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Date Posted: 13:09:39 10/16/04 Sat
Author: Verônica
Subject: Re: Task 3
In reply to: Deborah Ávila 's message, "Re: Task 3" on 10:07:48 10/12/04 Tue

The difficulties of teaching listening in a foreign language


According to Penny Ur, who wrote the book ‘Teaching Listening’, foreign language students have to face some difficulties in order to learn listening. As the author says, there are “main potential problems” (Ur, 1994:p.11), which make the process of learning a foreign language tougher than it would be to a native speaker.
One difficulty that a foreign language learner has to deal with is related to hear and to recognize the sounds. It happens because some English sounds do not exist in their 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, p.11). Some good examples of what had been said are: the sound / θ / as in think, the difference between the dark and clear l, and the sounds / I / and / i: /, as in ship and sheep, respectively.
Another problem is related to intonation, stress and rhythm. 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, p.13), what sometimes make it difficult for foreign language students to discover when it happens. Otherwise, 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.
Finally, the learner has to be familiar with the topic that has been developed, and it is hard for foreign language learners to do it. “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” (Ur, 1994, p.16). Some expressions or conjunctions help people to do this, such as but and however < I think you should show up this two words >, which make us expect something contrasting to other. In this topic, the listener’s vocabulary takes important place, because “choice of vocabulary is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener. The listener has to do the best he/she can to follow, although in some circumstances it is possible to stop the speaker and ask for clarification”. (Underwood, 1984, p.17) So, the listener vocabulary is really important to follow the conversation and understand it well.
In conclusion, 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. Trying to recognize the difficulties and work on them are good alternatives to make the process of learning more pleasurable.


Deborah Elisa Alves de Ávila

Deborah,

I haven't found any big mistake in your composition, only some small problems.

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