Teaching_listening_skills.docx

UNIVERSITY OF CONSTANTINE THE PHILOSOPHER IN NITRA FACULTY OF ARTS Department of English and American Studies

Methodology 3

Teaching listening skills

Alexandra Fintová VUAjm 2011/2012

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Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................1 1. Listening as a Language Skill ...........................................................................................3 2. Bottom-up and Top-down Processing...............................................................................5 3. Transactional Listening and Interactional Listening.........................................................7 4. Extensive Listening as Listening as Acquisition...............................................................7 5. Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening Skills.................................................................9 6. Intensive Listening as Listening as Comprehension........................................................10 7. Music and Video as Listening Skill teaching Tools.........................................................12 8. Practical part a.) Activity taken from a source.....................................................................14 b.) Modified activity from a stated source.....................................................15 c.) My own activity........................................................................................16 Conclusion..............................................................................................................................17 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................19 Appendix

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Introduction We´ve chosen the topic of teaching listening skills as listening is an important part of any language. Hearing the language is the first thing when we get in touch with it, not just with foreign languages but also with our mother tongue. As we are not in an English speaking country, most of the time we meet English by hearing it – on the TV, radio or in the school. Language production is rarer – this is the reason why this work aims to emphasize the importance of language acquisition and also language comprehension. This work also intends deal with the most important issues of teaching listening skills, and to describe and compare theories and views of different authors on the issues of teaching listening skills. At first, we would like to introduce listening as a language skill, consider its importance and place within the other skills by its categorizations. Later on we would like to introduce two contrasting views on language, namely having purpose to communicate and being exposed to the language without communicative purpose and consider their importance in teaching listening skills. Furthermore, we would like to describe bottom-up and top-down processing by the points of views of several authors, then analyse Harmer´s basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills. We would like to comment also on his suggestions on appropriateness and difficulty issues of a chosen text in teaching listening skills. After these two parts, which intends mainly to create a general overview on teaching listening skills, we would like to go deeper in details by describing and contrasting views on transactional and interactional listening, then by linking Harmer´s extensive listening to Richard´s listening as acquisition. Here we would like to emphasize the importance of listening to English language outside the classroom, and show opportunities of using extensive listening in the classroom by showing some of Richard’s suggestions to it, including David Nunan´s view on this issue. Still considering the importance of language acquisition, we would like to deal with drama as a tool for teaching listening skills as it is a tool for creating context to language. This potential of drama is very important this is the reason why we have chosen to include it in the work. As teaching listening skills includes mainly the part of listening comprehension tasks, we would like to link also Harmer´s intensive listening to J.C. Richard´s listening as 3

comprehension. This part intends to discuss and comment on the main stages in teaching listening skills, namely the framework of pre-listening, while-listening and post listening; and also to name some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them. The last part would deal with the importance of the usage of music and video as these are most important media in which we and our students can meet the English language. There would be Nick Peachey´s application of the framework for listening to a song which might be a good example how to use this media in our classroom. There would be also provided some viewing techniques which might be applicable to watching videos in the classroom. The practical part would include three activities, one original, one modified, and one invented. The first activity would focus on listening for gist, the second on listening on details and the invented activity would be based on the applied framework of Peachy to a popular song. In conclusion, this work aims to give the reader a general idea of what teaching listening skills is and what it includes. It provides examples some issues which can come up and give some examples of effective tasks and language teaching tools.

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1. Listening as a Language Skill There are four basic language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing - but from all, listening creates basis for the other skills. Acquisition of the mother tongue can be an example for proving this statement. Young children – babies acquire language through listening- they listen to our instructions (Look! Come here!) -then they physically respond to it. By time, they give us the instructions. The method of TPR (Total Physical Respond) is also based on this theory that children pick up the language at first through commands. The point is that listening of a language is the first step towards it. This is the reason why it is important to teach listening skills in teaching English as a foreign language. These skills are often divided to receptive skills – reading and listening – where the focus is on the language input; and to productive skills – speaking and writing – where language is produced. Harmer in his book The practice of English Language Teaching (2007) uses this division and also names this division as passive and active skills. He introduces the idea of language activation – basically the learning by doing principle – placing the language to a meaningful context - any meaning-focused activity provokes language activation. He also emphasizes that however reading and listening are more passive skills, they also require language activation as the reader or listener has to make sense from the seen or the heard. In real communication – as it is the point of all language learning – the skills are not, of course, used separately. Listening and speaking go hand in hand as well as reading and writing. We have to listen if we want to speak, to join a conversation, and of course, when we are writing we instinctively read through what we have written. However, not being present while speaking, listening, reading or writing happened to everyone – thinking about the “to do list” while speaking to the neighbour, thinking about cooking while listening to a blusterous friend on the phone, reading through two pages without getting the meaning and starting again while preparing for an exam or writing on a lecture without realizing what exactly we are writing down. Nunan also says that when we listen to TV or radio, we usually exclude some information which can be caused by lapse in concentration, lack of interest, or efficiency in listening. (1991:24) These two contrasting points of view to a language – having purpose to communicate (so we are listening with the purpose to join a conversation) and being exposed to the language without a purpose (listening to the TV while tidying up) are both parts of the world 5

and also are present in language learning. On the base of these points, listening can be divided into listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition. This division is perfectly pointed out by Jack C. Richards in his work Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice (2008) where he is dealing with the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening. He says that in most methodologies, listening is considered to be the synonym to listening comprehension and it is based on that the function of listening in second language learning is to foster the understanding of spoken discourse. (Richards, 2008:3). However we should not forget about the importance of language acquisition. The time we expend on teaching and learning a second language should be effectively and demandingly used, to create and absorb a strong and meaningful input of the foreign language. This means that methodologically appropriate tasks should be prepared, language should be placed to a meaningful context, so the students could profit from it. It is not true that there is not profit from listening activities in which the students´ brain is not “switched on” – we can still absorb pronunciation of sounds, intonation and also stress. We should think about our childhoods´ favourite pop songs – we were able to sing them phonetically however we didn´t understand the meaning as our level of English was low but we can still recall the rhythm and the phonetic sounds. Getting the meaning comes with time or never at all – I personally still have moments when I remember a song and I start to sing, then I realize that the meaningless syllables have meaning. All in all, listening as comprehension should create the core of teaching listening skills, and listening as acquisition should be the “side dish” because both are natural parts of any language.

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2. Bottom-up and Top-down Processing Harmer suggests that listening and reading require basically the same procedure. He talks about two types of tasks, the first is when the focus is on the general understanding of a text and the second is contains more detailed look on it. This is also called as bottom-up and top down procedure. Bottom -up procedure is starting with details and making sense of a text by looking for specifics. Jack C. Richards points out that “the listener´s lexical and grammatical competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing” (2008:4) which means that it is more demanding for lower levels as they need large vocabulary and good knowledge of sentence structures. “Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message. Whereas bottom-up processing goes from language to meaning, top-down processing goes from meaning to language.” (Richards, 2008:7) On the other hand, David Nunan names two kinds of knowledge: ´inside the head´ knowledge and ´outside the head´ knowledge which takes part in interpreting a message. “The use of inside the head knowledge, that is, knowledge which is not directly encoded in words, is known as the top-down view of listening. (Nunan,1991:18). The usage of both - the inside head knowledge and the outside head knowledge makes someone a successful listener. However, Prof. Larry Vandergrift points out that “listening comprehension is not either topdown or bottom-up processing, but an interactive, interpretive process, where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages.” (http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67)

Furthermore, Nunan suggests that in the listening process we store meanings, not linguistic forms (1991:18) - this is the reason why it is important to start a listening activity with “switching on” the brain and activating the general knowledge that we all carry. The methodological model, or procedure that Harmer suggests starts with a lead in which switches on that general knowledge– so basically he would start with top-down procedure. This concerns mainly general topics different for the proficiency levels or age groups. For instance: the topic of family, house, towns or people for beginners and maybe the causes of the global warming for intermediate students. When we look at course books, we can see that they are built up by these topics. Considering all of this, we have to make students to “get in touch with that knowledge or schema”. We can make this by giving them various key words or showing them pictures. 7

In the basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills Harmer furthermore suggests starting with the first type of tasks where general understanding is in the focus – students have to extract the most general idea of the text maybe by answering some questions. Then feedback, directed by teacher goes on, which is followed by text-related tasks and follow up activities. The text has to be recycled using tasks of the second type, using bottomup procedure, where students go deeply into the text. In teaching listening, we have to be careful choosing appropriate text – there might be some problems with comprehension. Students have to understand most of the words, because if there is a dominance of unknown words, they could not get the general idea – maybe this is the reason why he would begin with the top-down procedure. However, this barrier can be erased by pre-teaching vocabulary. On the other hand there should be some words left unknown, mainly kind of topic words which can be guessed out of the context. This might develop the ability of students to understand a text, heard or written, without knowing all of the words. Harmer suggests (2007:272) other kinds of activities in which there are given unknown words. Students have to find and research the meaning of the words and guess what topic may contain them. This might be a perfect lead in activity to listening by bottom-up procedure. Texts should be appropriate also in difficulty. Although it is important to choose a text or recording appropriate for the level, more importance is on the appropriateness of the follow-up activities. According to Nunan´s suggestion that listening tasks can be classified as tasks which involve only listening and which demand some form of oral interaction (Nunan, 1991:20), activities should be designed appropriately considering the objectives and the purpose of listening. If there is need for oral interactions, students should be prepared also for that. The activities have to be challenging, but they also should be achievable. Harmer has suggestions for the issue of appropriateness of the activities, he provides the example of “a news broadcast where the language level is very challenging may be entirely appropriate of the task only asks them – at first – to try to identify the five main topics in the broadcast.” (Harmer 2007: 275). However, it might make sense just with higher proficiency and age levels as their higher general knowledge and longer concentration time would make it more purposeful- to be in a more life-like language situation In conclusion, in teaching listening skills, we have to be well-prepared and we have to think through the whole deeply so we would be able to teach effectively. We have to pay 8

attention to pre-listening activities to activate students´ brain; we have to make sure that the text is appropriate to age and proficiency levels, and of course that there are appropriate follow-up activities regardless the chosen procedures. 3. Transactional Listening and Interactional Listening There is a differentiation between transactional and interactional purpose for communication by several authors like Richards or Vandergrift but also Joan Morley. The descriptions are basically the same: Interactional use of language is socially oriented mainly to satisfy social needs, like small talk and casual conversations, which means that it is highly contextualized, involving interaction with a speaker. Transactional use of language is, on the other hand, message oriented and its main function is to communicate information, or giving instructions, explaining, describing, giving directions, ordering, requesting and verifying understanding. (Morley, 2001:79) Vandergrift states that the main difference is between the two that transactional listening requires accurate comprehension of the message without an opportunity to clarify it with the speaker. On the other hand Morley suggests that the speaker may contradict the listener if he or she appears to have misunderstood. Furthermore, Morley claims that the most important difference between them is that interactional language is a “social type” talk – it is person oriented rather than message oriented. All in all, the most important thing, in which both authors agree, is that teachers need to provide practice experiences in both transactional talk and interactional talk and that student need to know the purpose and the context of listening in order to know what they need to listen for – specifics or meaning.

4. Extensive Listening as Listening as Acquisition Extensive and intensive listening described by Harmer (2007:303) are kind of similar to the already mentioned division of listening by Richards, listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition. Extensive listening happens outside the classroom – we should encourage students to listen to English language in their free time – music, series, CD from their course book, etc. In this modern world we have plenty of materials to create them the condition to do so. The motivation is the freedom of choice what they would listen to and it would be good to make this extensive listening the natural part of our classroom. This would mean that students 9

would be exposed to the language without a specific comprehension purpose; they would be in an environment in which they can just acquire the language. I don´t say, that there wouldn´t be purpose at all – we can give the students tasks for example which are suggested by Richards for listening as acquisition, which are noticing activities and restructuring activities: „Noticing activities involve returning to the listening texts that served as the basis for comprehension activities and using them as the basis for language awareness. For example, students can listen again to a recording in order to: -

Identify differences between what they hear and a printed version of the text

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Complete a cloze version of the text

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Complete sentences stems taken from the text

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Check off entries from a list of expressions that occurred in the text

Restructuring activities are oral or written tasks that involve productive use of selected items from the listening text. Such activities could include: -

Paired reading of the tape scripts in the case of conversational texts

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Written sentence-completion tasks requiring use of expressions and other linguistic items that occurred in the texts

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Dialog practice that incorporates items from the text

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Role plays in which students are required to use key language from the texts“ (Richards, 2008:16)

Listening without purpose is also discussed by David Nunan in his Language Teaching Methodology. He suggests that an important factor in interactive listening is whether or not we are taking part in the interaction. If not, it might seem a waste of time to involve learners in classroom tasks in which they are just listening to others. However, authentic conversations can provide learners with insights into ways in which conversations work and also with strategies for comprehending conversation outside the classroom. (1991:24)

In conclusion, there are plenty of things we can do with our students in order to teach them a second foreign language and that we can and we have to make the learning of the foreign language the natural part of their lives, outside the classroom also. We, as teachers should motivate students and guide them to this direction. As being in an environment full of language – with a purpose to listen or without - is natural in our mother tongue, so we should try to make it also natural in the foreign language. Making extensive listening part of our 10

classroom would have this effect and also it would be good for creating positive attitude towards foreign language learning.

5. Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening Skills Drama is a modern tool in foreign language teaching, and there are lots of opportunities in it. As it was mentioned before, an important part of language teaching is creating life-like situations in which the students can use the language naturally. Drama is a perfect tool for creating this context. In theatre, the actors have to listen carefully to each other to notice key words by which they can know what to do on the stage. In the classroom, drama also places huge importance on listening – students have to pay attention to each other and they also have to be able to follow instructions mainly by key words. This is an important component as it creates huge motivation for listening; it teaches the students to cooperate and respond to and to acquire a foreign language. Other important components of drama are mime and improvisation – students have to use their body in order to communicate and they have limited time for preparation, which makes classroom situations more natural. Drama, when brought into a learning process, enlarges the learning experience – it helps learners to be more aware of the language in different situations, it builds up self-confidence, creativity, spontaneity, helps students to be more able to express their emotions. Drama stimulates concentrated listening – students just have to listen carefully to be able to react appropriately in a specific situation. These drama activities are most of the times verbal activities, where other skills, mainly speaking is required. This can be seen - if we want to categorize – as listening as comprehension as the student are required to respond to the heard language. On the other hand, drama as listening as acquisition could be non-verbal activities in which students have to physically respond to instructions or use body language or minimal language. Here language production is limited, by which students have to raise their natural instincts and look for key words by which the language acquisition becomes similar to the acquisition of the mother tongue of children.

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Harmer says that "If we are really to teach students what words mean and how they are used, we need to show them being used, together with other words, in context." (1991: 24). With bringing drama to our classrooms, they can become different scenes to different actions: a shop, a bus station, a restaurant, a van in a train, etc. These scenes create great contexts not just for learning vocabulary, but they are also bringing grammatical structures alive. In conclusion, in the context of listening skills, drama plays an important role in bringing extensive and intensive listening, or listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition under the same roof as it provides opportunities in developing both and the most important is that is creates the context to any language learning.

6. Intensive Listening as Listening as Comprehension We already discussed intensive listening and listening as comprehension in several points of views. It is important to discuss the most important stages of listening closely and the most frequent and effective tasks. It was also discussed that in teaching listening we should firstly active the students´ brain to make them get in touch with their general knowledge. This is called the pre-listening stage, where there are more steps while we begin with the actual listening task. According to the article of Nick Peachey, these sub-stages, or as he calls them goals, are motivation, contextualisation and preparation. It is very important to choose an up-to-date topic, which fits the interests of our students. By this, we can motivate them to listen and we can also raise their curiosity. This motivational stage is tightly linked to the stage of contextualisation. However Harmer suggests (2007: 304) it is useful to bring authentic listening materials on CD to our classrooms, because it is important to students to hear the most common accents and different English from the teacher´s, he also claims that listening to a recording in a classroom is really unnatural. Because of this reason, it is very important to create context, which can motivate the students and contextualize the listening situation. The most effective techniques for this are drama techniques, but also some discussion about the topic, brainstorming, guiding questions or games can be effective.

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In order to avoid problems in the next stages, we have to prepare students not just to the topic which we are going to deal with, but to the language also. As it was previously suggested, at this stage we can pre-teach vocabulary or some phrases. This can make the actual listening more effective, however as it was also suggested, there are opportunities to teach unknown vocabulary or phrases inductively. After this preparatory stage is finished, we can move on to the while-listening stage. As it was discussed before, we should start with the top-down processing, so we have to make the first task connected with the general idea of the text. As in the first listening the students are firstly exposed to a new language, with new accent, voice and language, we shouldn´t put pressure on them by demanding tasks. Students should at first get familiar with the voice, situation, happening and language which is on the recording. We should just give them simple questions to look for in the first listening – as now we are listening with purpose – for example questions of how many characters are talking, where are they, why are they there. It should be also obvious that as we are listening, students shouldn´t have the tape script in front of them. The second listening should be more demanding; students should look deeply into the text and also look for deeper understanding of the meaning. The most typical tasks here are gap-fills, ticking items, information search, charts, comparing, correcting, matching, etc. After these tasks, the third listening should come in order to check their answers, and could be the base for post-listening activities. Evaluation of the results of decisions during a listening task is a very important part. Prof. Vandergrift suggests that the teacher should encourage self-evaluation and reflection by asking students to assess the effectiveness of strategies that they used - group or class discussions can also stimulate reflection and evaluation. Post-listening is focusing mainly to the reaction to the text. We can ask comprehension questions, students can do problem solving activities; they can summarize or retell the story and also write or speak about the heard recording in specifics. This framework of pre-listening activities and post-listening activities create the complexity and effectiveness of intensive listening. We, as teachers, should not forget about them, because listening as comprehension would lose its purpose and sense.

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7. Music and Video as Listening Skill Teaching Tools Music and video is all around us in this modern world and it is a natural part of our lives. It creates context and they contain much of language. Why not use them also in foreign language? Music lyrics in English language are all around us – we hear them in TV, in our favourite movies¸ on the radio, and in our MP3players. When discussing extensive learning, we emphasized the importance of listening outside the classroom – music has a big potential for this. Students, mainly teenagers are influenced by music, so motivation would be natural. On the other hand, music can be used also in the classroom. In the already mentioned article of Peachey, there is an example of the application of the framework for listening to a song: 

Pre-listening

1.

Students brainstorm kinds of songs

2.

Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it

3.

Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song



While listening

1.

Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad

2.

Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song

3.

Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in and correct them.



Post-listening

o

Focus on content

1.

Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song

2.

Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for

3.

Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website

4.

Write another verse for the song

o

Focus on form

1.

Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms

2.

Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean

3.

Students make notes of common collocations within the song (Peachey, Nick: A framework for planning a listening lesson)

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As music has several advantages in teaching listening skills, like teaching rhythm, intonation, phonetics, etc., videos have also pretty much advantages. We can include watching while listening into our lessons and we can encourage students to do so outside the classroom as in extensive listening. There are some viewing techniques provided by Harmer (2007: 309) which we would like to shortly describe: fast forward (to talk about the fast forwarded sequence), Silent viewing for language (to guess what was said/compare), Silent viewing for music (to guess the mood), freeze frame (prediction), partial viewing (predicting/guessing). In conclusion, there are lots of other possibilities in both, using music and video in our classrooms and also outside it. In my opinion, we should not leave them out of our syllabus, as they can create positive atmosphere in the classroom and towards the language. I also think that using them in classrooms would make students more aware of the language which would give them motivation for learning the language also outside the classroom. Other important thing is that teachers can stay fresh and up-to date which would support the connection between them and the students.

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PRACTICAL PART 1. Activity taken from a source The following activity is taken from Harmer´s The Practice of English Language Teaching, where listening for gist of a story is in the focus. Sorry I´m late Activity: getting events in the right order Skills: predicting; listening for gist Age: Young adult and above Level: lower intermediate Procedure: - Make pairs or groups! - Discuss what is happening on each picture and try to put pictures into a correct order! - Discuss your prediction with the other groups. Do not confirm or deny their predictions. - Play the recording! (Read the tape script.) - Students check their answers with each other and then, if necessary, listen again to ensure that they have the sequence correct. - Play the recording again or give them the tape script. Note phrases which express regret and apology and the use of repetition in order to be judgmental. - Write dialogues /role-play similar scenes in which they have to come up with stories and excuses for being late for school or work. Aids: pictures, tape script (Harmer, 2007:311)

Comments: I´ve had chosen this activity because I think that the turning point in the story would interest the students. I think it would also motivate them that it is not an activity from the course book – which can create the illusion of doing something new. The activity doesn´t need too much preparation on the side of the teacher, which makes it practical. I would like to use this activity, and some other activities designed on the base of this activity, in my future classroom. Maybe I would involve some drama techniques, mainly in the follow up activities, when acting it out. (The same persons would have different characteristics in different groups (good-working/hysterical), different emotions (happy/tired), different situations (platonic love), etc.

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2. Modified activity from a stated source Lesson Topic: plans, grammar: „be going to“ Level: elementary Objectives: Students will be able to : listen for specific information, create questions and answers with „be going to“, use learned vocabulary in context Age: 11-12 Source: Hutchinson T. Project 2 Student´s Book Stage

Procedure Pre-taught grammar: “be going to” questions and short answers, positive and negative sentences

Pre-listening

While listening

MY MODIFICATION: Discussion/topic: Plans What activities do we usually do on Saturdays? 1.) Make pairs! Choose an activity and act it in front of the others! When guessed, write on the board! 2.) Revision: How do we make questions with “going to”? T acts one of the actions written on the board, Ss ask Qs: Are you going to watch TV? Who guessed, takes turn. 1.) Listen. What are the people going to do on Saturday morning? Write the activities. (Fill in the chart). 1.) Work with a partner. Ask about the people. 2.) Ask and answer with a partner about the activities. 3.) Ask your partner. What are you going to do at these times?

Aids

Time

Course book

5-7´ Blackboard, chalk CD player CD Course book

5-7´

Course book

5-7´

Post-listening MY MODIFICATION: 1.) Make pairs and give them the handouts – infogap activity. (act. 2+3) English Lesson Battleship

10´

MY COMMENTS: The original listening activity remained the same, I added just some prelistening activities and prepared a handout for an information gap activity, which I think is very suitable for this level - it is entertaining and interesting. They can practice questions and also short answers in “be going to”. The pre-listening warm-ups are based on pre-taught grammar and vocabulary which is practiced with some drama. Adding interesting pre- and post- listening activities to classic course book activities brings them alive and supports effective language teaching. 17

3. My own activity The following activity is based on the applied framework of Peachy. I would like to apply it on the popular song: Gotye: Somebody That I Used to know. Activity: filling the gaps Skills: listening for specifics, grammar - Past simple Age: teenagers Time: 45´ Level: Beginners - Pre Intermediate Stage Procedure

Aids

Time

1. Discuss the music styles which you know! Collect as Pre many as you can! Write all of them on the board. listening 2. Make groups! Each group has to choose one style which they like and which they don´t like. Write 1 sentence as reasons for each. Discuss them! 3. Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song (Write on the board!)

Blackboard 3´ Chalk Handout 1 4´

While - 1. Listening 1.: Before listening read questions in activity 1. Ask Ss if they understand the questions. listening 2. Listening 2.: Give instructions for Activity 2: What they might talk about? Look for key words, or words that you understand. Collect them in groups. 3. Listening 3-4: Give students Handout 3. Listening 3 - fill the gaps! Students listen again to check their answers.

Handout 2 Handout 3

1. Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song Post listening 2. Give instructions! Give handout 3. Do the activities! Monitor! 3. If there are new words Ss try to guess their meaning of find them in the dictionary. 4. Write another verse for the song! Use the key words! (Homework)

Handout 4

3´

5´ 7´

10´

2´ 10

My comments: I´ve chosen this song because it is very popular nowadays, it has clear and understandable lyrics. The lyrics contain Past Simple tense which fits the needs of beginners or lower intermediate students. I was also curious about the application of Peachey’s framework to a song, and I am sure that I would apply it in the future in my classroom, as I emphasized how important is to use music as a listening skill teaching tool.

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Conclusion The main focus of this work was to deal with the most important issues of teaching listening skills and describe and compare theories and views of different authors on them. Furthermore, the work intended to emphasize the importance of language acquisition and also language comprehension within teaching listening skills. The first two parts of this work were dealing with listening as a language skill, and we introduced its categorizations. On the base of considering listening skill as a receptive skill, two contrasting views were introduced: listening with purpose and without purpose. It was defined that both are natural parts of any language which puts higher the importance of bringing both into the teaching of listening skills. Later on, we described the bottom-up and top-down processing by the points of views of several authors, then we analysed Harmer´s basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills also by commenting on his suggestions on appropriateness and difficulty issues. We also emphasized the importance of choosing appropriate tasks and texts in order to prevent problems, and we also provided some solutions to them, like pre-teaching of the unknown vocabulary. After these two parts, which intended to create a general overview on teaching listening skills, we were dealing with describing and contrasting views on transactional and interactional listening; and with the importance of language acquisition by linking Harmer´s extensive listening to Richard´s listening as acquisition. We provided some of Richard´s suggestions on using extensive listening in the classroom including Nunan´s view on this issue. We were also dealing with the importance of listening outside the classroom. We have to motivate students to do so because it might create positive attitude towards language learning. Because of the importance of language acquisition and the reason that language is commonly in context, we have to bring context also to our classrooms. This is why we included in this work drama as a tool for teaching listening skills. As this work intends not just to emphasize the importance of language acquisition, but language comprehension, we linked Harmer´s intensive listening to Richard´s listening as comprehension. Here we discussed the most important stages of teaching listening skills ,

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namely the framework of pre-listening, while listening and post-listening, and we named some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them. Finally, the last part is dealing with music and video and the possibilities of using them in teaching listening skills. Here we provided Nick Peachey´s application of the framework to a song, which is the base of my own activity in the practical part, which includes also an activity from a stated source and a modified activity. In conclusion, the aims of this work were fulfilled as we discussed everything we intended to. In my opinion, this work gives the reader a general overview on the issues of teaching listening skills and provides important information like the framework and methodological model of teaching listening skills and also their possible applications.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited, 1991, 296 p. ISBN 0-582-04656-4. Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8. Nunan. D. Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers, Prentice Hall, 1991, 264 p. ISBN 0-13-521469-6 Richards, J.C.Teaching Listening and Speaking From Theory to Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 44p. ISBN 13 978-0-521-95776-2 Morley, J. Aural Comprehension Instruction: Principles and Practices. In Celce-Murcia M. (Ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 2001, 584 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-8384-1992-2

Online sources: Peachley, N. A framework for planning a listening skills lesson [online] 10. February, 2010. [quoted 3. May, 2012.]. < http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/a-framework-planninga-listening-skills-lesson>. Vandergrift L. Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence [online] [quoted 5. June, 2012.] . Practical part: Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8. Hutchinson T. Project 2 Student´s Book, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 79p. ISBN 978 0 19 476305 9 Source of inspiration: Maley A., Duff. A. Drama Techniques: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 246 p. ISBN 9780-521-60119-1

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APPENDIX I´m sorry 1. pictures

2. Tape script

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Tapescript:

Activity in the coursebook:

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Place 2 rubbers, 1 ruler, a Project book, 2 pens and 1 homework on the desk.

My Desk

Stay in bed

Go swimming

Dance

Play the piano

Speak English

Ride a bike

Go shopping

This evening

A rubber A ruler Project book

After school

A pen

On Sunday afternoon Homework

At New Year On Saturday morning On your next birthday Tomorrow evening

My Partner´s Desk

Stay in bed

Go swimming

Dance

Speak English

This evening After school

Play the piano

Ride a bike

Go shopping

Call a square! F.e: Are you going to go shopping on Sunday afternoon? Your partner answers: Yes, I am.

On Sunday afternoon

HIT - X

At New Year On Saturday morning On your next birthday Tomorrow evening

No, I´m not. MISS – O

Find all the things on your partners desk!

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HANDOUT 1

1.) What kinds of music styles do you know? Write down at least 5 of them!

2.) Choose one style which you like and which you don´t like in your group! Give reason why! Write one sentence for each. We like _____________________________ because________________________________ We don´t like_________________________ because ________________________________ 3.) What expressions might be in a love song? Suggest at least 5! ___________________________________________________________________________

HANDOUT 2

Listening 1 1.) Answer the questions! a.) Is the song happy or sad? Why? ___________________________________________ b.) How many characters are there? __________________________________________ c.) What is between them, are they in love?_____________________________________

Listening 2

2.) What are the characters talking about? Look for key words! Write down every word that you understand!

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HANDOUT 3 – Fill in the gaps! "Somebody That I Used To Know" (feat. Kimbra) [Gotye:] Now and then I think of when we _______ together Like when you _______ you felt so happy you could die Told myself that you were right for me But _________ so lonely in your company But that was ___________ and it's an ache I still remember You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness Like resignation to the end, always the end So when we _____________ that we could not make sense Well you said that we would still be ___________ But I'll admit that I was glad it was over But you didn't have to cut me off Make out like it never __________________ and that we were nothing And I don't even need your love But you treat me like a stranger and I ___________ so rough No you didn't have to stoop so low Have your friends collect your records and then change your number I guess that I don't need that though Now you're just somebody that I _________ to know Now you're just somebody that I used to know Now you're just somebody that I used to know [Kimbra:] Now and then I __________ of all the times you screwed me over Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done But I don't wanna live that way Reading into every word you say You ______________ that you could let it go And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you _____________ know [Gotye:] But you _______________ cut me off Make out like it never happened and that we ____________nothing And I don't even need your love But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough And you ______________ stoop so low Have your friends collect your records and then _____________ your number I guess that I don't need that though Now you're just somebody that I used to know (...)

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HANDOUT 4 1.) Make the list of 10 verbs in Past Simple and write their Present Simple form . ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2.) Find 5 verbs which are in Present Simple! ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3.) Find the verbs which are in Present Continuous! ___________________________________________________________________________

4.) Work in pairs! Try to guess why they broke up! Write a short dialogue! Act it out! ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 5.) Write another verse for the song! Use the key words in Handout 1/3 and Handout 2/2.

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

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