Unit 7 · Listening

Listening is one of the four language skills and, like reading, a receptive skill: it involves responding to language rather than producing it. It means making sense of the meaningful sounds of language by drawing on context, on language itself and on our knowledge of the world.

◆What is listening?

What is listening?

Listening is one of the four language skillsThe four language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing. See develop skills, subskills, receptive skills, productive skills. click to keep open · see glossary: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Like reading, listening is a receptive skillIn language teaching we talk about the four skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. Reading and listening are receptive skills because learners receive language; they do not have to produce language. See productive skills. Page 37 of 57 Recycle verb … click to keep open · see glossary, as it involves responding to language rather than producing it. Listening involves making sense of the meaningful1. Something which shows the meaning of language. Teachers present language using situations which show learners the meaning of the language they are learning. These are meaningful contexts. See context. 2. An activity can be meaningful if it is useful for lea… click to keep open · see glossary sounds of language. We do this by making use of context1. The situation in which language is used or presented; e.g. a story about a holiday experience could be used as the context to present and practise past tenses. Photographs can help to provide a context for a magazine article. 2. The words or phrases before … click to keep open · see glossary, language and our knowledge of the world.

◆Key concepts: spoken and written language

Listening involves understanding spoken language. Spoken language is different from written language.

What differences can you think of between spoken and written language? List some before reading this table.

◆Why spoken language is different

As we can see, spoken language is generally less planned and less well structured than written language. There are very good reasons for this. When we speak we usually don't have time to organise our thoughts and our language beforehand, so we just say things as we think of them. Also when we listen, we need to listen to simply structured messages. As spoken texts usually disappear as soon as they are said, they need to be simple enough for us to process and understand in the time that is available. We can see that written and spoken language have different features because they are produced and understood in different kinds of circumstances. Their features respond to these circumstances.

◆An example of spoken language

To understand spoken language we need to be able to deal with all the characteristics of spoken language listed in the table above. Here is an example of spoken language. You can see that it can be less well organised and less exact than written language:

Father: How's your homework? You know, your history?
Son: Easy.
Father: You sure?
Son: It's just … I mean all we need to do is, well, just read some stuff.
Father: But d'you understand it?
Son: Yeah. Can I go and play with Tom?

The conversation contains examples of incomplete sentences, utterances, hesitations, sudden topic change, simple grammar and general vocabulary. We make sense of it partly through our understanding of language but also through making use of the context the language is spoken in and our knowledge of the world. In this example, our knowledge of relationships between fathers and sons, and of children's attitudes to homework, may give us some help in understanding, but if we knew the exact context of the conversation (e.g. where it took place, the father's and son's body language, their attitudes to homework, their relationship), we would understand more.

◆Text types, accents and connected speech

Like written language, spoken language has different text typesText types is something else good readers can do. click to keep open · see glossary, e.g. conversations, stories, announcements, songs, instructions, lectures and advertisements. Generally, they contain different ways of organising language and information, different grammatical patterns, a particular range of vocabulary, different interaction patternsThe different ways learners and the teacher work together in class, e.g. learner to learner in pairs or groups, or teacher to learner in open class, in plenary. When teachers plan lessons, they think about interaction patterns and write them on their plan. click to keep open · see glossary, fewer or more participants, etc. Learning to listen involves learning to be able to understand a range of relevantA connection with a situation or the subject you are thinking about or discussing. For example, verbs and tenses are relevant to grammar. click to keep open · see glossary (suitable) text types.

Listening also involves understanding different speeds of speech and different accents. Some people speak more slowly and with more pauses. Others speak fast and/or with few pauses. Features such as speed of delivery and accent are part of connected speechSpoken language in which the words join to form a connected stream of sounds. In connected speech some sounds in words may be left out or some sounds may be pronounced in a weak way or some words might join together, e.g. Is he busy  /ɪzibɪzi/. See linking, w… click to keep open · see glossary, i.e. spoken language in which words join together to form a connected stream of sounds. Other features of connected speech are word and sentence stress, linking1. The way different sounds and words can join with each other in connected speech, e.g. it ’s a good day – /ɪtsəɡʊdeɪ/. See connected speech. 2. Joining parts of sentences (phrases and clauses), sentences and paragraphs to make text more cohesive, e.g. I went… click to keep open · see glossary sounds and words together and the use of contracted forms. One reason why learners have problems understanding spoken language is because they are not used to dealing with features of connected speech.

◆Listening subskills

But we do not listen to everything in the same way. There are several different listening subskillsEach of the four language skills can be divided into smaller subskills that are all part of the main skill; e.g. identifying text organisation is a subskill of reading; identifying word stress is a listening subskill. See detail, gist, global understanding, sc… click to keep open · see glossary. Which subskill we use depends on our reason for listening. We might listen for gist/global understanding, specificInvolving one particular thing or one type of thing; e.g. teachers might talk about teaching a specific language point. This means that they are teaching one particular language point, e.g. If I were you, I’d … for giving advice. click to keep open · see glossary information, detailTo listen to or read a text in order to understand most of what it says; e.g. learners listening for detail to someone talking about a their last holiday would have a task to listen for where the holiday was, when it was, how long it was, what things the perso… click to keep open · see glossary or to infer attitudeTo decide how a writer or speaker feels about something from the way that they speak or write, rather than from what they openly say. Teachers might help learners to infer attitude by helping them to understand intonation. For example, learners could listen to… click to keep open · see glossary (listening to see what attitude a speaker is expressing). Other ways of listening are listening intensivelyListening to short texts in order to understand them in detail, often with a specific task, e.g. answering questions. click to keep open · see glossary and extensively. Our reason for listening influences the amount and kind of information we need to listen for. So, for example, when listening to a train announcement for specific information we might simply need to hear some times, but when listening to the details of some important news we might want to make sense of every word to find out what exactly happened and why.

See Unit 5 Reading, page 31 for an explanation of the terms for the subskills.

◆What listening involves

We can see that listening involves doing many things besides understanding the grammar, vocabulary and functionsFunctions are a way of describing how we use language. click to keep open · see glossary of what we hear. It also involves dealing with the characteristics of spoken language; using the context and our knowledge of the world; understanding different text types; understanding different speeds of speech and accents, making sense of connected speech and using appropriate listening subskills.

◆Key concepts and the language teaching classroom

Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you.

• In the classroom, we can give learners the opportunity to listen to many sources of spoken language, e.g. the teacher, other learners, visitors, CDs, DVDs. This exposes learners to a range of accents, speeds of delivery, text types and listening skills.
• When we listen to a recording we can't see the speaker's body language or the context he/she is speaking in, and we can't ask the speaker to repeat or explain what they said. This makes listening to recordings more difficult than listening to live speakers. For this reason, it is a good idea to help students listen to recordings by e.g. pre-teaching key words, setting pre-listening tasks, focusing initially on gist listening to establish context, and playing the recording a second or even a third time.
• Some listening texts in coursebooks are authentic materialWritten or spoken texts which a first language speaker might read or listen to. They may be taken from newspapers, radio, the internet etc. The language in the texts is not adapted or made easier for learners or the language learning process. click to keep open · see glossary, i.e. they contain all the features of real spoken language. Other texts are written especially for language learners and are graded to make them simple enough for particular levels of learners. Authentic texts allow learners to develop strategies for dealing with the challenge of real language, while simplified texts (texts that have been made easier) allow them to build up their confidenceThe feeling someone has when they are sure of their ability to do something well. Teachers often do activities that help learners to feel more confident about their own ability. click to keep open · see glossary.
• Understanding and showing you have understood are not the same thing. For example, maybe you can understand all of a story, but you can't tell the story. This means that learners may have understood something but be unable to explain what they have understood. Tasks such as completing tables, true/false, ticking correct answers in lists, and putting events in order allow learners to show whether they have understood or not, without needing to use much language.
• We have seen that there are many different aspects to listening, e.g. identifying different phonemes and other features of connected speech. A teacher can focus on these through a listening text or may sometimes prefer to do short activities just focusing on one of these aspects, e.g. a 5-minute activity on minimal pairsTwo words which are different from each other by only one meaningful sound (or phoneme), e.g. hit /hɪt/; heat /hiːt/. click to keep open · see glossary, word stressSee stress. click to keep open · see glossary, sentence stressSee stress. click to keep open · see glossary or dictation.
• We can make a difficult text easier for learners to understand by giving them easy listening tasks, or we can make an easier text more difficult by giving them harder listening tasks.
• The activities in a listening lesson often follow this pattern:
  1. Introductory activitiesIntroductory activities are activities used by a teacher to introduce a lesson or teaching topic. click to keep open · see glossary: an introduction to the topic of the text and activities focusing on key vocabulary in the text – to pre-teach important vocabulary, and to encourage learners to activate their knowledge of the world in relation to the topic.
  2. Main activities: a series of listening activities developing different listening subskills and moving from general to more detailed listening.
  3. Post-task activities: activities which ask learners to talk about how the topic of the text relates to their own lives or give their opinions on parts of the text. These activities require learners to use some of the language they have met in the text.
• You may sometimes just want to ask learners to listen to something and not give them any task, e.g. listen to a story, a song, an explanation. This gives learners the opportunity to listen in a relaxed way and enjoy the experience of listening to a foreign language.

✎Follow-up activity

💡Reflect

🔍Discovery activities

✎TKT practice tasks

These multiple-choice tasks are exactly as in the book, but interactive: pick your answers, check your score, and retry anytime. The scoring uses the official answer key from the back of the book.

📖Glossary terms in this unit

Key terms highlighted in this unit — study them on the flashcards page.