Listening Is The 1st of The Four Language Skills

Listening is the 1st of the four language skills, which are: 1. Listening, 2. Speaking, 3. Reading, 4. Writing.
Listening is such an important social skill for everyone, children and adult alike. Listening is such an important social skill for everyone, children and adults alike. Teaching children listening skills by reading to them will improve their listening skills and train them in the art of active listening. Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, and television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin). An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis (1981:134) lists a series of microskills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:

predicting what people are going to talk about guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing) Recognizing discourse markers, e. g. , Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc.
Recognizing cohesive devices, e. g. ,such as and which, including linking words, pronouns, references, etc.
understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc. , which give clues to meaning and social setting
Understanding inferred information, e. g., speakers' attitude or intentions.
Listening - Using a song: Prepare the learners before they listen to anything.
Show them pictures of characters from the song. If its a song about teddy bears then bring in some teddy bears to show them. If the teddy bears sing sections of the song then use them as puppets and make them actually sing the song.
Use actions as much as possible to accompany songs so that the children can participate. This will help build their confidence, increase their enjoyment and give them extra clues as to the meaning of the words they are listening to.
They should predict, imagine, what they are going to hear. Again, sticking with the teddy bears, ask them if they think the teddy bear is happy or sad. When they are listening they should always have something to do. They need a reason for listening. You could allocate part of the song to a small cluster of children so they have to listen out for their part and sing along to that part only.
Use the same song again and again. Listening is a difficult skill so building their confidence is vital at all stages of language learning. If they recognize the words they will be much more motivated. This is valid not only from a language point of view but also from a logical point of view. Listening to a song you know and like is always an enjoyable experience. Familiarity helps children feel secure.
Techniques for Using Music with L2 Learners There are a variety of different ways to use music in the classroom. Some teachers prefer to use background music and others use music lyrics as the basis of a lesson. Music can be used to: introduce a new theme or topic (Christmas/colours/feelings) break the ice in a class where students don't know each other or are having difficulty communicating change the mood (liven things up or calm things down) teach and build vocabulary and idioms review material (background music improves memory) teach pronunciation and intonation teach songs and rhymes about difficult grammar and spelling rules that need to be memorized ("i before e", irregular verbs, phrasal verbs) teach reading comprehension
inspire a class discussion teach listening for details and gist
10 Rules of Listening in Young Learner Classes: 1. Although listening is a receptive skill, the students are not and should not be passive while listening; in other words, they should be engaged and/or work in the listening task actively. 2. The students should be engaged with different listening tasks according to their age, learning style, listening capacity and phonological awareness. 3. The language teachers should train the students to listen to the English sounds carefully. 4. The teachers should train the young learners to follow simple instructions to get them ready to develop other language skills. 5. Different listening tasks should be addressed in class: Listen & Do Listen & Draw Listen &Color Listen & Mime Listen & Predict Listen & Respond Listen & Write (needs literacy) Listen & Identify (may need literacy) Listen & Match (may need literacy) Listen & Complete (needs literacy) Listen & Read (model for pronunciation) 6. The students should be given a different task each time theylisten to the same text. (i.e. First, listen to have a general idea; second listen to complete the blanks; third, listen to check your answers) 7. Input through tapes, videos or teacher modeling should be provided; the audio tools should be in good quality. 8. The teachers should be aware of the importance of familiarity (with the
context, language, task, voice ...etc.), difficulty (what is expected as the output) and teachers language (repeating, simplifying, and using gestures, intonation
and formulaic expressions meaning)
that help children to figure out the intended
9. It is important to embed listening into stories, games, routines, rhymes, songs. They may not understand every word, but they can understand the meaning from the context, visuals, and gestures as in real life. 10. Both bottom-up (requiring linguistic knowledge) and top-down (requiring world knowledge) listening should be addressed.
Lesson Plan: 1. Pre activities o introduce a new theme or topic e.g. :(Christmas/colours/feelings) 2. Main Activities o teach and build vocabulary and idioms o teach songs and rhymes about difficult grammar and spelling rules that need to be memorized ("i before e", irregular verbs, phrasal verbs) 3. Post activities o review material (background music improves memory)
Material and Equipment: 1. Tape recorder with taped music or taped conversation 2. Toys
Example: Start listening to children from the very beginning. For example: Smiling, stroking, cuddling, talking to your child and making eye contact are all ways of communicating. Give children choices to help them feel listened to: Do you want to wear the blue or pink socks today?

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Listening is the 1st of the four language skills, which are: 1. Listening, 2. Speaking, 3. Reading, 4. Writing.

Understanding inferred information, e. g., speakers' attitude or intentions.

inspire a class discussion teach listening for details and gist

and formulaic expressions meaning)

that help children to figure out the intended

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