2. Difficulties which can be encountered in teaching listening comprehension

It is not so easy to comprehend authentic oral speech. Difficulties are usually divided into three categories:

1. subjective listener’s difficulties;

2. objective linguistic difficulties;

3. objective difficulties caused by the environment.

Subjective listener’s difficulties include:

• ability to focus, to concentrate

• motivation

• auditory memory;

• flexibility of thinking

• speed of reaction;

• ability to transfer from one logical operation to another

• tiredness

• health etc

Objective linguistic difficulties include:

• phonetic difficulties (underdeveloped skills of sound identification and differentiation, intonation, logical stress; changes of words and sounds in speech, like reduction, assimilation etc)

• lexical difficulties (unfamiliar words, words in indirect meaning, idioms, polysemantic words, homonyms, paronyms, ‘false translator’s friends’ etc)

• grammatical difficulties (long sentences, complex structures, unusual word order, grammatical homonyms, e. g. his or he’s etc)

• type and genre of text (e.g. monologue is easier than a dialogue, narration is easier than argumentation etc)

Objective difficulties caused by the environment include:

• tempo of speech (140/150 words a minute)

• the number of presentations (2)

• duration of the recording (primary school - 1 min, basic – 2-3 min, senior – 3-5 min)

• quality of the soundtrack (loudness, background noises etc)

• live or recorded

• other environmental conditions (stuffy room, outside noise, after PT etc)

In order to overcome problems the teacher can provide some visual support during listening, may do some grammar or vocabulary activities before listening, should tune in to the topic of the listening, provide a real purpose for listening, divide the text into manageable fragments, make longer pauses between the parts of the text, play again the part that causes greater difficulties etc. Audiotexts should be interesting for learners, correspond to their age, life and learning experience, have a simple and logical composition (no flashbacks), some extra elements (repetitions, rhetorical questions, phatic words, pauses and pause fillers etc).

3. Stages of teaching listening and activities used at them

There are three main stages of teaching listening: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening.

Pre-listening stage is used for:

• Eliminating language or content difficulties that may be caused by listening to the soundtrack

• tuning the learners in: helping to anticipate, to predict the text content by its headline, illustrations, key words etc

• motivating learners to listen: giving a purpose, a definite task.

During while-listening stage students practice in one kind of listening: listening for gist (main idea, main facts, global understanding), listening for obtaining some specific information (e.g. from some pragmatic text) and listening for detail (maximum of precise and complete understanding).

Post-listening stage presupposes checking learners’ level of understanding in different ways and using the information from the text to develop other skills (speaking or writing).

Activities used at the pre-listening stage:

• asking questions on the text topic

• predicting text content using headlines, key words, pictures

• doing phonetic, vocabulary and grammar exercises (e.g. differentiation of minimal pairs; differentiation of the grammar function and meaning of lexico-grammatical homonyms, The brakes of the car are very good. The driver brakes very often etc)

Activities used at the while-listening stage:

• ordering the pictures;

• completing the picture;

• matching texts with titles;

• matching texts to the pictures;

• follow the route;

• labeling;

• gap filling;

• true/false statements;

• listing (things, events, characters)

• multiple choice (global understanding)

Activities used at the post-listening stage:

• true/false (understanding details)

• multiple choice (understanding details)

• identifying relations between speakers;

• inferring attitudes;

• expanding the list

• questions-and-answers

• summarizing

• retelling episodes from the text;

• discussing topical questions;

• writing compositions, essays, letters etc. (skills integration)

Later when speaking about assessment and testing we’ll consider ways of checking listening comprehension once more.