Eade
Listening
INTERMEDIATE LISTENING COURSE
C. EADE
COURSE DESCRIPTION
COURSE OBJECTIVES
• ENABLE students to develop their listening skills in order to cope with authentic audio and video materials
• ENCOURAGE students to develop their language fluency through guided input
COURSE COMPONENTS
· in-class sessions
· independent on-line assignments
· Course Portfolio: a collection of all the materials studied during the in-class sessions and the independent assignments. Please bring this to every session.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION
• Esonero: (at end of course) only for current students with minimum 80% attendance and a completed personal Course Portfolio. The esonero consists in a discussion of the Course Portfolio.
• Final Exam (June): Listening Comprehension Tasks
LISTENING: LESSON ONE
I. What is listening?
1) What is the difference between hearing and listening?
2) Which activity involves the most amount of listening?
3) How much time do you spend listening?
in general:
watching tv and in conversations:
in school-related hours:
4) What is needed to listen effectively?
5) What is active listening?
6) Are you a good listener? Explain
Now read the text. What answers can you find?
Students spend 20 percent of all school related hours just listening. If television watching and one-half of conversations are included, students spend approximately 50 percent of their waking hours just listening. For those hours spent in the classroom, the amount of listening time can be almost 100 percent. Look at your own activities, especially those related to college. Are most of your activities focused around listening, especially in the classroom?
Hearing and Listening are two very different things. Hearing is the perception of sound while listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the brain. Listening leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But listening takes attention, or sticking to the task at hand in spite of distractions. It requires concentration, which is the focusing of your thoughts upon one particular problem. A person who incorporates listening with concentration is actively listening. Active listening is a method of responding to another that encourages communication. Good listening is built on three basic skills: attitude, attention, and adjustment. These skills are known collectively as triple-A listening:
Attitude. A positive attitude paves the way for open-mindedness. Don't let reactive interference prevent you from recalling the speaker's key points.
Attention : Your attention must focus on what you hear. The words enter your short-term memory, where they have to be swiftly processed into ideas. If they aren't processed, then they will be dumped from short-term memory and will be gone forever. Attentive listening makes sure the ideas are processed.
Adjustment: What you expect to hear is not always what your hear. You need to adjust both mentally and physically to the variations both in topic, depth and even style.
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Poor Listening Habits and Good Listening Habits
The key to effective listening is acquiring good listening habits.
Read the following types of listening habits. Do they refer to Good listeners or Poor Listeners? Which is most similar to your behaviour?
1) Allowing yourself to be distracted
__Poor Listeners___ use little distractions -- someone coughing, a pencil dropping, the door opening and closing -- as an excuse to stop listening.
______filter out distractions and concentrate on what the speaker is saying.
2) Listening only for facts
______want to see how the facts and examples support the speaker's ideas and arguments. They know that facts are important, because they support ideas.
______only want the facts. They consider everything else to be only the speaker's opinion.
3) Listening to only the easy material
______want to learn something new and try to understand the speaker's point. They are not afraid of difficult, technical, or complicated ideas.
______think it is too difficult to follow the speaker's complicated ideas and logic. They want entertainment, not education.
4) Deciding a subject is boring
______decide a lecture is going to be dull and "turn off" the speaker.
______listen closely for information that can be important and useful, even when a lecture is dull.
5) Wasting thought speed
______use any extra time or pauses in the lecture to reflect on the speaker's message. They think about what the speaker is saying, summarize the main points, and think about the next points.
______move along lazily with the speaker even though thinking is faster than speaking. They daydream and falls behind.
6) Panicking
______become paralyzed when they miss a word or sentence. They think they can’t understand anything if they don’t understand everything.
______relax and focus on what they do understand. They know that they don’t need to understand everything.
Sum up the key characteristics of effective listening.
What about you? What can you do to improve your listening skills?
http://www.uefap.com/listen/listfram.htm
How to be an Effective Listener: You will hear a brief talk on how to listen effectively. As you listen, fill in the notes below using key words and phrases
The Golden Rules of Listening
Stop talking, you can’t listen if ……………………………………………………………………
Make a special effort to listen carefully when ……………………………………………………
Relax, listening less effective when you’re ………………………………………………………
Make it clear speaker has your …………………………………………………………………...
If you need ………………………………………………………., explain what you are doing and why.
Try not to let personal prejudices influence……………………………………………………..
Listen with reason and with ………………………………………………………………………
Your aim is to understand, not to ………………………………………………………………….
Be aware of what your speaker ……………………………………………………………………
Listening comprehension & note-taking
To improve your listening, you need to practise:
· How to take notes.
· Recognising lecture structure: understanding relationships in the lecture - reference; understanding relations within the sentence/complex sentences; importance markers, signposts.
· Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words and word groups - guessing.
· Recognising implications: information not explicitly stated; recognising the speaker's attitude. Evaluating the importance of information - selecting information.
· Understanding intonation, voice emphasis etc.
· Listening skills: skimming - listening to obtain gist; scanning - listening to obtain specific information; selective extraction of relevant points to summarise text; learning various ways of making sense of the words you hear.
How can listening help your language skills?
How long did it take you to learn your mother tongue the way you speak it today?
What are some of the ways you picked it up?
How can the same thing be done with a foreign language?
Can listening in a foreign language help develop your other skills?
Read the excerpt below. What is the point? Are you surprised?
Excerpts from
New study may revolutionize language learning
January 27, 2009
(PhysOrg.com) -- The teaching of languages could be revolutionised following ground-breaking research by Victoria University, New Zealand, PhD graduate Paul Sulzberger. Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns--even if you haven't a clue what it all means.
"Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example, frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new words."
Dr Sulzberger's research challenges existing language learning theory. His main hypothesis is that simply listening to a new language sets up the structures in the brain required to learn the words. "Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to the language—which is how babies learn their first language," Dr Sulzberger says.
Dr Sulzberger looked for ways people could develop these structures to make the learning process easier. His finding was simple: extensive exposure to the language, something made easier by globalisation and new technology. "It is easier to learn languages these days because they are so accessible now. You can go home and watch the news in French on the internet."
Provided by Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
II. BEST PARKS: VISUALIZING WHEN YOU LISTEN
One helpful way to focus on what you are listening to is to visualize what you are hearing. This turns words into images and helps you avoid the tendency to translate into your mother tongue, which slows you down and becomes a barrier to comprehension. Images are also often easier to remember than words.
http://www.elllo.org/english/Games/G058-Park.htm
I. Think of a park you like. In your mind’s eye, visualize the areas you like best. What can you do in these areas?
II. Listen to Todd introducing his talk. What is he going to talk about?
III. Now listen to Todd describing the different areas in the park. As you listen, draw the images which come to mind. Keep it simple, no one expects you to be Leonardo Da Vinci!
Make your drawing here:
I
V. Now listen again and label the parts of your drawing with the words and expressions Todd uses.
V. With your partner, use your drawings and labels to describe Todd’s park. Help each other complete your drawings.
1) Definition of expressions. Listen and take notes on the definitions. (audio notes)
1. ban …………………………………………………………………………………….
2. local school kids ………………………………………………………………………
3. senior citizens …………………………………………………………………………
4. produce ……………………………………………………………………………….
5. educational tool ………………………………………………………………………
6. fog …………………………………………………………………………………….
7. generate ………………………………………………………………………………
8. thatched houses………………………………………………………………………..
9. ancient dwellings………………………………………………………………………
2) Vocabulary Check
Fill in the gaps with the words listed below. Then listen to check your answers
thatched • banned • produce
generate • dwellings
1. All businesses need to revenue to survive.
2. You can buy apples and carrots in the department.
3. Smoking is in all public places.
4. People lived in cave thousands of years ago.
5. England has many houses with roofs.
3) Comprehension Quiz: Answer the questions below.
1) The park is good for running because _____ .
a) there are lots of inclines
b) there is a seniors club
c) the trials are soft to run on
2) The word 'tool' is used to show how people ______.
a) fix things
b) build a thatched roof
c) teach kids about fog
3) Who helps farm the garden?
a) local farmers
b) elderly people
c) parents of local kids
4) What do the guides do?
a) Show people the dirt trails
b) Show how to grow produce
c) Talk about the dwellings
5) What is suggested you do near the flowers?
a) Talk to the seniors
b) Read a book
c) Take a photo
6) What has the speaker never done at the park?
a) Have a barbecue
b) Walk on the grass
c) Seen the lake make fog
4) Questions.
You will hear 5 questions about your area. Write out the questions as you hear them. Then discuss each with your partner.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
You will now tell your partner about your favourite park or place to go to relax. First draw the place here:
Now describe your favourite place to your partner. Use the following expressions:
Today I'm going to talk about one of my favourite places. It's a park and it's …(location)
Now one thing I love about this park is it ‘s …...
Another nice thing about the park, is that it has
The park is also really
The best thing about the park though is that
Lastly, one thing you can do at the park is you can
And lastly if you just want to come and relax, one beautiful thing they have at the park is
And that's it. That's my favourite place.
Assignment for next week:
Part One: Reading:
Study the following text carefully. Think of an example for every types of listening described. Be ready to discuss the text next week.
12
Eade
Listening
Types of listening
Here are six types of listening, starting with basic discrimination of sounds and ending in deep communication.
Discriminative listening: Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference between difference sounds is identified. If you cannot hear differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such differences.
We learn to discriminate between sounds within our own language early, and later are unable to discriminate between the phonemes of other languages. This is one reason why a person from one country finds it difficult to speak another language perfectly, as they are unable distinguish the subtle sounds that are required in that language.
Likewise, a person who cannot hear the subtleties of emotional variation in another person's voice will be less likely to be able to discern the emotions the other person is experiencing.
Listening is a visual as well as auditory act, as we communicate much through body language. We thus also need to be able to discriminate between muscle and skeletal movements that signify different meanings.
Comprehension listening: The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make sense of them. To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what others are saying.
The same is true, of course, for the visual components of communication, and an understanding of body language helps us understand what the other person is really meaning.
In communication, some words are more important and some less so, and comprehension often benefits from extraction of key facts and items from a long spiel.
Comprehension listening is also known as content listening, informative listening and full listening.
Critical listening: Critical listening is listening in order to evaluate and judge, forming opinion about what is being said. Judgment includes assessing strengths and weaknesses, agreement and approval.
This form of listening requires significant real-time cognitive effort as the listener analyzes what is being said, relating it to existing knowledge and rules, whilst simultaneously listening to the ongoing words from the speaker.
Biased listening: Biased listening happens when the person hears only what they want to hear, typically misinterpreting what the other person says based on the stereotypes and other biases that they have. Such biased listening is often very evaluative in nature.
Evaluative listening: In evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other person is saying. We seek to assess the truth of what is being said. We also judge what they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy.
Evaluative listening is particularly pertinent when the other person is trying to persuade us, perhaps to change our behavior and maybe even to change our beliefs. Within this, we also discriminate between subtleties of language and comprehend the inner meaning of what is said. Typically also we weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, determining whether it makes sense logically as well as whether it is helpful to us. Evaluative listening is also called critical, judgmental or interpretive listening.