UNIVERSITY OF CONSTANTINE THE PHILOSOPHER IN NITRA

FACULTY OF ARTS

Department of English and American Studies

Methodology 3

Teaching listening skills

1

AlexandraFintová

VUAjm

2011/2012

2

Table of contents

Introduction ..................................................

...............................................................

...........1

1. Listening as a Language

Skill ......................................................

.....................................3

2. Bottom-up and Top-down

Processing..................................................

.............................5

3. Transactional Listening and Interactional

Listening...................................................

......7

4. Extensive Listening as Listening as

Acquisition.................................................

..............7

5. Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening

Skills......................................................

...........9

6. Intensive Listening as Listening as

Comprehension...............................................

.........10

7. Music and Video as Listening Skill teaching

Tools.......................................................

..12

8. Practical part

3

a.) Activity taken from a

source............................................

.........................14

b.) Modified activity from a stated

source............................................

.........15

c.) My own

activity..........................................

..............................................16

Conclusion.....................................................

...............................................................

..........17

Bibliography...................................................

...............................................................

.........19

Appendix

4

Introduction

We´ve chosen the topic of teaching listening skills as

listening is an important part of any language. Hearing the

language is the first thing when we get in touch with it, not

just with foreign languages but also with our mother tongue. As

we are not in an English speaking country, most of the time we

meet English by hearing it – on the TV, radio or in the school.

Language production is rarer – this is the reason why this work

aims to emphasize the importance of language acquisition and

also language comprehension. This work also intends deal with

the most important issues of teaching listening skills, and to

describe and compare theories and views of different authors on

the issues of teaching listening skills.

At first, we would like to introduce listening as a

language skill, consider its importance and place within the

other skills by its categorizations. Later on we would like to

introduce two contrasting views on language, namely having

purpose to communicate and being exposed to the language

without communicative purpose and consider their importance in

teaching listening skills.

Furthermore, we would like to describe bottom-up and top-

down processing by the points of views of several authors, then

analyse Harmer´s basic methodological model for teaching

receptive skills. We would like to comment also on his

5

suggestions on appropriateness and difficulty issues of a

chosen text in teaching listening skills.

After these two parts, which intends mainly to create a

general overview on teaching listening skills, we would like to

go deeper in details by describing and contrasting views on

transactional and interactional listening, then by linking

Harmer´s extensive listening to Richard´s listening as

acquisition. Here we would like to emphasize the importance of

listening to English language outside the classroom, and show

opportunities of using extensive listening in the classroom by

showing some of Richard’s suggestions to it, including David

Nunan´s view on this issue.

Still considering the importance of language acquisition,

we would like to deal with drama as a tool for teaching

listening skills as it is a tool for creating context to

language. This potential of drama is very important this is the

reason why we have chosen to include it in the work.

As teaching listening skills includes mainly the part of

listening comprehension tasks, we would like to link also

Harmer´s intensive listening to J.C. Richard´s listening as

comprehension. This part intends to discuss and comment on the

main stages in teaching listening skills, namely the framework

of pre-listening, while-listening and post listening; and also

to name some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them.

The last part would deal with the importance of the usage

of music and video as these are most important media in which

we and our students can meet the English language. There would

6

be Nick Peachey´s application of the framework for listening to

a song which might be a good example how to use this media in

our classroom. There would be also provided some viewing

techniques which might be applicable to watching videos in the

classroom.

The practical part would include three activities, one

original, one modified, and one invented. The first activity

would focus on listening for gist, the second on listening on

details and the invented activity would be based on the applied

framework of Peachy to a popular song.

In conclusion, this work aims to give the reader a general

idea of what teaching listening skills is and what it includes.

It provides examples some issues which can come up and give

some examples of effective tasks and language teaching tools.

7

1. Listening as a Language Skill

There are four basic language skills – listening,

speaking, reading and writing - but from all, listening creates

basis for the other skills. Acquisition of the mother tongue

can be an example for proving this statement. Young children –

babies acquire language through listening- they listen to our

instructions (Look! Come here!) -then they physically respond to

it. By time, they give us the instructions. The method of TPR

(Total Physical Respond) is also based on this theory that

children pick up the language at first through commands. The

point is that listening of a language is the first step towards

it. This is the reason why it is important to teach listening

skills in teaching English as a foreign language.

These skills are often divided to receptive skills –

reading and listening – where the focus is on the language

input; and to productive skills – speaking and writing – where

language is produced. Harmer in his book The practice of English

Language Teaching (2007) uses this division and also names this

division as passive and active skills. He introduces the idea

of language activation – basically the learning by doing

principle – placing the language to a meaningful context - any

meaning-focused activity provokes language activation. He also

emphasizes that however reading and listening are more passive

skills, they also require language activation as the reader or

listener has to make sense from the seen or the heard.

In real communication – as it is the point of all language

learning – the skills are not, of course, used separately.

8

Listening and speaking go hand in hand as well as reading and

writing. We have to listen if we want to speak, to join a

conversation, and of course, when we are writing we

instinctively read through what we have written.

However, not being present while speaking, listening,

reading or writing happened to everyone – thinking about the

“to do list” while speaking to the neighbour, thinking about

cooking while listening to a blusterous friend on the phone,

reading through two pages without getting the meaning and

starting again while preparing for an exam or writing on a

lecture without realizing what exactly we are writing down.

Nunan also says that when we listen to TV or radio, we usually

exclude some information which can be caused by lapse in

concentration, lack of interest, or efficiency in listening.

(1991:24)

These two contrasting points of view to a language –

having purpose to communicate (so we are listening with the

purpose to join a conversation) and being exposed to the

language without a purpose (listening to the TV while tidying

up) are both parts of the world and also are present in

language learning. On the base of these points, listening can

be divided into listening as comprehension and listening as

acquisition.

This division is perfectly pointed out by Jack C. Richards in

his work Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice (2008) where

he is dealing with the traditional way of thinking about the

nature of listening. He says that in most methodologies,

9

listening is considered to be the synonym to listening

comprehension and it is based on that the function of listening

in second language learning is to foster the understanding of

spoken discourse. (Richards, 2008:3). However we should not

forget about the importance of language acquisition.

The time we expend on teaching and learning a second

language should be effectively and demandingly used, to create

and absorb a strong and meaningful input of the foreign

language. This means that methodologically appropriate tasks

should be prepared, language should be placed to a meaningful

context, so the students could profit from it. It is not true

that there is not profit from listening activities in which the

students´ brain is not “switched on” – we can still absorb

pronunciation of sounds, intonation and also stress. We should

think about our childhoods´ favourite pop songs – we were able

to sing them phonetically however we didn´t understand the

meaning as our level of English was low but we can still recall

the rhythm and the phonetic sounds. Getting the meaning comes

with time or never at all – I personally still have moments

when I remember a song and I start to sing, then I realize that

the meaningless syllables have meaning.

All in all, listening as comprehension should create the

core of teaching listening skills, and listening as acquisition

should be the “side dish” because both are natural parts of any

language.

10

2. Bottom-up and Top-down Processing

Harmer suggests that listening and reading require

basically the same procedure. He talks about two types of

tasks, the first is when the focus is on the general

understanding of a text and the second is contains more

detailed look on it. This is also called as bottom-up and top

down procedure.

Bottom -up procedure is starting with details and making

sense of a text by looking for specifics. Jack C. Richards

points out that “the listener´s lexical and grammatical

competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up

processing” (2008:4) which means that it is more demanding for

lower levels as they need large vocabulary and good knowledge

of sentence structures. “Top-down processing, on the other

hand, refers to the use of background knowledge in

understanding the meaning of a message. Whereas bottom-up

processing goes from language to meaning, top-down processing

goes from meaning to language.” (Richards, 2008:7) On the

other hand, David Nunan names two kinds of knowledge: ´inside

the head´ knowledge and ´outside the head´ knowledge which

takes part in interpreting a message. “The use of inside the

head knowledge, that is, knowledge which is not directly

encoded in words, is known as the top-down view of listening.

(Nunan,1991:18). The usage of both - the inside head knowledge

and the outside head knowledge makes someone a successful

listener. However, Prof. Larry Vandergrift points out that

“listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up

processing, but an interactive, interpretive process, where 11

listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in

understanding messages.”

(http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67)

Furthermore, Nunan suggests that in the listening process

we store meanings, not linguistic forms (1991:18) - this is the

reason why it is important to start a listening activity with

“switching on” the brain and activating the general knowledge

that we all carry.

The methodological model, or procedure that Harmer

suggests starts with a lead in which switches on that general

knowledge– so basically he would start with top-down procedure.

This concerns mainly general topics different for the

proficiency levels or age groups. For instance: the topic of

family, house, towns or people for beginners and maybe the

causes of the global warming for intermediate students. When we

look at course books, we can see that they are built up by

these topics. Considering all of this, we have to make students

to “get in touch with that knowledge or schema”. We can make

this by giving them various key words or showing them pictures.

In the basic methodological model for teaching receptive

skills Harmer furthermore suggests starting with the first type

of tasks where general understanding is in the focus – students

have to extract the most general idea of the text maybe by

answering some questions. Then feedback, directed by teacher

goes on, which is followed by text-related tasks and follow up

activities. The text has to be recycled using tasks of the

12

second type, using bottom-up procedure, where students go

deeply into the text.

In teaching listening, we have to be careful choosing

appropriate text – there might be some problems with

comprehension. Students have to understand most of the words,

because if there is a dominance of unknown words, they could

not get the general idea – maybe this is the reason why he

would begin with the top-down procedure. However, this barrier

can be erased by pre-teaching vocabulary. On the other hand

there should be some words left unknown, mainly kind of topic

words which can be guessed out of the context. This might

develop the ability of students to understand a text, heard or

written, without knowing all of the words. Harmer suggests

(2007:272) other kinds of activities in which there are given

unknown words. Students have to find and research the meaning

of the words and guess what topic may contain them. This might

be a perfect lead in activity to listening by bottom-up

procedure.

Texts should be appropriate also in difficulty. Although

it is important to choose a text or recording appropriate for

the level, more importance is on the appropriateness of the

follow-up activities. According to Nunan´s suggestion that

listening tasks can be classified as tasks which involve only

listening and which demand some form of oral interaction

(Nunan, 1991:20), activities should be designed appropriately

considering the objectives and the purpose of listening. If

there is need for oral interactions, students should be

prepared also for that. The activities have to be challenging, 13

but they also should be achievable. Harmer has suggestions for

the issue of appropriateness of the activities, he provides the

example of “a news broadcast where the language level is very

challenging may be entirely appropriate of the task only asks

them – at first – to try to identify the five main topics in

the broadcast.” (Harmer 2007: 275). However, it might make

sense just with higher proficiency and age levels as their

higher general knowledge and longer concentration time would

make it more purposeful- to be in a more life-like language

situation

In conclusion, in teaching listening skills, we have to be

well-prepared and we have to think through the whole deeply so

we would be able to teach effectively. We have to pay attention

to pre-listening activities to activate students´ brain; we

have to make sure that the text is appropriate to age and

proficiency levels, and of course that there are appropriate

follow-up activities regardless the chosen procedures.

3. Transactional Listening and Interactional Listening

There is a differentiation between transactional and

interactional purpose for communication by several authors like

Richards or Vandergrift but also Joan Morley. The descriptions

are basically the same: Interactional use of language is

socially oriented mainly to satisfy social needs, like small

talk and casual conversations, which means that it is highly

contextualized, involving interaction with a speaker.

Transactional use of language is, on the other hand, message

oriented and its main function is to communicate information,

14

or giving instructions, explaining, describing, giving

directions, ordering, requesting and verifying understanding.

(Morley, 2001:79) Vandergrift states that the main difference

is between the two that transactional listening requires

accurate comprehension of the message without an opportunity to

clarify it with the speaker. On the other hand Morley suggests

that the speaker may contradict the listener if he or she

appears to have misunderstood. Furthermore, Morley claims that

the most important difference between them is that

interactional language is a “social type” talk – it is person

oriented rather than message oriented.

All in all, the most important thing, in which both authors

agree, is that teachers need to provide practice experiences in

both transactional talk and interactional talk and that student

need to know the purpose and the context of listening in order

to know what they need to listen for – specifics or meaning.

4. Extensive Listening as Listening as Acquisition

Extensive and intensive listening described by Harmer

(2007:303) are kind of similar to the already mentioned

division of listening by Richards, listening as comprehension

and listening as acquisition.

Extensive listening happens outside the classroom – we

should encourage students to listen to English language in

their free time – music, series, CD from their course book,

etc. In this modern world we have plenty of materials to

create them the condition to do so. The motivation is the

15

freedom of choice what they would listen to and it would be

good to make this extensive listening the natural part of our

classroom. This would mean that students would be exposed to

the language without a specific comprehension purpose; they

would be in an environment in which they can just acquire the

language. I don´t say, that there wouldn´t be purpose at all –

we can give the students tasks for example which are suggested

by Richards for listening as acquisition, which are noticing

activities and restructuring activities:

„Noticing activities involve returning to the listening texts that

served as the basis for comprehension activities and using them

as the basis for language awareness. For example, students can

listen again to a recording in order to:

- Identify differences between what they hear and a printed

version of the text

- Complete a cloze version of the text

- Complete sentences stems taken from the text

- Check off entries from a list of expressions that occurred

in the text

Restructuring activities are oral or written tasks that involve

productive use of selected items from the listening text. Such

activities could include:

- Paired reading of the tape scripts in the case of

conversational texts

- Written sentence-completion tasks requiring use of

expressions and other linguistic items that occurred in

the texts

16

- Dialog practice that incorporates items from the text

- Role plays in which students are required to use key

language from the texts“ (Richards, 2008:16)

Listening without purpose is also discussed by David Nunan

in his Language Teaching Methodology. He suggests that an important

factor in interactive listening is whether or not we are taking

part in the interaction. If not, it might seem a waste of time

to involve learners in classroom tasks in which they are just

listening to others. However, authentic conversations can

provide learners with insights into ways in which conversations

work and also with strategies for comprehending conversation

outside the classroom. (1991:24)

In conclusion, there are plenty of things we can do with

our students in order to teach them a second foreign language

and that we can and we have to make the learning of the foreign

language the natural part of their lives, outside the classroom

also. We, as teachers should motivate students and guide them

to this direction. As being in an environment full of language

– with a purpose to listen or without - is natural in our

mother tongue, so we should try to make it also natural in the

foreign language. Making extensive listening part of our

classroom would have this effect and also it would be good for

creating positive attitude towards foreign language learning.

5. Drama as a Tool for Teaching Listening Skills

Drama is a modern tool in foreign language teaching, and

there are lots of opportunities in it. As it was mentioned 17

before, an important part of language teaching is creating

life-like situations in which the students can use the language

naturally. Drama is a perfect tool for creating this context.

In theatre, the actors have to listen carefully to each

other to notice key words by which they can know what to do on

the stage. In the classroom, drama also places huge importance

on listening – students have to pay attention to each other and

they also have to be able to follow instructions mainly by key

words. This is an important component as it creates huge

motivation for listening; it teaches the students to cooperate

and respond to and to acquire a foreign language.

Other important components of drama are mime and

improvisation – students have to use their body in order to

communicate and they have limited time for preparation, which

makes classroom situations more natural. Drama, when brought

into a learning process, enlarges the learning experience – it

helps learners to be more aware of the language in different

situations, it builds up self-confidence, creativity,

spontaneity, helps students to be more able to express their

emotions.

Drama stimulates concentrated listening – students just

have to listen carefully to be able to react appropriately in a

specific situation. These drama activities are most of the

times verbal activities, where other skills, mainly speaking is

required. This can be seen - if we want to categorize – as

listening as comprehension as the student are required to

respond to the heard language.

18

On the other hand, drama as listening as acquisition could

be non-verbal activities in which students have to physically

respond to instructions or use body language or minimal

language. Here language production is limited, by which

students have to raise their natural instincts and look for key

words by which the language acquisition becomes similar to the

acquisition of the mother tongue of children.

Harmer says that "If we are really to teach students what

words mean and how they are used, we need to show them being

used, together with other words, in context." (1991: 24). With

bringing drama to our classrooms, they can become different

scenes to different actions: a shop, a bus station, a

restaurant, a van in a train, etc. These scenes create great

contexts not just for learning vocabulary, but they are also

bringing grammatical structures alive.

In conclusion, in the context of listening skills, drama

plays an important role in bringing extensive and intensive

listening, or listening as comprehension and listening as

acquisition under the same roof as it provides opportunities in

developing both and the most important is that is creates the

context to any language learning.

6. Intensive Listening as Listening as Comprehension

We already discussed intensive listening and listening as

comprehension in several points of views. It is important to

19

discuss the most important stages of listening closely and the

most frequent and effective tasks.

It was also discussed that in teaching listening we should

firstly active the students´ brain to make them get in touch

with their general knowledge. This is called the pre-listening

stage, where there are more steps while we begin with the

actual listening task. According to the article of Nick

Peachey, these sub-stages, or as he calls them goals, are

motivation, contextualisation and preparation.

It is very important to choose an up-to-date topic, which

fits the interests of our students. By this, we can motivate

them to listen and we can also raise their curiosity. This

motivational stage is tightly linked to the stage of

contextualisation. However Harmer suggests (2007: 304) it is

useful to bring authentic listening materials on CD to our

classrooms, because it is important to students to hear the

most common accents and different English from the teacher´s,

he also claims that listening to a recording in a classroom is

really unnatural. Because of this reason, it is very important

to create context, which can motivate the students and

contextualize the listening situation. The most effective

techniques for this are drama techniques, but also some

discussion about the topic, brainstorming, guiding questions or

games can be effective.

In order to avoid problems in the next stages, we have to

prepare students not just to the topic which we are going to

deal with, but to the language also. As it was previously

20

suggested, at this stage we can pre-teach vocabulary or some

phrases. This can make the actual listening more effective,

however as it was also suggested, there are opportunities to

teach unknown vocabulary or phrases inductively.

After this preparatory stage is finished, we can move on

to the while-listening stage. As it was discussed before, we

should start with the top-down processing, so we have to make

the first task connected with the general idea of the text. As

in the first listening the students are firstly exposed to a

new language, with new accent, voice and language, we shouldn´t

put pressure on them by demanding tasks. Students should at

first get familiar with the voice, situation, happening and

language which is on the recording. We should just give them

simple questions to look for in the first listening – as now we

are listening with purpose – for example questions of how many

characters are talking, where are they, why are they there. It

should be also obvious that as we are listening, students

shouldn´t have the tape script in front of them.

The second listening should be more demanding; students

should look deeply into the text and also look for deeper

understanding of the meaning. The most typical tasks here are

gap-fills, ticking items, information search, charts,

comparing, correcting, matching, etc. After these tasks, the

third listening should come in order to check their answers,

and could be the base for post-listening activities. Evaluation

of the results of decisions during a listening task is a very

important part. Prof. Vandergrift suggests that the teacher

should encourage self-evaluation and reflection by asking 21

students to assess the effectiveness of strategies that they

used - group or class discussions can also stimulate reflection

and evaluation.

Post-listening is focusing mainly to the reaction to the

text. We can ask comprehension questions, students can do

problem solving activities; they can summarize or retell the

story and also write or speak about the heard recording in

specifics.

This framework of pre-listening activities and post-

listening activities create the complexity and effectiveness of

intensive listening. We, as teachers, should not forget about

them, because listening as comprehension would lose its purpose

and sense.

7. Music and Video as Listening Skill Teaching Tools

Music and video is all around us in this modern world and

it is a natural part of our lives. It creates context and they

contain much of language. Why not use them also in foreign

language?

Music lyrics in English language are all around us – we

hear them in TV, in our favourite movies¸ on the radio, and in

our MP3players. When discussing extensive learning, we

emphasized the importance of listening outside the classroom –

music has a big potential for this. Students, mainly teenagers

are influenced by music, so motivation would be natural. On the22

other hand, music can be used also in the classroom. In the

already mentioned article of Peachey, there is an example of

the application of the framework for listening to a song:

Pre-listening

1. Students brainstorm kinds of songs

2. Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they

like about it

3. Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a

love song

While listening

1. Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad

2. Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song

3. Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary

of the song with errors in and correct them.

Post-listening

o Focus on content 

1. Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song

2. Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for

3. Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website

4. Write another verse for the song

o Focus on form

1. Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb

forms

2. Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean

3. Students make notes of common collocations within the song

(Peachey, Nick: A framework for planning a listening lesson)

23

As music has several advantages in teaching listening

skills, like teaching rhythm, intonation, phonetics, etc.,

videos have also pretty much advantages. We can include

watching while listening into our lessons and we can encourage

students to do so outside the classroom as in extensive

listening.

There are some viewing techniques provided by Harmer

(2007: 309) which we would like to shortly describe: fast

forward (to talk about the fast forwarded sequence), Silent

viewing for language (to guess what was said/compare), Silent

viewing for music (to guess the mood), freeze frame

(prediction), partial viewing (predicting/guessing).

In conclusion, there are lots of other possibilities in

both, using music and video in our classrooms and also outside

it. In my opinion, we should not leave them out of our

syllabus, as they can create positive atmosphere in the

classroom and towards the language. I also think that using

them in classrooms would make students more aware of the

language which would give them motivation for learning the

language also outside the classroom. Other important thing is

that teachers can stay fresh and up-to date which would support

the connection between them and the students.

24

PRACTICAL PART

1. Activity taken from a source

The following activity is taken from Harmer´s The Practice of

English Language Teaching, where listening for gist of a story is in

the focus.

Sorry I´m late

Activity: getting events in the right order

Skills: predicting; listening for gist

Age: Young adult and above

Level: lower intermediate

Procedure:- Make pairs or groups!- Discuss what is happening on each picture and try to put

pictures into a correct order!- Discuss your prediction with the other groups. Do not

confirm or deny their predictions.- Play the recording! (Read the tape script.)- Students check their answers with each other and then, if

necessary, listen again to ensure that they have the sequence correct.

- Play the recording again or give them the tape script. Note phrases which express regret and apology and the use of repetition in order to be judgmental.

- Write dialogues /role-play similar scenes in which they have to come up with stories and excuses for being late for school or work.

Aids: pictures, tape script (Harmer,

2007:311)

25

Comments: I´ve had chosen this activity because I think that the turning point in the story would interest the students. I think it would also motivate them that it is not an activity from the course book – which can create the illusion of doing something new. The activity doesn´t need too much preparation on the side of the teacher, which makes it practical. I would like to use this activity, and some other activities designed on the base of this activity, in my future classroom. Maybe I would involve some drama techniques, mainly in the follow up activities, when acting it out. (The same persons would have different characteristics in different groups (good-working/hysterical), different emotions (happy/tired), different situations (platonic love), etc.

2. Modified activity from a stated source

Lesson Topic: plans, grammar: „be going to“

Level: elementary

Objectives: Students will be able to : listen for specific

information, create questions and answers with „be going to“,

use learned vocabulary in context

Age: 11-12

Source: Hutchinson T. Project 2 Student´s Book

Stage Procedure Aids TimePre-

listeningPre-taught grammar: “be going to” questions and short answers, positive and negative sentences

MY MODIFICATION:Discussion/topic: PlansWhat activities do we usually do on

Course book

26

Saturdays?1.) Make pairs! Choose an activity

and act it in front of the others! When guessed, write on the board!

2.) Revision: How do we make questions with “going to”? T acts one of the actions written on the board, Ss ask Qs: Are you going to watch TV? Who guessed, takes turn.

Blackboard,chalk

5-7´

Whilelistening

1.) Listen. What are the people going to do on Saturday morning?Write the activities. (Fill in the chart).

CD playerCDCourse book

5-7´

Post-listening

1.) Work with a partner. Ask aboutthe people.

2.) Ask and answer with a partner about the activities.

3.) Ask your partner. What are yougoing to do at these times?

MY MODIFICATION:1.) Make pairs and give them the

handouts – info-gap activity. (act. 2+3) English Lesson Battleship

Course book

5-7´

10´

MY COMMENTS: The original listening activity remained the same, I added just some pre-listening activities and prepared a handout for an information gap activity, which I think is very suitable for this level - it is entertaining and interesting. They can practice questions and also short answers in “be going to”. The pre-listening warm-ups are based on pre-taught grammar and vocabulary which is practiced with some drama. Adding interesting pre- and post- listening activities to classic course book activities brings them aliveand supports effective language teaching. 3. My own activity

27

The following activity is based on the applied framework of Peachy. I would like to apply it on the popular song: Gotye: Somebody That I Used to know.

Activity: filling the gapsSkills: listening for specifics, grammar - Past simpleAge: teenagersTime: 45´Level: Beginners - Pre IntermediateStage Procedure Aids Tim

ePre -listening

1. Discuss the music styles which you know! Collect as many as you can! Write all of them on the board.

2. Make groups! Each group has to choose one style which they like and which they don´t like. Write 1 sentence as reasons for each. Discuss them!

3. Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song (Write on the board!)

BlackboardChalkHandout1

3´

4´

3´

While -listening

1. Listening 1.: Before listening read questions in activity 1. Ask Ss if they understand the questions.

2. Listening 2.: Give instructions for Activity 2: What they might talk about? Look for key words, or words that you understand. Collect them in groups.

3. Listening 3-4: Give students Handout 3. Listening 3 - fill the gaps!

Students listen again to check theiranswers.

Handout2Handout3

5´

7´

10´

Post -listening

1. Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song

2. Give instructions! Give handout 3. Do the activities! Monitor!

3. If there are new words Ss try to guesstheir meaning of find them in the

Handout4

2´10

28

dictionary.4. Write another verse for the song! Use

the key words! (Homework)

My comments: I´ve chosen this song because it is very popular nowadays, it has clear and understandable lyrics. The lyrics contain Past Simple tense which fits the needs of beginners or lower intermediate students. I was also curious about the application of Peachey’s framework to a song, and I am sure that I would apply it in the future in my classroom, as I emphasized how important is to use music as a listening skill teaching tool.

Conclusion

The main focus of this work was to deal with the most

important issues of teaching listening skills and describe and

compare theories and views of different authors on them.

Furthermore, the work intended to emphasize the importance of

language acquisition and also language comprehension within

teaching listening skills.

The first two parts of this work were dealing with

listening as a language skill, and we introduced its

categorizations. On the base of considering listening skill as

a receptive skill, two contrasting views were introduced:

listening with purpose and without purpose. It was defined that

both are natural parts of any language which puts higher the

importance of bringing both into the teaching of listening

skills.

29

Later on, we described the bottom-up and top-down

processing by the points of views of several authors, then we

analysed Harmer´s basic methodological model for teaching

receptive skills also by commenting on his suggestions on

appropriateness and difficulty issues. We also emphasized the

importance of choosing appropriate tasks and texts in order to

prevent problems, and we also provided some solutions to them,

like pre-teaching of the unknown vocabulary.

After these two parts, which intended to create a general

overview on teaching listening skills, we were dealing with

describing and contrasting views on transactional and

interactional listening; and with the importance of language

acquisition by linking Harmer´s extensive listening to Richard

´s listening as acquisition. We provided some of Richard´s

suggestions on using extensive listening in the classroom

including Nunan´s view on this issue. We were also dealing with

the importance of listening outside the classroom. We have to

motivate students to do so because it might create positive

attitude towards language learning.

Because of the importance of language acquisition and the

reason that language is commonly in context, we have to bring

context also to our classrooms. This is why we included in this

work drama as a tool for teaching listening skills.

As this work intends not just to emphasize the importance

of language acquisition, but language comprehension, we linked

Harmer´s intensive listening to Richard´s listening as

comprehension. Here we discussed the most important stages of

30

teaching listening skills , namely the framework of pre-

listening, while listening and post-listening, and we named

some of the most frequent and effective tasks in them.

Finally, the last part is dealing with music and video and

the possibilities of using them in teaching listening skills.

Here we provided Nick Peachey´s application of the framework to

a song, which is the base of my own activity in the practical

part, which includes also an activity from a stated source and

a modified activity.

In conclusion, the aims of this work were fulfilled as we

discussed everything we intended to. In my opinion, this work

gives the reader a general overview on the issues of teaching

listening skills and provides important information like the

framework and methodological model of teaching listening skills

and also their possible applications.

31

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited, 1991, 296 p. ISBN 0-582-04656-4.

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8.

Nunan. D. Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers, Prentice Hall, 1991, 264 p. ISBN 0-13-521469-6

Richards, J.C.Teaching Listening and Speaking From Theory to Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 44p. ISBN 13 978-0-521-95776-2

Morley, J. Aural Comprehension Instruction: Principles and Practices. In Celce-Murcia M. (Ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 2001, 584 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-8384-1992-2

Online sources:

Peachley, N. A framework for planning a listening skills lesson [online] 10.February, 2010. [quoted 3. May, 2012.]. < http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/a-framework-planning-a-listening-skills-lesson>.

Vandergrift L. Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence [online] [quoted 5. June, 2012.] <http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67>.

Practical part:

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, 448 p. ISBN 978 1 4058 4772 8.

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Hutchinson T. Project 2 Student´s Book, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 79p. ISBN 978 0 19 476305 9

Source of inspiration:

Maley A., Duff. A. Drama Techniques: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 246 p. ISBN 978-0-521-60119-1

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APPENDIXI´m sorry

1. pictures

2. Tape script

34

Tapescript: Activity in the coursebook:

35

Place 2 rubbers, 1 ruler, a Project book, 2 pens and 1 homework on the desk.

A rubber

A ruler

Project book

A pen

Homework

36

My DeskStayinbed

Goswimmin

g

Dance

SpeakEnglish

Playthepiano

Ridea

bike

Goshopping

Thisevening

AfterschoolOn

Sundayafterno

onAt NewYearOn

Saturday

morningOn yournext

birthday

Tomorrow

evening

Call a square!

F.e: Are you going to go shopping on Sunday afternoon?

Your partner answers:

Yes, I am.

HIT - X

No, I´m not.

MISS – O

Find all the things on your partners desk!

HANDOUT 1

1.) What kinds of music styles do you know? Write down atleast 5 of them!

2.) Choose one style which you like and which you don´t like in your group! Give reason why! Write one sentence for each.

We like _____________________________

because________________________________ We don´t

37

MyPartner´s Desk

Stayinbed

Goswimmin

g

Dance

SpeakEnglish

Playthepiano

Ridea

bike

Goshopping

ThiseveningAfterschoolOn

Sundayafterno

onAt NewYearOn

Saturday

morningOn yournext

birthday

Tomorrow

evening

like_________________________ because

________________________________

3.) What expressions might be in a love song? Suggest at

least 5!

___________________________________________________________________________

HANDOUT 2

Listening 1

1.) Answer the questions!

a.) Is the song happy or sad? Why?

___________________________________________

b.) How many characters are there?

__________________________________________

c.) What is between them, are they in love?

_____________________________________

Listening 2

2.) What are the characters talking about? Look for key words!Write down every word that you understand!

HANDOUT 3 – Fill in the gaps!

38

"Somebody That I Used To Know"(feat. Kimbra)

[Gotye:]Now and then I think of when we _______ together

Like when you _______ you felt so happy you could dieTold myself that you were right for meBut _________ so lonely in your company

But that was ___________ and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadnessLike resignation to the end, always the end

So when we _____________ that we could not make senseWell you said that we would still be ___________

But I'll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn't have to cut me offMake out like it never __________________ and that we were

nothingAnd I don't even need your love

But you treat me like a stranger and I ___________ so roughNo you didn't have to stoop so low

Have your friends collect your records and then change yournumber

I guess that I don't need that thoughNow you're just somebody that I _________ to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to knowNow you're just somebody that I used to know

[Kimbra:]Now and then I __________ of all the times you screwed me over

Part of me believing it was always something that I'd doneBut I don't wanna live that wayReading into every word you say

You ______________ that you could let it goAnd I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you

_____________ know

[Gotye:]But you _______________ cut me off

39

Make out like it never happened and that we ____________nothingAnd I don't even need your love

But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so roughAnd you ______________ stoop so low

Have your friends collect your records and then _____________your number

I guess that I don't need that thoughNow you're just somebody that I used to know

(...)

HANDOUT 4

1.) Make the list of 10 verbs in Past Simple and write their Present Simple form .

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2.) Find 5 verbs which are in Present Simple!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3.) Find the verbs which are in Present Continuous!

___________________________________________________________________________

4.) Work in pairs! Try to guess why they broke up! Write a short dialogue! Act it out!

40

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5.) Write another verse for the song! Use the key words in Handout 1/3 and Handout 2/2.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

41