Listening as a language skill

In every field of study, skill is the prominent goal that needs to reach for. It is the capital for student to increase their quality as an educated people. In addition everybody will value someone knowledge by looking at how many skill they master. According to Jack C Richard skill is an acquired ability to perform an activity well, usually one that is made up of a number of coordinated processes and actions.[1]

 It same like a language, there are 4 major skills in language study, they are; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. These are the skills that most of people always value in a language proficiency test. In other ways Jack Richard classified these skills into two types; oral skill (listening and speaking), reading, and writing skill. Some methods focus primarily on oral skills and say that reading and writing skills are secondary and derive from transfer of oral skills.[2]

Base on this reason we can say that listening is more important than others so that teacher and student need to concern a lot in it. Because there is no many student can overcome their problem in listening quickly. They must patient to undergo the exhausted period in which they should listen to speaker even sometime it makes them dizzy.

As a language skill, listening has some component skill that determines the successful listening. This component should integrated in listening activity. Here are these components:[3]

a.       Discriminating between sounds

b.      Recognizing words

c.       Identifying grammatical groupings of words

d.      Identifying “pragmatic units”- expressions and sets of utterances which function as whole units to create meaning.

e.       Connecting linguistic cues to paralinguistic cues (intonation and stress) and to non-linguistic cues (gestures and relevant objects in the situation) in order to construct meaning.

f.        Using background knowledge and context to predict and confirm meaning.

g.       Recalling important words and ideas

By looking at the explanation above we can conclude that every skill have some aspects that determine the success of their study. Eventually many student especially ESL/EFL, they have problem in listening comprehension. And because of this reason many method and approach have much concern on this skill.  

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[1] Ibid p. 489

[2] Jack C Richard and Theodore S Rogers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Reino Unido: Cambridge University Press, 1987)  p. 20

[3] Paraskevi Andreopoulou, “Focus on Listening: Why Do Beginner Find Listening Is Difficult?” (Language Skill Assignment, Cambridge Delta Course,2009 ) p. 3

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Listening to English as a foreign language

Listening for English as a foreign language is different from listening English as a native language. For foreign language learner, listening to English language is not seems like listening their own language. They listen not only to get some information or to enjoy what they listen but also it has some another meaning for the listener.

According to Tricia Hedge, most of EFL student should undergo some uncertainties that is challenging for them as one term of their learning process. Basically they are difficult for second language listener to make sense of an ambiguous message in which the speaker has given the explicit information. Well, some of these uncertainties are:[1]

a.       Uncertainties of confidence

b.       Uncertainties of deriving from the presentation of speech

c.        Uncertainties because of the gaps of the message

d.       Uncertain strategies

e.        Uncertainties of language

f.         Uncertainties of content, and visual uncertainties

                  Anyways, every problem might have solution. As Jim Scrivener has explained some tips that helps EFL student especially to listen better in English as follow:[2]

a.       Keep the recording short, not more than two minutes or so.

b.      Play the tape a sufficient number of times, or the teacher did not give the students enough opportunities to hear the tape.

c.       Let the student discuss their answer together

d.      Don’t immediately acknowledge correct answer with words or facial expression. Throw the answer back to the class.

e.       Aim to get the students agree together without your help. Until they agree, play the tape again whenever they need to hear it, to confirm their idea.

f.        Play little bit of the tape (a word, a phrase, a sentence) again and again until it is clear.

g.       Give help if they completely stuck, but still with the aim of getting them to work it out if at all possible rather than giving them the answer.

h.       Give them control of tape recorder, to listen as what they wish

i.         Don’t let them lose heart, try to make sure the task is just within their abilities.

                  We can conclude that listening to English speech is not easy for EFL student. They should be patient and learn in a series of process. Also they should do it continuously and placidly. In the similar way, the greater exercise in listening it would make the greater result.

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[1] Tricia Hedge, Teaching And Learning In The Language Classroom (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2000) pp 237-242

[2] Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching (Oxford: Heinemann Publishing Limited, 1994) p 149

Types of Listening

Gary Buck divided the type of listening into two types:[1]

1. Bottom-up, it seem like listening to directions from friend on how to get to his/her house. This kind of listening comprehension is achieved by dividing and decoding the sounds - bit by bit. The ability to separate the stream of speech into individual words becomes more important here, if we recognize, for example, the name of a street or instructions on how to take a particular bus.
2. Top-down listening, listening to a friend tell a story about a terrible vacation in Thailand during rainy season with a mutual friend. This kind of listening requires the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message. Background knowledge consists of context.

H. Douglass Brown divided the type of listening into four types; intensive, responsive, selective, and extensive.[2]

a.       Intensive is listening for perception of the component (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc) of a larger stretch of the language.

b.      Responsive is listening to a relatively short stretch of language ( a greeting, question, command, comprehension check, etc ) in order to make an equality short response.

c.       Selective is listening to the short monologs for several minutes in order to scan certain information (e.g. classroom direction for a teacher, TV, or radio news item, or story)

d.      Extensive is listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of long speech or conversation and it has comprehensive purposes. e. g. listening to get the main idea, making inference from all of part of listening.

Some types of listening above explain us that listening has the complex purposes which the form listening influenced the value for listener. However, it is the evidence that listening skill is much useful for many people. By listening people can enjoy the song or it may even inspire human mind. At the heart of the matter, everyone listening for any purpose, it can be for fun or anything that would help them.

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[1] Gary Buck, Assessing Listening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p 2

[2] Ibid, p 120

Definition of Listening

Listening is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language.[1] It means that listening is one of major skill that every English student must had. Practically, there are still many people who have lack of listening skill than other skill, especially it is the common problem the mostly ESL student had. For example when student could speak English fluently but she could not identify what the native speaker said. It could be influenced by neither the speed of speech that is too fast nor the low responses skill of what they heard.

According to Ronald carter the term listening is used in language teaching to refer to complex process that allow us to understand spoken language[2]. This theory explains that listening is not only recognizing the sound but also student must get the meaning of word. Recognizing the function of the sentences when in an interaction and student must listen carefully. If one sentence can not be heard clearly, it is difficult to understand the another word or sentences. Therefore, there is so much attention in listening process. In the same way, David Nunan define the listening as a matter of decoding the individual sound to derive the meaning of word and change utterance[3]

From the explanation above, we can conclude that listening is a matter of ear and mind. Whereas hearing is not only recognizing the sound but focus on the person communicating and must respond to the question and directions. Then in a listening process the good pronunciation of the speaker determine the success of listening too.

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[1] Ibid, p 324

[2] Ronald Carter and David Nunan, The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p 7

[3] Ibid p.63

The Important of Listening

Hearing is the common sense of human being which its function is accepting information in voice form. In other hand we compare it with a human who can hear normally but he can not understand that the information that he heard. It means that what he or she has heard doesn’t mean anything. It is out of the listening purpose that is to get the information from the sound streaming into the sense of hearing.

Therefore in learning foreign language listening skill is so important, it supported by H Douglass Brown who said “every teacher of language knows that one’s oral production ability is only as good as one’s listening comprehension ability”[1]. And on his other book Douglass Brown compared between listening and other competence “the important of listening in language learning is hardly be overestimated. In classroom, students always do more listening than speaking. Listening competence is always universally larger than speaking competence.[2] In the real fact mostly found that there is no many foreign language learners master overall listening skill.

Definitely, Listening is an important skill. Successful communication depends on not only receiving messages but also decoding them correctly. No communication process is complete without listening. Most of students take much time to improve their listening skill, they should through this placidly. They do not only learn to listen what their teacher taught but also they should learn by their self by watching TV or listening radio.

Effective listening is extremely important for students as they spend most of their time listening to lectures. For professionals, the higher of the position, the greater of the listening responsibility. In some companies, it is important to listen carefully to the instructions of one’s superiors at the workplace. We can also measure the morale and enthusiasm of coworkers and subordinates by listening closely to them. On a personal level, a person who listens and pays attention is rated as highly popular and socially compatible.

As a result, listening has an important role for human life. It is one of the basic skills that everyone is required to master it as well as possible. Unconsciously, many activities related to the listening which many students always do. For example; listening to radio, song, or watching English movie. However listening help people to enjoy their life.

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[1] H Douglass Brown, Language Assessment ( New York: Pearson Education Incorporation, 2004) p 119

[2] H Douglass Brown, Teaching By Principle: An Interactive approach to Language Pedagogy, Second Edition ( New York: Pearson Education Incorporation, 2001) p 247

The relevance between dictation and teaching listening

        We knew the advantage of dictation by looking at the explanation before. Indirectly these advantages are influenced the student skill in listening. In the similar way, dictation is the good technique for English learner to improve their listening skill. As we know that listening is still become the major trouble of thousands English learner, especially ESL/EFL student. They have been through the complicated process to get their goal in listening process; it is understanding, decoding, and response the spoken language.

            John Flowderdew load dictation as the language focus to decide the success of student in listening mastery[1]. This fact creates the relevance between dictation and listening. Because the major activity of dictation is listening to the speaker and than response into the written, later on student may check it by themselves. Well directly, they could measure their listening skill by this activity anyways.

            In other way, the relevance between dictations encloses the collaboration between teacher and student. Jeremy Harmer said that little dictations can get the process moving[2] especially for warming up. Many teachers complain that sometime they confuse how to start the class; most of them have no ides to begin the class. But with little dictation like asking “what is your hobby?” then answers glowingly “my hobby is…”it will create an enjoyable class condition.

            In essential, listening is part of dictation and conversely, because it is impossible to separate both of them in language teaching. Dictation in language teaching doesn’t mean that everything should depend on the teacher as though teacher was the only prime mover of the class. However the view of dictation is changed today, dictation is not the old boring technique anymore but now it is become a treatment to make the class more interactive. In the same way, dictation is the effective technique to teach listening.

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[1] Ibid p. 71

[2] Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching (London: Longman Group UK limited, 1992) p. 119

The Adventages of Dictation

By looking at the reason why dictation could work well in a classroom, we know that dictation give positive value for student especially in listening skill. Paul Davis and Mario Rinovalucri stated that there are several reasons why dictation activities work well. They are:[1]

a)      The students are active during the exercise.

b)      The students are active after the exercise.

c)      Dictation leads to oral communicative activities

d)      Dictation fosters unconscious thinking

e)      Dictation copes with mixed-ability group

f)        Dictation deals with large groups

g)      Dictation will often calm group

h)      Dictation is safe for the non-native teacher

i)        For English, it is technically useful exercise

j)        Dictation gives access to interesting text

In addition the value of dictation is increased if the learners know what the mistakes they made.[2]

However dictation is the modest technique, it is a good technique for less facilities classes. Because in it application, it must not always use tape, cassette, etc to support the learning-teaching process, but also teacher can be facilitator to transform the text to the students other than creator of class atmosphere.

In such way the old fashioned (dictation) is not always less useful technique for teacher to apply. Year by year it is expanded to be an enjoyable technique that make student become more active. This technique was used for hundred years ago, and because of its high contribution it still exists nowadays.

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[1] Paul Davis And Mario Rinvolucri, dictation, New Method, New Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 4 - 8

[2] I.S.P Nation, Teaching Listening And Speaking,( Wellington: I.S.P Nation, 1995) p. 97