This document compares the perspectives of Jeremy Harmer and Douglas Brown on teaching listening skills. Both authors believe listening is important for language acquisition, but for different reasons. Harmer views listening as important for pragmatic uses of language, while Brown sees it as important for acquisition. Brown presents detailed types of listening activities and skills, whereas Harmer only distinguishes levels of students. They also differ on potential disadvantages during listening - Brown cites confusion from tasks, while Harmer notes external distractions. Overall, the authors agree listening is fundamental, but emphasize different aspects in their approaches.

1. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 1
Different perspectives
about the listening skill:
a comparison between Jeremy Harmer and Douglas Brown.
Víctor A. González
and
Juan A. Rosales
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción

2. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 2
Many authors have analyzed and studied the listening stage in the learning
and acquisition process of a second language, which is in this case English.
Throughout time they have proposed several views about the stage. Currently, as
a result of several researches we have the opportunity to look at them and to
distinguish which one is the most suitable for us according to our reality, likes and
the way we see or illustrate the teaching process in this particular area. In the
following Comparative Essay we will expose, review, compare and contrast two
viewpoints about how to teach listening. We will introduce Jeremy Harmer’s and
Douglas Brown’s view. Later on we will compare and contrast these two positions,
analyzing similarities and differences between them. The idea is to show their
perception about the listening teaching process, the composition of assessment
tools, the way teacher should conduct a listening activity, the changes in
educational environment and the different resources that a teacher can use to
provide the students enough tools for making this process easier for them. Finally,
a summary will be presented stating the main conclusions and implications of this
Comparative Essay.
First of all, is important to mention the main characteristics of both authors.
On the one hand we have Jeremy Harmer’s view. In his book called “how to teach
English” he reviews and gives an analysis of all the different parts of what teaching
English is about. He demonstrates and covers the language skills that we possess
(reading, listening, writing and speaking) and that have to be considered when
teaching English. In addition, he provides the way in which a teacher should

3. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 3
conduct the teaching process; giving emphasis on how to address to the students,
how to give them clear instructions, how to define the stages of a lesson and how
to motivate students. This last one is certainly the elemental part of this entire
subject. Otherwise students would not get involved in the process. Moreover, he
analyses different types of teaching listening activities for the different levels of
English that learners can have. Furthermore, he proves that not only audio-
listening activities are permitted, but also the use of videos to cover the listening
area proposing 4 different types of organizing the students and the classroom, in
order to get this work properly.
On the second hand we have Douglas Brown’s view. In his book called
“Principle and classroom practices” he mentions two concepts that interact with
each other. These are performance and observation. According to Brown (2004),
we as teachers can observe performance no matter what the skills are. However,
there is another concept called competence which refers to the student’s
knowledge about a piece of information. Brown states this cannot be observed but
only assessed. In addition, this concept is conditioned by a series of factors, such
as, anxiety or tiredness. Thus, the teacher has to consider different ways of
evaluating the students’ competences. He also points out that observation is
essential for teachers in order to perceive and determine what students know.
Moreover, he claims that in receptive skills, in this case listening, neither the
process of performing nor the product can be noticed because you observe the
results of the listening but the listening process is mental and individual. Therefore,
the product of what students listened to is in the brain. The teacher can only

4. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 4
appreciate what students express in whether written or spoken for; thus, the
inference capacity is required so that a teacher is able to assess listening.
Furthermore, since inference is demanding process, Brown proposes several sorts
of assessments task. This will be useful for a teacher when observing students’
performance and it will facilitate the conclusion making about the students’
comprehension.
Secondly, it is necessary to declare the main differences between both
authors. At first glance, both authors present a notorious difference on their
perspectives about the listening process. On the one hand, Brown’s view is more
related with the cognitive part of acquiring listening skills. He focuses on the types
of listening and the student’s mental abilities. This means that the abilities shown
by the students will depend on the activity. He also mentions different types of
listening; intensive, responsive, selective and extensive. In addition, he explains
the abilities that a student can use; note-taking, editing, interpret and retelling.
Moreover, he highlights that the relation between the type of activity and the ability
is essential for accomplishing the objective of the listening. On the other hand,
Harmer’s view is close to the pragmatic part of language that is achieved through
the learning and acquiring of listening skills. He gives an answer to the question of
why teaching listening. His answers are stated pragmatically. Here he notes the
importance of exposing the students to the listening part. The purpose is getting
the students engaged to the lesson simulating different social context related with
the English language. The development of these abilities will allow the learners to
talk and use the language in real situations; thus, they will feel comfortable at the

5. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 5
moment of speaking in English and expressing their thoughts to a native speaker
or a second language user.
In addition, another big discrepancy between the two authors is their focus.
Harmer (1998) states and categorizes the different levels that the students may
have. He proposed different activities and ways to approach these levels
(beginner, elementary, intermediate and upper intermediate) that go from
considering general features to specific ones. However, he does not distinguish
between types of activities or types of skills, he just keeps away this categorization
and states these four major levels in which every student belongs depending on
their listening knowledge. On the contrary, Brown does not consider the different
levels. Instead, he makes a more complex distinction between the activities and
what he explains as micro and macro skills. The first group has to do with
identifying smaller bits and chunks of language in more of a bottom-up process
whereas the second group is related to the recognition of larger elements of the
language, being more of a top-down process.
Moreover, Brown mentions the impediments that students may have during
a listening task which are clustering, redundancy, colloquial language, reduced
form, etc. Thus, it implies that the students may get confused and have a wrong
perception during the listening, so they will not perform correctly. Nevertheless,
Harmer only states distractive problems. He argues that during the listening the
students may get distracted by something external to the classroom. Thus, he
suggests to the teachers to pay special attention to the environment of the

6. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 6
classroom and the type of listening selected, which must be meaningful for them in
order to ensure motivation.
Thirdly, a similarity between both authors has to be considered. As Harmer
as Brown manifest the significance of giving meaning to what students hear rather
than just paying attention to details or to identify particular language features. This
can be observed and explained by one of Harmer’s principles in which he
establishes the importance of encouraging the students to respond to the content
of a listening, not just to the language in detail. For instance, he gives the idea
asking a question like “do you agree?”, which implies open answers, rather than
“what language did she use to invite him?”, in which the answer is limited.
Finally, it is important to express the appreciation and importance of each
author about the listening process. Harmer highlights the importance of teaching
listening because if you expose the students to different accents they will get use
to these variations; thus, they will understand a greater variety of listening tasks
without getting confused. He also claims that teaching listening is beneficial
because it helps students to acquire language in a subconscious way. Therefore,
they obtain vital information not only about grammar and vocabulary, but also in
terms of pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress. On the other hand,
Brown states that listening should be taken into account because we are prone to
listen more and speak less. In addition, he claims that the listening process is
important because it allows students to acquire knowledge about the language that
is being object of study.

7. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 7
In summary, both authors present their arguments about why listening is a
fundamental skill to develop in students. What is going to be mentioned is what we
preserved from the readings about both authors and their insights. The following
comparisons will be enumerated. 1. While Brown states that listening is important
for acquisition, Harmer believes that it is important in terms of pragmatic. 2. Harmer
does not present a detailed list of activities as Brown does, but he presents
different levels to which students could belong. 3. The disadvantages of the
listening process are opposite from each other. Brown states that students may get
confused during the listening whereas Harmer argues that students may get
distracted in it. The most noticeable aspects of the authors is the fact that Brown
makes great emphasis on activities and skills whereas Harmer only makes the
distinction in terms of technical issues because he presents general characteristics
of the listening activities. For example, the difficulty of the recording, the accent or
the concern about whether TICs are operating. Yet he does not refer to specific
types of activities or specific types of listening.

8. Running head: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE LISTENING SKILL 8
REFERENCES
Brown, D. (2004). Language assessment: Principles and classroom
practices. NY: Pearson Education , Inc.
Harmer, J. (1998). How to teach English: Malaysia: Pearson Education
Limited.