Understanding Listening

Listening is one of the four language skills:

reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Like reading, listening is a receptive skill, as it

involves responding to language rather than
producing it. Listening involves making sense
of the meaningful sounds of language. We do
this by making use of context, language and
our knowledge of the world.

by Rodina Alawady
Key Concepts
Listening involves understanding spoken language.
Spoken language is different from written language.

What differences can you think of between spoken and

written language?
Written Language Spoken Language
Stays on the page: doesn't disappear. Disappears as soon as it is spoken. Sometimes it is spoken fast and
sometimes slowly, with or without pauses.
Indicates sentences and meaningful groups of words through stress and
Uses punctuation and capital letters to show sentences. intonation.

Consists of sounds, single words, sentences, utterances (complete sense

Consists of letters, written words and sentences, and punctuation units) and incomplete sentences joined together in connected speech.
joined together into text.

Often has no visual support. The speaker uses body language to support his/her communication; for
example, gestures (movements of hands or arms to help people
understand us), and facial expressions (the expressions on our faces)

Is usually quite well organised: sentences are complete, follow Is not so well organised; e.g., it contains interruptions, hesitations
one another in a logical sequence and are joined to previous or (pausing when speaking because you're not sure what to say or how to
following sentences. Topics are usually separate from one say it), repetitions and frequent changes of topic.
another.

Usually uses quite exact vocabulary and more complex grammar. Often uses rather general vocabulary and simple grammar.
As we can see, spoken language is generally less planned and less well-structured than
written language.
There are very good reasons for this:
When we speak, we usually don't have time to organise our thoughts and our language
beforehand, so we just say things as we think of them.
Also, when we listen, we need to listen to simply structured messages. As spoken texts
usually disappear as soon as they are said, they need to be simple enough for us to process
and understand in the time that is available.

We can see that written and spoken language have different features because they are
produced and understood in different kinds of circumstances. Their features respond to
these circumstances.

To understand spoken language, we need to be able to deal with all the characteristics of
spoken language listed in the table above.
 Here is an example of spoken language. You can see that it can be less well
organised and less exact than written language: The conversation contains examples of
incomplete sentences, utterances,
Father: How's your homework? You hesitations, sudden topic change, simple
know, your history? grammar and general vocabulary. We make
sense of it partly through our
understanding of language but also
Son: Easy. through making use of the context the
language is spoken in and our knowledge of
Father: You sure? the world. In this, example, our knowledge
of relationships between fathers and sons,
Son: It's just ... I mean all we need to do and of children's attitudes to homework,
may give us some help in understanding,
is, well, just read some stuff. but if we knew the exact context of the
conversation (e.g. where it took place, the
Father: But d'you understand it? father's and son's body language their
attitudes to homework, their relationship),
Son: Yeah. Can I go and play with Tom? we would understand more.
Characteristics of Spoken Language

1 Less Planned and less well strutured

2 Less well organised and less exact

3 Connected speech, linking

Structure of Spoken Communication

Incomplete Sentences Pauses and Hesitations Topic Changes

Speakers often use Spoken language includes

Conversations may
incomplete sentences to natural pauses,
involve frequent changes
convey their thoughts, hesitations, and
of topic, adding fluidity
emotions, and intentions. interruptions, reflecting
and authenticity to
the spontaneity of human
spoken communication.
interaction.
 Like written language, spoken language has different text types:

conversations songs announcements

stories

Stories lectures Advertisements

instructions

Generally they contain different ways of organising language and information, different
grammatical patterns, a particular range of vocabulary, different interaction patterns,
fewer or more participants, etc.
Learning to listen involves:
• learning to be able to understand a range of relevant
(suitable) text types. Connected
• Understanding different speeds of speech and speech
different accents
Some people speak more slowly and with more spoken language in which
pauses. Others speak fast and/or with few pauses words join together to form a
connected stream of sounds

Features of connected speech

o speed of delivery and

accent
o Word and sentence One reason why learners have
stress problems understanding spoken
o Linking sounds and language is because they are not
words together used to dealing with features of
o The use of contracted connected speech.
forms.
 listening subskills

1. Listen for gist/global understanding.

Which subskill we
2. Specific information. use depends on our
reason for listening.
3. Detail or to infer attitude (listening to see what attitude a speaker
is expressing).

4. Listening intensively and extensively

Our reason for

listening
So, for example, when listening to a When listening to the details of some
influences the
train announcement for specific important news we might want to make
amount and kind
information we might simply need to sense of every word to find out what
of information
hear some times. exactly happened and why.
we need to
listen for.

See Unit 5 Reading, page 31 for an explanation of the

terms for the subskills.
We can see that listening involves doing many
things besides understanding the grammar,
vocabulary and functions of what we hear.

It also involves dealing with the

characteristics of spoken language

 Using the context and our knowledge of

the world.
 Understanding different text types.
The characteristics  Understanding different speeds of
of spoken language
speech and accents.
 Making sense of connected speech and
using appropriate listening subskills.
 Key concepts and the language teaching classroom

Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you.

In the classroom, we can give learners the opportunity to listen to many sources of spoken language, e.g. the teacher,
other learners, visitors, CDs, DVDs. This exposes learners to a range of accents, speeds of delivery, text types and listening
skills.

When we listen to a recording we can't see the speaker's body language or the context he/she is speaking in, and we can't ask
the speaker to repeat or explain what they said. This makes listening to recordings more difficult than listening to live speakers.
For this reason, it is a good idea to help students listen to recordings by e.g. pre-teaching key words, setting pre-listening tasks,
focusing initially on gist listening to establish context, and playing the recording a second or even a third time.

Some listening texts in coursebooks are authentic material, i.e. they contain all the features of real spoken language. Other
texts are written especially for language learners and are graded to make them simple enough for particular levels of
learners. Authentic texts allow learners to develop strategies for dealing with the challenge of real language, while
simplified texts (texts that have been made easier) allow them to build up their confidence.

Understanding and showing you have understood are not the same thing. For example, maybe you can understand all of
a story, but you can't tell the story. This means that learners may have understood something but be unable to explain
what they have understood. Tasks such as completing tables, true/false, ticking correct answers in lists, and putting
events in order allow learners to show whether they have understood or not, without needing to use much language.

We have seen that there are many different aspects to listening, e.g. identifying different phonemes and other features of
connected speech. A teacher can focus on these through a listening text or may sometimes prefer to do short activities
just focusing on one of these aspects, e.g. a 5-minute activity on minimal pairs, word stress, sentence stress or dictation.
 Significance of Body Language
We can make a difficult text easier for learners to understand by giving them easy listening tasks, or we can make an easier text more
difficult by giving them harder listening tasks.

The activities in a listening lesson often follow this pattern:

Introductory activities: an introduction to the topic of the text and activities focusing on key vocabulary in the text-to pre-
teach important vocabulary, and to encourage learners to activate their knowledge of the world in relation to the topic.

2 Main activities: a series of listening activities developing different listening subskills and moving from general to more
detailed listening.

3 Post-task activities: activities which ask learners to talk about how the topic of the text relates to their own lives or give
their opinions on parts of the text. These activities require learners to use some of the language they have met in the text.

You may sometimes just want to ask learners to listen to something and not give them any task, e.g. listen to a story, a song, an
explanation. This gives learners the opportunity to listen in a relaxed way and enjoy the experience of listening to a foreign language.

See unit 16 for listening activities and unit 21 for planning lessons.