Approaches to Teaching Listening Skills

Approaches to Teaching auditory modality SkillsAmong the an a nonher(prenominal)(prenominal) four learnings, audition is the one that has been most forgotten and neglected in second style classrooms. So teachers dont move over a good deal attention to this learning and teach it carelessly. In the field of nomenclature teaching and learning growth has tended to be expressioned as the ability of articulateing and writing in language in question. Listening and reading skills are in the second position. matchless reason for this situation might be the demanding characteristic of the perceive skill. Listening has gained a new importance in language classrooms after feast IT technology establish information in society in Iran. merely it should be mentioned that most of the students class time is devoted to the audition. Despite this, we oft take importance of audience for granted, and it is the most overlooked skill among other skills. In born(p) order of learning any language, audience stands at first rank. Without any reception one can non take on anything. Though, if a teacher wants to have fluent and productive students, he/she should pay much and infallible attention to teaching listen skill.Listening rough of the teachers believe that speaking should be dynamicly discouraged. One of the reasons of emphasizing auditory modality and delaying speaking is based on an opinion. Those who give importance to speaking view the language as a product and think that language is a behavior and speaking is the manifestation of this learning or happening.On the contrary, there are approach shotes that gave more importance to comprehend Nation, Newton (2009). in this approach of language learning , listening is at the center. All of the information necessary for building up the cognition for using language comes from receptive skills listening, and reading. When the association of language in this regard is built the learner can create verbally and speak. In other words, with out any input, the outcome or sidetrack should be nonhing.Gray and Gray (1981) described the benefits of delaying speaking and concentrating on listening. These benefits allow in the following 1. The learner is not overloaded by having to focus on two or more skills at the same time-a cognitive benefit.2. zipper of coverage -receptive friendship grows faster than productive knowledge.3. It is easy to move very(prenominal) quickly to realistic communicative listening activities.4. L earners get out not feel shy or worried about their language classes. Having to speak a foreign language, particularly when you know very superficial, can be a frightening experience.5. Listening activities are well studied to breaka trend learning through listening to readings.Critics believe that producing a language is not sufficient for learning. In language learning substantial quantities of receptive legal action should be included in the mind for future us e. To speak communicatively and to perplex and understand the meaning, one should have a previous language knowledge and information in his/her mind.Models of listeningTraditionally listening was viewed as a inactive skill through which the listener or hearer authentic information sent by message senders. More recently listening is viewed as an active and interpretive handle by which the message is not fixed but is made or created by participants. (Newton,Nation.2009)Types of listening accord to Nation and Newton (2009) there are two roles of listening1. one-way listening-typically associated with the transfer of information.2. Two-listening- typically associated with maintaining social relations.As it is understood, in the first type of listening one can listen to monologues which are one way productions without any pause and stop to clarification.While in two-way listening both sides of interaction are active in a natural sounding dialogues.Listening work onOne of the listen ing processes is bottom-up one. In this process the message goes from the parts to the whole by piece. In this process the listener uses information which is already present in data.The other process in listening is top -down process. As Nation and Newton (2009) earth this process involves the listener in inferencing. The listener goes from whole to parts. Listeners previous knowledge or information and his /her content of schemata help him/her to predict what the message will be.According to the above mentioned processes, listening is not a single skill but as a variety of sub-skills (Nation, Newton, 2009). So listening experience is a top-down approach which focuses on meaning and need much care and attention.Problems with traditional modelThere are a dope of problems with traditional models of teaching listening skills. In old methods of teaching the province of learning were not upon the shoulders of the students. Teachers set goals. Chose material and control the equipments . There were little room for students preferences. the fact that the teacher still tends to choose the material becomes notwithstanding harder to justify now that a wide range of spoken language is available to students outside the language classroom through a air TV and the internet (Goodith White, 2006). some of the teachers of this model , and learners are regarded as passive over-hearers rather than active participants in the listening process. They are often listening to audio or video tape which they can not stop. In order to clarify and solve the comprehension problems, it is necessary for them to integrate or interact with the speakers. In real life situations, listeners play an active and big role in dialogues and speech acts. They show interest, ask questions, ask for repetitions, and bring on the speakers to modify some parts.Some ways of improving the teaching of listeningIt seems clear that the way of teaching listening needs to be limited and changed. In order to e ngage the students in the subject and make them active in the learning process some of the traditional problems of regarding models of teaching listening should be avoided. It is better to allow students to1.choose what they listen to2. make their own listening text3. control their equipment4. give the instructions5. design their own listening task6. reflect on their problems in listening(White,2006).Goals for teaching and learning listeningWhite (1998) states the listening skill goals as-understanding short utterances on a literal semantic level-understanding interactive discourse-understanding the functional/illocutionary reap of an utterance-interpreting utterances in terms of the situation-resolving comprehension problems by pursuance help from the speaker-remembering input, monitoring, and evaluating how well one is understanding.ConclusionI move to persuade the readers through these pages that the methodology for teaching listening needs to be changed. All aspects of listen ing skills should be covered and lead to true competence in listening with in a communicative competence framework. vestige is to deal with the listening in a more task based area of attention and authenticity of listening materials needs to be at the center of attention. Students and listeners should be encouraged to take more responsibility for exploitation their listening ability.