In the final part of this series of posts on teaching listening, Interchange author Jack C. Richards considers the implications on teaching of viewing listening as either acquisition or comprehension.
So, what are the implications of this view of the role of listening in language learning to the teaching of listening? I would suggest that we first distinguish between situations where comprehension only is an appropriate instructional goal and those where comprehension plus acquisition is a relevant focus. Examples of the former are situations where listening to extract information is the primary focus of listening, such as listening to lectures, announcements, sales presentations, etc., and situations where listening serves primarily as a transactional function, such as in service encounters.
In other cases, however, a listening course may be part of a general English course or linked to a speaking course, and in those situations both listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition should be the focus. Listening texts and materials can then be exploited, first as the basis for comprehension and second as the basis for acquisition.
What classroom strategies are appropriate for the listening-as-acquisition phase? I would propose a two-part cycle of teaching activities:
- Noticing activities
- 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;
- Dialog practice that incorporates items from the text;
- Role plays in which students are required to use key language from the texts.
As an example, here is the listening text from an activity in Interchange, Third Edition, Level 2.
Mike has just returned from Brazil. Listen to him talk about Carnival. What did he enjoy most about it?
Mike: Isn’t that music fantastic? It’s from a samba CD that I got when I was in Rio for Carnival. Wow! Carnival in Rio is really something! It’s a party that lasts for four whole days. It’s held late in February or early March, but you need to book a hotel room way in advance because hotels fill up really quickly. Carnival is celebrated all over Brazil, but the most famous party is in Rio.
The whole city is decorated with colored lights and streamers. It’s really very beautiful. Everyone is very friendly – especially to visitors from other countries. The best part about Carnival is the big parade. The costumes are unbelievable – people work on them for months.It’s really fantastic to watch. Everyone dances the samba in the streets. I’d really recommend you go to Rio for Carnival if you ever have the chance.
The listening activities that accompany this text focus on listening for comprehension and on understanding details from the passage. However, the text could also be used as the basis for a follow-up acquisition activity. For example, students could be given the preceding text with some key lexical and grammatical items deleted and the passage used as a cloze listening. Then the students could be asked to work in pairs and rewrite the monolog as a question-and- answer exchange between Mike and a friend. Once this was done, the dialog could be used for pair practice. In this way, students would have the chance to acquire for active use some of the vocabulary and grammar used in the text.
I am therefore advocating that in contexts where comprehension and acquisition are the goals of a listening course, a two-part strategy is appropriate in classroom teaching and instructional materials, namely:
Phase 1: Listening as comprehension
Use of the materials as discussed in the preceding section.
Phase 2: Listening as acquisition
The listening texts used are now used as the basis for speaking activities, making use of noticing activities and restructuring activities. Linking listening tasks to speaking tasks in the way described above, provides opportunities for students to notice how language is used in different communicative contexts. They can then practice using some of the language that occurred in the listening texts.
Top image licensed from Celso Pupo / Shutterstock.com
Read other posts in this series at the links below.
Teaching Listening and Speaking – From Theory to Practice: an introduction
Teaching listening #1 – Listening as comprehension
Teaching listening #2 – Bottom-up processing
Teaching listening #3 – Top-down processing
Teaching listening #4 – Teaching top-down processing
Teaching listening #6 – Listening as Acquisition
Teaching listening #7 – Implications