Teaching Listening Comprehension: Unit 5

Unit 5
Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills
Teaching Listening
Comprehension
Index
Scheme 3
Key Ideas 4
5.1. Introduction and Objectives 4
5.2. The Process of Listening 5
5.3. Types of Listening: Perception, Understanding 9
© Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR)
5.4. Methodological Considerations 13

5.5. Activities, Tasks and Resources in the EFL
Classroom 17
5.6. Bibliographic References 24
In Depth 26
Test 29
TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
TYPES OF LISTENING: METHODOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES, TASKS,

THE PROCESS OF LISTENING
PERCEPTION, UNDERSTANING CONSIDERATIONS AND RESOURCES
The properties of consciousness Bottom-up and top-down Compensatory strategies Conditions for learning through
approach input
Non-verbal cues Metacognitive strategies

Rost’s classification Listening text: Content and
delivery
Allophonic variations Visuals
Vandergrift’s classification
Sources of listening
Listening stages
Assessment
Scheme
Unit 5. Scheme
3
Key Ideas
5.1. Introduction and Objectives
The purpose of this unit is to examine different perspectives about listening in order
to identify those that suit best our teaching practice. It provides an overview of recent
developments in teaching listening comprehension and how they influence the type
of activities we can effectively use with certain target groups.
In the first section, the speaking process is discussed in a broad sense. Phenomena
that influence the listening process and can make word recognition a hard task are
also described. The second section reviews the most relevant classifications of types
of listening. The last two sections outline some learning strategies and provide
examples of their possible application in the classroom.
The objectives of this unit are as follows:
 To identify the essential characteristics of the process of listening and the

potential difficulties learners can encounter.
 To distinguish different classifications of types of listening and different ways to
apply them in class.
 To recognize the most important features of a listening text and its use in the
language classroom.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
5.2. The Process of Listening
While it may seem that hearing and listening are the same process, we should be
aware of the differences between these two processes. Rost (2011) provides the
following definition of hearing: “Hearing is the primary physiological system that
allows for reception and conversion of sound waves” (p. 11). It plays an important
role in our orientation in space. Although listening involves the same sound
perception that also initiates hearing, the main difference is “a degree of intention”
(Rost, 2011, p. 12). The intention to understand and to be understood related to
intentionality is ‘consciousness’ (Rost, 2011, p. 17). Consciousness emerges when
two cognitive processes coincide:
1. The brain identifies an outside object or event as consisting of independent

properties.
2. The brain sets up the listener as the central agent who willingly and purposefully
witnesses this object or event (Rost, 2011, p. 17).
Rost identifies five properties of consciousness that affect listening.
THE PROPERTIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness is embedded in a surrounding area of peripheral awareness.
Consciousness is dynamic. Its focus moves constantly.
Consciousness has a point of view. One’s model of the world is centered on a self.
Consciousness has a need for orientation. Consciousness can shift from attending to
present to attending to imaginary or abstract references.
Consciousness can focus on only one thing at a time.
Table 1. The properties of consciousness. Source: adapted from Rost, 2011, p. 18.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Attention is generally considered to be the beginning of the process of listening. As
mentioned above, our consciousness can focus on only one thing at a time. So, when
there are multiple sources of information simultaneously, it has to select which one
deserves our attention. Although we can usually control shift of attention from one
source to another, sometimes our reaction is instinctive.
Processing language is considered one of the most complex neurological

mechanisms, as it involves several processes at the same time. Listeners differ in a
variety of characteristics, such as neural transmission speed, flexibility, connections,
and functional circuits, among others. Some learners can use higher-level listening
strategies such as cognitive maps.
Speakers operate in time, which means that listeners have to process speech in real
time, too, “to group the speech into a small number of constituents that can be
worked easily within short-term memory. The metaphor of the sausage machine is
sometimes used to describe the nature of the listener’s task: Taking the language as
it comes out and separating it into constituents” (Rost, 2011, pp. 27-28). Speech is
not produced as an interrupted stream, but in small units, often called intonation
units. These units “consist of phrases or clauses and average two or three seconds of
length” (Rost, 2011, p. 30). It becomes clear that listeners make use of both linguistic
and paralinguistic signals in interpreting the message. Thus, it is essential to help
students understand that spoken English cannot be properly understood without the
study of paralinguistic cues. Paralinguistic signals usually complement or confirm the
information obtained from linguistic signals, but they can sometimes contradict it.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Non-verbal cues
Exophoric signals When the speaker holds a picture or writes on the board
Kinesic signals Speaker’s body movements
Baton signals Hand and head movements related to emphasis and prosodic cadence
Directional gaze Eye movement used to direct the audience’s attention to a reference
Systematic gestures or movements of any part of the body, e.g. extending
Guide signals one’s arms or leaning
Table 2. Non-verbal cues. Source: adapted from Rost, 2011, pp. 50-51.
Speech is processed word by word, hence at the heart of understanding units of

spoken language is word recognition. However, as word order in a sentence is
different in different languages, learners should often wait for a stream of words to
be completed to understand the meaning of the whole. Word recognition is not
limited to recognizing its sense, listeners should be able to recognize to which word
class it belongs and its relationship with other words, for instance in collocations.
It is not an easy task for EFL learners to perceive English sounds accurately, especially
when these sounds do not exist in their native language, for instance, short and long
vowels like /ɪ/ in ship and /iː/ in sheep. In Spanish /b/ and /v/ are often pronounced
identically, which makes it difficult for Spanish learners of English to distinguish
between these two sounds in words like ban and van in listening activities. Spanish
learners might also have difficulty in perceiving the difference between /ʃ/ in sheep
/s/ in seep. Teachers should anticipate these difficulties and provide suitable activities
to avoid confusion. Learners may also struggle with the sequences and juxtaposition
of sounds in English, particularly with consonant clusters, e.g. they can hear ‘crips’
instead of crisps (Ur, 1984, p. 12).
Another reason why learners can mishear some parts of a sentence are the stress
and intonation patterns in English. Sometimes learners do not recognize certain
words, because they pronounce them in a wrong way, i.e. they pronounce them
differently from native speakers.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
It is therefore essential for the learner to achieve familiarity with the common
phonemes of the target language as soon as possible is he is to be an efficient
listener. […] if he learns to pronounce the sounds accurately himself, it will be
much easier for him to hear them correctly when said by someone else.
(Ur, 1984, p. 12)
Although teachers tend to focus on the pronunciation of specific sounds, rather than
on intonation and rhythm, students should be made aware of the importance of
stress and rhythm to understand an utterance correctly. Teaching rhythm in
connected speech is as important for improving listening skills as teaching common
phonemes. Learners might be surprised to know that native speakers often rely on
stress to identify words correctly and incorrect stress patterns. An additional
difficulty is the production of allophonic variations as a result of three phenomena
in connected speech: assimilation, elision, and reduction.
Assimilation occurs because the production of spoken discourse is faster, and the
speaker intends to make it also easier. Yule (2010) defines assimilation as the process
“when two sound segments occur in sequence and some aspect of one segment is
taken or ‘copied’ by the other” (p. 47). An example of assimilation is the sentence I
have to go in connected speech. The voiceless /t/ sound in to affects the preceding
voiced /v/ sound in have and the result is [hæftə]. Yule (2010) describes elision as the
“process of not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the
deliberately careful pronunciation of a word in isolation” (p. 48). For example, we
asked him will sound like [wiæstəm]. He reminds us that this should be viewed as
efficiency, not laziness, and that trying to avoid assimilation and elision will sound
quite artificial. Griffen (1998) defines phonological vowel reduction or centralization
as “a phenomenon in which the vowel in an accented syllable is shifted toward the
mid-central position when the accent is removed from the syllable” (p. 17). An
example of reduction is the pronunciation of the weak form of ‘and’ in bread and
butter, as [ənd] or [ən].

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Think about it!
What activities can help students cope with assimilation, elision, and reduction? How can
we adapt these activities to the learner’s language proficiency and age? Can learners be
aided by strategies that involve paying attention to visual signals?
Other factors that affect speech processing are interferences from background noise
or fatigue. Long listening comprehension activities can be particularly tiring for
learners if they have to concentrate hard in order to understand the text.
5.3. Types of Listening: Perception, Understanding
Researchers have acknowledged the importance of listening in language acquisition

and teaching listening skills has attracted greater attention than before. Many
teachers still use mainly comprehension-based approach in the EFL classroom. It is
not surprising that students find it hard, particularly at lower proficiency levels. To be
able to understand the kind of problems students encounter when doing a listening
activity, we should examine the types of listening and their characteristics (For
further information about possible problems students might face and some solutions,
see “How to improve your listening skills” in the “In-Depth” section below). Although
some types intersect, overlap, and are present in one way or another in most lists,
there is not a unique classification of types of listening.
Nation and Newton (2009) identify two broad types of listening:
 One-way listening: Typically associated with the transfer of information

(transactional listening).
 Two-way listening: Typically associated with maintaining social relations
(interactional listening).

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Unit 5. Key ideas
The most common classification of approaches to listening is based on the difference
between bottom-up process and top-down process of listening.
Bottom-up approach to listening
Bottom-up processing implies starting from what we know about sounds, words and
discourse markers and then we assemble the units to understand the whole.
Students “segment the stream of speech into its constituent sounds, link these
together to form words, chain the words together to form clauses and sentences and
so on” (Nunan, 1991, p. 17). Nation and Newton (2009) describe bottom-up
processes as those that “the listener uses to assemble the message piece-by-piece
from the speech stream, going from the parts to the whole” (p. 40).
Top-down approach to listening
In order to improve learners’ listening skills, it is important to activate prior

knowledge. The idea of prior knowledge relates to top-down model of language
processing. Thus, this model is based to a great extent on the listener. In top-down
processes, the listener goes from the whole to the parts, i.e. “the listener uses what
they know of the context of communication to predict what the message will contain,
and uses parts of the message to confirm, correct or add to this. The key process here
is inferencing” (Nation & Newton, 2009, p. 40). For further information on bottom-
up and top-down approaches, see “Listening in Language Learning” in the “In-Depth”
section).
There is not a universal agreement about which model is more effective and recent
research shows that a combination of the two is the best way to account for the
variety of listeners, listening contexts, and listening difficulties that students can
encounter.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
On his part, Rost identifies six types of listening described in the table below.
Types of listening according to Rost
Intensive Focus on phonology, syntax, lexis
Selective Focus on main ideas, pre-set tasks
Interactive Focus on becoming active as a listener; attempt to clarify meaning or form
Extensive Focus on listening continuously, managing large amounts of listening input
Responsive Focus on learner response to input
Autonomous Focus on learner management on progress, navigation of ‘help’ options
Table 3. Compensatory strategies. Source: adapted from Rost, 2011, p. 183.
 Intensive listening implies close listening and is language-focused. Students can

listen for details, such as specific words or grammatical units. Examples of
intensive listening include dictation, shadowing, error identification, etc. In an
intensive listening activity, the teacher can provide a text with missing information
or containing some mistakes or the text can contain complex grammatical
structures.
 Selective listening means that students focus only on what they want to hear. Pre-
listening stage is important in this type of listening. Teachers can use visual
support or pre-teach vocabulary, for instance, and in turn, students can take notes
while listening. The topic of the listening activity can be discussed in advance, to
activate prior knowledge.
 Interactive listening refers to listening in a conversation. The listener can ask for
clarification and negotiate meaning. Interactive listening, which presents a
number of variations, is a common practice in the FL classroom. An example of
this type of listening is when two students engage in a conversation on a topic in
class.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
 Extensive listening refers to listening usually with a long-term goal. It can include:
• Academic listening (the reception and understanding of spoken discourse, such
as lectures at university, which include complex structures and terminology
relating to a particular field).
• Sheltered language instruction (instruction is made understandable, using
physical activities, visuals, and cooperative strategies, among others, and taking
care not to overload students with information).
• Listening for pleasure (removes the stress of listening for details and is highly
motivating).
 Responsive listening means that the goal of the activity is the listener’s response,
which is affective rather than informational.
 Autonomous listening refers to independent listening without the guidance of the
teacher. It can include some of the previous types of listening. Films are a valuable
source for autonomous listening activities (for further information on teaching
listening through films, see “How can film help you teach or learn English?” in the
“In-Depth” section).
Larry Vandergrift provides a different classification of types of listening.
Types of listening according to Vandergrift

Academic Involves more than lectures and note-taking. An example of the complexity of
listening academic listening is the widespread use of metaphor in university lectures
This type of listening is also called ‘collaborative listening’. Taking part in a
Bidirectional conversation means that the listener has to process the message and respond
listening in real time. Clarification strategies are essential in bidirectional listening
Narrow Students listen repeatedly to oral texts on topics of their choosing, at their
listening own pace, without the threat of evaluation
Listening to The Tomatis approach uses special headsets to enhance sound perception,
train the ear allowing the listener to perceive sounds through bone as well as air
Table 4. Types of listening. Source: adapted from Vandergrift, 2004, pp. 15-17.
Vandergrift (2004) argues that we should also take into account the sociolinguistic
dimension of listening in listening instruction (p. 17).

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Think about it!
Films are a great source for autonomous listening. Think of five criteria that will help you
decide which film to use. Then think of a film that meets these criteria. How will the
lesson start? How will it end?
5.4. Methodological Considerations
Listening was considered a passive activity, focused on comprehension, but the

approach to teaching listening has gradually evolved over the years. Researchers
have shown its importance in integrating the four macro skills and have pointed to
the need to make students aware of the listening process itself, not only of the
meaning of a message. The communicative approach brought with it activities
involving real-life listening in real time. Many listening activities are still limited to
listening comprehension despite recent research findings that show the benefits of
encouraging listeners “to understand what listening involves, to reflect on difficulties
and contemplate solutions, to discuss the application of knowledge from particular
listening experiences to future listening events” (Santos & Graham, 2018, p. 23).
Sometimes the term ‘listening comprehension’ is used to mean any type of listening
activity, which can be to a certain extent misleading. Anyway, comprehension is
essential in the listening process and although the starting point is linguistic
processing, the key to effective listening is the successful integration of different
processes. To provide students with strategies, we should consider that in order for
the new information to be built into the knowledge structure, it should relate to the
learner’s own experience and prior knowledge. The connection between new and
given can be activated through a series of linguistic and paralinguistic cues. For
instance, prominent words (underlined in the example below) can help the listener
understand the message. Compare: He is writing a new novel.
He is writing a new novel.

He is writing a new novel.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Modules of knowledge are often referred to as schemata. When we listen to or read
something, we create new schema or update the existing schemata. For instance,
when learners are listening to an airport announcement, existing schemata about
airport announcements heard before are activated in order to understand the new
information. Activating a schema also allows the learner to make inferences about
the meaning of an utterance. Learners must identify, classify, and evaluate new
information quickly. They might decide that it aligns with or contradicts their own
experience or prior knowledge. Given the complexity of the process, sometimes
there is a breakdown in processing. In such cases, learners should employ strategies
to compensate for gaps in comprehension. Rost provides a list of such compensation
strategies.
Compensatory strategies
Skipping Omitting part of the text from processing

Using a superordinate concept to cover the essence of what has not been
Approximation understood
Filtering Compressing of longer message
Incompletion Maintaining an incomplete proposition in memory, waiting for clarification
Substitution Substituting a word or concept for one that is not understandable
Table 5. Compensatory strategies. Source: adapted from Rost, 2011, p. 70.
Undeniably, context is essential for listening comprehension. Context includes the

speaker and listener, topic, setting, purpose, and channel, among other elements.
Context might also help the listener to infer the speaker’s feelings and thus better
understand the message. Compensatory strategies can draw on shared experience
or common context, in particular in texts related to socially significant events.
In many ways, the difference between more successful and less successful listeners
is that the former uses a wider variety of strategies and combine them effectively.
Studies also show that more proficient students use more metacognitive strategies,
while less proficient student, in particular, adults rely more on translation. Explicit

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Unit 5. Key ideas
strategy instruction will help students be more efficient and autonomous learners.
However, explicit instruction is not unproblematic. For instance, young learners
might not have the cognitive maturity to activate and combine purposefully different
listening strategies. It is also true that adults find it difficult to perceive and master FL
pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm, which affects their listening skills.
Vandergrift (2004) notes that “prosodic features such as stress and intonation are
important for word segmentation in listening comprehension” (p. 13). What is
particularly difficult for adults is lexical segmentation or recognizing a word in
connected speech. They tend to transfer native cues to the foreign language which
slows down word recognition. Lexical transfer, i.e. when two words have the same
origin (e.g. English school, Spanish escuela, Italian scuola, from Latin schola). Learners
should be made aware of the danger of lexical transfer, because of the existence of
multiple examples of “false friends”, e.g. Spanish sensible and English sensible.
Visuals are great help to listening. In fact, listening comprehension is the result of “a
complex interplay of linguistic and extralinguistic, contextual (often visual)
information cues” (Mueller, 1980, p. 335). For visuals to be helpful, they should
provide direct information about the utterance/text. Otherwise, apart from the
spoken message, learners have to process the images, too. For instance, Bejar,
Douglas, Jamieson, Nissan, & Turner (2000) distinguish two types of visuals: situation
visuals and content visuals. Situation visuals provide information about the
participants, setting, text type. The role of the participants is usually presented in the
visual, e.g. “a photograph of a professor in a lecture hall filled with students” (Bejar
et al. 2000, p. 11). Content visuals relate to the text material, e.g. a key word or phrase
on the blackboard, a picture of a house with gables in a talk on architecture, an
outline of the main points of a lecture, or a diagram of a process that was orally
described (Bejar et al., 2000, pp. 12-13). It is important to recognize the contextual
nature of listening and be aware that decontextualized materials will hinder the
learning process.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the
shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits
then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the
North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea. Of their original home the
Hobbits in Bilbo's time preserved no knowledge.
Figure 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Official Trailer.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aStYWD25fAQ
Using trailers is a great way to teach listening comprehension with the

help of visuals. Think of an activity that includes content visuals, as well
as situation visuals. Will you employ authentic listening, caption-assisted
listening or both? Why/why not? Will students take notes? If so, what will
you ask them to do?
Listening instruction should include a wide variety of texts that present the
opportunity to focus on vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, but also on the listening
process itself. Students can be engaged in prediction, problem-solving, and
evaluation, among other metacognitive strategies in order to teach them how to
monitor their own listening process. Being able to monitor and re-adjust their
listening process will boost their self-confidence. One of the most important
metacognitive strategies for effective listening is self-regulation. It implies deeper
understanding of the listening process and a more reflexive self-assessment, i.e. a

strategies-based approach. But what is a learning strategy?

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Learning strategies refer to “any attitudinal plans or behavioural devices that
students use to acquire knowledge or skills. In particular, the notion of
learning strategies is used to focus on those plans that aim to increase
transfer of learning from a controlled, pedagogic experience to a more
generalised realm” (Rost, 2011, p. 156).
Students can be instructed to use strategies they can apply in life-long learning or to
a particular context or activity. What is important in the learning process is not to
employ a great number of strategies, but to find the strategy that suits one’s needs
best, adapt it to one’s characteristics and goals, and gain autonomy.
5.5. Activities, Tasks and Resources in the EFL

Classroom
One of the main problems for teachers is to define the difficulty of the listening
activity. The difficulty depends on a number of factors and the following questions
can help us design the task that best adapts to the learner’s proficiency level: Is the
student familiar with the topic, is information in the text organized and sequenced in
a clear way, does the text provide enough information on the topic, etc.? Nation and
Newton cite Krashen’s (1981) emphasize the importance of comprehensible input
and summarize the conditions as follows.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Conditions for learning through input
Meaningful Is the input meaningful?
Interesting Does the input contain information that will attract students’ attention?
What learnable language, ideas, skills or text types will learning meet
New items through the listening experience?
Understanding Can learners understand the input?
Stress free How are stress and anxiety being controlled?
Table 6. Conditions for learning through input. Source: adapted from Nation & Newton, 2009, p. 43.
Think about it!

Stress seems to be one of the conditions that often accompany listening activities and
prevent students from listening effectively. Think of three ways to relieve stress and
anxiety in a listening activity in the EFL classroom.
J. J. Wilson (2008) discusses what makes a good listening text from a slightly different
perspective, although some criteria inevitably overlap with the conditions mentioned
in the table above. He groups the factors that determine a good listening text into
content and delivery.
 Content:
• Interest factor: The text should match students’ interests and needs. Needless
to say, it is not an easy task to find a text that is of interest to all the students
in a class.
• Entertainment factor: Ideally, the text should also be enjoyable. This factor
relates to the interest factor.
• Cultural accessibility: Some texts might be difficult or impossible to understand
due to the cultural differences between the L1 culture and FL culture.

• Speech acts: Speech acts include questions, commands, offers, exclamations,
and request, among others. It will be easier for students at lower proficiency
levels to understand texts that contain predictable speech acts.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
• Discourse structures: Discourse structure refers to the way a text is organized,
i.e. how meaning and form relate. Cohesion and coherence are particularly
important when we reflect on this factor.
• Density: This factor refers to the amount of information in the text.
• Language level: Complexity, formal and informal vocabulary, collocations,
phrasal verbs, etc. are also to be taken into account for the choice of a good
listening text.
 Delivery:
• Length: The length of the recording should be adapted to the listening purpose,
e.g. intensive and extensive listening. We should also take into account that
listening activities are usually tiring for the students.
• Quality of recordings: The quality of the recording is an important aspect of a
good listening texts. Teachers should bear in mind that it is already stressful for
students to do listening comprehension activities and bad quality will only
increase anxiety levels.
• Speed and number of speakers: Speed can be an obstacle for listening
comprehension, especially when there are more than two speakers.
• Accent: There is an ongoing debate as to whether we should select British,
Australian, North American, etc. accent, which takes us to the question of using
or not authentic material for listening comprehension. (Wilson, 2008, pp. 26-
30)
Sources of listening are not limited to textbook recordings. Wilson points to teacher
talk, student talk, guest speakers, television, radio, videos, and songs, among
others. He provides a list of genres and their linguistic features and benefits for the
students: television and radio news and weather reports, film clips and trailers,
television advertisements and documentaries, episodes in a (comedy) series,

animation, television or radio talk shows/interviews, television or radio game
shows/quiz shows (Wilson, 2008, p. 51).

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Unit 5. Key ideas
Nunan (1991) claims that listening tasks can be classified differently depending on
the criteria and mentions: “tasks which involve the comprehension of aural texts in
which there is only one speaker, as opposed to two or more speakers” and tasks
which involve “comprehending interactive language” (interaction can be social or
transactional) (p. 25). Nunan also discusses a technique called ‘dictogloss’, in which
students are expected to employ both bottom-up and top-down learning strategies.
In it “the teacher reads a passage at normal speed to learners who listen and write
down as many words as they can identify. Then they collaborate in small groups to
reconstruct the text on the basis of the fragments which they have written down”
(Nunan, 1991, p. 28).
Think about it!

How will you prepare students for a dictogloss activity? How will you organize the
groups?
Nation and Newton (2009) pay special attention to dictation in their work on
listening. For them, the text used for dictation should contain connected language of
between 100 and 150 words (p. 59). Although it is considered by many a traditional
listening activity, it can still provide a valuable opportunity to focus on language and
accuracy. It is important to choose a text that contains interesting information and
known vocabulary presented in a new way. Traditional dictation has variations that
can help teachers avoid boring routines. Variations include one-chance dictation (the
teacher reads the text only once), guided dictation (the teacher writes some words
on the board to help students focus on difficult items), or peer dictation (students
work in groups and one of them reads the texts aloud for the rest of the group).
Dictogloss is another variation of traditional dictation. Dicto-comp is in a way similar
to dictogloss: The teacher reads the text and then students write what they
remember without any further support.
The three stages of a listening activity are: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-
listening.

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Unit 5. Key ideas
1. Pre-listening: Teachers can evaluate the students’ comprehension (diagnostic
approach). The focus is on the correctness. This approach will detect students’
strengths and weakness and this will help teachers design suitable activities to
target these difficulties. Audios are usually played twice, but in this case, teachers
can play the audio more than twice. After that, teachers discuss with their
students what prevented them from understanding certain parts and provide
them with some strategies that will help them overcome the problems detected
in the pre-listening task. Making students aware of listening problems they will
encounter will prepare them for the task. Pre-listening stage can focus on
grammar or vocabulary, but the teacher should also try to activate previous
knowledge on the topic of the listening activity. Teachers can support listening by
providing prior experience or building a bridge between the listening activity and
students’ prior knowledge.
2. While-listening: In the while-listening stage students hear the input usually twice
(or three times), although the teacher might decide to employ a variation of an
activity that requires students to listen to the input only once. Students should be
aware of the purpose for listening. Some common listening activities are as
follows:
• Listening for the gist: We listen for gist when we want to know the main ideas
of a text.
• Listening for specific information: There is no need to understand everything.
For instance, we can listen to airport announcements when our flight is
delayed, so we are interested in when our plane will take off; we won’t pay
attention to the rest of the information.
• Listening for details or listening intensively: An example of this type of listening
is when students are given a text and have to find the mistakes.
• Listening to make inferences or inferential listening: In this type of listening

activity students might be asked to comment on the feelings of the speaker, on
his mood or attitude.
Cooperative approaches to listening activities reduce students’ anxiety and stress
and improve their self-confidence. Teachers can also provide guidance in the

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Unit 5. Key ideas
while-listening stage, e.g. a text written on the board with gaps (For further
information on listening and reading, see “The Curious Case of Improving Foreign
Language Listening Skills” in the “In-Depth” section).
3. Post-listening: In the post-listening stage students check answers, discuss what

problems they encountered and if the activity met their expectations. Input should
be analyzed and discussed.
The purrrplexing story of the British Museum cats.
Nick Harris, Digital Creative Producer and Andrew Shore (2017, April 12).
This is the story of how the British Museum became a cat haven, and how
they eventually came to be on the Museum payroll, thanks in large part
to a British Museum cleaner affectionately referred to as the ‘Cat Man’.
Figure 2. The purrrplexing story of the British Museum cats. Source:

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-purrrplexing-story-of-the-british-museum-cats/
Museums are a valuable source of material for designing language

activities. Some provide material for schools that can be adapted for the
EFL classroom. Think of an activity based on the British Museum podcast.
How will you support students in the while-listening stage?
Assessment is essential part of teaching listening. It is determined by the purpose for

listening and the type of listening activity. If students were asked to take notes in the
while-listening stage, the teacher can collect and evaluate these notes. Rost provides
a model for listening assessment, based on five components as shown in the figure
below.

22
Unit 5. Key ideas
Figure 3. Model of listening assessment. Source: adapted from Rost, 2011, p. 212.
Teacher Resources
BBC Learning English. (n.d.). 6 Minute English. BBC. Retrieved from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english
Brown, S. (2011). Listening myths: Applying second language research to classroom

teaching. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Buck, G. (2001). Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Helgesen, M., & Brown, S. (2007). Practical English Language Teaching: Listening.
New York: McGraw-Gill.
Lynch, T. (2009). Teaching Second Language Listening. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Richards, J. C. (2008). Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice. New
York: Cambridge University Press.

23
Unit 5. Key ideas
Teaching listening skills to young learners.
Access to the video through the virtual campus
5.6. Bibliographic References
Bejar, I., Douglas, D., Jamieson, J., Nissan, S., & Turner, J. (2000). TOEFL 2000 Listening
Framework: A Working Paper. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Griffen, T. D. (1998). Pitch, stress, and vowel reduction. General Linguistics, 36, 17-
32.
Mueller, G. A. (1980). Visual Contextual Cues and Listening Comprehension: An

Experiment. Modern Language Journal, 64(3), 335-340.
Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. London
& New York: Routledge.
Nunan, D. (1991). Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rost, M. (2011). Teaching and Researching Listening. Harlow, UK: Pearson.

24
Unit 5. Key ideas
Santos, D., & Graham, S. (2018). What Teachers Say About Listening and Its Pedagogy:
A Comparison Between Two Countries. In A. Burns & J. Siegel (Eds.), International
Perspectives on Teaching the Four Skills in ELT (pp. 21-35). London: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Ur, P. (1984). Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.
Vandergrift, L. (2004). Listening to Learn or Learning to Listen? Annual Review of

Applied Linguistics, 24(1), 3-25.
Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to Teach Listening. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman.
Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


25
Unit 5. Key ideas
In Depth
Listening in Language Learning
Nunan, D. (1997). Listening in Language Learning. The Language Teacher, 21(9), 47-51.
Retrieved from https://jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2203-listening-language-
learning
In “Listening in Language Learning”, David Nunan introduces the reader to those

methods that marked our understanding of the importance of developing listening
skills. The author explains the nature of the listening process with a special focus on
top-down and bottom-up processes. Nunan also discusses the practical application
of strategies-based approach to teaching listening.

26
Unit 5. In Depth
How to Improve your Listening Skills
Long Beach City College. (2011, September 22). How To Improve Your Listening Skills |
LBCC Study Skills [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9LBUf1NzU0&list=RDQMH-
Y6j3wjHmU&start_radio=1
The lecturer starts by identifying the three main problems that prevent us from
listening effectively: pseudo listening, selective listening (distractions), and critical
listening (not like critical thinking, more like criticizing the speaker or focusing on
something that bothers you). He also offers six possible solutions to help students
face the challenge of listening.

27
Unit 5. In Depth
The Curious Case of Improving Foreign Language Listening Skills by Reading Rather
than Listening
Jiang, D., Kalyuga, S., & Sweller, J. (2018). The Curious Case of Improving Foreign
Language Listening Skills by Reading Rather than Listening: an Expertise Reversal Effect.
Educational Psychology Review, 30(3), 1139-1165. (Access to the article through UNIR
online library).
In this paper, Jiang et al. present the results of four experiments to study the
expertise reversal effect in the field of teaching FL listening skills. Three instructional
formats were designed: read-only, listen-only, and read-and-listen. Results show that
read-and-listen approach is more beneficial for lower expertise foreign language
learners than read-only or listen-only approach.
How can film help you teach or learn English?
Donaghy, K. (2014, October 21). How can film help you teach or learn English? Voices
Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/how-can-
film-help-you-teach-or-learn-english
The British Council official website provides a variety of sources for teachers, among
them this blog post. Kieran Donaghy explains how to make the use of films and videos
in the EFL classroom motivating and enjoyable. He also provides a list of websites
where teachers can find free lesson plans and ideas on using films to teach listening
skills.

28
Unit 5. In Depth
Test
1. The beginning of the process of listening is:
A. Consciousness.
B. Attention.
C. A source of information.
D. A point of view.
2. Choose the correct answer.

A. Listeners differ in a variety of characteristics, such as neural transmission
speed, flexibility, connections, and functional circuits.
B. Some learners are able to use higher-level listening strategies such as
cognitive maps.
C. Listeners have to process speech in real time.
D. A, B, and C are correct.
3. Paralinguistic signals:
A. Always confirm the information obtained from linguistic signals.
B. And body language is the same.
C. Help word recognition.
D. Always contradict the information obtained from linguistic signals
4. Choose the correct answer.

A. To understand utterance correctly students should focus on the grammatical
structure.
B. To understand utterance correctly students should focus on allophonic
variations.
C. Intonation and rhythm are essential for understanding an utterance
correctly.
D. Native speakers rely on pronunciation and learners rely on stress for
understanding an utterance correctly.

29
Unit 5. Test
5. Listening for pleasure is a type of:
A. Metacognitive listening.
B. Intensive listening.
C. Extensive listening.
D. Interactive listening.
6. Listening materials should be:

A. Contextualized.
B. Decontextualized.
C. Problem-solving.
D. A, B, and C are wrong.
7. According to Nation and Newton, listening input should be:

A. Entertaining.
B. Easy.
C. Dense.
D. Meaningful.
8. Delivery of a listening text includes:

A. Teacher talk and student talk.
B. Television, radio, films, reality shows, videos, and textbook audios.
C. Length, quality of recording, speed and number of speakers, accent.
D. All possible channels of transmission.
9. Dictogloss is:
A. A variation of traditional dictation.
B. The same as dicto-comp.
C. A strategy to improve listening skills in adults.

D. All of the above.

30
Unit 5. Test
10. In the while-listening stage students can listen for:
A. The gist
B. Details.
C. Specific information.
D. All of the above.

31
Unit 5. Test

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Unit 5

Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills

5.4. Methodological Considerations 13