TeachingEnglish
About teaching listening
Submitted by yuan on 12 June, 2009 - 12:03
I am an English teacher from China. Because of less of language enviroment, most of students did weak in listening.
I always try to improve their listening by any ways. For instance, I let them listen to English songs before class and watch English movies. But the result is not good. What should I do?
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Songs and movies are good ways to get your students interested in English. But you could think about the following questions first.
How do you check if your students have understood anything from the songs and movies?
Do you set any tasks or exercises for your students to do while listening?
Do you discuss the topics or themes of the songs and movies with your students before listening?
What do you expect them to be able to understand from the songs and movies you have chosen for them?
For movies, do you show them the whole movie or just short clips?
Developing listening skills is not easy especially when the students are beginners. As trainers we can ask the students to listen to us carefully while we speak, read, we can sing songs together this helps with the pronunciation too and in a week or two they will be ready to listen and understand the dialogues in the movies they watch.
Students usually get demotivated to language learning if they cannot comprehend what's been said. I have found out that in many cases, it's not a matter of not knowing the vocabulary but rather it's a matter of not being able to match the sound with the word been said.
When having students watch TV or movies, add CAPTIONS. In this way, students learn to match text and sound as well as recognize already familiar and unfamiliar words.
Hope this tip helps,
Hi from the Caribbean, edda
One thing that can really help is preparing them for the listening beforehand.
Background Information
When you read or listen to something in your own language, you always have a lot of background information about the topic ready, and you constantly make predictions about the text based on the topic, context, title, pictures, and how much you've read/heard already.
For example, before I read the news article "George Bush's approval ratings: 2001-09" I had the following information:
All of this information helps me to understand the text when I read it.
Suggestion
In class, though, teachers often have Ss just 'listen/read' and that makes it much more difficult than it actually is in real life. So, before they listen:
(eg. for the article above start off by talking about the news, then talk about Bush in general, then talk about approval ratings).
(eg. many people in China probably assume that Americans like Bush, but more than 50% of Americans actually hate him; approval ratings probably aren't done for Presidents in China, but are very common in Western Countries, etc).
This is helpful for both listening and reading. Do all this and the Ss will find the listening experience more interesting, more achievable, and more rewarding... and that should result in good improvements in listening.
I am an English teacher from China, too. I think that your ways are good and also you can speak more English in class and out of class, so you can offer them more time and chances to practise their listening skills.
I've also worked with Chinese teachers in China. I really have to say that the very sad thing is, Chinese teachers don't speak English to their students outside class. Some don't even speak much English in class. My Chinese colleagues always claim that their students are too weak to understand spoken English. But I doubt if that's all true - as far as I know in fact there are of students who want opportunities to use English outside class. Even if it's true that students are weak, they'll never get a chance to improve if you don't speak English to them. I always pretend I don't understand the language much in front of my students, for the sake of forcing them to communicate in English with me.
Listening to English audio course is always better than English movie. This is because students likely to watch the movie without understand the language itself. Alternatively, you can try use English subtitle rather than Chinese during movies time. Turn off the audio and force them to read the English subtitle.
I'm not sure whether this will work but I use this technique to teach my son english. Try it yourself.
It has to be a choice between English subtitles or no subtitles at all, I think.
I live in China and can speak a little bit of Chinese. I have occasionally watched, and even enjoyed, movies entirely in Chinese with no subtitles, but most of the time I try to find movies in English or movies with English subtitles.
One thing I have noticed - when there are English subtitles I completely ignore the Chinese audio. When there are no subtitles I put a lot of effort into understanding the audio and I pay much more attention to body language, gestures, facial expressions and other visual clues than I do when I have to try to read. In fact, I was quite shocked last time my wife and I went to the cinema and I watched a Chinese comedy purely in Chinese and found it absolutely hilarious. The whole plot, which was quite complex, was easy to follow when the little Chinese I knew was combined with clear visuals, and about 90-95% of the jokes were too.
Even low level Ss can get a lot from a well chosen movie with no subtitles.
I have to admit though, I've never tried watching Chinese movies with Chinese subtitles, because I can't read Chinese characters. So I don't know which would be more useful to me - no subtitles or L2 subtitles - but definitely not L1 subtitles.
Let us first understand the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is done with the ears. Listening is done with the mind and the heart.
Lack of effective listening skills is something which even professionals holding high positions lack. It is more of passive listening.
Irrespective of the age group of your students, it is imperative for the listener to focus on the delivery and shut out all other thoughts from his mind. We cannot force anyone to listen. I have seen so many cases where the speech has been excellent, but the listeners tune on and off. There are lot of psychological factors, apart from internal and external disturbances which hamper the listening process.
The methodology that you are using right now will not be effective, because even though the movie is interesting, the focus will not be on the dialogue, which is the main reason for doing this exercise. Another huge drawback with movies and songs is the extensive use of slang language which destroys the very purpose of doing that activity.
Try to download interesting stories and have questions based on the story which your students need to answer while listening. Also have lot of listening games, as in, putting two people in a group and asking them to introduce their partner.
The best you can do is to give everything that you have. Beyond this, as I have mentioned earlier, things are not in your control.