1. Teaching Listening
Brandy Barter
Brittni Driver
EDUC 8620: Practicum
Dr. De Costa

2. Say What?
"We listen ...
twice as much as we speak,
four times as much as we read, and
five times as much as we write"
(Morley, 1999)

3. What is Listening?
• Listening is the most important of the four language
skills. It is the...
o First skill to develop
o Language skill used most often in everyday
communication (Ashcraft & Tran, 2010)
• Listening as a skill:
o “The ability to respond accurately to questions or to
the demands of a task is a reliable indication of
listening competence and the appropriate goal for a
lesson” (Burns & Richards, 2012).

4. Say What?

5. Background
• Relatively new in terms of its history.
• A means of presenting a new grammar point
o Short, contrived dialogues
• Mostly dictation
o Word & phoneme recognition
• 1960’s listening was recognized as a skill to be
practiced on its own right.
o Tape and cassette recordings
(Burns & Richards, 2012)

6. Listening Activity #1!!!
Ask and answer these questions with a pair:
• What kinds of movies do you like?
• Have you been to the movies recently?
• What was the last movie you saw?
• Was it an evening movie or a matinee?

7. What were the steps in
the listening lesson?

8. Listening Lesson Format
• Prelistening
• Extensive listening
• Preset questions or task
• Intensive listening
• Language of the recording
• Final play
Field (2008; 2012)

9. Comprehension Approach
• Exposes learners to wide range of voices.
• Hear L2 speakers interacting.
• Gives them practices in particular types of
listening (auditory scanning).
• Tests like TOEFL and TOEIC use this
format.

10. Comprehension Approach
Evaluated
• What is missing in the CA approach?
o Tests listening without ever teaching it
o Provides extensive exposure without
honing the skills/strategies of the learner
 Listening, like reading, is an operation
that takes place in the mind of the
language user
 Emphasizes product over process

11. Activity #2!
• Checklist for listening strategies.
• Directions: In groups, put each of the
strategies into the correct category.

12. Types of Strategies
Metacognitive Cognitive Socioaffective
Used to determine Used to manipulate Using others to help us
one's own information and make understand:
comprehension: sense of what we hear:
-Planning -Responding -Cooperative learning
-Monitoring -Organization -Questioning for
-Evaluating -Summarization comprehension
-Elaboration -Managing one’s emotions
-Clarifying in the learning situation
*Adapted from Peterson (2001) and Lynch (2009).

13. Discussion Question:
• How might you adapt the comprehension
approach in order to include listening
strategies and processes?
Talk with a pair for 2 minutes and then share
with the class.

14. How to Teach Listening Strategies
• Find out what strategies your students already use.
• Not all listening tasks require the same strategies and
that they need to be flexible.
• Focus on a small number of strategies.
• Use yourself as a model for using a strategy.
• Follow-up with a 'debriefing' discussion.

15. Higher-level processes
TOP-DOWN
nature of the world
nature of the text
context
topic
sounds
words
phrases
BOTTOM-UP
Lower-level processes

16. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

17. Conclusion:
• Listening is an important skill to teach.
o It doesn't have to be taught in isolation.
• Comprehension approach is valid and
effective but insufficient.
o We need strategy instruction.
o Integrate top-down and bottom-up
processes.

18. Online Resources
• Lyrics Training (lyricstraining.com): Dictation style task where learners
listen to music videos and in real time type in lyrics and receive instant
feedback.
• Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab (esl-lab.com): Website with
hundreds of listening activities that include pre- and post-listening
exercises.
•
TFL Chinese
Lingomi (lingomi.com): Helps Chinese learners get better tones. Gives
you useful products that help improve your listening and pronunciation
• skills.
Sesame Street China (sesamestreetchina.com.cn/): Great for young
chinese learners or adults who are “kids at heart.”

19. Discussion Question:
• What are some other technology
based resources you could use?

20. References
Ashcraft, N. & Tran, A. (Eds.). (2010). Teaching listening: Voices from the field. Alexandria, VA: Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.
Field, J. (2008). Listening in the language classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Field, J. (2012). Listening instruction. In Burns, A. & Richards, J. C. (Eds.), The
Cambridge guide to pedagogy and practice in second language teaching (pp.
207-217). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, T. (2009). Teaching second language listening. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Morley, J. (1999). Current perspectives on improving aural comprehension. ESL
Magazine, 2(1), 16-19. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED436958.pdf.