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Date Posted: 06:09:59 11/30/04 Tue
Author: Amanda comments
Subject: Re: Final Paper
In reply to: Deborah 's message, "Re: Final Paper" on 04:48:30 11/29/04 Mon

Déborah, I have some suggestions for you to think about them. You must ad the references at the end of your paper. The other ones are already shown in the text. Tell me if you have any doubts.

Some difficulties on teaching listening comprehension


Usually when students join a foreign language course, they are more interested in learning speaking because they may think that listening is less important or too difficult to learn. But listening is a vital mental capacity – (1) one of the principal means by which we understand and take part in the world – although it is less directly observed and less noticeable in both its development and its use. However, it can not be considered less important. Despite the fact that there are many difficulties for a foreign language learner to deal with listening comprehension, teachers can use some alternatives to improve this skill and make the listening classes more enjoyable for the students.

According to Penny Ur, in her book ‘Teaching Listening Comprehension’, foreign language students have to face some difficulties in order to learn listening. As the author says, there are “main potential problems” (UR, 1994:11), which make the process of learning a foreign language tougher than it would be to a native speaker.

One difficulty that foreign language learners have to deal with is related to hearing and recognizing the sounds. It happens because some English sounds do not exist in their first (2) language. “As a young teacher it took me some time to realize that my students actually did not perceive certain English sounds with any accuracy because these did not exist (or at all, or as separate phonemes) in their own language”. (UR, 1994:11) Some good examples of what had been said are the sound / è / as in think, the difference between the dark and clear l, and the sounds / I / and / i:/, as in ship and sheep, respectively. A good way to solve this problem and to make the listening activity more pleasurable is to give students some written texts for them to follow while they are listening to a passage. Besides holding and attracting students’ attention, it also makes them understand how the language sounds are pronounced and how words are written.

The English stress system, intonation and rhythm can also interfere in the foreign learners’ proper understanding of spoken English. The purpose of the stress is to highlight words which carry the main information the speakers wish to convey and changing the stress can alter the meaning of an expression even if the words remain the same. The analysis of intonation is complex; however it is rather important for understanding the right meaning of an expression. In English, the words are divided in “tone groups”, “strings of syllables run together to form a single sequence and generally characterized by one heavily stressed tone” (UR, 1994:13) what sometimes make it difficult for foreign language students to discover when it happens. In addition, there are also differences between the spoken words from a continuous speech to isolated words when native speakers emphasize some words in order to make them more remarkable than others. Students will only improve this skill by studying hard and focusing on listening comprehension. To do this, they will have to listen too many (3) passages to see how the words are pronounced and when they need to emphasize them.

The listeners’ limited vocabulary is another problem that may interfere (4) during a listening comprehension class. The vocabulary that is going to be used is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener. The function of the listeners is to try to follow the discourse as well as they can. Some listeners can deduce what have been said by the context. However, for foreign learners it is not easy to do it. Many times, they have to stop and try to discover the meaning of a word and, doing this, they can get lost in the conversation. (UNDERWOOD, 1994) Focusing on word by word is a mistake that many English courses make. A good alternative to improve the listener’s vocabulary is to give them some entertainment during the class. The teacher can do it with stories, songs, films and television programs. This kind of exercise is a good basis for teaching vocabulary and grammar, for literary analysis and also for students to improve their listening comprehension. (UR, 1994) Doing this, while students have fun listening or watching something, they are making their vocabulary richer and, as a consequence, they will have more facility when hearing to a passage.

As speaking is a creative process, speakers are almost always in the position of formulating what they are going to say, adding thoughts of their own. Unfortunately, non-native listeners may have problems because the discourse is frequently not well organized. Speakers can decide to change what is going to be said, in order to see listeners’ reaction, and this process causes speakers to hesitate, to go back to the beginning of an idea and start again, to repeat and to contradict themselves.(UNDERWOOD, 1994) If the teacher could prepare some activities in which the students have the option to talk about any topic they want, such as their family, friends, hobbies, plans for the future and others, they will have the opportunity to practice the speaking and listening at the same time and, as a result, they will try to recognize their difficulties and work on them.

Finally, learners have to be familiar with the topic that has been developed, and it is hard for foreign students to do it. According to Penny Ur (1994), if the listener can make a guess as to the sort of thing that is going to be said next, he will be much more likely to perceive it and understand it well. Some expressions or conjunctions help people to do this, such as ‘but’ (5) and ‘however’ (5), which make us to expect something contrasting to other. If students are listening to something entertaining, then they are likely to attend and get full benefit from the listening experience. Good stories, subtitled films and well-known songs are good ways to make the class more enjoyable and understandable.

In the past, the listening activities were excluded from the curriculum because people believed that this subject could not be taught. This argument is unacceptable if we are concerned that “to teach means to facilitate learning” (UR, 1994) and if we think that the role of the teacher is to give students support and guidance for learning. Besides, although listening is a difficult subject for foreign students, it is an essential skill for successful communication and it is possible for everyone to achieve a satisfactory level of communicative competence. And in this way (6), trying to recognize the difficulties and working on them are good alternatives to make the process of learning more pleasurable.

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