TEACHING LISTENING

BAB I

INTRODUCTION

Listening another language is a hard job. It is caused of the environment

that the learner face in the society. This condition make them not familiar with those
sound. Other reason is the learner never practice or train them self to listen and
comprehend another language sound. Technology can be one of the media such
watching film, but what we see in the society is they never try to listen the language
spoken that used by the actors. They prefer to read the translation on the bottom of
the screen.

Therefore, the teacher should work hard to help students to fight this
condition. We can make it easier by applying some strategy on teaching listening.
Telling them of how important is listening also can motivate them to have a willing
on listening class.

In principle, the objective of listening comprehension practice in the

classroom is that students should learn to function successfully in real-life listening
situation. This being so, it makes sense to examine first of all what real-life listening,
and what sorts of things the listener need to be able to do in comprehend satisfactorily
in a variety of situations.

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 BAB II

DISCUSSION

A. Listening Comprehension

The nature of listening comprehension means that the learners should be

encouraged to concentrate on an active process of listening for meanings, using not
only the linguistic cues but his nonlinguistic knowledge as well. Learner should also
know that not every clue is equally important to the message. Therefore, even when
they miss a piece of language, they should not worry: there is a good chance that
other clues will make them understand the message, or at least, enough of the
message for their own aim. Of course, it may be that the missed item is one which
completely changes the whole message. This doesn’t concern the general point being
made here, since the learners has more hope of realizing their own misunderstanding
if he concentrates on the communication rather than being distracted by a sense of
failure.

According to Anderson and Lynch in Xu Fang (2008), there are two

influential views: traditional view and alternative view. Traditional view regarded the
listener as a tape-recorder and the listener took in and stored aural messages in much
the same way as a tape-recorder. Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as
inappropriate and inadequate. This notion is not a tenable one. Alternative view
considered the listener as an active model builder. This kind of listener could
combine the new information with his previous knowledge and experience to reach
full comprehension of what had been heard. Anderson and Lynch agreed with this
view. It emphasized the active interpretation and integration of incoming information
with prior knowledge and experience.

B. Real-Life Listening Situations

a. Informal Spoken discourse

Speech that we are always listen or use is informal spoken and

spontaneous. Speakers make their speech up as he or she goes along no mater how is
the structure. The most important is the message that want to deliver in conversation.
Here are various features on informal speech:

 Brevity of ‘chunks’. It is usually broken into short chunks. For

example, in a discussion, some people take turn on delivering their idea by

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 speaking while the other suddenly in a short chunks speak only in few second
to add some information.

 Pronunciation. It always happen when someone pronounce the word

slurry. At the same time it is noticeable that it is different from the phonological
representation which should be used. The example is like “can’t” as the
abbreviation from “can not”.

 Vocabulary. The vocabulary is often colloquial; in English you might,

for example, use guy where in writing you would use man, or kid for child.

 Grammar. This is what actually always happen to spoken language

where the grammatical aspect is forgotten. The utterances do not usually divide
into sentences. The sentence can be changed in the middle of the utterances.
Unfinished clauses also happen in informal speech

 Redundancy. The speaker normally says a good deal more than is

strictly necessarily for the conveying of the message. It is includes such things
as repetition, paraphrase, self correction, the uses of ‘fillers’ such as I mean,
well, em, um

b. Listener Expectation and Purpose

The listener almost always knows in advance something about what is

going to be said, who is speaking and what is the basic topic. Listener want to hear of
what his or her want. In this case is the purpose of they do learn. A clear opening
information can make them easy to predict.

c. Ongoing, Purposeful Listener Response

Ongoing means the listener respond to speech usually. This is contradict

with what the EFL learner do. Learner always respond to only the end of the speech.
The responds directly related to the listening purpose. The respond can be seen
directly to the listener reaction; by face and moving.

C. Real-Life Listening in The Classroom

The title say that but, it is of course contradict with the reality that
happen in the classroom. As we can see, in classroom we can only coping, at least

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some of the features of real-life situation in the expectation that the learner will be
trained for the effective functioning in out side of the class. Even so, the learning will
be better in real-life situation instead of contrived textbook comprehension exercises.

Below are some guidelines for the design of listening texts and tasks are
based on these ideas.

a. Listening Texts

 Informal talk. Most listening text should be based on discourse that is either
genuine improvised, spontaneous speech, or at least a fair imitation of it.
Because typical written text that read aloud will not provide the learner a
practice in understanding the most common form of spoken discourse.

 Speaker visibility or direct interaction between speaker and listener. The

presence of the speaker is needed to make the real situation instead of
listening to the tape recorder where listener just have a brain picture. We
can use the video for this point. The video can shows learner the real
situation or the context and environment of a speech used.

 Single Exposure. The real-life situation can not be always replayed. If so, we
should motivated them to develop their ability to extract they need from a
single hearing by them self. Teacher must redundant enough to provide
information more than once. Therefore, they can learn by them self.

b. Listening Task

 Expectation. As what in the reality happen, we should tell the learner of what is
going to hear. So that, they will be easier to listen. Why? Because it will
activates the learner schemata. In this case, their previous knowledge and
concepts of facts, scenes, event, etc that relevant.

 Purpose. By knowing the purpose of course the learner will easier and focused to
the task. Teacher have to give a clear instruction of what is the purpose.
The definition of a purposes enables the learner to listen selectively for
significant information-easier, as well as more natural, than trying to
understand anything

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 Ongoing Listener Response. The task that teacher provide to listener should
usually involve intermittent responses during the listening. The respond
not only at the end. Learner should be encouraged to respond to the
information that they are looking for as they hear it.

D. Several Problems from Learners

a. Trouble with sound

Listener always unaware of inaccurate sound perception. This is about

how they hear the pronounce of word. The condition where they think that listener
rely mostly on context for comprehension make them failed to understand a speech
because of misinterpretation of sound.

b. Have to understand every word

Learners believe that every word is equally important to be heard. As the

result when they try to understand everything they got ineffective comprehension.
Teacher may give the learners practice in selective ignoring of heard information.
Teacher should explain and set them with task that ask them to scan a relatively long
text for only one or two limited information.

c. Can’t understand a fast speech

It is natural if the learner can’t understand a fast speech. But teacher

should not be slow down as they want. Teacher just need to provide them with a short
discourse at their level. The speech will be faster as they are developed in their
listening skill.

d. Need to hear things more than once

In the real-life condition, people communicate with ‘one-off’

conversation. Therefore, it will helpful if the teacher can trained them to do such
things. Teacher can try by providing text which present more than once and not too
intensively. Moreover, the learner with have opportunity to request clarification or
repetition during the listening.

e. Find it difficult to keep things

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 Not only foreign language this problem happen to students, but also in
their language. The solution for this problem is encourage the learner to relax, stop
trying to understand everything, and learn to pick out what is the essential and allow
them to ignore the rest.

f. Get tired

The easiest way is breaking the passage into short ‘chunks’ thorough
pause, ask listener response or change of speaker.

E. Types of Listening Activities

a. No overt response

In this type, the learner do not do anything in response the listening. But
if they are following or not following, they can give a facial expression and body
language.

1. Stories. If the story is rightly chosen, learner will be motivated to attend and
understand which caused of they want to enjoy it.

2. Songs. The learner here can be to understand the word and also only to the music

3. Entertainment. Learner will be motivated to understand without the need for any
further task.

b. Short response

1. Obeying instructions. Learner perform action, do anything to response to the

instruction.

2. Ticking of items. Word list, text or picture is provided. The listener just give
mark or tick off the word or picture that right as they hear it.

3. True/false. Listener will be provided with some text which are true or false.
Listener will instructed to hear and chose or crosses whether the statement is true
or false

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 4. Guessing definition. Teacher will describe a thing, place or person. The listener
will guess what, where or who is being talked.

c. Longer response

1. Answering question.

2. Note taking. Learner take a briefly notes from someone’s talk

3. Paraphrasing. The learner rewrite the listening text in different word, in the same
or in another language.

4. Summarizing. Just like taking note, learner will summary the content of listening

5. Long gap-filling. Learner will given with a passage which had been left blank.
They will guess what word is missing.

d. Extended response

1. Problem solving. A problem is described orally then the learner discuss it and
present or write down a suggested solution.

2. Interpretation. An extract of monologue or dialogue is provided. The listener will

try to guess from the words, kind of voices, tone and any other evidence of what
is going on.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. R. 1995. Cognitive psychology and its implications (4th ed.). New York:
Freeman.

Brown S. (2006). Teaching Listening. New York. Cambridge University Press.

Retrieved in 2006 http://start.facemoods.com/results.php?
category=web&s =teaching+listening+PDF

Fang, Xu. (2008). Listening comprehension in EFL teaching. US-China Foreign

Language. China. Retrieved in 2008, January, Vol. 6 No.1 http://pdf-

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 freedownload.com/ pdf-folder/teaching-listening-journal-
pdf.php

Richard, Jack C. (…). Teaching Listening and speaking from theory to

practice. Retrieved in
http://www.ctserc.org/library/bibfiles/listening.pdf