effective listening materials

Listening Materials | James Hobbs | June 4th, 2001

There have been so many postings in the last week that I'm losing track of who said what, but somewhere along the line there was a discussion to the effect of "What is effective listening material?"

Apologies if this is a blindingly obvious point, but I think it's usually the questions/task you set that make or break a listening activity, rather than the material itself. My own pet hate is the irritatingly vague "listen and write down the key words" type task, in which even students who understand perfectly what's going on on the tape have trouble determining what is/isn't a key word. Usually, so do I.

As part of the same debate, somebody brought up the issue of using recordings of native speakers performing a task. I used this approach in my MET assignment ("Directing students' attention to conversation strategies in pair interviews."). I focused on areas such as "openings/closings", "topic-shift markers", "pause fillers", "feedback", etc, and soon noticed a significant improvement in student performance. My basic argument in my assignment was that in a class of students who share a common L1 it is unlikely that students will try to use much English for pause-fillers, feedback, etc, unless you show them examples and make them aware that this is an integral part of the task. All too often (but quite understandably) students opt for a much narrower interpretation of the task requirement; something along the lines of "for each question, produce one grammatically correct sentence that answers it". The Kumaravadivelu article in MET (sorry don't have the reference handy) got me started, as it noted that there is often a significant difference between what the teacher intends the task requirements to be, and what the students interpret them to be. I also found plenty of useful reading in Challenge and Change, and on the TESOL Quarterly and ELTJ CD-ROMs.

James Hobbs
Japan

Re: Listening for key words | Francesca Michalski | June 4th, 2001

James mentioned that his pet hate with listening activities is the one where students are asked to write down the key words, the problem not being one of comprehension, but rather one of knowing what a 'key word' is.

I have also had a similar experience, James, which made me not question the validity of the activity, but rather, how I can better prepare students for it.

One difficulty students encounter with listening is a desire to understand everything rather than the gist, which, when unfulfilled leads to stress and a subsequent inability to understand anything. As the grammar or structure words change radically in the spoken language due to weak forms, contractions, elision etc students find it difficult to identify them, however to understand the gist of a conversation, focusing on the content words: verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs, is often enough. The task of identifying key words therefore seems an excellent one theoretically; as it shows learners that it is not necessary to understand everything in order to get the gist of a conversation and focuses them on the content or 'key' words as being the key to comprehension.

Ways to prepare students for this type of listening task would involve showing them what we mean by keys words and that these are normally the ones which are most stressed and, therefore, easiest to understand. The teacher could start either by giving students the beginning of the tape script or asking them to underline the words which carry the most meaning or information in the dialogue. Then, the students can listen for these words on the tape and the teacher might help students notice how many of them carry the main stresses in the sentence. Next, the teacher could, together with the students, discuss and identify the content words in the next part of the tape. Finally, the students can listen to the last part of the tape and practice noting individually what they consider to be the key words, perhaps with the aim of using these to summarize what they have heard orally in pairs afterwards.

I've tried doing this type of preparation with groups of learners of several different levels and it has always been successful. Tell me what you think, James.

Francesca

Re: Listening | Raymond Sheehan | June 4th, 2001

I would like to have access to more and more listening materials, which are task-based, and not simply listening exercises. In some common kinds of listening exercise, the student listens in order to complete a table, a form, a schedule, a report, etc. And that's it! It would be more meaningful, I think, if students listened for meaningful and realistic (rather than classroom-based) reasons and then actually used the information that they had acquired through listening in order to do something else with it. In other words, the end of the listening task should not be to show the teacher a completed piece of information but to use that information in an integrated task-based sequence.

I also have some misgivings where the role of student-as-listener is as an eavesdropper on some native speakers' conversations. I think that giving him an active role as a participant in the listening process is more useful. What is the value of those "radio interviews" from such bestsellers as Headway where the student listens and does exercises that a real listener to radio programs would never do? As the student completes the exercises, we do indeed get clear signs that he is identifying the correct information and comprehending. But is he doing it in a context and in a format that prepare him for realistic information-processing situations outside the classroom?

At present I am teaching towards an exam that is cloned on PET. Students overhear short dialogues in the first section and then choose the one picture from four that most accurately represents the dialogue. Other exercises follow which use multiple-choice decisions, true or false and gap filling: all types of "tasks" which give me no meaningful indication of how well the student-as-listener will deal with reality. I only know what he is like as a test-taking strategist.

Introducing authentic materials into the classroom is a major step forward. Devising realistic tasks to exploit that authentic material is where the most interesting challenges lie.

Raymond Sheehan
UAE

Re: Listening | James Hobbs | June 5th, 2001

Francesca, I agree with everything you say, and actually I don't think we really had a disagreement to start with. You're saying that with a carefully structured pre-listening activity a "key-words" task can be very fruitful, and I'd certainly agree with that. What bugs me is the way such tasks are often presented in a supposedly "ready-to-go" format, when in actual fact they require a lot of extra thought and effort on the part of the teacher to make them successful. So I'm not trying to make a case for or against any particular form of task here, I'm just saying that whatever we have your students listen to, we mustn't forget that it's what we have them do before, during, and after listening that will determine how useful this is as a learning experience.

Raymond makes a convincing argument for more task-based listening activities, and I can relate to many of the points mentioned. Many of the texts I use are full of listening activities that illustrate the language point focused on in the unit, but in which the task itself has no direct connection with what comes before or after it. I often feel a sense of anticlimax after the activity has been completed, and find myself saying something like "Ummm ...well done everyone ....err ...now let's look at the next page, shall we?"! Raymond, you say,

The end of the listening task should not be to show the teacher a completed piece of information but to use that information in an integrated task-based sequence.

I for one would certainly welcome more ready-to-go materials that took that approach.

What do the rest of you think?

James Hobbs

Re: Listening Materials, the debate rages... | Andy Boon | June 5th, 2001

After researching for my MAP assignment I came to the conclusion that my students are reduced to OVERHEARERS in the classroom and would like to change their role to reflect the more ACTIVE role of listening........

I agree with James that it is what we do before, during and after the listening that will determine how useful it is as a learning experience. In addition, students need to establish a purpose for listening;

Why am I listening?

Why is this relevant to me and my goals for English?

In this respect, I would like to devise some materials in which the students have an active role in shaping the content and purpose of the material.

One example is telephone English in which the students establish the context, participants, purpose and this becomes the focus of the interaction. If the teacher can then phone the students from outside of the class to a cell phone within the class, the interaction is authentic and created by the students. It is also interactive.

This may be the basis of my MAP assignment:

Any thoughts?

Andy

Re: Listening | Jonathan Clifton | June 5th, 2001

I did my MAP assignment a few months ago on authenticity and task based listening. Raymond- it used a task based approach with the students first doing the task and then analyzing native speakers doing the task (taking down a telephone message).

Andy, the assignment puts in writing my ideas on some of the themes you developed in the questionnaire.

Anyway, it wasn't a 'corker' of an assignment (b- grade) but if anybody is interested on how I tried to put develop some task based listening material, how it worked out and what my thoughts were then I'd be happy to email the assignment.

By the way, I think it would be useful if more assignments (finished - or unfinished) were circulated especially if we are working on or have just worked on similar themes. What do you all think?? Certainly I have just benefited a lot by having a fellow participant read a draft assignment as a 'critical friend'.

Best

Jonathan Clifton

Re: Listening | Stephan Hegglin | June 5th, 2001

Andi, Raymond, Francesca, James, Jonathan and who else is interested,

I'd be interested in any materials, especially if they are task based as Raymond pointed out. I would certainly welcome Jonathan's assignment. So far, I have never seen another assignment (But I must admit that I have only finished FND and MET so far).

Andy, I have been thinking about telephone interaction for a while and have made first experiences. For me it would be ideal to have materials where telephone calls already work as starters, giving the students first messages or clues. They then would have to process the information and call back to someone else (of course it would be the teacher again) gathering some additional information ......until the task would be solved. Like this the class could be split up in groups, solving slightly different tasks.

Stephan Hegglin

Re: Listening | Catherine Buhler | June 6th, 2001

Following on from Stephan's thoughts about telephone calls, I'd like to share an exercise that I often give my adult beginners. It can also be combined with learning the alphabet, as many of them think this is very basic and they know the alphabet well!

Using a Lonely Planet guide to Britain, I select a hotel somewhere in England for each student, giving him or her the telephone number, name and location of the hotel. They then have to call the hotel and ask for a brochure and price list. We practice some of the phrases they may need in class and they are then given two weeks to complete the exercise. The task has been completed when a brochure addressed to the student arrives in the post and they show this to the rest of the class, reporting back on their telephone conversation. Depending on how self-confident they are, some report back longer conversations than others, but so far none has hung up because they didn't understand something. Sometimes the addresses look rather strange, but they do arrive (luckily Switzerland is a small country).

One intermediate student admitted to me that he thought he knew the alphabet well, but when he had to spell his own name and address he realized that it isn't so easy.

One word of advice though, always pick different hotels or else they may realize that something fishy is going on with all these strange requests.

This is authentic English and some of my students have been delighted to have booked hotels for holidays by telephone afterwards. Isn't that what it's all about?

Thanks for taking time to listen to a newcomer.

Catherine Buhler
in rainy Switzerland

Re: Catherine's exercise (listening) | Jerry Talandis Jr. | June 6th, 2001

Hi Catherine,

I liked your exercise. I think making English real is the way to go whenever possible. It's the scariest thing for many students, but when they successfully accomplish the task, they feel all that much better. That's what makes learning worthwhile.

I've tried similar exercises here in Japan, despite the fact we don't have an ESL situation here. If only Japanese people really needed English! Ah, that's another long story!

In EFL settings, using the Internet has been most successful for me. In my writing class, for example, I have the students create a portfolio of short paragraphs about themselves and their lives, and then toward the middle of the year have them find an email friend to exchange messages with. They can use their portfolio as the basis for sharing about their lives.

In another class I was teaching how to write business letters. I had my students send away for information from a school in an English speaking country. The idea was good, but few students got responses, so that was too bad. Still, the plan was solid.

Keep up the good work!

Jerry Talandis