MODULE 2:

The Concept and

Importance of Listening
Skills
 I. OBJECTIVES:

Thus, at the end of this Unit, the pre-service teachers will be able to:
 identify important concepts of listening, listening process, and listening comprehension

 discuss the techniques and strategies in the teaching and teaching assessment of
listening,

 select differentiated listening and viewing learning tasks to suit learners’ gender, needs,
strengths interests, and experiences;

 demonstrate how to provide timely, accurate, and constructive feedback to improve

learner performance in the different tasks in listening; and

 craft a learning plan according to the English curriculum that is developed from
research-based knowledge and principles of listening and the theoretical bases,
principles, methods, and strategies in teaching these components.

II. PRE -TEST:

(No pretest)

III. INTRODUCTION:

CHAPTER II: From Listening as Comprehension to Listening as Acquisition

How to Teach and Assess Listening Skill

As the world embraces English as the international language, there is also a growing demand
for its fluency. Thus, teachers continuously revisit language learning assumptions and recalibrate
teaching practices to respond to the needs of the time.

As a future English teacher, you must master the pillars of effective communication, namely
listening, speaking, reading, writing. and viewing. Moreover, much is expected of you considering that
you will also have to teach these skills to your students. For your students to be competitive, they
should be able to communicate effectively in varied situations be it in their future workplace or their
personal life. A good English teacher ensures that students are provided with the necessary
conditions to acquire this skill set needed for academic and personal success.
 Listening is primarily viewed as the foundation for language acquisition process. Since
communication is basically oral, people mostly learn, understand, and respond effectively by listening
to what others have to say. Studies pointed out that many people spend 70 to 80 percent
communicating and from that, 45 percent is spent on listening. However, according to Nation and
Newton (2009) in Nemtchinova, 2013, it has been "the least understood and the most overlooked of
the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). Field (2008) states that in the early days of
English Language Teaching (ELT), listening chiefly served as a means of introducing new grammar
through model dialogues." Listening is as important as the rest of the macro skills yet it is not explicitly
taught in language classes. Listening skills in language classrooms are more often tested through
students’ ability to respond effectively to what has been heard. However, this skill is seldom taught.

Therefore, this Chapter will guide you on how to teach your students to become active
listeners by providing them with relevant and comprehensible input. It will introduce you to the
concepts of the listening process and listening and viewing comprehension skills in order to find some
strategies that can enhance your ability to communicate effectively. It will also provide strategies in
teaching and assessing listening skills, as well as activities that you can use in your classrooms.

These activities will help your students acquire and develop active listening which essential for
target language competence.

IV. CONTENT:

Lesson 1: The Concept and Importance of Listening

Hearing and Listening

What do you know of listening? How is it different from hearing?

You heard, but you didn't listen. You might have heard someone say this line and have perfectly
understood what the person meant. Although hearing and listening are most of the time regarded as
synonyms, the two terms are quite distinct. The former is passive and the latter is active.

From the dictionary

Hearing is "the process, function or power of perceiving a sound." Listening is "to hear something with
thoughtful attention."

From the book Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, hearing is an
accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort." Listening is "purposeful
and focused to understand the meanings expressed by a speaker."

According to Kline (1996), "hearing is the reception of sound, listening is the attachment of meaning
to the sound.

According to Rost (2002), "hearing is a form of perception. Listening is an active and intentional
process. Although both hearing and listening involve sound perception, the difference in terms
reflects a degree of intention".
Vandergrift (1999) in Yildirim (2016) defines listening as "a complex, active process in which the
listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures,
interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the
immediate as well as the larger sociocultural context of the utterance"

According to Maureen (2017), hearing is the "act of perceiving sound and receiving sound waves or
vibrations through your ear". Listening is the "act of hearing a sound and understanding what you
hear".

According to Surbhi (2017), "the natural ability or an inborn trait that allows us to recognize sound
through ears by catching vibrations is called the hearing." Listening is defined "as the learned skill, in
which we can receive sounds through ears, and transform them into meaningful messages".

As they say, "hearing is through the ears, but listening is through the mind and the heart.” Flowerdew
and Miller (2005) claimed that most children are born with the ability to hear. Children first listen and
then start to speak. They speak before they read, and finally, writing comes after reading. That is,
among all the other language skills, listening is the first one to appear (Lundsteen, 1979).

To sum up, listening is more than just hearing sounds and words. It is an active process wherein
language learners receive, construct meaning from, and respond to both verbal and non-verbal
messages. Sadiku, 2015 states that listening is "a state of receptivity that permits an understanding of
what is heard and grants the listener full partnership in the communication process".

Listening is an integral part of communication; thus, we need to develop a keen interest in improving
our listening skills. As you listen, you interpret the sounds and get the important words and construct
meaning. As you do this you also simultaneously check the new information against your prior
knowledge and experiences. A good listener shows readiness and possesses an ability to manipulate
the sound into words and their contextual meaning. But how does one listen actively?

Active Listening

In various interactions (face-to-face or virtual), listeners show their understanding and response to the
speakers through verbal utterances like "ok", uh-huh", or "oh", and non-verbal gestures like nodding
and pressing the emoticon buttons in Zoom. They can also make comments, ask questions, and take
turns participating in the conversation. This proves that listening is active and not a passive skill.
"If the listener takes part actively in the process of listening linguistically and uses his/her non-
linguistic knowledge to follow up the message that the speaker intends in a conversation, if s/he
listens, replies, and asks/answers questions, it is active listening" (Lindslay & Knight, 2006,
Littlewood, 1981 in Yildirim (2016). Anderson and Lynch (2003) added that understanding is not
something that happens because of what speaker says, the listener needs to make connections
between what s/he hears and what s/he already knows and at the same time, he/she tries to
comprehend the meaning negotiated by the speaker."

What is active listening?

Although the previous paragraphs have established that listening is an active skill, not all listening is
the same. This skill may not come naturally for many of us. You have to understand that there is a
line that separates passive listening and active listening.
Passive listening is a little more than hearing. It is regarded as one-way communication wherein the
receiver does not respond nor give feedback to the speaker in any way. Imagine yourself listening to
the one hour and a half lecture of your teacher via Google Meet (for example). Your teacher keeps
talking, and while you claim that you are "listening" you didn't show any feedback in the form of
clicking the emojis for a response, or using the chat box for questions, or raising your hand to answer
questions. You may not be doing anything else, yet, you are also not paying attention to what's being
said.

On the other hand, active listening includes responding and providing feedback at the right time. It is
paying attention not only to the speaker, or to the message but even to the verbal and non-verbal
messages. It is listening accurately, effectively, and responding appropriately to the various
communicative context. It is gaining information, learning, and understanding things. It is a key to
effective communication

The importance of active listening

The importance of active listening in people's everyday life cannot be argued. Guo and Wills (2006)
mentioned that "it is the medium through which people gain a large proportion of their education, their
information, their understanding of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of values".
Highlighting the importance of listening in language learning, Peterson (2001) in Yildirim (2016) states
that "no other type of language input is easy to process as a spoken language, received through
listening... through listening, learners can build an awareness of the interworking of language systems
at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills".

In an English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom, listening is considered a basic skill. Nunan (1998)
stated that over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted
to listening (Nunan, 1998). Moreover, the importance of listening (activities) in language classrooms
are listed below based on Rost (1994) in Yildirim (2016):

 Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without
understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.

 Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner. Because learners must
interact to achieve understanding. Access to speakers of the language is essential. Moreover,
learners’ failure to understand the language they hear is an impetus, not an obstacle, to
interaction and learning.

 Authentic spoken language presents a challenge for the learner to understand language as
native speakers use it.

 Listening exercises provide teachers with a means for drawing learners attention to new forms
(vocabulary, grammar, new interaction patterns) in the language

Barriers to Active Listening

Sometimes even if it is one's intention to stay focused while listening, some may have difficulty
staying attentive due to several factors like noise, attention span, receiver biases, and listening or
receiver apprehension.
Noise. It is the most common distraction when listening. Noise does not only refer to something
physical, but also psychological (internal thoughts), physiological (basic needs), semantic noise, and
(word meanings and interpretation),

Attention span. As future teachers, you should know that your students can only maintain focused
attention for a finite length of time. Thus, classroom lectures should be short, interesting, and
engaging. If you are a speaker, on any occasion-formal or informal, you need to apply certain
strategies to prevent this interference.

Receiver biases. One's preconceived ideas and opinions, whether about the speaker or the
message/topic, can be considered as noise and may interfere in the listening process. It may hinder
one from receiving new points of view and information. Even with these biases, it is important to
withhold judgment all the time and promote open-minded listening.

Listening or receiver apprehension. Listening or receiver apprehension is the fear that you might be
unable to understand the message or process the information correctly or be able to adapt your
thinking to include the new information coherently (Wheeless, 1975 in Stand up, Speak out The
Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, 2011). It is important to address this by identifying your
audience's (students') current understanding of the topic. You should not underestimate or
overestimate your audience's knowledge of a subject.

6 Key Active Listening Skills

The Center for Creative Leadership (https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading- effectively-articles/coaching-

others-use-active-listening-skills/) provided this active listening skillset which you can practice to
improve your active listening skills.

Pay Attention

In active listening, we give the speaker our undivided attention. It is concentrating on the
speaker's message while integrating one's own prior knowledge and experiences. It also
involves paying attention not just to the speaker's message but also to the non-verbal
gestures. It is also being aware of one's frame of mind when engaging in the communication
process. It is letting the speaker finish first (without interrupting) before responding and giving
feedback.

Withhold Judgment

As we engage in conversations, it is but normal to sometimes have opposing ideas from those
of other people. In active listening, it is important to stay open-minded and to welcome varied
ideas, new perspectives, and different opinions. Good listeners know how to respond
appropriately without criticizing, judging, and insisting on their point of view.

Reflect

Reflecting during the communication process allows you to understand the speaker's
experiences and the emotions that come with them. Reflecting in this context refers to
rephrasing and repeating or reaffirming both the words and the feelings of the speaker. The
purposes of this are as follows (https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/reflecting.html)
  to allow the speakers to "hear their thoughts and to focus on what they say and feel;

 the speakers that you are trying to perceive the world as they see it and that you are
doing your best to understand their messages; and

 to encourage them to continue talking.

If you have noticed, this technique in active listening focuses more on the speaker rather than
on the listener. The listener in this case will not ask questions nor give his/her own opinion of
the topic, rather, helps the speaker direct his/her thoughts and encourage him/her to continue
speaking.

Clarity

In active listening, feedbacking is very important. However, to be able to provide accurate and
relevant feedback, the listener has to clarify information that has not been clearly understood;
or to ask for more information or details about the topic. Moreover, the listener may ask
questions. You may also clarify by asking "What do you mean by...?" Or summarize by saying,
"So, you mean that…” This provides an opportunity for the speaker to fill in any missing pieces
of the information or to correct misconceptions. Use this technique when you want to
understand what is being communicated in context.

Summarize

In addition to clarifying, you can also summarize or restate key points in the conversation to
ensure that you have the same understanding of the intention and message of the speaker.
When you summarize, you are not "stating a fact” about what was said. Rather, the main goal
is to clarify with the speaker whether the information and feelings shared have been heard
correctly. It is also one way for the speaker to "listen to himself/herself” and to review his/her
thoughts and feelings. There may also be instances when we have not fully understood the
speaker, clarifying and summarizing show that you're taking the conversation "seriously".

Share

In the previous discussion, you've learned to withhold' judgment and not to insist and impose
your ideas. However, it also doesn't mean that you will not provide relevant, accurate, and
needed feedback to the speaker. Active listening is having to understand and be understood.
As you listen intently to the other person and maintain open-mindedness, you will also begin to
understand where the person is coming from'. You'll be able to understand his perspectives
and feelings. As you take into account the context of the speaker, you can begin to introduce
(without imposing) your perspectives, ideas, and feelings without judgments.

Ethical listening

As you apply these key active listening skills, you are also promoting ethical listening. Ethical listening
highlights the importance of listening with honest intentions. Respect is the key to active listening. If
you want to be heard and respected when it is your turn to speak, you should also extend the same
degree of respect to others whether you agree with them or not. Remember the golden rule "In
everything, do to others what you would have them do to you…” (Golden Rule, precept in the Gospel
of Matthew 7:12). According to Coopman and Lull (2008) "the creation of a climate of caring and
mutual understanding, observing that "respecting others' perspectives is one hallmark of the effective
listener".

Stages of Listening

There are indeed several factors that can interfere with listening. Thus, DeVito (2000) has divided the
listening process into five mental tasks or stages namely: receiving, understanding, remembering,
evaluating, and responding.

Stage 1. Receiving

The first stage of the listening process is receiving which involves two other activities like hearing and
attending. As the listener hears the message, he/she tries to isolate it from all the rest of the physical
noise heard. The next important activity in this stage is for the listener to attend to the message by
identifying and interpreting the sounds heard as words. The sounds heard are merely sounds unless
put in context. In this stage, you must pay attention to the speaker and avoid accommodating other
thoughts to ensure that you have not missed any information, or messages both verbal and non-
verbal

Stage 2. Understanding

In understanding or comprehending the messages that you have accommodated in the first stage, the
listener in this stage will have to determine the context and assign meaning to the words and
utterances heard. "Determining the context and meaning of individual words, as well as assigning
meaning in language, is essential to understanding sentences. This, in turn, is essential to
understanding a speaker's message (Lumen Boundless Communications, n.d.). In this stage, you
should also be aware of some factors that may affect your understanding like the choice of words,
accent, language fluency, physical noise, perceptions, experiences, and the like. You may want to
use the 'clarify' strategy you've learned in active listening to help you with your mental reconstruction
of the speaker's message.

Stage 3. Remembering

According to Harvard Business Review, people usually forget up to half of what they've heard within
the first eight hours of listening to it. Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience says the same thing - students
only retain at least 20% of what they hear. In this stage, remembering all details is vital to be able to
move forward in the conversation. Sometimes listening attentively is not enough since there might be
a message that is too complex and thus needs highly developed listening skills. You also have to
consider that "you can improve your memory of a message by processing it meaningfully-that is, by
applying it in ways that are meaningful to you" (Gluck, et al., 2008). One way to do this is to "make
associations to past remembered information. This can help a listener understand what she is
currently hearing in a wider context" (Lumen Boundless Communication, n.d.).

Stage 4. Evaluating
In this stage, the listener assesses the information after making a reasonable objective interpretation
of the message. One strategy for active listening that you've learned in the previous section is to
"withhold judgment while the speaker is still talking. However, this stage sometimes often starts too
early in the listening process especially when topics are sensitive, emotional, debatable, and
conflicting. If this happens, the listener will just basically listen only to what he/she wants to hear. It is
also in this stage wherein the listener tries to review mentally and determine the veracity of the
information (with considerations of the speaker's context) against his/her knowledge and experiences.
Moreover, since each one has his/her perspectives, experiences, and even biases, evaluation of the
same message may vary depending on the listener. To expect a positive acceptance of the message
and to ensure that both speaker and listener disagree agreeably, the speaker has to speak clearly,
present ideas logically, and provide evidence to his/her claims.

Stage 5. Responding

The last stage which is giving feedback is an important aspect of the communication process. It is at
this stage where you will signify your participation. Feedback can either be verbal and non-verbal
reactions. For example, during virtual classes students give their feedback through the emoticon
buttons or the chat box. For verbal feedback, this may be in the form of questions, clarifying,
requesting additional information, repeating, or summarizing what the speaker has said. Take note as
well that not all feedback occurs at the end. The listener may offer non-verbal signals like nodding
while the speaker is talking to show involvement. This is referred to as formative feedback.
Summative feedback on the other hand is given at the end of the communication.

The Process of Listening

For the past years, listening played an important role in audio-lingual methods, students only listened
to repeat and develop a better pronunciation (for speaking). However, the work of Asher, Postovsky,
Winitz, and, later, Krashen has paved the way in putting more attention to the role of listening as a
tool for understanding and a key factor in facilitating language learning.

Moreover, most literature would point out two common terms related to the process of listening top-
down and bottom-up. Top-down and bottom-up describe how a person processes a listening text. In
some literature, these are also regarded as strategies in processing and understanding listening
texts. In this context, we use both understandings of the terms as you will anchor your listening
activities (in the next lessons) on these two perspectives. To perform real-life listening, you usually
combine the two processes depending on your reason for listening.

In the bottom-up process, the listener, at the onset, "uses the information he/she has about sounds,
word meanings, and discourse markers, then after, tries to assemble his/her understanding of what
he/she reads or hears one step at a time" (Brown, 2006). The listener in this case looks for contextual
clues from the text to better understand it. It is first decoding the semantic, syntactic, and
phonological aspects of the utterance as a means of understanding the listening or spoken texts.

Moreover, varied authors have also elaborated on this process.

According to Nunan (1998), this kind of processing linearly consists of decoding sounds, starting from
the smallest significant units to complete texts, deriving meaning as the last step of the process. He
elaborates that this process includes decoding phonemic units that are linked together to form words,
which in turn are combined to form phrases that later come together to form utterances which are
finally linked together to form meaningful texts.

Hinkel (2006) mentioned that bottom-up processing constitutes a view of listening which is based on
the linguistic elements of comprehension and aims to develop the students abilities in identifying
formal elements such as words sentence limits, contractions, individual sounds, and sound
combinations.

As per Brown (2006), bottom-up processing involves using our knowledge about sounds, word
meanings, and discourse markers to set up the understanding of what we hear. In this sense, he
explains that it is important to hear some sounds and keep them long enough in our working memory
so that they can be connected to allow the interpretation of the message before there is new incoming
information to be processed.

Likewise, Richards (2008) defines bottom-up processing as a process of decoding, where

comprehension starts with the analysis of the input data in successive levels of organization (sounds,
words, clauses, sentences, texts) to establish the relationship between the constituent elements of
the sentences and understand their meaning based on the listener's lexical and grammatical
competence.

Although recognizing that these syntactic elements are very important in language learning, it is
convenient to remember that these linguistic aspects are just temporary carriers of meanings
(Richards, 2008) and that the foreign language must be understood within specific social contexts
(Rost, 2011), which means that it is not enough for listeners to rely exclusively on their linguistic
knowledge to understand spoken texts. To achieve this goal successfully, they must be able to
integrate contextual knowledge and general knowledge about the world (Wang; Treffers-Daller,
2017).

On the other hand, Yildirim (2016) explains that in a top-down process, "learners use their
background knowledge to comprehend the meaning by considering previous knowledge and
schemata". It means using your knowledge and experiences of the world (schema) in comprehending
a text. The listener does not rely on understanding individual letters, words, phrases, sentences, or
sounds; rather, uses his/her existing information and knowledge that might come from outside the
text. The top-down process highlights that understanding starts from the listener's background
knowledge of the situation and of the world in general then works down towards the individual
sounds.

This process is further explained from the words of these authors:

Top-down processing includes a semantic dimension that emerges from the listener's memory and
integrates the new information offered by the text with the previous knowledge that he or she
possesses. It also incorporates a pragmatic dimension, which allows the listener to make use of his or
her social knowledge to obtain and construct contextual meaning in coordination, collaboration, and
interaction with the speaker (Rost, 2011).

This process demands the listener's active reconstruction of the speaker's original meaning, with the
help of incoming sounds and clues, the use of their prior knowledge of the context and
communicative situation, to be able to understand what is being said (Nunan, 1998; Brown, 2006,
Richards, 2008).

In Top-down processing, aural comprehension depends on the listener's ability to activate his
knowledge-based schemata' based on his cultural constructs, familiarity with the topic as well as the
use of discourse clues and pragmatic conventions (Hinkel, 2006). While bottom-up processing goes
from language to meaning, top-down processing moves from meaning to language (Richards, 2008).

Moreover, based on their knowledge of the context, listeners can predict the message and confirm
their predictions through inference (Nation, Newton 2009). This requires the use of the context and
the listeners' previous experiential, cultural, textual, linguistic, and pragmatic knowledge for the
activation of their conceptual framework to interpret the incoming message, which may be in principle
incomprehensible to them (Vandergrift, 2011).

Lopez, et. al. (2020) summarizes these ideas as "top-down processing demands listeners
background knowledge activation, which may include their knowledge of the world, of the social and
cultural context, along with their knowledge of speech events and particular text types, to understand
the meaning of spoken texts. On the other hand, bottom-up processing implies relying on their
knowledge of the linguistic code to achieve progressive meaning construction, starting from the
phonetic level up to the discursive level."

These two processes are considered correlated although they involve very distinct listening activities.
These two are both used to construct meaning. Buck (1994) in Nihei, (2002), explains that "to arrive
at an understanding of the message, listeners must understand the phonetic input, vocabulary, and
syntax (bottom-up processing), and, at the same time, use the context of a situation, general
knowledge, and past experiences (top-down processing)". Thus, leads to an integrative approach in
teaching listening (Lopez et.al., 2020).

Skills for Listening

Based on the listening process discussed, there are specific listening skills or competencies that
students need to acquire to develop their listening ability. As a teacher, you have to provide
instruction as to how your students will acquire such skills. Skills are "competencies which native
listeners possess and which non-natives need to acquire concerning the language they are learning'"
(Field, 1998 in Nihei, 2002). Moreover, you have to inform your students that acquiring these specific
competencies for listening would require work and practice just like how they exert effort when trying
to master speaking, reading, writing. Thus, language teachers have to be able to identify which
particular competencies are needed for effective listening and provide opportunities and relevant
activities that would help students acquire such.

The following skill classification is adopted by Nihei (2002) from an article by Richards (1987):

1. ability to recognize reduced forms of words;

2. ability to distinguish word boundaries;

3. ability to detect keywords (i.e., those which identify topics and propositions);

4. ability to guess the meanings of words from the contexts in which they occur;
 5. ability to recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse;

6. ability to distinguish between major and minor constituents;

7. ability to recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations,

participants, goals;

8. ability to reconstruct or infer situations, goals, participants, procedures;

9. ability to use real-world knowledge and experience to work out purposes, goals, settings,
procedures;

10. ability to predict outcomes from events described;

11. ability to infer links and connections between events

12. ability to distinguish between literal and implied meanings;

13. ability to recognize markers of coherence in discourse, and to detect such relations as the
main idea, supporting the idea, given information, new information, generalization,
exemplification;

14. ability to process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections;

15. ability to make use of facial, paralinguistic, and other clues to work out meanings; and

16. ability to adjust listening strategies to different kinds of listener purposes or goals.

So maybe your question now is how will these be taught side by side with the listing of competencies
as reflected in the curriculum guide. Rost (1990) purported that these competencies are "better
learned when aspects of the skill are practiced in 'clusters' rather than in minimal units". It means that
"it is not until several skills are involved and practiced in one lesson that they can be effectively
developed and improved'.

In Lesson 2, you will be introduced to specific methods and activities that you can use in the
classroom to help your students become effective active listeners.

Listening to Comprehend and Listening to Acquire the Target Language

The LSRW (listening-speaking-reading-writing) method suggests that students learning a new

language will first be taught how to listen. This is because listening provides much aural input and
data and enables the language learner to interact spoken communication. To understand the
nuances in a particular language, on must be able to listen. Schmidt (1990) highlighted the role of
listening in facilitating second language acquisition. He argues that a learner will not comprehend and
learn anything from the input he hears unless he will notice something about the input. He remarked,
"The only linguistic materials that can figure in language-making are stretches of speech that attract
the child's attention to a sufficient degree to be noticed and held in memory." Likewise, Stephen
Krashen's input hypothesis suggests that “The best methods are therefore those that supply
'comprehensible input in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students want to hear.”
The importance of listening as a language skill has been highlighted in the studies of Rost (2001) and
Vandergrift (2011). They considered it as "a critical means of acquiring the second language and a
channel through which we process language in real-time since it internalizes language rules and
favors the development of other language skills". The K to 12 Curriculum Guide in English has
reflected ‘Listening comprehension' as one of the language domains identified that "'students need to
learn and that teachers need to teach in greater detail". Acknowledging that indeed listening skill is a
fundamental tool in the language teaching and learning process, the curriculum guide specifically
stipulates the competencies, under the listening comprehension domain, that students need to
acquire.

Consequently, you might have observed in language classes that usually the teacher gives students
samples of oral texts and passages to listen to, then asks them about what they have understood.
Richards (2016) states that the "view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of
listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse". He added
that language teachers also need to "consider how listening can provide input that triggers the further
development of second-language proficiency".

As observed, in most English language classrooms, teachers give students a listening activity and
then evaluate how well they understand what was heard. Nemtchinova (2013) elaborates this as:

"When teachers ask students to make predictions, discuss the main the idea of the text,
or summarize it, the primary concern is how well they understand what they hear: Teachers
teach students strategies to facilitate comprehension and tell them not to cling to every word
but to try to derive meaning from what they recognize. This approach encourages learners to
rely on a familiar language and provides little opportunity to boost linguistic development. lt
equates listening with listening comprehension, overlooking the important role listening plays in
language acquisition."

He further pointed out that teachers have to supplement comprehension goals with acquisition goals.
There is nothing wrong with the current practice, however, teachers are encouraged to move from
listening as comprehension to listening as acquisition. This can be done by providing students
activities that require "accurate recognition and recall of words, syntax, and expressions that occurred
in the input” such as "dictation, cloze exercises, and identifying differences between spoken and
written text" (Richards, 2008 in Nemtchinova, 2013). The learner has to try to incorporate new
linguistic items into his or her language repertoire, that is, to use them in oral production (Richards,
2016).

Lesson 2: Strategies in Teaching Listening

Teaching Listening

The previous discussions have laid down the importance of listening, not as a secondary skill, but as
an important foundation for the language acquisition process. Teaching this skill provides an avenue
for students to be exposed to rich input and an authentic sample of oral texts. This allows them to be
familiar with what constitutes oral texts like pronunciation, stress, pitch, and intonation; and to be
exposed to rich vocabulary and language structure that is used in varied communicative settings.
Likewise, you have also been introduced to the process of listening. Vandegrift (2004) mentioned that
students may use either top-down or bottom-up processes. As one listens, he/she may consciously or
unconsciously use one or both processes. Cahyono and Widiati (2009) mentioned that “successful
listeners are those who can use both bottom-up and top-down processes by combining the new
information and the knowledge that they already know." Brown (2006) in Yildirim (2016) elaborated on
this:

... students must hear some sounds (bottom-up processing), hold them in their working
memory long enough (a few seconds) to connect them, and then interpret what they 've just
heard before something new comes along. At the same time, listeners are using their
background knowledge (top- down processing) to determine meaning with respect to prior
knowledge and schemata".

This claim is supported by several authors and thus leads to what Lopez, et.al (2020) mentions as an
'integrative approach' in teaching listening which involves three key stages: before-listening, while-
listening, and after-listening. As (future) language teachers, you should ensure to provide activities
that would involve students processing and decoding the text (bottom-up), and then comprehending it
using one's schema (top-down).

According to Vandergrift (2011), "the greater use of one process over the other will depend on the
listening purpose, the listeners' characteristics, and the context where the listening act takes place".
Richards (2008) in Lopez et.al. (2020) states that:

In real-world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processes generally occur

together. The extent to which one or the other dominates depends on the listener s familiarity
with the topic and content of a text, the density of information in a text, the text type, and the
listener’s purpose listening.

The following are some of the exercises you can use which would develop students' top-down and
bottom-up processing:

Bottom-up
Teachers may ask students to:
Top-down

 point out familiar words from the oral texts  write down as many words and phrases
related to the topic they are about to listen
 identify the meaning of unfamiliar words to
from texts listened to
 get the idea from the texts listened to
 locate the syllable stress from words, and
word stress from sentences  discriminate between emotional reactions

 listen for pitch levels and intonation  make predictions and inferences from
patterns stories heard

 determine synonyms and antonyms from  listen for specific information

texts listened to
 sequence information after listening to a
 literature piece

 follow directions
 identify key words that occurred in a
spoken text  share one's ideas based on the topic
heard
 find which modal verbs occurred in a
spoken text  give synthesis from texts heard

 identify thought groups  summarize important points

 find collocations and idioms  generate questions from topics heard

 point out key transitions in a discourse  identify conversation themes

 identify grammatical relationships between  rewrite the listening texts using their own
key elements in sentences words

 determine the order in which words  share what the speaker's purpose is and
occurred in an utterance identify his/her speaking attitude

 students to ask about and/or to describe

other expressions they may have heard

 write a journal of their listening activities

You have also been introduced to the interactive process of combining both top-down and bottom-up
as teachers design teaching-learning listening activities. Thus, the activities above may be integrated
and divided into three key stages in teaching listening: before-listening, while-listening, and after-
listening.

Richards (2008) in Lopez, et.al. (2020) explains that:

the before-listening stage prepares students for both types of processing through activities that
require activating their previous knowledge, making predictions, and revising key vocabular;

the while-listening stage focuses attention on activities that require selective listening, listening
for main ideas (gist listening), or understanding the sequence of events (sequencing); and
comprehension through

in the post-listening phase, students should express their opinions on the topic and respond to
comprehension. This stage may also include a detailed analysis of some sections of the text
that could not be understood by the students.

Moreover, since in most actual listening students are exposed to real-life conversations, teachers are
encouraged to contextualize materials and anchor activities on real-life situations.

The following are some of the exercises using the principle of interactive approach in listening.
Remember that deciding on what tasks to give and at which stage they will be given also depends on
the learning outcomes students are expected to achieve during the session.
 Stages Suggested Activities
 Introduce some vocabulary words from the text.

 Encourage students to write down questions which they would want to

answer after listening.

 Have students sort a text from a jumbled version.

Pre/Before-  Ask them to predict what the oral text will be based on its title.

Listening  Ask students questions related to the oral text to activate prior
knowledge.

Pre-listening tasks may include but are not limited to discussion questions, true
or false statements, vocabulary work, prediction tasks and brainstorming the
topic, eliciting real-world knowledge related to the content.

 Instruct students to list down important words.

 Let students guess the meaning of unknown words from the oral texts.

 Ask students to list expressions that occurred while listening.

During/While-
 Ask students to do cloze exercises while listening.
Listening  Let them show evidence of understanding or non-understanding through
gestures (thumbs up or thumbs down) while listening.

 As the teacher reads the text, or as the audio recording plays, the
teacher may stop at some parts to ask students to write down important
points or give descriptions, etc..

 Ask students to think and talk about what they heard.

Post/After
 Let them create and share their dialogues from what they have listened
to.
Listening
 Let them write their own opinions and share them with the class.

 Ask them to sequence important events from the stories listened to.

 Let them complete gaps in the text, tick words, and phrases that are
heard, or match and choose pictures.

 Ask questions for comprehension.

 Introduce memory games.

  Let students’ complete tables, charts, diagrams, sentences.

Let them answer multiple-choice and true/false questions.

Let them do character portrayals.

The teacher can also build and expand students' understanding through
integrating other language skills.

Format of a Listening Lesson

In the previous discussion, we have established the following points:

 Teachers have to provide activities that supplement comprehension goals with acquisition
goals.

 Successful listeners are those that can use both bottom-up and top-down processes thus,
teaching-learning activities should provide students the opportunity to practice both.

 The three key stages in listening may be used as an outline in designing a listening lesson that
ensures an interactive process approach in teaching listening.

So how do you craft a listening lesson with all three stages: pre-listening while-listening, after-
listening?

Pre-listening

This stage sets the context of the listening activity that will be given to students. In this stage, the
following will help you in getting your students ready for the listening task:

Identifying vocabulary/comprehension needs. As language teachers, you should have information on

your students' listening skills as well as their vocabulary level. This is very helpful not just when
designing pre-listening vocabulary activities but also when choosing specific materials for listening
activities. Teachers should help students better understand the listening or oral texts by identifying
possible difficult words or presenting specific vocabulary expressions which students would need
while listening. Before listening, you can already select some vocabulary for students to study. You
can give them word-definition matching or fill the gaps in sentences.

Activating interest. Teachers would always start with motivational activities to set the classroom
mood. The goal is for students to be ready and be motivated to listen. The listening text should be
'familiar, interesting, and within students’ level of understanding. From this, you should design tasks
that will arouse your students’ interest and curiosity. You may use video and audio segments, songs,
and/or stories that students find interesting. You may refer to the suggested activities given above.

Putting it in context. Teachers should choose oral and listening texts that are relevant and interesting
to the students. During pre-listening, the teacher should be able to design contextualized listening
activities that would activate students’ prior knowledge and help them form appropriate inferences
which they need to comprehend the message. According to Vandergrift (n.d), teachers need to help
students organize their thoughts, activate appropriate background knowledge for understanding and
to make predictions to prepare for listening.

Setting the purpose. At the onset, the purpose of the listening activity should be made clear to the
students. Are they listening for information? for gist? Or are they going to do intensive listening?
Students should be cued in advance on what specific points they need to attend to when listening.
This will help them to be more prepared at the same time know the listening strategies they will have
to use while listening. What is the purpose of listening - to gain information, or to be entertained, or to
evaluate, or to give support or understanding to the speaker? Students will better understand if they
know why are they made to listen in the first place. Remember as well that before starting the while-
listening activities, you have to ensure that students will have no distractions.

While-listening

In planning the while-listening activities, you may need to consider the following

Listening and re-listening. Most students may need to listen to a text several times before they can
understand. Listening becomes more challenging if you' re using adapted audio texts from foreign
speakers. In this case, you may want to inform your students ahead that such audio recordings will be
played more than once so as not to put too much pressure on them. Likewise, depending on the
purpose of the listening task and the listening material, as a teacher, you need to assess how much
your students can take and whether listening once is enough for them. If students are listening
independently, they can stop the audio and think or listen again as needed.

Guided listening and Scaffold note-taking. While-listening focuses on comprehension through

exercises that require selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, etc. If you need your students to
complete something while listening, you have to make sure that they have previewed and understood
the written task first before listening begins. Remember that these tasks are given to guide your
students in the listening task and not to distract them. Thus, you also have to keep writing tasks to a
minimum especially if your goal is comprehension. You can provide listening organizers to help
students focus on important details which can help them deepen their understanding of the listening
material/task. You can also direct them to find clues from the listening text which would help them
understand better. These activities may be done by pairs on in groups. Although listening is an
individual activity, sometimes students become more confident if they are working with a partner
especially in completing while-listening activities.

‘Thinking space'. Just like any classroom activity, students need 'breathing' or thinking space'
between and after listening activities. Give them time to process the information by pausing in
between paragraphs, and check now and then if they are still following. If there. are parts that
students have difficulty understanding, they may start to wander off and lose focus in the activity.
Thus, you have to be keen and address these difficulties while in the process. You may summarize,
use questions, point out significant details so that students will be able to recognize important parts of
the message.

There's a lot of listening texts you can use in your classroom. However, providing students with a
“more real act of communication” through authentic listening texts provides a better way for students
to understand the language when used in the real context. Your listening texts may be from any of the
following:
 o spoken poetry

o radio programs (news, advertisements etc.)

o song lyrics

o a lecture

o video segments like TED Talks, etc.

o tutorial videos

o an anecdote, short stories etc.

o podcasts and vodcasts

o ‘recorded’ announcements in airports,

o bus terminals etc.

Post-listening

As there are many post-listening activities that you can give, remember that this stage serves as a
follow-up to the listening activity done while taking into account the primary purpose of the listening
task. Thus, post-listening activities may focus on:

Responding to the text. It is important that students share their reactions to the content. You can
provide discussion questions or evaluative questions that would guide students in processing what
they feel and the ideas they got after listening. They can give opposing views, connect their ideas
based on their experience, or even answer the questions they have raised during pre-listening. You
can better engage them by providing post-listening tasks that would let students categorize,
synthesize, and clarify ideas or reflect upon the message. You can engage them in synthesizing.

Analyzing linguistic features of the text. Depending on the goal of your listening task, you can also
ask students to analyze language forms from the script. You can also use the listening script/task as
a springboard in teaching grammatical functions.

Integrating speaking and writing. Since listening is a receptive skill, you may also want to design
tasks that would require students to use their productive skills. In this case, students are allowed to
use the language creatively. They may write dialogues and short compositions, role-play a certain
scene, or express their appreciation and reaction through written and oral tasks.
Generic Format of a Listening Lesson

Pre-listening
o Identify vocabulary needs

o Activate interest and motivation

o Put in context

o Set the listening purpose

While-listening
o Provide opportunity for students to re-listen

o Promote guided listening

o Give students 'thinking space

Post-listening.
Activities may focus on:

o Responding to the text.

o Analyzing linguistic features of the text.

o Integrating speaking and writing.

Lesson 3: Assessment in Teaching Listening

Why do we assess

In education, assessment is an integral part of the teaching-learning process. This involves collecting
evidence and making judgments or forming opinions about learners' knowledge skills and abilities"
(Tsagari et.al., 2017). It is part of a teacher's responsibility to be well-informed of not just students’
language level or strengths and difficulties, but also for the teacher to evaluate his/her classroom
practices.

Since listening is an internal activity, it is difficult to know what goes in the mind of the student as
he/she listens. However, teachers can check for retention comprehension, and acquisition through
the different listening tasks in each listening stage. Assessment in listening is as important as
assessment in other macro skills. Teachers have to employ mechanisms on how to monitor students’
progress and performance at different stages of the listening process. Thus, activities are provided in
pre-, while-, and post-listening stages.
An initial assessment may be done during pre-listening tasks where teachers can determine students’
strengths and weaknesses. Formative assessment is done throughout the listening tasks to check
for students' progress and ability to complete the listening tasks. Summative assessment may be
given as part of the post-listening activities to find out how successful learners have been in the
listening tasks or to find out what they can or can't do.

Remember that summative assessment is not an end in itself. Teachers need to reinforce students’
learning by providing scaffolding strategies in teaching listening and giving regular feedback on
students' listening skills.

Other than checking students’ progress and reinforcing learning, assessment is also important as this
will serve as a basis for teachers to make informed decisions as to his/her teaching practices. If
teachers find out that listening tasks are too difficult or too easy (for example) as reflected in students'
performance in the listening tasks, they can make necessary changes. This will also help the teacher
decide on what to do next to help the student improve.

What do we assess

Although there are a lot of listening tests you can give to your students, it is important to ask yourself
the following questions: Am I assessing for students’ ability to comprehend? Am I assessing for
students' ability to decode language components? Am I assessing for students’ ability to focus on
important details after listening?

What is the purpose of the listening tasks and what particular aspect of listening skills are you going
to assess? To help determine this, you have to consider the competencies under Listening
Comprehension (LC) in the K to 12 Curriculum Guide for English. For what particular LC competency
will the student be tested? Moreover, you may also want to delve more into the different types and
purposes of listening tasks. It is important to know what listening text to use and what type of listening
to assess.

Brown (2004) identified the types of listening. Teachers can identify the purpose of the task and then
identify specific listening tests to give to students. Most of these tasks have already been identified in
the previous lesson.

Types/Purpose of What to assess

Listening
Intensive listening *Listening tasks and tests may focus on listening for the perception of the
components of language such as sounds, words, discourse markers, etc.)
(Focusing on the
form of the Examples:
language)
Recognizing Phonological and Morphological Elements

- This form of listening assessment assesses students’ ability to

identify different phonemes correctly and morphemes commonly
found in the English language.
 Paraphrase Recognition

- This type of assessment focuses on students 'ability to paraphrase

the short sentences they hear.

*Listening tasks or tests may focus on student's ability to create an

appropriate short response after listening to short conversations/utterances

Examples:
Responsive
Open-ended Response
listening
- This type of assessment requires students to answer by using
(Showing
vocabulary stored in their lexicon.
understanding)
Appropriate Response to a question

- This type of assessment focuses on the students’ ability to

understand what is being said by responding to a question that has
been asked.

*Listening tasks or tests involve listening to scan for specific information.

Students may be directed to listen for directions, names, numbers, and
figures, facts, events, or grammatical categories.
Selective listening
Examples:
(Picking out
important Listening Cloze
information such as - This form of listening assessment assesses students' ability to
dates, times, identify key vocabulary from within a brief monologue.
locations)
Information Transfer, Chart Filling

- This type of assessment forces students to listen carefully to details

while writing them down into a chart; it creates an authentic
environment from which students can learn English practically.

Extensive listening *Listening tasks or tests may focus on developing a top-down process or
global understanding of spoken language.
(Understanding
longer texts and Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures to listening
connecting the to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose.
ideas) Listening for the gist, for the main idea, and making inferences are all part
of extensive listening.

Examples:

Dictation

- This form of listening assessment assesses students' ability to

 identify phonemic differences within a normal conversation.

Dialogue and multiple-choice comprehension questions

- This form of assessment tests students’ ability to gather the

information they just listened to and apply it in answering questions.

How do we assess
Regardless of macro skill, certain principles serve as guidelines when assessing

Reliability. A reliable test is consistent and dependable. Bachman & Palmer (1996) describes it as
getting the same results when the same tests were to be administrated to the same group of
individuals on two different occasions in two different settings. Considerations may include: choosing
listening tasks and tests that are practical and anchored on real-life situations; considering a range of
short tasks rather than very long texts and tasks; and making sure that the tests assess the actual
skill of the students.

Validity. Brown (2006) states that validity reveals the extent to which the test measures what it is
supposed to measure and nothing else. He added that it is by far the most complex criterion of a
good test. You need to make sure that assessment tasks reflect or measure the competencies or
objectives as stipulated in the curriculum guide. Remember that in this case, you are testing students"
listening skills and not speaking or writing skills.

Practicality. This means that the tests should consider constraints like limitations, time constraints,
case of administration, scoring, etc. Although it is good to give students as many listening tasks as
possible, in reality, there are other competencies (from other macro skills or other subjects) that they
still have to accomplish. Time is often limited, resources may not be available, and students’
concentration is finite. This means that teachers should also consider the quality of the listening tasks
over quantity

Authenticity. Authenticity describes the relationship between the test and the real world. Assessment
tasks should be reflective of real-life situations which would trigger mental processes similar to that of
what students hear and use in their daily life. Moreover, Galaczi (2021) further explained that "tasks
that have interactional authenticity may not necessarily replicate a real-world context, but they elicit a
cognitively authentic linguistic experience Since they create a context in which realistic uses of
language can occur."

Language teachers, particularly in teaching listening, should consider the level and the assessment
methods appropriate for the students. Feedbacking is also an important aspect of assessment. For
students to know how to improve, Grant Wiggins (1998) in Tsagari et.al., (2017) Suggested that they
need to understand three things about their performance:

 what they are doing well,

 what they are struggling with, and

 what they need to do differently to be more successful.

Students should be informed of their progress regularly, at the same time, teachers should
continuously revisit teaching strategies to meet students listening-skill needs.

V. ACTIVITY:
TEST 1: Explain the following.

1. The Stages of listening (Receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding)

2. The Process of Listening (Bottom up vs. Top down)

3. Explain what happens in “Before/Pre Listening, While Listening and /Post Listening”

TEST 2: Do the task and answer the questions.

1. Write down 5 things that make listening more difficult to assess than other skills: speaking,
writing, and reading.

2. What where the different ways you do to assess your listening skills?

3. How did you improve your listening skill? Elaborate your answer?

VI. REFERENCES:

Alda, Rivika C., Abao, Ethel L., et.al., Teaching and Assessment of the Macroskills,
Lorimar Publishing, Inc., 2022