Although listening and speaking are the most widely used skills in the mother tongue, the same skills are generally restricted to the classroom activity in the foreign language learning process.
Besides, teachers expect skills to be transferred from the mother tongue and so get for granted that students are well trained in the art of listening. After all, they have listened to their language since they were born or even before.
Consequently, teachers believe the only reason why students have a poor performance in understanding what they listen in English is their limited knowledge of the foreign language and consider that they only need to study more and have more oral input.
That’s only part of the truth because most of the times teachers don’t consider the students’ listening habits. Most of them have bad listening habits such as tuning out if they consider the subject boring, letting emotions block the subject or daydreaming.
Human beings hear because their bodies are physically provided with all the necessary mechanisms to capture noises around them involuntarily. Listening, on the other hand, is a voluntary act and human beings listen only if they have decided to do so. Consequently, students can block out any bothering sound coming into their brain and pretend to listen.
An appropriate communicative climate will generate a better understanding so before starting the class students should calm down and concentrate. This can be achieved closing their eyes, breathing deeply and exhaling the air slowly. That way they’ll relax and put aside thoughts and concerns not related to the listening task.
Together with this good disposition, an open-minded attitude free of prejudices and assumptions will let students follow the thread of the conversation or speech at ease.
But how can teachers control all those hidden features? Prompt students to ask questions.Questioning is a key skill in the learning process that conveys empathy, expands understanding and encourage students to quest self-discovery and problem-solving.
Do your students ask questions in the history or biology classes? If they don’t, ask your colleagues to elicit questions about what students are being taught and if they feel stupid, remind them about Confucius thought: He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not is a fool for life.
Asking questions will give students the opportunity to negotiate the meaning and understand the message thoroughly. Every listener comes to the listening activity with a peculiar background, attitude and personal experience which get active at the moment of giving meaning to what he or she listens to.
Another way of improving students’ listening is to make them listen to short statements and paraphrase them. If the student listens to “I don’t have any money” the receptor can say something like “So you mean you’re penniless” and the speaker should nod his head or utter an affirmative answer.
This practice can be used in a group where one acts as a speaker and two or three as receptors. They can repeat the information, paraphrase and add some new idea to the original one.
You can also provide the same piece of info to three or four different groups and after working as explained above they can share the final output.
Listening actively and asking questions are great tools not only to help students to use the language and express the same idea in different ways but also to improve their listening habits; something they’ll certainly transfer to heir mother tongue.
Monica Haydee Di Santi is an ESL teacher and has a master degree in Linguistics. She has been a teacher and speaker in Chile, Argentina and USA. She’s also a published translator and writer. Her work has been published in Mexico, USA, Hong Kong and India. She’s the author of www.e1-network.com