while someone speaks to us, it’s mean we learn almost nothing new, because we can’t catch their ideas clearly.  So, this is a reason why we should be quiet and listen to others without interrupting.

c)      Respect with the speaker

It is very important to pay attention with someone whom we speak with, because that will show our respect for them. If we respect the other person, we will get more attention from them. On the other hand, if we don't respect the person that much, we won't be very attentive. So, make a habit to respect to the speaker and it can help us to improve our listening.

d)      Repeat it and write it down.

In the middle of a conversation, the speaker might say something very interesting for us. We want to remember that but we also want to pay attention to what the speaker is currently saying. So, to solve this problem we can write it down on our note and repeat it all after the conversation.

e)      Asking questions or feedback

A great exercise to improve listening skills is to ask questions throughout a conversation. Asking the right questions at the right time is one way to improve our listening skill. If we ask question to the speaker, it means that we are listening to them.

2. How can you choose a suitable listening text?

To choose a suitable listening text for our students, we should know our students’ ability, level and students’ interest in listening.

v      Students’ ability

The ability of our students will determine what kinds of texts are suitable for them. The teachers are recommended to give suitable listening text for their student. It means that the text is understandable due to the ability of the students, thus the student could be easy to understand what they are being listen.

v      Students’ level

Students’ level is the most important thing to determine a suitable listening text for our students, because their age will be shown their language ability. Example, we can’t give our student a listening text for Senior High School if we teach in Junior High School, because they have different language ability and they won’t understand about the text.

v      Student’s interest

Another term to choose the suitable listening text to the students is student’s interest. The topic of the text should be interesting for students, because if the text is interesting, the students will interest to listen the text. The interesting topic of the text for student also help the students to gain the goal of listening skill.

3. What makes a listening text easy or difficult?

There are some reasons that make listening text easy or difficult:

a)      The students try to understand word by word

This way can make the students misunderstand with the ideas that are delivering by the speaker. On listening we can’t only understand word by word but we have to understand the meaning of the text or the main point of the text. So, that is one factor that make a listening text difficult for the students.

b)      The students have problems with different accents

As we know, English is spoken by many people in this world. It means that English has many varieties in spoken or accent like British, American and Australian accents. This factor also makes the students difficult to understand the listening text, because every accent has different way to pronounce the words.

c)      They just don't know the main idea of the text

Every text has its main idea, and so do in listening text. To make us understand a listening text, we should find out the main idea of the text first and then we can understand the other sentence by guest them even though we find difficult words on the sentence. So, to solve this problem, the students have to more practice to determine the main idea of listening text.

4. How can you help your students to understand a listening text?

Listening to a person speaking is different when we listen a listening text, because when we listen to a listening text, we can’t ask to repeat what is the text have said, like we can do when we listening to someone speaking. Many students said, listening to a listening text is more difficult then listening to a person speaking. So many of them are fail in understanding a listening text. As a teacher we should be creative to help our students to solve this problem. There are some ways that the teachers can do to help them to understand a listening text:

v      Attending a lesson or a lecture. The aim of this activity is to understand the main concept and to be able to distinguish the main information of the text.

v      Giving students exercise to listen to announcements, news and weather forecast and take notes weather they find difficult words.

v      Listening to or watching plays, watching TV or listening to a radio for pleasure. The aim of this activity is to entertain oneself.

v      Listening to someone giving a speech. The listener is often interested in views and attitudes of the speaker.

5. What are the main stages in a listening skills lesson?

v      Pre-Listening Activity

In pre-listening activities, the teacher should encourage the students to think about and discuss what they are going to hear. It means that the people are impossible to listen to something without having some ideas of what they are going to hear. For example, when listening to a radio phone–in show, they will probably know which topic is being discussed and when listening to an interview with a famous person, they probably know something about that person. Besides, the teachers have to realize that all students bring different backgrounds to the listening experience.

v      While listening activity

While listening is the time when we set a task to help focus on overall understanding. This can be in the form of two or three questions, or a task. Then we give the listening text to read it or we play a recording. It is better not to stop because this is more realistic and helps the students concentrate on getting the whole picture. After that students can be asked to discuss their answers and opinions in pairs or groups.

v      Post-listening activity

There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content.

•      Reaction to the text

The exercises that focus on students’ reaction to the content are most important. This is something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following reaction. This could be a discussion as a response to what we’ve heard.

•      Analysis of language

This is focus on analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier.

6. Technique of teaching listening

a)      Using Authentic Materials and Situations

Authentic materials and situations prepare students for the types of listening they will need to do when using the language outside the classroom. There are two kinds of authentic materials and situation:

•      One-Way Communication

The material can be given by listening to the radio and television programs, speeches, telephone customer service recordings and so on. This way can help the student to identify the listening goal, obtain specific information, decide whether to continue listening and understand most or all of the message.

•      Two-Way Communication

In authentic two-way communication, the listener focuses on the speaker's meaning rather than the speaker's language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear. Note the difference between the teacher as teacher and the teacher as authentic listener in the dialogues in the popup screens.

b)     Textbook-based Learning and Other Listening Contexts

Listening lessons require listeners to concentrate on the content and make fast responses to what is heard. If students are passive and apprehensive during listening training, they will probably feel nervous and wary of taking chances. Teachers need to take a non-punitive approach and structure lessons that are varied, vivid and interesting. Teachers need to select a wide range of materials to increase listening content besides using textbooks. Students need to listen to different levels of English in order to be exposed to natural, lively, rich language, such as listening to English songs, seeing films with English text.

c)      Games

Games are used to make a variation in teaching and learning process. Game will help students not feel they are being forced to learn and they will enjoy the materials. Learning the materials with enjoy situation will easily understand for student to learn the materials. Some related games could be whispering.

d)     Song

Giving a students song will help the student to improve both of their speaking and listening skill. Besides, the songs have been proved that songs are very effective way to learn listening skill. While students are listening song they immediately receiving the vocabularies and pronunciation on target language.