UNIT 7 LISTENING

Listening is a receptive skill. It involves understanding sounds and making sense of them. For this, we need to realize the context in which we are, the language and what we know about the world. In addition, to listen something first we have to understand spoken language and some features of it such as: stress and intonation, the body language that the speaker uses to convey a message, we have to understand that spoken language is not very organized  because of the hesitations and utterances, it also contains simple grammar and basic vocabulary. Moreover, spoken language has a variety of text types like dialogues, speeches, songs, etc in which people talk with different speed and accent. Thus listening requires to deal with features of connected speech. Furthermore, listening has some subskills which we can use depending on the reason for listening. We can listen for gist or global understanding, specific information, detail or listening intensively or extensively.

Finally, to teach this unit I would expose my students to authentic material in order that they can recognize the different aspects of real spoken language. So they can be exposed to different accents, speeds of delivery, text types, etc. Additionally, according to Verner (2017) some good sources of authentic materials are: TV commercials, news, weather reports, movies and TV, radio, another teacher. Moreover, we don't have to forget to apply the listening process (pre, during, post) because according to Houston (2016) it is very important to plan our listening lesson in order that students can be successful at listening. For pre-listening, I can make students relate their previous knowledge with the topic by discussing, brainstorming, etc. Then, for during listening I can make a variety of listening tasks that allow students to develop their subskills. To finish, for the post stage I can make students recall a piece of information they remember from the listening and discuss in pairs.

Additional information to teach listening:

References:

Verner, S. (2012). 10 Great Sources for Real Listening Practice: Part One. Busy Teacher. Retrieved 17 April 2017, from http://busyteacher.org/9357-10-great-sources-for-real-listening-practice.html

Houston, H. (2016). The Three Stages Of A Listening Activity - EFL Magazine. (2016). EFL Magazine. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://www.eflmagazine.com/the-three-stages-of-a-listening-activity/

TEFL Class Instruction: How to Teach Listening Skills in the ESL Classroom. (2011). YouTube. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2bXeP5dhqI