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The importance of integrating skills in the teaching of english as a foreign language Enviado por orellana

Scientific article. Kind of article: monography 1.

Summary

2. Segregated-skill instruction 3. Two forms of integrated-skill instruction 4. Advantages of the integrated-skill approach 5. Integrating the language skills 6. Conclusion 7. References SUMMARY This article has been made as a guide for teachers of English as a foreign language to develop the students´ abilities in the language. It is the application of an integrating approach for the development of communicative skills in the classroom, in which the four skills in the acquisition of knowledge of a foreign language can be taught in a coherent way, and practiced together, with a distinction of the importance of one upon the other One image for teaching English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) is that of a tapestry. The tapestry is woven from many strands, such as the characteristics of the teacher, the learner, the setting, and the relevant languages (i.e., English and the native languages of the learners and the teacher). For the instructional loom to produce a large, strong, beautiful, colorful tapestry, all of these strands must be interwoven in positive ways. For example, the instructor's teaching style must address the learning style of the learner, the learner must be motivated, and the setting must provide resources and values that strongly support the teaching of the language. However, if the strands are not woven together effectively, the instructional loom is likely to produce something small, weak, ragged, and pale--not recognizable as a tapestry at all. In addition to the four strands mentioned above--teacher, learner, setting, and relevant languages-other important strands exist in the tapestry. In a practical sense, one of the most crucial of these strands consists of the four primary skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing. This strand also includes associated or related skills such as knowledge of vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, syntax, meaning, and usage. The skill strand of the tapestry leads to optimal ESL/EFL communication when the skills are interwoven during instruction. This is known as the integratedskill approach. If this weaving together does not occur, the strand consists merely of discrete, segregated skills-parallel threads that do not touch, support, or interact with each other. This is sometimes known as the segregated-skill approach. Another title for this mode of instruction is the language-based approach, because the language itself is the focus of instruction (language for language's sake). In this approach, the emphasis is not on learning for authentic communication. By examining segregated-skill instruction, we can see the advantages of integrating the skills and move toward improving teaching for English language learners. SEGREGATED-SKILL INSTRUCTION In the segregated-skill approach, the mastery of discrete language skills such as reading and speaking is seen as the key to successful learning, and language learning is typically separate from content

learning (Mohan, 1986). This is contrary to the integrated way that people use language skills in normal communication, and it clashes with the direction in which language teaching experts have been moving in recent years. Skill segregation is reflected in traditional ESL/EFL programs that offer classes focusing on segregated language skills. Why do they offer such classes? Perhaps teachers and administrators think it is logistically easier to present courses on writing divorced from speaking, or on listening isolated from reading. They may believe that it is instructionally impossible to concentrate on more than one skill at a time. Even if it were possible to fully develop one or two skills in the absence of all the others, such an approach would not ensure adequate preparation for later success in academic communication, career-related language use, or everyday interaction in the language. An extreme example is the grammar-translation method, which teaches students to analyze grammar and to translate (usually in writing) from one language to another. This method restricts language learning to a very narrow, noncommunicative range that does not prepare students to use the language in everyday life. Frequently, segregated-skill ESL/EFL classes present instruction in terms of skill-linked learning strategies: reading strategies, listening strategies, speaking strategies, and writing strategies (see Peregoy & Boyle, 2001). Learning strategies are strategies that students employ, most often consciously, to improve their learning. Examples are guessing meaning based on context, breaking a sentence or word down into parts to understand the meaning, and practicing the language with someone else. Very frequently, experts demonstrate strategies as though they were linked to only one particular skill, such as reading or writing (e.g., Peregoy & Boyle, 2001). However, it can be confusing or misleading to believe that a given strategy is associated with only one specific language skill. Many strategies, such as paying selective attention, self-evaluating, asking questions, analyzing, synthesizing, planning, and predicting, are applicable across skill areas (see Oxford, 1990). Common strategies help weave the skills together. Teaching students to improve their learning strategies in one skill area can often enhance performance in all language skills (Oxford, 1996). Fortunately, in many instances where an ESL or EFL course is labeled by a single skill, the segregation of language skills might be only partial or even illusory. If the teacher is creative, a course bearing a discrete-skill title might actually involve multiple, integrated skills. For example, in a course on intermediate reading, the teacher probably gives all of the directions orally in English, thus causing students to use their listening ability to understand the assignment. In this course, students might discuss their readings, thus employing speaking and listening skills and certain associated skills, such as pronunciation, syntax, and social usage. Students might be asked to summarize or analyze readings in written form, thus activating their writing skills. In a real sense, then, some courses that are labeled according to one specific skill might actually reflect an integrated-skill approach after all. The same can be said for ESL/EFL textbooks. A particular series might highlight certain skills in one book or another, but all the language skills might nevertheless be present in the tasks in each book. In this way, students have the benefit of practicing all the language skills in an integrated, natural, communicative way, even if one skill is the main focus of a given volume. In contrast to segregated-skill instruction, both actual and apparent, there are at least two forms of instruction that are clearly oriented toward integrating the skills.

TWO FORMS OF INTEGRATED-SKILL INSTRUCTION Two types of integrated-skill instruction are content-based language instruction and task-based instruction. The first of these emphasizes learning content through language, while the second stresses doing tasks that require communicative language use. Both of these benefit from a diverse range of materials, textbooks, and technologies for the ESL or EFL classroom. "Content-Based Instruction." In content-based instruction, students practice all the language skills in a highly integrated, communicative fashion while learning content such as science, mathematics, and social studies. Content-based language instruction is valuable at all levels of proficiency, but the nature of the content might differ by proficiency level. For beginners, the content often involves basic social and interpersonal communication skills, but past the beginning level, the content can become increasingly academic and complex. The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA), created by Chamot and O'Malley (1994) shows how language learning strategies can be integrated into the simultaneous learning of content and language. At least three general models of content-based language instruction exist: theme-based, adjunct, and sheltered (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). The theme-based model integrates the language skills into the study of a theme (e.g., urban violence, cross-cultural differences in marriage practices, natural wonders of the world, or a broad topic such as change). The theme must be very interesting to students and must allow a wide variety of language skills to be practiced, always in the service of communicating about the theme. This is the most useful and widespread form of content-based instruction today, and it is found in many innovative ESL and EFL textbooks. In the adjunct model, language and content courses are taught separately but are carefully coordinated. In the sheltered model, the subject matter is taught in simplified English tailored to students' English proficiency level. "Task-Based Instruction." In task-based instruction, students participate in communicative tasks in English. Tasks are defined as activities that can stand alone as fundamental units and that require comprehending, producing, manipulating, or interacting in authentic language while attention is principally paid to meaning rather than form (Nunan, 1989). The task-based model is beginning to influence the measurement of learning strategies, not just the teaching of ESL and EFL. In task-based instruction, basic pair work and group work are often used to increase student interaction and collaboration. For instance, students work together to write and edit a class newspaper, develop a television commercial, enact scenes from a play, or take part in other joint tasks. More structured cooperative learning formats can also be used in task-based instruction. Task-based instruction is relevant to all levels of language proficiency, but the nature of the task varies from one level to the other. Tasks become increasingly complex at higher proficiency levels. For instance, beginners might be asked to introduce each other and share one item of information about each other. More advanced students might do more intricate and demanding tasks, such as taking a public opinion poll at school, the university, or a shopping mall. ADVANTAGES OF THE INTEGRATED-SKILL APPROACH The integrated-skill approach, as contrasted with the purely segregated approach, exposes English language learners to authentic language and challenges them to interact naturally in the language. Learners rapidly gain a true picture of the richness and complexity of the English language as employed for communication. Moreover, this approach stresses that English is not just an object of academic interest nor merely a key to passing an examination; instead, English becomes a real

means of interaction and sharing among people. This approach allows teachers to track students' progress in multiple skills at the same time. Integrating the language skills also promotes the learning of real content, not just the dissection of language forms. Finally, the integrated-skill approach, whether found in content-based or task-based language instruction or some hybrid form, can be highly motivating to students of all ages and backgrounds. INTEGRATING THE LANGUAGE SKILLS In order to integrate the language skills in ESL/EFL instruction,teachers should consider taking these steps: * Learn more about the various ways to integrate language skills in theclassroom (e.g., contentbased, task-based, or a combination). * Reflect on their current approach and evaluate the extent to which theskills are integrated. * Choose instructional materials, textbooks, and technologies that promotethe integration of listening, reading, speaking, and writing, as well as theassociated skills of syntax, vocabulary, and so on. * Even if a given course is labeled according to just one skill, rememberthat it is possible to integrate the other language skills throughappropriate tasks. * Teach language learning strategies and emphasize that a given strategycan often enhance performance in multiple skills. CONCLUSION With careful reflection and planning, any teacher can integrate the language skills and strengthen the tapestry of language teaching and learning. When the tapestry is woven well, learners can use English effectively for communication. REFERENCES Chamot, A. U., & O'Malley, J.M. (1994). "The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitiveacademic language learning approach." Reading: MA: Addison Wesley. O'Malley, J.M., & Valdez Pierce, L. (1996)."Authentic assessment for English language learners: Practical approaches for teachers." New York: Addison Wesley. Mohan, B. (1986). "Language and content." Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Nunan , D. (1989). "Designing tasks for the communicative classroom." Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Oxford, R. (1990). "Language learning strategies. What every teacher should know." Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Oxford, R. (1996). "Language learning strategies around the world. Cross-cultural perspectives." Manoa: University of Hawaii Press. Peregoy, S.F., & Boyle, O.F. (2001). "Reading, writing, and learning in ESL." New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Scarcella, R., & Oxford, R. (1992). "The tapestry of language learning: The individual in the communicative classroom." Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Lic. Evelio Elías Orellana Orellana orellana[arroba]suss.co.cu

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Opinion Papers; Guides - Classroom - Teacher; Journal Articles Skills integration generally refers to linking two or more of the traditional four skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This article describes two kinds of skills integration--traditional and "real life"--and presents arguments for skills integration. Sample exercises are included. (12 references) (LB)

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Opinion Papers; Guides - Classroom - Teacher; Journal Articles Skills integration generally refers to linking two or more of the traditional four skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This article describes two kinds of skills integration--traditional and "real life"--and presents arguments for skills integration. Sample

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THINK articles Pre-listening activities Submitted by admin on 21 November, 2002 - 12:00 Listening skills are hard to develop. Students can do a variety of work before listening to help them understand the listening. Why do pre-listening tasks? Aims and types of pre-listening tasks Selection criteria

Why do pre-listening tasks? In real life it is unusual for people to listen to something without having some idea of what they are going to hear. When listening to a radio phone-in show, they will probably know which topic is being discussed. When listening to an interview with a famous person, they probably know something about that person already. A waiter knows the menu from which the diner is choosing their food. In our first language we rarely have trouble understanding listening. But, in a second language, it is one of the harder skills to develop - dealing at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures. This is even more difficult if we do not know the topic under discussion, or who is speaking to whom.

So, simply asking the students to listen to something and answer some questions is a little unfair, and makes developing listening skills much harder. Many students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something but feel they understand very little. It is also harder to concentrate on listening if you have little interest in a topic or situation. Pre-listening tasks aim to deal with all of these issues: to generate interest, build confidence and to facilitate comprehension. Aims and types of pre-listening tasks Setting the context This is perhaps the most important thing to do - even most exams give an idea about who is speaking, where and why. In normal life we normally have some idea of the context of something we are listening to. Generating interest Motivating our students is a key task for us. If they are to do a listening about sports, looking at some dramatic pictures of sports players or events will raise their interest or remind them of why they (hopefully) like sports. Personalisation activities are very important here. A pair-work discussion about the sports they play or watch, and why, will bring them into the topic, and make them more willing to listen.

Activating current knowledge - what do you know about…? 'You are going to listen to an ecological campaigner talk about the destruction of the rainforest'. This sets the context, but if you go straight in to the listening, the students have had no time to transfer or activate their knowledge (which may have been learnt in their first language) in the second language. What do they know about rainforests? - Where are they? What are they? What problems do they face? Why are they important? What might an ecological campaigner do? What organisations campaign for ecological issues? Acquiring knowledge Students may have limited general knowledge about a topic. Providing knowledge input will build their confidence for dealing with a listening. This could be done by giving a related text to read, or, a little more fun, a quiz. Activating vocabulary / language Just as activating topic knowledge is important, so is activating the language that may be used in the listening. Knowledge-based activities can serve this purpose, but there are other things that can be done. If students are going to listen to a dialogue between a parent and a teenager who wants to stay overnight at a friend's, why not get your students to role play the situation before

listening. They can brainstorm language before hand, and then perform the scene. By having the time to think about the language needs of a situation, they will be excellently prepared to cope with the listening. Predicting content Once we know the context for something, we are able to predict possible content. Try giving students a choice of things that they may or may not expect to hear, and ask them to choose those they think will be mentioned. Pre-learning vocabulary When we listen in our first language we can usually concentrate on the overall meaning because we know the meaning of the vocabulary. For students, large numbers of unknown words will often hinder listening, and certainly lower confidence. Select some vocabulary for the students to study before listening, perhaps matching words to definitions, followed by a simple practice activity such as filling the gaps in sentences. Checking / understanding the listening tasks By giving your students plenty of time to read and understand the main listening comprehension tasks, you allow them to get some idea of the content of the listening. They may even try to predict answers before listening.

Selection criteria When planning your lesson you should take the following factors into account when preparing the pre-listening tasks. The time available The material available The ability of the class The interests of the class The nature and content of the listening text

The choice of pre-listening task also gives you a chance to grade the listening lesson for different abilities. If you have a class who are generally struggling with listening work, then the more extensive that the pre-listening work is the better. If, however, you wish to make the work very demanding, you could simply do work on the context of the listening. Thus, the same listening text can provide work for different abilities. Personally, I feel it is important to devote a fair proportion of a lesson to the pre-listening task, should the listening warrant it. For example, the listening about an ecological campaigner lends itself well to extended knowledge and vocabulary activation. However, a listening involving airport announcements may only need a shorter lead-in, as the topic is somewhat narrower.

Overall, training your students to bring their own knowledge and their skills of prediction to their listening work can only help them when listening to the language outside the classroom. These skills are as much a part of listening as understanding pronunciation or listening for details.

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Listening: Top down and bottom up Submitted by admin on 5 September, 2007 - 12:00 In 'real-life' listening, our students will have to use a combination of the two processes, with more emphasis on 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' listening depending on their reasons for listening. 1.

Top-down vs. bottom-up listening

1.

In the classroom

1.

Top-down listening activities

1.

Bottom-up listening activities

1.

Conclusion

Top-down vs. bottom-up listening Imagine the following situations: Over lunch, your friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster. You listen with interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express surprise or sympathy. That evening, another friend calls to invite you to a party at her house the following Saturday. As you’ve never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You listen carefully and make notes. How do you listen in each case? Are there any differences? With the holiday anecdote, your main concern was probably understanding the general idea and knowing when some response was expected. In contrast, when listening to the directions to a party, understanding the exact words is likely to be more important – if you want to get there without incident, that is! The way you listened to the holiday anecdote could be characterised as top-down listening. This refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message. Background knowledge consists of context, that is, the situation and topic, and co-text, in other words, what came before and after. The context of chatting to a friend in a casual environment itself narrows down the range of possible topics. Once the topic of a holiday has been established, our knowledge of the kind of things that can happen on holiday comes into play and helps us to ‘match’ the incoming sound signal against our expectations of what we

might hear and to fill out specific details. In contrast, when listening to directions to a friend’s house, comprehension is achieved by dividing and decoding the sound signal bit by bit. The ability to separate the stream of speech into individual words becomes more important here, if we are to recognise, for example, the name of a street or an instruction to take a particular bus. In reality, fluent listening normally depends on the use of both processes operating simultaneously. Think about talking to your friends (in your first language) in a noisy bar. It is likely that you ‘guess’ the content of large sections of the conversation, based on your knowledge of the topic and what has already been said. In this way, you rely more on topdown processing to make up for unreliability in the sound signal, which forms an obstacle to bottom-up processing. Similarly, second-language listeners often revert to their knowledge of the topic and situation when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary or structures, so using top-down processing to compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processing. On the other hand, if a listener is unable to understand anything of what she hears, she will not even be able to establish the topic of conversation, so top-down processing will also be very limited.

In the classroom In real-life listening, our students will have to use a combination of the two processes, with more emphasis on top-down or bottom-up listening depending on their reasons for listening. However, the two types of listening can also be practiced separately, as the skills involved are quite different.

Top-down listening activities Do you ever get your students to predict the content of a listening activity beforehand, maybe using information about the topic or situation, pictures, or key words? If so, you are already helping them to develop their top-down processing skills, by encouraging them to use their knowledge of the topic to help them understand the content. This is an essential skill given that, in a real-life listening situation, even advanced learners are likely to come across some unknown vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context and co-text, they should either be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or understand the general idea without getting distracted by it. Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a series of pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and identifying where they take place, reading information about a topic then listening to find whether or not the same points are mentioned, or inferring the relationships between the people involved.

Bottom-up listening activities The emphasis in EFL listening materials in recent years has been on developing top-down listening processes. There are good reasons for this given that learners need to be able to listen effectively even when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary or structures. However, if the learner understands very few words from the incoming signal, even knowledge about the context may not be sufficient for her to understand what is happening, and she can easily get

lost. Of course, low-level learners may simply not have enough vocabulary or knowledge of the language yet, but most teachers will be familiar with the situation in which higher-level students fail to recognise known words in the stream of fast connected speech. Bottom-up listening activities can help learners to understand enough linguistic elements of what they hear to then be able to use their top-down skills to fill in the gaps. The following procedure for developing bottom-up listening skills draws on dictogloss, and is designed to help learners recognise the divisions between words, an important bottom-up listening skill. The teacher reads out a number of sentences, and asks learners to write down how many words there would be in the written form. While the task might sound easy, for learners the weak forms in normal connected speech can make it problematic, so it is very important for the teacher to say the sentences in a very natural way, rather than dictating them word-by-word. Some suitable sentences are: 1.

I’m going to the shop.

1.

Do you want some chocolate?

1.

Let’s have a party!

1.

I’d better go soon.

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You shouldn’t have told him.

1.

What are you doing?

1.

There isn’t any coffee.

1.

What have you got?

1.

He doesn’t like it.

1.

It’s quite a long way.

1.

Why did you think you’d be able to?

1.

Can you tell him I called?

Learners can be asked to compare their answers in pairs, before listening again to check. While listening a third time, they could write what they hear, before reconstructing the complete sentences in pairs or groups. By comparing their version with the correct sentences, learners will become more aware of the sounds of normal spoken English, and how this is different from the written or carefully spoken form. This will help them to develop the skill of recognising known words and identifying word divisions in fast connected speech.

Conclusion Successful listening depends on the ability to combine these two types of processing. Activities which work on each strategy separately should help students to combine top-down and bottom-up processes to become more effective listeners in real-life situations or longer

classroom listenings.

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ELT Journal 1998 52(2):110-118; doi:10.1093/elt/52.2.110 © 1998 by Oxford University Press

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Skills and strategies: towards a new methodology for listening John Field Currently doing PhD research on listening at the University of Cambridge. He is a materials writer and teacher trainer with experience in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, and Africa. He has written secondary school coursebooks for Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, and is the author of a beginners series on BBC English by Radio. He worked for two years in the People's Republic of China, designing distance learning materials for TV. He is Coordinator of the IATEFL Research SIG. E-mail: [email protected]

This article calls for a rethinking of the purposes of the listening lesson, and examines ways in which we can teach the skill rather than simply practise it. The

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approaches proposed are based on micro-listening exercises which practise individual subskills of listening. The implications of using authentic materials are then examined, and a case is made for teaching recognition of the features of spontaneous speech. Finally, a strategic view of listening is presented, and it is argued that classroom activities need to take account of the true nature of real-life L2 listening, where understanding is partial, and inferencing is crucial.

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Teaching Listening Skills Via Interactive Videodisc

Journal article by Michael W. Cronin; T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education), Vol. 21, 1993

Journal Article Excerpt

Teaching listening skills via interactive videodisc

by Michael W. Cronin

Most people spend more time listening than they spend on speaking, reading and writing combined. Yet most people know less about listening than they do about the other forms of communication. Further, most people have taken extensive instruction in writing and reading, but have never received any listening instruction. In short, people get the least amount of instruction in the form of communication that they do the most. As a result, there are a lot of poor listeners. In fact, two days after listening to a ten-minute presentation, most people retain only 25% of what they heard.

Listening Competence

Ten recent national reports have called for an increased emphasis on listening instruction. Numerous studies conducted over the past 15 years document the need for listening instruction in both education and business.

* Listening competence results in higher college grades.

* Listening competence is more significant than reading skills or academic aptitude in college students' achievement and retention.

* Listening competence is the form of communication that is most important in entrylevel positions, most critical in distinguishing effective from ineffective subordinates, most critical for managerial competence, most important for career competence and most important for organizational success. A majority of businesses and postsecondary educational institutions are responding to this need to provide listening instruction. Approximately 60% of Fortune 500 industry and service companies and most colleges and universities provide listening instruction.

Studies at the University of Minnesota revealed that instruction in listening improved listening skills significantly.

The Technological Challenge

Although many businesses and educational institutions offer some instruction in listening, the need for additional training cannot be met by traditional methods alone. Most institutions can offer only one or two courses per year, falling far short of the goal of providing instruction to all (or most) students or employees.

Educators are calling for the application of new technologies to enhance teaching and learning. Interactive multimedia instruction (IMI)--defined here as the use of a Level--Ill interactive videodisc--often produces greater gains in knowledge and performance than does linear videotape or conventional instruction. Plus, the use of IMI often means more learning in less instructional time. However, almost no affordable IMI software is available in the field of oral communication. Further, even if it were, some educators question its effectiveness in teaching oral communication skills.

Is it possible to teach oral communication skills, such as listening, with IMI? Can affordable IMI software be made available to enable corporations and educational institutions to expand their instruction in listening skills? Yes.

This article focuses on the development, implementation and assessment of an IMI program in listening developed at Radford University. Called Mission Possible: Listening Skills for Better Communication, it was an award winner in the higher education category of the 1993 "Innovations in Multimedia" contest, co-sponsored by Sony Educational Systems and T.H.E. Journal. This article concludes with a brief description of other IMI programs in oral communication developed at the university and a discussion of our plans for future applications.

The Program in Detail

Mission Possible is a Level III interactive videodisc providing instruction in :

* Identifying bad listening habits;

* Overcoming these bad habits;

* Assessing personal listening behavior; and

* Enhancing active listening. Several unique learning issues presented themselves when designing Mission Possible. For example, this program might frequently be used to supplement courses or learning situations that involve listening but might not be about listening. Also, those who need listening-skills training the most might be least motivated to learn from this program. In response to these issues, conscious efforts were made to focus on basic instruction in listening and to enhance motivation to learn.

For example, the opening segment enhances initial interest in learning to improve listening. The disc begins with an attention step (the need for more effective listening) by "the Chief," which motivates some users to work to learn effective listening skills. If users do not attend to the Chief, a surprise posttest identifies their ineffective listening. Incorrect answers on the posttest may motivate them to seek more effective listening skills. The attention step and surprise posttest combine to provide users with a high need-to-know factor about basic instruction in effective listening. While this opening segment is designed to generate initial interest, the use of a Super Spy game aims to maintain interest (and is also how the name, "Mission Possible," was derived). For each activity within a mission, points can be earned through accuracy, and occasionally, speed. High scorers ...

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Business Communication Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2, 45-46 (1989) DOI: 10.1177/108056998905200216

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Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials

by Lindsay Miller For too long listening has been relegated to a secondary position in the English language teaching classroom. This stems, in part, from the fact that whereas a considerable amount of research has been conducted into reading, writing and speaking--research which has influenced our approaches to teaching language and has also influenced how textbooks have been written (see sidebar)--there has been a lack of research interest into listening. Some of the reasons for this lack of research interest come from the fact that speaking was always considered a more

"valuable" skill to focus on in the classroom; that researchers and teachers have often considered that listening was something which could just be "picked up"; and as researchers and teachers had not been taught listening themselves, they saw little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teaching listening. It is indeed interesting that listening has not received wider attention in the past given that it is the language skill most often used in everyday life. More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995). Although listening has been a relatively neglected skill in terms of research and how it is introduced to language learners, it is now beginning to receive more attention. In the past few years we have seen the publication of several major texts, both practical and theoretical, specifically dealing with listening skills: Mendelson and Rubin 1995; Nunan and Miller 1995; Buck 2000; Rost 2002; Flowerdew and Miller, in press. In conjunction with these books, there is now a greater awareness among teachers that we have to help learners develop their listening skills, rather than rely on the skill developing itself. The question of how to help learners develop effective listening skills brings attention to the methods we use and the type of materials we introduce our learners to. The aim of all listening lessons should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context, and that means using authentic texts. Authentic texts are any spoken texts which have not been specially prepared for language learners, and they are often delivered via technologies like radio, television/video, and the Internet or CD-ROM. In the rest of this article I would like to suggest a process for helping learners develop their listening skills, and make suggestions as how this might be achieved with authentic materials. Pre-, While-, and Post-Listening One of the main advancements to come out of research into listening strategies was the understanding that listening exercises could be divided into three main parts: Pre-listening, While-listening, Post-listening activities. This format has proved useful in taking the attention off continually testing listening and has allowed learners to do other things with the information that they listen to. For instance, a teacher can initiate a short discussion with the learners in the pre-listening stage as to what they think of the topic before they listen to the text (activating world and personal knowledge). Then the learners can be asked to use whatever information they gathered from a text to have an extended discussion in a post-listening stage (allowing for more individualization and critical comments to be developed). In between these two stages, learners can be helped to focus on their listening by careful selection of tasks that are meaningful and that cater to developing specific

listening skills rather than on constantly measuring performance through test-like exercises. I will use this established format of pre-, while-, and post-listening activities and make some suggestions as to how they can be used with authentic materials delivered through technological media. Radio Using real-time radio in class is one of the more easily accessible forms of authentic listening practice we can give our learners. The airwaves are filled with programs twenty-four hours per day, and the low cost of radios means that most language teachers can obtain a radio and take it to class. Radio stations such as BBC World Service (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) are constantly on-air. Meanwhile, many non-English speaking countries also broadcast some programs, or even have dedicated stations, in English. Although radios are easy to access, they are perhaps the most difficult of aural text for language learners to listen to. The reason for this is that all non-verbal information is missing, information which can aid in helping understand the message, and the learner has to focus on the skill which is most difficult for him or her--listening. In order to use radio programs with learners teachers need to select a program at a suitable time for their class and decide on some global listening tasks for the learners. For instance, with an intermediate group of learners about to listen to a radio program on travel we might adopt the following procedure: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Today we are going to listen to a travel program on the radio for ten minutes. Before we listen, who has made a trip recently? Where did you go? What did you see? The radio guide tells us in that this program is about Egypt. What do you know about Egypt? What would you like to know about Egypt? What kind of information do you think the presenter will give us? Stage 2: While-Listening Task While you listen to the program, try to listen for the main things the presenter recommends doing while in Egypt. Don¹t try to write anything down, only listen to the program and see how much you can understand. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task In groups of three have a short discussion about what you heard from the program. Would you like to go to Egypt based on what you just heard? Why or why not? In using the radio in the way suggested here we allow learners access to native speaker models, something which might be missing from their normal classroom experiences. Also, we place the focus on extensive listening for pleasure and take the emphasis off testing what the learners hear (that is why we ask the learners not to write while they listen). TV/Video Using television or videos in the classroom allows the learners access to more information when listening. That is, the learners can now see what is happening as well as listen to the text. Non-verbal behavior or paralinguistic features of the

spoken text are now available to the learners (compared with radio, that is), so learners can develop their listening skills in a richer language context. Many language learners watch movies outside of class time, but few of them consider this as an opportunity to develop their listening skills (perhaps because they become used to reading the sub-titles of English movies). Going to a movie is considered as entertainment and often "doesn¹t count" in terms of learning. We can, however, in the language classroom, sensitize our learners to how they can make use of movies to help them develop their second language listening skills. With an elementary-level class of learners we might consider the following out-ofclass activity: Stage 1: Pre-Viewing Task This weekend there is an English movie on TV. Does anyone know what it is? What time is it on? Which channel is it on? Please write the name, time and channel down as this is your homework task. Stage 2: While-Viewing Task I would like you to watch the movie this weekend, or try to watch as much as you can. Focus on listening to the movie instead of reading the subtitles. Try to collect the following information: kind of movie (comedy, romance, action, horror), names of the main characters (male, female, animal), where does the movie take place (inside, outside, on land, at sea, country), what is the main idea in the movie? Stage 3: Post-Viewing Task (the next lesson) Who watched the movie last weekend? What can you tell us about it? This generic format can be repeated as many times as you like, and once learners have developed the habit of watching and listening to English language movies with some kind of focus, they will get used to this type of exposure to listening for pleasure, and you may then move on to more critical post-viewing tasks--e.g., Do you think we should go to war with each other (after viewing a war movie). The Internet/CD-ROM There has been a rapid increase in the development of Internet facilities and CDROMs. This has been prompted, partly, by the more powerful computers we have these days and has been partly driven by the users' demands for more interesting and innovative applications of the technology. We are able to direct our learners to sites on the Internet where they can practice their listening as long as they have access to the appropriate computer hardware. There are several benefits computer software has over radio or television. For instance, many CD-ROMs now have glossaries and online scripts, so that when problems are encountered, the learners can get online help. In addition to this, many younger learners wish to learn or use their computer skills nowadays, so the prospect of developing computer skills along with developing their language skills may seem attractive to these learners. With an advanced group of learners we might consider having extended critical and creative discussion about the news: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Tomorrow in class we will have some discussion about what¹s in the news. In order to do this I would like you do access at least two of the following websites: http://www.bbc.co.uk, http://www.avoa. gov or

http://npr.org (National Public Radio) and listen to different versions of the main stories. Once you are in the website you can choose audio or video presentations. You can also look for related items. Just surf around until you feel you have collected enough information for our discussion in class. Stage 2: While-Listening Task Students may either work at home or in a computer lab at school to collect the information they require. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task (the next class) First I would like you to sit in groups according to one of the websites you visited. So lets have a group of BBC listeners/viewers, one of VOA, and one of NPR to begin with. In your groups discuss what the main news stories were. Only exchange information at this stage. Now change groups and have one person for each website in groups of three. Explain to the other members in your group the main stories in the order they were presented on the Web. Then discuss your reaction to these stories. Consider how important you think the item is, what angle the broadcast company took when presenting the stories, and what this story means to you personally. This use of the Internet and computer technology integrates several authentic activities for the learners and widens the scope of developing listening skills. In addition to this, learners are now given more autonomy over their language learning and the links between classroom and real-world learning becomes more obvious to them. Richer Learning Experiences With the increased awareness of the need to help second-language learners develop effective listening skills and with the greater availability of technology nowadays, teachers are able to explore more creative ways of teaching listening in and out of the class using authentic materials. Once we begin to explore the possibilities, a few of which are outlined here, we offer a richer language learning experience for our learners and create good listeners into the bargain. SIDEBAR The Question of Authenticity When preparing learners for academic listening, English language teachers often choose to use a textbook with a title like Academic listening: preparing students for lectures. Such textbooks are widely used on pre-sessional courses, and many students and their teachers diligently work their way through the textbook in the belief that they are preparing for the real thing. However, my colleague John Flowerdew and I conducted an investigation of an authentic economics and finance lecture (Flowerdew and Miller, 1997). We found that what academic listening textbooks prepared learners for was very different from the "real thing." We transcribed and analyzed a lecture discourse and then compared it to a selection of academic listening textbooks, this is what we found: 1. The authentic lecture was structured at the micro-level of discourse. There were lots of uses of "and," "so," "but," many pauses, and filled pauses with the use of "ah" and "er." On the other hand, textbook lectures had complete clauses and fewer

pauses. 2. The authentic lecture discourse contained many false starts, redundancies and repetitions. None of these show up in English language teaching (ELT) textbooks. 3. The lecturer made use of a variety of extra linguistic features such as body movements and kinesics. Textbook texts are usually only audio recorded so such cues are missing. 4. In the real lecture the lecturer made an attempt to establish a rapport with the students; he a) tried to make the lecture non-threatening and empathized with the students, b) personalized many of his references, and c) checked that the students were following the lecture as he delivered it. The impersonal nature of an audio text cannot simulate any of these features. 5. As the authentic lecture lasted for two hours, the lecturer made use of a narrative thread to hold his talk together, that is, he told a story and continually returned to the theme of the story. ELT textbooks, on the other hand, rarely have recordings of more than a few minutes and cannot sustain any narrative thread. 6. The lecturer made use of macro-markers to signpost his way through the talk and to refer to future lectures, e.g., "Last week we saw howŠ.." "In next week's lecture I am going to move on toŠ..". In this way he structured the lecture around the series of talks he was going to give to the students. Textbooks cannot do this as most of their texts are stand-alone lectures. 7. The lecturer made use of a variety of visual aids during his talk including the white board, overhead transparencies and pre-lecture reading text. None of these were used in the textbooks analyzed. This detailed lecture analysis illustrates that authentic texts should also be used when helping learners prepare for listening to lectures. By only using specially scripted text, learners may miss important features of spoken academic discourse and develop listening skills which will be of little use to them in the real lecture context. ----------------------------------Lindsay Miller is an associate professor of language education in the Department of English and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. References Buck, G. 2000. Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Burely-Allen, M. 1995. Listening: The forgotten skill. New York: John Wily & Sons, Inc. Flowerdew, J. and L. Miller. 1997. The teaching of academic listening comprehension and the question of authenticity. English for Specific Purposes, 16 (1):27-46. Flowerdew, J. and Miller, L. In press. Second Language Listening Comprehension: Theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mendelson, D., and J. Rubin. 1995. A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Listening. San Diego, CA: Dominic Press.

Nunan, D., and L. Miller, eds. 1995. New Ways in Teaching Listening: Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Rost, M. 2002. Teaching and Researching Listening. London: Pearson. This article first appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of ESL Magazine.

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Business Communication Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2, 45-46 (1989) DOI: 10.1177/108056998905200216

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Listening Activities for Effective Top-down Processing Ji Lingzhu margie_ji [at] yahoo.com Taiyuan Normal University (China)

Introduction Once I played the recording of a hundred word passage on how to advertise for a kind of very expensive perfume to my students in the listening class. Before they listened, all the necessary new words like tuxedo, Leonardo da Vinci etc, were given and explained carefully. The tape was played three times before I asked them to retell the main idea of the passage. Half of them failed to give the correct answer. Even some of the strong learners failed. My students told me they did not know what the writer was talking about, although they knew all the words and the grammatical rules. Suddenly one lady student who seldom opened her mouth in the listening class stood up, telling me that the writer was talking about how to make an advertisement for a kind of perfume. She further explained that she was interested in reading fashion magazines in her spare time, and people always tried many ways to advertise their products. That was really out of my expectation because she was not very strong in listening comprehension.

The text itself was not very difficult linguistically and the students were capable of understanding it. What caused the comprehension failure?

Just like reading, in listening, there are also two simultaneous and complementary ways of processing a text. In top-down processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make predictions about the text. In bottom-up processing, learners rely on their linguistic knowledge to recognize linguistic elements -- vowels, consonants, words, sentences to do the construction of meaning. Teachers often think that the learners hear every sound, word or sentences before they understand the general meaning of the passage. However, in practice, they often adopt a topdown approach to predict the probable theme and then move to the bottom-up approach to check their understanding.rAccording to the schema theory, the process of comprehension is guided by the idea that input is overlaid by the pre-existing knowledge in an attempt to find a match. The readers must relate textual materials to their background knowledge, so that the new input from a reading passage is mapped against some prior schema. All aspects of the previously existing schema must be compatible with the new input from the text. In a commercial society like ours, my students do not lack the schema for advertising. However the passage is not about the advertisement for the perfume, but about his thoughts on the ways to advertise. The students reported that they did not think about the advertisement planning process while they listened to the passage. The lady student who did well reported that she had read an article on how to advertise for a famous brand of shirt. Most of the students actually failed because they were not very familiar with the topic. In English listening, the content schema must be activated in order for the learners to access their prior knowledge. Consequently it is our job to use some classroom activities to help them. First of all, we must assess the students' level of background knowledge on a particular topic before the students listen to the text. If the students lack specific content schema, we should provide a remedial lesson on the topic to bring their level of content schema up to the level where they can better comprehend the text. Or we revise the teaching materials so that they will not be too demanding for the students. Furthermore, the teachers can use the information gained at this time to make specific lesson plans for the remainder of the listening lesson on that particular topic.

Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge To effectively activate the students' prior knowledge, I often use activities in my listening class and will introduce some of them here in this article.

Word Association Tasks This method helps to determine what prior knowledge students bring to the new topic before they listen to the passage. They will respond to a key word or phrase such as "Crimes are harmful to the society." They can write down as many words and phrases as possible in five minutes' time related to this topic, or they may write freely on this topic. While they write, they should not worry about the words and sentences they write, just pay attention to the content. The whole process takes about ten minutes. The teacher can write down the main ideas on the board. Then according to the information, the teacher should adjust his/her teaching plan. The free association method of assessing background knowledge was originally developed as part of a pre-reading plan. Later it was further developed as a measure of prior knowledge. The learners are usually given three content words or phrases related to a topic and asked to write anything that comes to mind when they hear each word or phrase. We can also use the semantic webbing method. In

this approach, teachers graphically connect the various concepts and key words surrounding a particular topic on the blackboard, helping students to see the possible relationship between ideas discussed. Here we are not creating new knowledge, but making students aware of the knowledge they already have by giving structure to the content information. This process will enable them to connect what they are going to learn with what they have already know.

This teaching process can be done as group work. Students can be divided into several groups to discuss the topic. Usually each group will come up with different ideas. After a few minutes, the instructor can ask the group leader to report their discussion results, and help them to put their ideas into appropriate groups and label them properly. The students are encouraged to refer to a dictionary as they generate their ideas.

Another Type of Pre-listening Activity Is Questioning. Usually teachers ask students questions after they finish listening. Here my suggestion is giving them the questions before they listen to the target text. This task more closely relates to what happens in the real world. We most often listen to the speaker to find answers to the questions in our minds, relating to a certain topic, or to confirm what we already thought to be true. Pre-passage questions induce a selective attention strategy. If we use a certain textbook, in which questions always follow a passage, we may ask the students to read the questions first. By reading the questions, students may build up their own expectations about the coming information, and also by trying to find answers to these questions, their prior knowledge on the topic can be activated. They can even have a framework of the organization of the passage to be read if the questions are arranged in a wellarranged order.

For instance, students are expected to answer the following questions after they listen to a passage. •

What are the benefits of the social recognition of marriage for children?

•

What are the three areas the speaker will deal with in this lecture?

•

What are the three possibilities for the number of mates?

•

What are the possibilities for the locality of the marriage?

•

What are the possibilities for the transfer of wealth?

Ask the students to read the questions carefully, they will know the main idea of the passage is marriage customs, and the speaker will mainly talk about the benefits of social recognition of marriage for the children, the number of mates, the locality of marriage, and the transfer of wealth after the marriage.

We can also use the student-generated questions by giving them a topic, letting them ask questions about what kind of information they would like to know, and then asking their classmates to give answers to the questions. Before they listen to a dialogue between a policeman and a thief, tell them who the two speakers are, then ask what they may talk about. You may also ask the learners to role play the dialogue.

However, this method may not be very appropriate for opinion-giving text or fiction. It is best used for passages that provide factual information. If the passage is too long, one possible solution for the teacher is divide the text into sections and implement the approach section by section.

Making List of Possibilities / Ideas / Suggestions When the text contains lists, even short lists of possibilities /ideas /suggestions or whatever, it is often a good idea to use list making as the pre-listening activity. This way the students can use their lists during the listening stage. While the students make the list, they can use the words and phrases they have already known, or they can ask their partners to help. Any checking type activity carried out while listening can then be limited to matching with known language. This can increase the likelihood of students succeeding with the task. So it is a very motivating activity, especially for the lower level students.

The list making activity is very good for pair or group work. Students can work it in a relaxed atmosphere because there is no right answer as to what should be on the list. In the beginning of the course, when the students are not very familiar with the activity, we may use list-making for the subjects about which people are very familiar since they are likely to have a lot of ideas. For instance, "the food people like to eat", "things children are afraid of", etc.

Looking at Pictures Before Listening I have used this many times with younger learners because they are good at reading pictures. If you want to check whether the students can name some of the items in the listening text, pre-listening "looking and talking about" is an effective way of reminding the students of lexis which they may have forgotten or never known. It will also help them to focus their attention on the coming topic. This is very good for narrative or descriptive passages.

Why Are These Activities Important? Listeners do make use of background knowledge for comprehension. Therefore it seems logical to teach background knowledge in the second language program. In China, the textbooks for listening are chosen by the department leaders and teachers are required to follow the book closely. The texts are taken from various resources from English speaking countries, which put emphasis on authenticity. These materials cover a wide range of fields in the target language culture. However, our students are not culturally ready for these kind of materials. They are forced to listen to the unknown, the remote and the bizarre, so that they cannot use the top-down processing strategies very effectively.Therefore they are forced to listen word by word or even sound by sound. Several scholars recommended the use of narrowed materials, possibly with the local materials, such as school newspapers, local novels etc (Carrell& Eisterhold, 1983). They are right to a certain extent. However as foreign language learners, they cannot always stick to narrow materials, we may start from narrow materials and gradually move to authentic materials. So at the beginning of the course, students should be given a pre-test on

their background knowledge. Then we may present listening passages in a graded order to ensure that for every topic the students have some prior knowledge. The passages that are learned first would provide background for later passages.

Pre-listening activities usually have two primary goals: a. to bring to consciousness the tools and strategies that good listeners use when listening, and b. to provide the necessary context for that specific listening task. Studies show that learners comprehend more of a text if they are familiar with the text from experience or they have known something about the topic before or they know in advance what the listening passage concerns. The four kinds of pre-listening activities help to activate students' prior knowledge, build up their expectations for the coming information and sometimes even give them a framework of the coming passage. In this way we can help our students to comprehend better.

What Influences Our Choice of Top-down Activities? The choice of the activities will depend on a number of factors, such as: •

the time available;

•

the material available;

•

the ability of the class;

•

the nature and content of the listening text itself.

The last item on the list " the nature of the listening text itself" is very important when choosing activities. Some kind of activities are simply not appropriate to some types of text, and in other instances, the text itself very naturally makes one type of activity especially appropriate.

Listening texts which naturally rise to certain kind of top-down activities are particularly useful and generally quite motivating for the students. When the instructor designs these kind of activities, they should also take the time element into consideration. You cannot have a fifteen- minute activity for a passage which will last only three minutes. Remember the pre-listening process should not last longer than the actual listening activity. The learners' proficiency is also a factor to consider. The activities should not be too demanding, otherwise the students will lose their interests.

Conclusion Top-down processing is very important in listening comprehension. In our native language, we do not listen to the speaker word by word, and we are sometimes one step ahead of the speaker. Our students' cognitive level is quite high, and they are quite strong in comprehension. The only problem is that their English is not very good. Using top-down activities can quickly help them to transfer their mother tongue listening strategies into English listening. Activating prior knowledge is crucial in top-down processing.

References •

Carrell, P. L.& Eisterhold,J. (1983). Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 23 (4), 647-678.

•

He, Q. etc (1992) Listen to This -- 2. Beijing -- Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing House.

•

Kitao, S.K.C. (1989). Reading, Schema Theory and Second Language learners. Tokyo; Eichosha Sininsha Co., LTD.

•

Chia,H (2001),Reading Activities for Effective top-down Processing. English Teaching Forum, Vol 39 No 1.

•

Underwood, M ( 1989). Teaching listening. New York: Longman Inc. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 11, November 2003 http://iteslj.org/

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Lingzhu-Listening.html Current Issue - Activities for ESL Students - Things for ESL Teachers - TESL/TEFL Links - Search - Copyright The Internet TESL Journal

Listening Activities for Effective Top-down Processing Ji Lingzhu margie_ji [at] yahoo.com Taiyuan Normal University (China)

Introduction Once I played the recording of a hundred word passage on how to advertise for a kind of very expensive perfume to my students in the listening class. Before they listened, all the necessary new words like tuxedo, Leonardo da Vinci etc, were given and explained carefully. The tape was played three times before I asked them to retell the main idea of the passage. Half of them failed to give the correct answer. Even some of the strong learners failed. My students told me they did not know what the writer was talking about, although they knew all the words and the grammatical rules. Suddenly one lady student who seldom opened her mouth in the listening class stood up, telling me that the writer was talking about how to make an advertisement for a kind of perfume. She further explained that she was interested in reading fashion magazines in her spare time, and people always tried many ways to advertise their products. That was really out of my expectation because she was not very strong in listening comprehension.

The text itself was not very difficult linguistically and the students were capable of understanding it. What caused the comprehension failure? Just like reading, in listening, there are also two simultaneous and complementary ways of processing a text. In top-down processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make predictions about the text. In bottom-up processing, learners rely on their linguistic knowledge to recognize

linguistic elements -- vowels, consonants, words, sentences to do the construction of meaning. Teachers often think that the learners hear every sound, word or sentences before they understand the general meaning of the passage. However, in practice, they often adopt a topdown approach to predict the probable theme and then move to the bottom-up approach to check their understanding.rAccording to the schema theory, the process of comprehension is guided by the idea that input is overlaid by the pre-existing knowledge in an attempt to find a match. The readers must relate textual materials to their background knowledge, so that the new input from a reading passage is mapped against some prior schema. All aspects of the previously existing schema must be compatible with the new input from the text. In a commercial society like ours, my students do not lack the schema for advertising. However the passage is not about the advertisement for the perfume, but about his thoughts on the ways to advertise. The students reported that they did not think about the advertisement planning process while they listened to the passage. The lady student who did well reported that she had read an article on how to advertise for a famous brand of shirt. Most of the students actually failed because they were not very familiar with the topic. In English listening, the content schema must be activated in order for the learners to access their prior knowledge. Consequently it is our job to use some classroom activities to help them. First of all, we must assess the students' level of background knowledge on a particular topic before the students listen to the text. If the students lack specific content schema, we should provide a remedial lesson on the topic to bring their level of content schema up to the level where they can better comprehend the text. Or we revise the teaching materials so that they will not be too demanding for the students. Furthermore, the teachers can use the information gained at this time to make specific lesson plans for the remainder of the listening lesson on that particular topic.

Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge To effectively activate the students' prior knowledge, I often use activities in my listening class and will introduce some of them here in this article.

Word Association Tasks This method helps to determine what prior knowledge students bring to the new topic before they listen to the passage. They will respond to a key word or phrase such as "Crimes are harmful to the society." They can write down as many words and phrases as possible in five minutes' time related to this topic, or they may write freely on this topic. While they write, they should not worry about the words and sentences they write, just pay attention to the content. The whole process takes about ten minutes. The teacher can write down the main ideas on the board. Then according to the information, the teacher should adjust his/her teaching plan. The free association method of assessing background knowledge was originally developed as part of a pre-reading plan. Later it was further developed as a measure of prior knowledge. The learners are usually given three content words or phrases related to a topic and asked to write anything that comes to mind when they hear each word or phrase. We can also use the semantic webbing method. In this approach, teachers graphically connect the various concepts and key words surrounding a particular topic on the blackboard, helping students to see the possible relationship between ideas discussed. Here we are not creating new

knowledge, but making students aware of the knowledge they already have by giving structure to the content information. This process will enable them to connect what they are going to learn with what they have already know.

This teaching process can be done as group work. Students can be divided into several groups to discuss the topic. Usually each group will come up with different ideas. After a few minutes, the instructor can ask the group leader to report their discussion results, and help them to put their ideas into appropriate groups and label them properly. The students are encouraged to refer to a dictionary as they generate their ideas.

Another Type of Pre-listening Activity Is Questioning. Usually teachers ask students questions after they finish listening. Here my suggestion is giving them the questions before they listen to the target text. This task more closely relates to what happens in the real world. We most often listen to the speaker to find answers to the questions in our minds, relating to a certain topic, or to confirm what we already thought to be true. Pre-passage questions induce a selective attention strategy. If we use a certain textbook, in which questions always follow a passage, we may ask the students to read the questions first. By reading the questions, students may build up their own expectations about the coming information, and also by trying to find answers to these questions, their prior knowledge on the topic can be activated. They can even have a framework of the organization of the passage to be read if the questions are arranged in a wellarranged order.

For instance, students are expected to answer the following questions after they listen to a passage. •

What are the benefits of the social recognition of marriage for children?

•

What are the three areas the speaker will deal with in this lecture?

•

What are the three possibilities for the number of mates?

•

What are the possibilities for the locality of the marriage?

•

What are the possibilities for the transfer of wealth?

Ask the students to read the questions carefully, they will know the main idea of the passage is marriage customs, and the speaker will mainly talk about the benefits of social recognition of marriage for the children, the number of mates, the locality of marriage, and the transfer of wealth after the marriage.

We can also use the student-generated questions by giving them a topic, letting them ask questions about what kind of information they would like to know, and then asking their classmates to give answers to the questions. Before they listen to a dialogue between a policeman and a thief, tell them who the two speakers are, then ask what they may talk about. You may also ask the learners to role play the dialogue. However, this method may not be very appropriate for opinion-giving text or fiction. It is best used for passages that provide factual information. If the passage is too long, one possible solution for the teacher is divide the text into sections and implement the approach section by section.

Making List of Possibilities / Ideas / Suggestions When the text contains lists, even short lists of possibilities /ideas /suggestions or whatever, it is often a good idea to use list making as the pre-listening activity. This way the students can use their lists during the listening stage. While the students make the list, they can use the words and phrases they have already known, or they can ask their partners to help. Any checking type activity carried out while listening can then be limited to matching with known language. This can increase the likelihood of students succeeding with the task. So it is a very motivating activity, especially for the lower level students.

The list making activity is very good for pair or group work. Students can work it in a relaxed atmosphere because there is no right answer as to what should be on the list. In the beginning of the course, when the students are not very familiar with the activity, we may use list-making for the subjects about which people are very familiar since they are likely to have a lot of ideas. For instance, "the food people like to eat", "things children are afraid of", etc.

Looking at Pictures Before Listening I have used this many times with younger learners because they are good at reading pictures. If you want to check whether the students can name some of the items in the listening text, pre-listening "looking and talking about" is an effective way of reminding the students of lexis which they may have forgotten or never known. It will also help them to focus their attention on the coming topic. This is very good for narrative or descriptive passages.

Why Are These Activities Important? Listeners do make use of background knowledge for comprehension. Therefore it seems logical to teach background knowledge in the second language program. In China, the textbooks for listening are chosen by the department leaders and teachers are required to follow the book closely. The texts are taken from various resources from English speaking countries, which put emphasis on authenticity. These materials cover a wide range of fields in the target language culture. However, our students are not culturally ready for these kind of materials. They are forced to listen to the unknown, the remote and the bizarre, so that they cannot use the top-down processing strategies very effectively.Therefore they are forced to listen word by word or even sound by sound. Several scholars recommended the use of narrowed materials, possibly with the local materials, such as school newspapers, local novels etc (Carrell& Eisterhold, 1983). They are right to a certain extent. However as foreign language learners, they cannot always stick to narrow materials, we may start from narrow materials and gradually move to authentic materials. So at the beginning of the course, students should be given a pre-test on their background knowledge. Then we may present listening passages in a graded order to ensure that for every topic the students have some prior knowledge. The passages that are learned first would provide background for later passages.

Pre-listening activities usually have two primary goals: a. to bring to consciousness the tools and strategies that good listeners use when listening, and b. to provide the necessary context for that specific listening task. Studies show that learners comprehend more of a text if they are familiar with the text from experience or they have known something about the topic before or they know in advance what the listening passage concerns. The four kinds of pre-listening activities help to activate students' prior knowledge, build up their expectations for the coming information and sometimes even give them a framework of the coming passage. In this way we can help our students to comprehend better.

What Influences Our Choice of Top-down Activities? The choice of the activities will depend on a number of factors, such as: •

the time available;

•

the material available;

•

the ability of the class;

•

the nature and content of the listening text itself.

The last item on the list " the nature of the listening text itself" is very important when choosing activities. Some kind of activities are simply not appropriate to some types of text, and in other instances, the text itself very naturally makes one type of activity especially appropriate.

Listening texts which naturally rise to certain kind of top-down activities are particularly useful and generally quite motivating for the students. When the instructor designs these kind of activities, they should also take the time element into consideration. You cannot have a fifteen- minute activity for a passage which will last only three minutes. Remember the pre-listening process should not last longer than the actual listening activity. The learners' proficiency is also a factor to consider. The activities should not be too demanding, otherwise the students will lose their interests.

Conclusion Top-down processing is very important in listening comprehension. In our native language, we do not listen to the speaker word by word, and we are sometimes one step ahead of the speaker. Our students' cognitive level is quite high, and they are quite strong in comprehension. The only problem is that their English is not very good. Using top-down activities can quickly help them to transfer their mother tongue listening strategies into English listening. Activating prior knowledge is crucial in top-down processing.

References •

Carrell, P. L.& Eisterhold,J. (1983). Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 23 (4), 647-678.

•

He, Q. etc (1992) Listen to This -- 2. Beijing -- Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing House.

•

Kitao, S.K.C. (1989). Reading, Schema Theory and Second Language learners. Tokyo; Eichosha Sininsha Co., LTD.

•

Chia,H (2001),Reading Activities for Effective top-down Processing. English Teaching Forum, Vol 39 No 1.

•

Underwood, M ( 1989). Teaching listening. New York: Longman Inc. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 11, November 2003 http://iteslj.org/

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Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A cognitive perspective on language learners' listening comprehension problems

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Christine C. M. Goh,

English Language and Applied Linguistics Division, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 469 Bukit Timah Road, S 259756, Singapore

Received 7 January 1999; revised 9 April 1999; accepted 19 April 1999. Available online 24 January 2000.

Abstract In this article, I offer a cognitive perspective on the comprehension problems of second language listeners. I do this by identifying real-time listening difficulties faced by a group of English as a second language (ESL) learners and examining these difficulties within the three-phase model of language comprehension proposed by Anderson (1995, Cognitive Psychology and its Implications, 4th Edition.

Freeman, New York). Data were elicited from learners' self-reports through the procedures of learner diaries, small group interviews and immediate retrospective verbalisations. My analysis showed 10 problems which occurred during the cognitive processing phases of perception, parsing and utilisation. Five problems were linked to word recognition and attention failure during perceptual processing. There were also problems related to inefficient parsing and failure to utilise the mental representations of parsed input. A comparison of two groups of learners with different listening abilities showed some similarities in the difficulties experienced, but low ability listeners had more problems with low-level processing. In the last part of the article, I highlight the benefits of researching real-time cognitive constraints during listening and obtaining data through learners' introspection, and offer some practical suggestions for helping learners become better listeners.

Author Keywords: Listening comprehension problems; Language learning; Cognitive framework

Article Outline 1. Introduction 2. Understanding learners' listening problems 2.1. Using learners' self-reports 2.2. Adopting a cognitive framework 3. The study 3.1. Informants and methods 3.2. Data analysis 4. Results 4.1. Problems related to perception, parsing and utilisation 4.1.1. Quickly forget what is heard 4.1.2. Do not recognise words they know 4.1.3. Understand words but not the intended message 4.1.4. Neglect the next part when thinking about meaning

4.1.5. Unable to form a mental representation from words heard 4.1.6. Other listening problems 4.2. A comparison of learners with different listening abilities 4.3. Summary of findings 5. Helping learners become better listeners 5.1. Direct strategy: perception and strategy practice 5.2. Indirect strategy: metacognitive awareness raising activities 6. Conclusion References

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TEACHING LISTENING PRACTICATILITIES ABSTRACT

Thispaperdescribes procedures to be followed by the teacher when teaching the listening ability in classroom. These procedures are based on recent research in foreign language learning. The ways video, music poems and aural material can be used are described and various activities are presented. Key words: listening-pre-post-whilelisteninglanguage-task. One of the most difficult ability to be mastered in the process of acquiring/learning a foreign language is aural comprehension. The most frequent complaints heard from students is that they do not understand what is said on tapes, videos, and any kind ofmedia in general or even in real life situations. Students aretrained all their lives to understand each word of the oraldiscourse and teachers in generaldo not perceive that most of thetimes this is not necessary, that sometimes understanding the gist already ensures enough

comprehension to respond to a situation either in real life or in the classroom answering questions. The main purpose of teaching listening is to expose students to and allow them to hear different types of accents, such as British or American English, Australian, Indian, French, Swiss and of many other nationalities in order to expose them not only to 44 Caminhos grammar and vocabulary, but also to rhythm, intonation, pronunciation and stress of the world language of English. Pronunciation is often different from the phonological representation found in the dictionaries; vocabulary is coloquial and most of the times the presence of noise hinders understanding of 100%. Besides these features of real life listening, the listener knows in advance who is speaking, what is going to be said and the purpose of listening, that is, the listener knows the context and has a

reason to listen. According to Ur (1996), in real life, in our first language, we listen to interviews, instructionsloudspeaker announcements radio news - television programs shopping - telephone and on line chats - lectures - gossip - story telling - on line productions music, among others. We understand that a teacher has to expose students to the kind of discourse above and also call attention to the following features present in it. First of all, the kind of language we hear in the above situations is informal ungrammatical, and redundant. We understand that a teacher has to expose students to the kinds of discourse above and call attention to the following features present in it: • the kind of language we hear in the above situations is informal, slightly ungrammatical and redundant. The language is spoken in short chunks; the pronunciation is slurred and noise can prevent

understanding of the whole text. • In real situation, the listener knows in advance the context (reason to listen and content). • Listeners can often see the environment. It is blind when we listen to a radio or telephone. • The time of exposure to speech is usually not long due to turn taking • The speaker may adapt the discourse depending on the listener's reactions regarding understanding (p.105) . Even though, according to Ur (1996, pp. 111-112) learners in general often complain about the listening class by saying that they are not able to: • distinguish the sounds of the foreign language • understand every word (it is difficult for them to accept that theydonothaveto understand every word) • understand people when they speak fast • understand when hearing the

text only once • follow the text when it is too long UNIDAVI 45 HOW TO SOLVE THESE DIFFICULTIES First of all, students should have an idea of what they are going to hear in order to activate their schemata (background knowledge) and anticipate what is going to be said. This will help students to succeed in the task which will motivate them. Thus, teachers can use a picture, a map, a diagram a written text, pre teach unknown vocabulary (when absolutely necessary). It is essential that curiosity is awakened by giving some hints to special messages hidden in the context. For example, the teacher could use a little bit of discourse analysis on the passage to be heard by calling their attention to irony traces, power relations, genre, and conclusions drawn from inferences in order to motivate students to listen. Second, students should have

a reason to listen because the purpose guides the listener to listen selectively for specific information to fulfill their curiosity. Thus, the teacher should give the task first, that is, set the question or explain what piece of information they have to find out. For example, the teacher asks the students: “What did Sally choose to eat?” and then plays the part that contains this answer. He stops and checks the answer. In case students are not able to provide the answer, the teacher repeats Figura 1 - The task text/ tape/ video/ feedback circle Source: Scrivener,1994, p. 150. 46 Caminhos the same passage. The teacher again asks the next question and plays the part of the corresponding answer. He checks it with the students and continues to the other questions till the end of the listening passage. The students should not listen to the entire passage twice, for example, and then answer

comprehension questions; instead, teacher and student should interact all the time and students should answer questions while listening. This procedure is shown in figure 1 Furthermore, the listening class can be more enjoyable if : • the texts are not too long • there is a maximum of three speakers whose voice can be easily distinguished • the speakers speak at normal speed using simple grammar and vocabulary • there are no background noises • there is image (video or live), not just audio • the students have knowledge about the topic • there is repetition (redundancies) and pauses in the text • the text is of the students' interest. LISTENING STRATEGIES Some actions can be taken by the learners which seem to lead to a more successful mastering of language skills. Thus, to

enhance listening comprehension the following steps can be undertaken by the learners (Oxford, 1990). • Watch TV shows or movies or listen to the radio in the new language. • Attend and participate in outofclass events where the new language is spoken. • Try to understand what has been heard or read without translating it word-for-word into one´s language. • When not understanding all the words read or heard, guess the general meaning by using any clue found, for example, clues from the context or situation. • In a conversation anticipate what the other person is going to say based on what has been said before. • When someone is speaking in the new language try to concentrate on what the person is saying and put unrelated topics out of mind. • Take responsibility for finding

opportunities to practise the new language. • Look actively for people with whom it is possible to speak UNIDAVI 47 the new language. • If not understanding, ask the speaker to slow down, repeat, or clarify what was said • Ask other people to verify if what has been said or understood is correct. • In conversation with other in the new language, ask questions in order to be as involved as possible and to show interest. By keeping in mind the above hints, the teacher will be exposing the students to real life listening since its characterists mentioned before will be present. The above hints can also be solutions for the problems presented by Ur (1996, p. 111-112). Moreover, there are some techniques that help soften the process: • Keep the recording short not

more than 2 minutes or so. • Play the tape a sufficient number of times (the teacher often finds material easy and does not play the tape enought times). • Let students discuss answers together - pairs/small groups. • Don´t immediately acknowledge correct answers with words or facial expressions throw answers back to the class: What do you think of X´s answer - do you agree? • Don´t be led by one strong student. Have they all got it? • Aim to get the students to agree together without your help. Until they agree, play the tape again whenever they need to hear it, to confirm or refute their ideas. • Play little bits of the tape (a word, a phrase, a sentence) again and again until it is clear. • Give help if they are completely stuck - but with the aim of getting them to work it out if at all possible (eg “There are three words in this sentence”

or “Listen to what she says here”) rather than giving them the answers. • Give them control of the tape recorder - to listen as and when and to what they wish. • Don´t cheat them by changing your requirements halfway - ie don´t set one task but then afterwards ask for answers to something completely different! • Try to make sure the task is within their abilities. It should be difficult, but achievable. The sense of achievement in finishing a task should be great: “It was difficult - but we did it!” (SCRIVENER, 1994, p. 149) Gower et al (1995, p. 88) add to the above by stating that a teacher can make a listening task 48 Caminhos easy when: • The texts are fairly short. • They have only one speaker, or two speakers who are easy to tell apart. • The speaker(s) speak slowly (though naturally), in a standard accent, and use simple grammar and vocabulary.

• The speakers can be heard clearly - there is no distracting background noise. • The speakers can be heard and are `live´or on video rather than recorded solely on audio. • The topic is familiar. • The structure of the text is simple and straightforward butnot too dense there is repetition, pausing, etc. • The students are interested in and prepared for what they will hear. TYPES OF LISTENING ACTIVITIES According to Ur (1998, p. 113-114) listening activities can be classified in four categories which will be addressed below. 01. No overt response - facial expression and body language signal understanding or not when the student is not required to verbalize the response. This is the case of story telling, jokes, songs and sometimes video. 02. Short responses • Obeying instructions= learners perform what they are told to ( physical exercises, drawings, general instructions). • Ticking off items in a list

according to what they hear. • Detecting mistakes True or false - the teacher hands out a series of statements about a video or aural recorded text which the students are going to watch or listen to and the teacher reads these statements together with the students in order to prepare them for the activity. Then the students watch or listen to the recorded text and decide which statements are true and which are false. Remember to work with the hand out first in order to prepare the students for the activity. Always set the task first. • Cloze - students receive a hand out of a text with gaps to be filled in. After listening to the complete text, they should write in the missing words. The procedure should be like this: (a) the teacher goes through the worksheet with the students; (b) teacher plays the whole recorded text to show context; (c) teacher plays the recorded text stopping after each one or UNIDAVI 49 two gaps according to the

level of difficulty of the material; (d) teacher plays the recorded text as many times as necessary to the full comprehension; (e) students listen to the whole text again as a follow up. • Guessing definitions - the teacher reads a short text which describes a person, thing or place and the students have to find out what this is. This activity is suitable for all levels; can be the teacher´s own production and uses very short classtime. • Skimming and scanning students listen to a fairly short text and have to identify the general idea/gist (skimming) or else to a specific information (scanning). The teacher should remember to set the questions first before students listen to the passage. 03. Longer responses - depending on the proficiency level of the group the teacher can ask the students to provide longer responses such as answering questions which demand long answers, notetaking, paraphrasing a listening text,

summarizing a listening text, filling in more than one word in a gap, discussion of a problem that was heard. The teacher may bring to the class a recorded literary passage and students just listen to it, comment, identify the tone (dramatic, ironic, sarcastic, comic, happy, etc) of a passage read aloud. The internet is a good source for this type of free material. 04. Extended responses - the listening activity is seen as a means of introducing another ability like writing or speaking to build an integrated skills lesson. Thus students may hear a passage which will serve as a bridge to foster a discussion to write an essay or a short composition. According to Nunan (in RICHARDS and RENANDYA, 2002, p. 242247) the teaching of listening nowadays is not focusing on form, instead itfocuses on meaning. The teaching of listening shouldinvolve three stages in a listeningclass:

Pre-listening = preparing students to listen As a general principle, try toplay the recording once for overall comprehension • Tell your students they shouldn’t worry that they have to understand every word they hear.Not every word is important! • Where possible, make surestudents know what they are Listening for before you startlistening. Explain they should50 Caminhos focus only on the informationthey need. • Give two or three general questions to check students comprehension of the basicdetails. • If possible, check for any words that your students may notknow. Pre-teach these so they do not interfere with understanding. • Brainstorm students' ideas onthe topic they are going to listen to. This will help focus them. • Don't choose a listening that istoo long. If necessary, stop the recording at certain points andreview what students have understood so far.

While listening = listening to carry out tasks • Play the recording again for specific details. • Tell students to note any dates, people or places they hear. • Divide students into groups and give each group a different listening task (e.g. different questions). Then swap their answers and have students listen again and check their classmates' answers. • Don't be afraid to repeat the recording… especially the parts students have most trouble understanding. Post-listening = follow up • Tell students to compare their notes and discuss what they understood in pairs or small groups. • Encourage students to respond to what they heard. For example, where possible ask questions like Do you agree? and encourage debate. • Tell pairs to write a summary of

the main points. Then have them compare their summaries and check if they covered all the main points. • Play the recording again and tell students to call out 'Stop!' when they hear the answers they were listening for. • Put students into groups and tell them to make a list of comprehension questions to ask each other. • Tell students to make a list in their notebooks of any new vocabulary they feel is useful. In sum, according to Goh (2003,pp3-5),aural comprehension involves more than one ability when listening and that is why students should be exposed to various kinds of tasks which practise the following: • Comprehension of details UNIDAVI 51 which calls for specific information such as numbers and key words. • Comprehension of main ideas or listening for gist

• Comprehension to infer, that is, the speaker may omit certain information and the hearer should be able to bridge the gap by using inference. • Comprehension to select information, that is, depending on the goal of the hearer, attention will be concentrated on the parts that are of interest. • Comprehension to predict, that is, the hearer tries to predict what is going to be said, what should be said and tries to confirm these predictions. USING SONGS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM The acquisition of vocabulary is enhanced when there is a combination of music and pedagogically-sound techniques; thus,foreignlanguage acquisition is more successful when combined with music (www.geocities.com/ESLmusic/ar ticles/articles03.html.). Music has shown to be a very important factor of motivation in

the EFL classroom. Whenever you tell your students that they are going to listen to music, they immediately respond with eagerness, curiosity and attentiveness to the proposed activity. Music creates a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere resulting in a successful learning environment. Thus, music can be an effective teaching tool since students who are usually quiet engage in the class activity. Besides being fun and enhance learning, music is generally a good reference in terms of culture because it brings information about human relations, ethics, customs, history, humor and regional and cultural differences. Below several steps and tips are presented: • Songs, rhymes and chants are good means of teaching stress and intonation patterns of English. • Songs constitute a context for language use for children. They become more outgoing

when they play or sing. • Music becomes easier to imitate and remember language because it ´sticks.´ • Songs have high frequency vocabulary and facilitate memorizing when associated with a linguistic item. • Like poetry music develops students´creativity and interpretation skills because it allows for different kinds of interpretations and meanings. 52 Caminhos • Teachers should plan a class with music very carefully and not just using it as a means of killing time with almost always the same type of activity, i.e., gap filling. • Gap filling exercises should deal with very easy vocabulary. In case the song chosen presents too many unknown words, these should be pretaught. Another variation could be the listing of the new words which are to be filled in so that the students use them as hints.

• The title of the song should be given after the activity so that students do not have in mind a pre-determined interpretation of it. • It is essential to have a good sound equipment. • Students at the elementary level should not be corrected in order not to discourage them to participate, while students beyond this level should be corrected regarding grammar and accuracy (in case the activity allows it). • A class with music can also be productive with blind and partially deaf students since they can feel the rhythm better and use their creativity to visualize the content. • While preparing the activities with songs, the teacher should not forget to listen to the whole song thoroughly and pay attention to whether there areunaudiblewords. Moreover, having a colleague doing the activity as a way of pre-testing it will ensure a

successful lesson; thus, avoiding embarassing situations which indicate an unprepared teacher. • Depending on the type of activity it is useful to number the verses in order to make correction easier specially when the exercise deals with gap filling, synonyms, verb tenses, etc. (Adapted from Malgorzata, 2000 “Using Music in the Classroom” ). Selecting music: • The lyrics should be clear and loud. • The vocabulary should be appropriate to the level. • Short and slow songs are suggested for beginning-level students while songs that tell stories can be used with higher level students. • Exercises on vocabulary and tenses are good to begin with. The lyrics of some songs can bring up interesting discussions (debate) on a certain topic or to different interpretations. Ex. • Simon and Garfunkel - El

Condor Pasa UNIDAVI 53 • Pink Floyd - The Wall • Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water - compared to James Taylor - You´ve got a friend • John Lennon's Working Class hero (work) • Bruce Springsteen - The River (work) • Cat Stevens - New York times (city life) (http://www.esl-lounge.com /songsab.html ). Suggestions of activities: 01. Filling in gaps for: rhyming words; grammatical words; verb tenses; synonyms and antonyms. 02. Match • columns of English words from the song with their native language equivalents; • English words (ex: synonyms or antonyms with a given list in the mother tongue) • The mother tongue and the English verses, but do not separate the verses into stanzas

03. Find a synonym or antonym of an English word in a verse or a stanza that means the same as a given word in the mother tongue. 04. Comprehension questions after other exercises to work on more detailed vocabulary and grammar. 05. Transformation exercises. Ex: change sentences from active to passive; from direct into indirect speech; from masculine to feminine point of view (the students change all the personal pronouns and possessives). 06. Separate the verses on a continuous paragraph with dashes; (http://usuarios.lycos.es/jcac0012 /lyrics/ideaslyrics.html ) 07. Put the stanzas into the correct order; 08. Messenger and scribe = the teacher sticks on the wall outside the classroom chunks of the lyrics. Students work in pairs (one is the messenger and the other is the scribe) . The scribe goes out, reads the chunks, tries

to memorize as much as possible and returns to the classroom and dictates the text to the scribe who writes the message down. At the end they listen to the song and put the chunks in order. 09. Multiple choice lyrics = the teacher prepares different versions of some of the lyrics. Students listen to the song and underline the correct ones (Ex: 'we both love our freedom / we'll always be/ we´ll never be together …..' ). 10. Extra words the teacher adds some extra words to the lyrics and the students listen to identify 54 Caminhos and correct them. Poems, like songs, contextualize a grammar lesson effectively. Since poetry is often spoken, repeated, dealt with, and considered, it acts as an effective tool for practicing a specific grammatical structure. Throughrepeatingand considering the poem, the grammatical structures become more deeply internalized. Thus,

poetry not only provides a rewardingresourcefor structured practice of grammar, but also a proper basis for review. If a poem that exemplifies a particular structure is also a good poem, it engages the eye, the ear and the tongue simultaneously while also stimulating and moving us; this polymorphic effect makes poetry easier to memorize than other things for many students (CelceMurcia and Hills, 1988, p.123). An interesting idea would be to compare a poem to a song. Ask the students to read the poem, explain the vocabulary, if necessary, and then play the song. Students then write or discuss the differences between them. For example: The road not taken Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

(http://www.tnellen.com/cyberen g/road_not.html) My Way Frank Sinatra And now, the end is near; And so I face the final curtain. UNIDAVI 55 My friend, I'll say it clear, I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and ev'ry highway; And more, much more than this, I did it my way. Regrets, I've had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do And saw it through without exemption. I planned each charted course; Each careful step along the byway, But more, much more than this, I did it my way. Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew When I bit off more than I could chew.

But through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and spit it out. I faced it all and I stood tall; And did it my way. I've loved, I've laughed and cried. I've had my fill; my share of losing. And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing. To think I did all that; And may I say - not in a shy way, "no, oh no not me, I did it my way". For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels; And not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows And did it my way! (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/fra nk-sinatra/56378.html) The selection of the activities songs or poems should depend on the temperament of the class. Music can also be used in order

to just create a relaxing and creative atmosphere leading students to mental fantasies which can be associated to moving image such as videos. According to Maley ( in Stempleski & Tomalin, 2001, p.ix), “film attracts students through the power in has to tell a story. ” USING VIDEO IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM Among the four abilities listening comprehension is generally considered the most difficult to be mastered. With theimplementationof technology, however, listening in the classroom has become more enjoyable and less pressing with 56 Caminhos the use of VCR, DVD, cable TV, and the Internet since students can see what is happening, that is, they have a context while they hear what is being said. Besides context, the image allows students to observe facial expressions, body language and cultural aspects. It can even be

used with adults and also with children who cannot read and write well yet. There are two kinds of video material: • Instructional videos are specially devised to be used in classrooms and the language content and length are tailored to teach the form of the language. They can be presented in single episodes or in the form of a soap opera. Single episodes tend to be more interesting since they are usually humorous while soap operas tend to make students impatient since they want to know the end of the story and do not want to wait for a next class. Examples: ON TRACK - Oxford HEADWAY (which accompanies the Headway series - Oxford) ONLY IN AMERICA - Oxford GRAPEVINE - Oxford ENGLISH CHANNEL - Oxford • Authentic videos include movies, television programs, news broadcasts which present real-language spoken at a normal speed not controlled or adjusted as the instructional videos which present real-language, but as said above, are tailored to present specific language items. Examples of movies appreciated by students are: Shrek, Monsters Inc., Toy Story,A Bug´s Life, The Simpsons; Finding Nemo; Ice Age.

Stages of a video lesson As already explained in figure 1, the video lesson follows the same guidelines as a listening lesson. Before presenting the video (pre-viewing), teachers have to prepare students for the viewing by discussing vocabulary, discussing aspects of culture and predicting content, for example. While viewing, the teacher should pay attention to students´ reactions to check whether they are understanding or not. At this stage, the teacher should use the pause, rewind, and play buttons whenever needed. After viewing, the teacher should prepare follow up activities and discussions. Below are some tips to ensure a successful video class: • Be fully conversant with the tape (contents, length, order, etc.). • Always check the tape beforehand: quality, format (PAL, SECAM, long play/ short play, etc.). • Always check the VCR/DVD/TV beforehand: power supply, connections, remote control, channel, etc. • Always try to work with a remote control. • Make sure you are familiar with the VCR/DVD and its controls (play, pause, rewind, volume, channels, etc.). • Before the lesson insert the tape, cue it and zero de VCR/DVD. • Check the volume, tone and angle of view from different parts of the room. • Make sure you rewind to the right place. Take your time. Nothing is worse than losing your place. • Try creating your own worksheets tailored to an authentic sequence. • Give students something to watch or listen while the tape is playing. This can get increasingly difficult or detailed with each repetition. • Don´t play a tape without

giving an introduction or setting the context (unless there is a good reason for not doing so). • Let the tape do the work. Don´t say yourself what the tape says. • Don´t play a tape for too long without stopping. • Be sensitive and realistic as to what students can be expected to memorize. (http://usuarios.lycos.es/jcac0012 /lyrics/ideaslyrics.html ) VIDEO ACTIVITIES 01. “In the news” • Tell the students they are going to see a film clip showing an event that might be reported in a newspaper. Explain that you will play the film clip twice. Their task is to watch to get the general idea, and then to watch again and make notes to answer the questions on the worksheet. • Introduce the activity by discussing news reporting with the class. Explain the difference between: Reporter = It's a person who finds out and reports about facts (or events) in the media( newspaper, magazines, radio, TV, etc) Journalist = It's the person who writes about news, makes (writes)commentsfor newspapers and magazines or texts for TV and radio, editing and preparing the material. Then the teacher asks: How many different kinds of reporters can you name? ( Sports reporter, news reporter, crime reporter, etc.)

UNIDAVI 57

Do you think that being a reporter is a good profession? Why? (The advantages and disadvantages of being a reporter) • Explain that the factual content of a news story usually answers questions based on the “five Ws and an H” of an event. • Students watch the sequence . After watching, teacher writes

the “Wh” questions on the board. Go over the items to make sure the students understand what they should do. • Students answer the questions or write about the event based on the questions. - Who is the story about? - What happened? List the important events and facts of the story - When did it happen? Be as specific as you can about the date and time - Where did the event take place? - Why and how did it happen? What reasons or causes were given for what happened? • When they have completed their questions, divide the class into small groups and get students to compare and discuss the items on the worksheet. • Finally, in the lesson or as homework, students work individually or in pairs and write up a short news based on the film clip. (Stempleski, Susan and Barry Tomalin, 2001, p.69). 02 Video Bingo. This is something that can be done using video in the class, specifically to practice functional or situational English. Choose a video or video clip in which you know there will be a lot of functional language e.g. inviting, accepting, offering, requesting, etc. Thus, for example, you could show a clip of people in a bar or restaurant making their orders. Elicit and practice the relevant language beforehand and then give the students a simple 3 by 3 tic-tac-toe grid, as follows: Then, getting the students to work in pairs or small groups, the

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teacher asks them to predict the language they are going to hear. It is vital for the teacher to set the scene accurately of the video the students are about to see. In this

way, the students will not be guessing blindly. The teacher tells the students that there must be at least three words in their predictions, so they can't just guess 'Yes please' , but 'No thank you' is fine. Here is an example of a student's prediction grid to give you an idea of the sort of functional language you could target and the amount of clues you should give beforehand. The example situation, as described by the teacher, was 'a couple ordering a meal in a restaurant and the woman is vegetarian.' If you want, you can employ a simple scoring system whereby the groups get a point for every word in a correct prediction - this would be an incentive for them to guess, for instance, 'can we have the…' and not just 'can we have…'. Or you can stick to classic bingo rules and have wins awarded for lines and full house. (http://www.esllounge.com/level2/lev2videobing o.html) 03. Pink Panther Cartoon The Pink Panther shows without telling, leaving it to your students to do the telling, with your help. They're wonderful stories that allow you to use language of whatever level of difficulty matches your students ability. (http://www.eslcafe.com/ideas/se fer.cgi?display:91818078814980.txt)

No, thank you. I'll have the... Can we have the... I don't eat meat Asd for dessert? Yes, of course What would you like... How would you like... No, that's all. UNIDAVI 59 CONCLUSION With the current changes in teaching English as a foreign language the listening classes nowadays are not used anymore as a means of teaching grammar, but they can become an enjoyable time for students to learn to hear the language in real-life situations and learn how to interact with one another,

besides becoming culturally aware. This is possible due to another development in English language methodology which has recently seen authentic materials as sources of input that contribute to the process of becoming competent in listening . Listening is not just testing, that is, getting answers right. On the other hand, to have a successful listening class in which students are able to comprehend at least the gist, the teacher should have in mind the need of teaching strategies, that is, hints to prepare students to achieve better listening skills. Also, rather than grading the texts, the tasks should be graded. The process is more important than the product. Success in a listening class can also be achieved if the class follows the steps of pre-listening, while listening and post-listening. Most important it is for students to have clearly in their minds that the process is more important than answering correctly and this means that sometimes not every word has to be understood. Finally, frequent exposure to well planned listening classes, which take into account students´ motivation and feelings, will certainly result in students with a good competence in the listening skill.

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REFERENCES CELCE-MURCIA, M. & Hilles, S. . Techniques and resources in teaching grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press,1988. GOH, C.M. Ensino da Compreensão Oral em Aulas de Idiomas. São Paulo: SBS- Special Books Services, 2003. GOWER, R.; PHILLIPS, D. and WALTERS, S. Teaching Practice Handbook. London. Heinemann Educational Books, 1995. MALEY, A . (ed) Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. MALGORZATA, J. “Using Music in the classroom.” Forum, 38(4), 30, 2000. MURPHEY, T. Music and Song. Oxford: OUP, 2000. NUNAN, David. “The changing face of listening” in RICHARDS, J.C. and RENANDYA, W.A. (eds). Methodology in Language Teaching An Anthology of Current Practice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. OXFORD, R.L. Language learning strategies what every teacher should know. New York: Newbury House Publishers, 1990. SCRIVENER, J. Learning Teaching. London. Macmillan Heinemann

Educational Books, 1994. STEMPLESKI, Susan and Barry Tomalin. Film. Oxford: OUP, 2001. TANNER, R. and GREEN, C. Tasks for teacher Education coursebook. Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1998. ______Tasks for teacher Education trainer´s book. Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1998. TOMALIN, B. Teaching English with Technology. Chelmsford, Esses: IBI Multimedia, 2001. UR, P. A Course in English Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Internet resources for poems: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Saricoban-Songs.html

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Internet resources for songs: www.geocities.com/ESLmusic/articles/articles03.html http://www.esl-lounge.com/songsab.html http://usuarios.lycos.es/jcac0012/lyrics/ideaslyrics.html http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank-sinatra/56378.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/road_not.html Internet resources for videos: http://usuarios.lycos.es/jcac0012/lyrics/ideaslyrics.html http://www.esl-lounge.com/level2/lev2videobingo.html http://www.eslcafe.com/ideas/sefer.cgi?display:918180788-14980.txt

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Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials

by Lindsay Miller For too long listening has been relegated to a secondary position in the English language teaching classroom. This stems, in part, from the fact that whereas a considerable amount of research has been conducted into reading, writing and speaking--research which has influenced our approaches to teaching language and has also influenced how textbooks have been written (see sidebar)--there has been a lack of research interest into listening. Some of the reasons for this lack of research interest come from the fact that speaking was always considered a more "valuable" skill to focus on in the classroom; that researchers and teachers have often considered that listening was something which could just be "picked up"; and as researchers and teachers had not been taught listening themselves, they saw little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teaching listening. It is indeed interesting that listening has not received wider attention in the past given that it is the language skill most often used in everyday life. More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995). Although listening has been a relatively neglected skill in terms of research and how it is introduced to language learners, it is now beginning to receive more attention. In the past few years we have seen the publication of several major texts, both practical and theoretical, specifically dealing with listening skills: Mendelson and Rubin 1995; Nunan and Miller 1995; Buck 2000; Rost 2002; Flowerdew and

Miller, in press. In conjunction with these books, there is now a greater awareness among teachers that we have to help learners develop their listening skills, rather than rely on the skill developing itself. The question of how to help learners develop effective listening skills brings attention to the methods we use and the type of materials we introduce our learners to. The aim of all listening lessons should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context, and that means using authentic texts. Authentic texts are any spoken texts which have not been specially prepared for language learners, and they are often delivered via technologies like radio, television/video, and the Internet or CD-ROM. In the rest of this article I would like to suggest a process for helping learners develop their listening skills, and make suggestions as how this might be achieved with authentic materials. Pre-, While-, and Post-Listening One of the main advancements to come out of research into listening strategies was the understanding that listening exercises could be divided into three main parts: Pre-listening, While-listening, Post-listening activities. This format has proved useful in taking the attention off continually testing listening and has allowed learners to do other things with the information that they listen to. For instance, a teacher can initiate a short discussion with the learners in the pre-listening stage as to what they think of the topic before they listen to the text (activating world and personal knowledge). Then the learners can be asked to use whatever information they gathered from a text to have an extended discussion in a post-listening stage (allowing for more individualization and critical comments to be developed). In between these two stages, learners can be helped to focus on their listening by careful selection of tasks that are meaningful and that cater to developing specific listening skills rather than on constantly measuring performance through test-like exercises. I will use this established format of pre-, while-, and post-listening activities and make some suggestions as to how they can be used with authentic materials delivered through technological media. Radio Using real-time radio in class is one of the more easily accessible forms of authentic listening practice we can give our learners. The airwaves are filled with programs twenty-four hours per day, and the low cost of radios means that most language teachers can obtain a radio and take it to class. Radio stations such as BBC World Service (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) are constantly on-air. Meanwhile, many non-English speaking countries also broadcast some programs, or even have dedicated stations, in English. Although radios are easy to access, they are perhaps the most difficult of aural text for language learners to listen to. The reason for this is that all non-verbal information is missing, information which can aid in helping understand the message, and the learner has to focus on the skill which is most

difficult for him or her--listening. In order to use radio programs with learners teachers need to select a program at a suitable time for their class and decide on some global listening tasks for the learners. For instance, with an intermediate group of learners about to listen to a radio program on travel we might adopt the following procedure: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Today we are going to listen to a travel program on the radio for ten minutes. Before we listen, who has made a trip recently? Where did you go? What did you see? The radio guide tells us in that this program is about Egypt. What do you know about Egypt? What would you like to know about Egypt? What kind of information do you think the presenter will give us? Stage 2: While-Listening Task While you listen to the program, try to listen for the main things the presenter recommends doing while in Egypt. Don¹t try to write anything down, only listen to the program and see how much you can understand. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task In groups of three have a short discussion about what you heard from the program. Would you like to go to Egypt based on what you just heard? Why or why not? In using the radio in the way suggested here we allow learners access to native speaker models, something which might be missing from their normal classroom experiences. Also, we place the focus on extensive listening for pleasure and take the emphasis off testing what the learners hear (that is why we ask the learners not to write while they listen). TV/Video Using television or videos in the classroom allows the learners access to more information when listening. That is, the learners can now see what is happening as well as listen to the text. Non-verbal behavior or paralinguistic features of the spoken text are now available to the learners (compared with radio, that is), so learners can develop their listening skills in a richer language context. Many language learners watch movies outside of class time, but few of them consider this as an opportunity to develop their listening skills (perhaps because they become used to reading the sub-titles of English movies). Going to a movie is considered as entertainment and often "doesn¹t count" in terms of learning. We can, however, in the language classroom, sensitize our learners to how they can make use of movies to help them develop their second language listening skills. With an elementary-level class of learners we might consider the following out-ofclass activity: Stage 1: Pre-Viewing Task This weekend there is an English movie on TV. Does anyone know what it is? What time is it on? Which channel is it on? Please write the name, time and channel down as this is your homework task. Stage 2: While-Viewing Task I would like you to watch the movie this weekend, or try to watch as much as you can. Focus on listening to the movie instead of reading the subtitles. Try to collect the following information: kind of

movie (comedy, romance, action, horror), names of the main characters (male, female, animal), where does the movie take place (inside, outside, on land, at sea, country), what is the main idea in the movie? Stage 3: Post-Viewing Task (the next lesson) Who watched the movie last weekend? What can you tell us about it? This generic format can be repeated as many times as you like, and once learners have developed the habit of watching and listening to English language movies with some kind of focus, they will get used to this type of exposure to listening for pleasure, and you may then move on to more critical post-viewing tasks--e.g., Do you think we should go to war with each other (after viewing a war movie). The Internet/CD-ROM There has been a rapid increase in the development of Internet facilities and CDROMs. This has been prompted, partly, by the more powerful computers we have these days and has been partly driven by the users' demands for more interesting and innovative applications of the technology. We are able to direct our learners to sites on the Internet where they can practice their listening as long as they have access to the appropriate computer hardware. There are several benefits computer software has over radio or television. For instance, many CD-ROMs now have glossaries and online scripts, so that when problems are encountered, the learners can get online help. In addition to this, many younger learners wish to learn or use their computer skills nowadays, so the prospect of developing computer skills along with developing their language skills may seem attractive to these learners. With an advanced group of learners we might consider having extended critical and creative discussion about the news: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Tomorrow in class we will have some discussion about what¹s in the news. In order to do this I would like you do access at least two of the following websites: http://www.bbc.co.uk, http://www.avoa. gov or http://npr.org (National Public Radio) and listen to different versions of the main stories. Once you are in the website you can choose audio or video presentations. You can also look for related items. Just surf around until you feel you have collected enough information for our discussion in class. Stage 2: While-Listening Task Students may either work at home or in a computer lab at school to collect the information they require. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task (the next class) First I would like you to sit in groups according to one of the websites you visited. So lets have a group of BBC listeners/viewers, one of VOA, and one of NPR to begin with. In your groups discuss what the main news stories were. Only exchange information at this stage. Now change groups and have one person for each website in groups of three. Explain to the other members in your group the main stories in the order they were presented on the Web. Then discuss your reaction to these stories. Consider how important you think the item is, what angle the broadcast company took when presenting the stories, and what this story means to you personally. This use of the Internet and

computer technology integrates several authentic activities for the learners and widens the scope of developing listening skills. In addition to this, learners are now given more autonomy over their language learning and the links between classroom and real-world learning becomes more obvious to them. Richer Learning Experiences With the increased awareness of the need to help second-language learners develop effective listening skills and with the greater availability of technology nowadays, teachers are able to explore more creative ways of teaching listening in and out of the class using authentic materials. Once we begin to explore the possibilities, a few of which are outlined here, we offer a richer language learning experience for our learners and create good listeners into the bargain. SIDEBAR The Question of Authenticity When preparing learners for academic listening, English language teachers often choose to use a textbook with a title like Academic listening: preparing students for lectures. Such textbooks are widely used on pre-sessional courses, and many students and their teachers diligently work their way through the textbook in the belief that they are preparing for the real thing. However, my colleague John Flowerdew and I conducted an investigation of an authentic economics and finance lecture (Flowerdew and Miller, 1997). We found that what academic listening textbooks prepared learners for was very different from the "real thing." We transcribed and analyzed a lecture discourse and then compared it to a selection of academic listening textbooks, this is what we found: 1. The authentic lecture was structured at the micro-level of discourse. There were lots of uses of "and," "so," "but," many pauses, and filled pauses with the use of "ah" and "er." On the other hand, textbook lectures had complete clauses and fewer pauses. 2. The authentic lecture discourse contained many false starts, redundancies and repetitions. None of these show up in English language teaching (ELT) textbooks. 3. The lecturer made use of a variety of extra linguistic features such as body movements and kinesics. Textbook texts are usually only audio recorded so such cues are missing. 4. In the real lecture the lecturer made an attempt to establish a rapport with the students; he a) tried to make the lecture non-threatening and empathized with the students, b) personalized many of his references, and c) checked that the students were following the lecture as he delivered it. The impersonal nature of an audio text cannot simulate any of these features. 5. As the authentic lecture lasted for two hours, the lecturer made use of a narrative thread to hold his talk together, that is, he told a story and continually returned to the theme of the story. ELT textbooks, on the other hand, rarely have recordings of more than a few minutes and cannot sustain any narrative thread.

6. The lecturer made use of macro-markers to signpost his way through the talk and to refer to future lectures, e.g., "Last week we saw howŠ.." "In next week's lecture I am going to move on toŠ..". In this way he structured the lecture around the series of talks he was going to give to the students. Textbooks cannot do this as most of their texts are stand-alone lectures. 7. The lecturer made use of a variety of visual aids during his talk including the white board, overhead transparencies and pre-lecture reading text. None of these were used in the textbooks analyzed. This detailed lecture analysis illustrates that authentic texts should also be used when helping learners prepare for listening to lectures. By only using specially scripted text, learners may miss important features of spoken academic discourse and develop listening skills which will be of little use to them in the real lecture context. ----------------------------------Lindsay Miller is an associate professor of language education in the Department of English and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. References Buck, G. 2000. Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Burely-Allen, M. 1995. Listening: The forgotten skill. New York: John Wily & Sons, Inc. Flowerdew, J. and L. Miller. 1997. The teaching of academic listening comprehension and the question of authenticity. English for Specific Purposes, 16 (1):27-46. Flowerdew, J. and Miller, L. In press. Second Language Listening Comprehension: Theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mendelson, D., and J. Rubin. 1995. A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Listening. San Diego, CA: Dominic Press. Nunan, D., and L. Miller, eds. 1995. New Ways in Teaching Listening: Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Rost, M. 2002. Teaching and Researching Listening. London: Pearson. This article first appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of ESL Magazine.

Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsay Miller For too long listening has been relegated to a secondary position in the English language teaching classroom. This stems, in part, from the fact that whereas a considerable amount of research has been conducted into reading, writing and speaking--research which has influenced our approaches to teaching language and has also influenced how textbooks have been written (see sidebar)--there has been a lack of research interest into listening. Some of the reasons for this lack of research interest come from the fact that speaking was always considered a more "valuable" skill to focus on in the classroom; that researchers and teachers have often considered that listening was something which could just be "picked up"; and as researchers and teachers had not been taught listening themselves, they saw little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teaching listening. It is indeed interesting that listening has not received wider attention in the past given that it is the language skill most often used in everyday life. More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995). Although listening has been a relatively neglected skill in terms of research and how it is introduced to language learners, it is now beginning to receive more attention. In the past few years we have seen the publication of several major texts, both practical and theoretical, specifically dealing with listening skills: Mendelson and Rubin 1995; Nunan and Miller 1995; Buck 2000; Rost 2002; Flowerdew and Miller, in press. In conjunction with these books, there is now a greater awareness among teachers that we have to help learners develop their listening skills, rather than rely on the skill developing itself. The question of how to help learners develop effective listening skills brings attention to the methods we use and the type of materials we introduce our learners to. The aim of all listening lessons should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context, and that means using authentic texts. Authentic texts are any spoken texts which have not been specially prepared for language learners, and they are often delivered via technologies like radio, television/video, and the Internet or CD-ROM. In the rest of this article I would like to suggest a process for helping learners develop their listening skills, and make suggestions as how this might be achieved with authentic materials.

Pre-, While-, and Post-Listening One of the main advancements to come out of research into listening strategies was the understanding that listening exercises could be divided into three main parts: Pre-listening, While-listening, Post-listening activities. This format has proved useful in taking the attention off continually testing listening and has allowed learners to do other things with the information that they listen to. For instance, a teacher can initiate a short discussion with the learners in the pre-listening stage as to what they think of the topic before they listen to the text (activating world and personal knowledge). Then the learners can be asked to use whatever information they gathered from a text to have an extended discussion in a post-listening stage (allowing for more individualization and critical comments to be developed). In between these two stages, learners can be helped to focus on their listening by careful selection of tasks that are meaningful and that cater to developing specific listening skills rather than on constantly measuring performance through test-like exercises. I will use this established format of pre-, while-, and post-listening activities and make some suggestions as to how they can be used with authentic materials delivered through technological media. Radio Using real-time radio in class is one of the more easily accessible forms of authentic listening practice we can give our learners. The airwaves are filled with programs twenty-four hours per day, and the low cost of radios means that most language teachers can obtain a radio and take it to class. Radio stations such as BBC World Service (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) are constantly on-air. Meanwhile, many non-English speaking countries also broadcast some programs, or even have dedicated stations, in English. Although radios are easy to access, they are perhaps the most difficult of aural text for language learners to listen to. The reason for this is that all non-verbal information is missing, information which can aid in helping understand the message, and the learner has to focus on the skill which is most difficult for him or her--listening. In order to use radio programs with learners teachers need to select a program at a suitable time for their class and decide on some global listening tasks for the learners. For instance, with an intermediate group of learners about to listen to a radio program on travel we might adopt the following procedure: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Today we are going to listen to a travel program on the radio for ten minutes. Before we listen, who has made a trip recently? Where did you go? What did you see? The radio guide tells us in that this program is about Egypt. What do you know about Egypt? What would you like to know about Egypt? What kind of information do you think the presenter will give us? Stage 2: While-Listening Task While you listen to the program, try to listen for the main things the presenter recommends doing while in Egypt. Don¹t try to write anything down, only listen to the program and see how much you can

understand. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task In groups of three have a short discussion about what you heard from the program. Would you like to go to Egypt based on what you just heard? Why or why not? In using the radio in the way suggested here we allow learners access to native speaker models, something which might be missing from their normal classroom experiences. Also, we place the focus on extensive listening for pleasure and take the emphasis off testing what the learners hear (that is why we ask the learners not to write while they listen). TV/Video Using television or videos in the classroom allows the learners access to more information when listening. That is, the learners can now see what is happening as well as listen to the text. Non-verbal behavior or paralinguistic features of the spoken text are now available to the learners (compared with radio, that is), so learners can develop their listening skills in a richer language context. Many language learners watch movies outside of class time, but few of them consider this as an opportunity to develop their listening skills (perhaps because they become used to reading the sub-titles of English movies). Going to a movie is considered as entertainment and often "doesn¹t count" in terms of learning. We can, however, in the language classroom, sensitize our learners to how they can make use of movies to help them develop their second language listening skills. With an elementary-level class of learners we might consider the following out-ofclass activity: Stage 1: Pre-Viewing Task This weekend there is an English movie on TV. Does anyone know what it is? What time is it on? Which channel is it on? Please write the name, time and channel down as this is your homework task. Stage 2: While-Viewing Task I would like you to watch the movie this weekend, or try to watch as much as you can. Focus on listening to the movie instead of reading the subtitles. Try to collect the following information: kind of movie (comedy, romance, action, horror), names of the main characters (male, female, animal), where does the movie take place (inside, outside, on land, at sea, country), what is the main idea in the movie? Stage 3: Post-Viewing Task (the next lesson) Who watched the movie last weekend? What can you tell us about it? This generic format can be repeated as many times as you like, and once learners have developed the habit of watching and listening to English language movies with some kind of focus, they will get used to this type of exposure to listening for pleasure, and you may then move on to more critical post-viewing tasks--e.g., Do you think we should go to war with each other (after viewing a war movie). The Internet/CD-ROM There has been a rapid increase in the development of Internet facilities and CDROMs. This has been prompted, partly, by the more powerful computers we have these days and has been partly driven by the users' demands for more interesting

and innovative applications of the technology. We are able to direct our learners to sites on the Internet where they can practice their listening as long as they have access to the appropriate computer hardware. There are several benefits computer software has over radio or television. For instance, many CD-ROMs now have glossaries and online scripts, so that when problems are encountered, the learners can get online help. In addition to this, many younger learners wish to learn or use their computer skills nowadays, so the prospect of developing computer skills along with developing their language skills may seem attractive to these learners. With an advanced group of learners we might consider having extended critical and creative discussion about the news: Stage 1: Pre-Listening Task Tomorrow in class we will have some discussion about what¹s in the news. In order to do this I would like you do access at least two of the following websites: http://www.bbc.co.uk, http://www.avoa. gov or http://npr.org (National Public Radio) and listen to different versions of the main stories. Once you are in the website you can choose audio or video presentations. You can also look for related items. Just surf around until you feel you have collected enough information for our discussion in class. Stage 2: While-Listening Task Students may either work at home or in a computer lab at school to collect the information they require. Stage 3: Post-Listening Task (the next class) First I would like you to sit in groups according to one of the websites you visited. So lets have a group of BBC listeners/viewers, one of VOA, and one of NPR to begin with. In your groups discuss what the main news stories were. Only exchange information at this stage. Now change groups and have one person for each website in groups of three. Explain to the other members in your group the main stories in the order they were presented on the Web. Then discuss your reaction to these stories. Consider how important you think the item is, what angle the broadcast company took when presenting the stories, and what this story means to you personally. This use of the Internet and computer technology integrates several authentic activities for the learners and widens the scope of developing listening skills. In addition to this, learners are now given more autonomy over their language learning and the links between classroom and real-world learning becomes more obvious to them. Richer Learning Experiences With the increased awareness of the need to help second-language learners develop effective listening skills and with the greater availability of technology nowadays, teachers are able to explore more creative ways of teaching listening in and out of the class using authentic materials. Once we begin to explore the possibilities, a few of which are outlined here, we offer a richer language learning experience for our learners and create good listeners into the bargain. SIDEBAR The Question of Authenticity When preparing learners for academic listening, English language teachers often

choose to use a textbook with a title like Academic listening: preparing students for lectures. Such textbooks are widely used on pre-sessional courses, and many students and their teachers diligently work their way through the textbook in the belief that they are preparing for the real thing. However, my colleague John Flowerdew and I conducted an investigation of an authentic economics and finance lecture (Flowerdew and Miller, 1997). We found that what academic listening textbooks prepared learners for was very different from the "real thing." We transcribed and analyzed a lecture discourse and then compared it to a selection of academic listening textbooks, this is what we found: 1. The authentic lecture was structured at the micro-level of discourse. There were lots of uses of "and," "so," "but," many pauses, and filled pauses with the use of "ah" and "er." On the other hand, textbook lectures had complete clauses and fewer pauses. 2. The authentic lecture discourse contained many false starts, redundancies and repetitions. None of these show up in English language teaching (ELT) textbooks. 3. The lecturer made use of a variety of extra linguistic features such as body movements and kinesics. Textbook texts are usually only audio recorded so such cues are missing. 4. In the real lecture the lecturer made an attempt to establish a rapport with the students; he a) tried to make the lecture non-threatening and empathized with the students, b) personalized many of his references, and c) checked that the students were following the lecture as he delivered it. The impersonal nature of an audio text cannot simulate any of these features. 5. As the authentic lecture lasted for two hours, the lecturer made use of a narrative thread to hold his talk together, that is, he told a story and continually returned to the theme of the story. ELT textbooks, on the other hand, rarely have recordings of more than a few minutes and cannot sustain any narrative thread. 6. The lecturer made use of macro-markers to signpost his way through the talk and to refer to future lectures, e.g., "Last week we saw howŠ.." "In next week's lecture I am going to move on toŠ..". In this way he structured the lecture around the series of talks he was going to give to the students. Textbooks cannot do this as most of their texts are stand-alone lectures. 7. The lecturer made use of a variety of visual aids during his talk including the white board, overhead transparencies and pre-lecture reading text. None of these were used in the textbooks analyzed. This detailed lecture analysis illustrates that authentic texts should also be used when helping learners prepare for listening to lectures. By only using specially scripted text, learners may miss important features of spoken academic discourse and develop listening skills which will be of little use to them in the real lecture context.

----------------------------------Lindsay Miller is an associate professor of language education in the Department of English and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. References Buck, G. 2000. Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Burely-Allen, M. 1995. Listening: The forgotten skill. New York: John Wily & Sons, Inc. Flowerdew, J. and L. Miller. 1997. The teaching of academic listening comprehension and the question of authenticity. English for Specific Purposes, 16 (1):27-46. Flowerdew, J. and Miller, L. In press. Second Language Listening Comprehension: Theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mendelson, D., and J. Rubin. 1995. A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Listening. San Diego, CA: Dominic Press. Nunan, D., and L. Miller, eds. 1995. New Ways in Teaching Listening: Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Rost, M. 2002. Teaching and Researching Listening. London: Pearson. This article first appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of ESL Magazine.