Advanced Listening

Q\what is listening skill?

Is the first language skill developed, it comes before speaking, reading and writing.
Listening means not only hearing or receiving the spoken language but rather it can
imply responding and replying to the spoken language more than creating it.

Listening: is a dynamic process in which the listener has to be able to attend,

receive, interrupt, remember, and respond to the expressed verbal and nonverbal
needs, concerns, and information presented by the speaker.
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Q\Why listening is not simple skill?
Because it requires from the listener to be able to identify and understand what the
speaker is saying through understanding his accent, pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, and grasping his meaning.
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Q\What are the subcomponents of listening?
1.Differentiating between sounds.
2.Identifying functions such as apologizing in conversations.
3.Using previous knowledge in order to predict meaning.
4.Recognizing the important ideas and words presented in the passage.
5.Giving suitable feedback to the speaker.
6.Reformulate what the speaker has said.
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Q\What does the type of listening depend on?
The type of listening depends on the situations.

Q\How to be an effective listener?

To be an effective listener in different situations, you should first consider your
purpose of listening.
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Q\What are the types of listening?
1.Extensive listening: it refers to listening in order to get pleasure and enjoy listening
for something. All the materials in this type should interest the learner and make
listening enjoyable for them.

Q\What are the activities that encourage extensive listening?

Watching movies, listening to radio programs, podcasts, songs, lectures, and
interviews.

2.Intensive listening: it can be used for the purpose of getting information, solving
the problems. So, it requires from the learner to use his analytical ability in order to
proceed through problem solving steps.

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Q\Where we practice intensive listening?

We practice intensive listening in everyday situations and pay attention for specific
elements of the text and focus on it, such as phonology and syntax and Lexis.

Q\What purpose is intensive listening used for?

It is used for the purpose of analyzing text.

3.Responsive listening: the learner is encouraged to make response to the text that
he heard and usually the listener response is not affected expressing an opinion or
point of view rather than informational giving based on what he was heard.

Q\What are the activities of responsive listening?

asking questions, giving comments, seeking clarifications and checking the
understanding.

4.Selective listening: the learner has already planned his purpose and attended to
achieve his purpose by selecting specific information from the text in order to
perform the task.

in intensive listening listener or learner are asked to listen for: names of people,
specific facts or events, location, situation, context, dates and main ideas or
conclusions.

5.Autonomous listening: can be seen as independent listening in which the learner

is responsible for the listening process without any help or guide from the teacher. It
includes all other types of listening intensive, extensive, selective and responsive.
So, in autonomous listening, the learner manages the input selection, task
completion, and assessment.

6.Critical listening: is listening to comprehend and evaluate the message as well as

give reasoning of the message. It enables the learner to judge the message more
than to understand it by forming an opinion based on what he or she listen.

Q\Why is critical listening known as an analytical listening?

Because the learner tends to analyze the message and judge it.

7.Empathic listening: this type of listening happens when the speaker tries to share
his feelings and emotions with others in order to get help from others.

Q\Why is empathic listening known as a sensitive listening?

Since it takes into account the speaker's feeling.

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8. Discriminative listening: it provides the learner with the opportunities to

understand and distinguish between words, sounds, pronunciation, and etcetera. It
enables the learner to concentrate on the features of the message rather than the
content.
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Q\What is listening comprehension?
It is a process of understanding speech which depends on the learner's ability to
identify the meaning and the purpose of the speaker's speech. It also includes
focusing on the role of individual linguistic units, for example phonetics, words,
grammatical structures, in addition to the role of listener's expectations,
understanding situations and topic and also learners, background knowledge.
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Listening comprehension can be categorized into three types:
1.Main ideas comprehension: this type depends mainly on the recognition of
vocabulary presented in the text in order to comprehend the message.

2.Detail Comprehension: this type involves getting specific information. It may be

performed independently of main idea comprehension in which the listener know the
information that they listen for.

3.Full comprehension: this is the goal of teaching listening skills, which is

understanding the message and the main idea presented in the speech.
Comprehension of the speech does not always require understanding every word or
structure.
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Q\Why listening is very important in skill and vital aspects of English and other
languages? Because :
1.It enables the learner to acquire language by understanding words, grammar,
pronunciation, vocabulary and language chunks.

2.It helps the learner to connect effectively with natural listening situations that may
face in real life situations will definitely stimulate the learners to use language and
interact.

3.It's also provides the learner with the input for the language acquisition.

4.It also enables learners to think ahead while receiving the message in which it can
facilitate the comprehension of the speech.

5.It enables learners to use language by giving information in order to build up the
learners knowledge of language.

6.It provides learner with an oral input this will facilitate the process of language
learning.
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Advanced Listening

Listening and hearing

Listening and hearing have been misunderstanding, since many people consider
listening as hearing, therefore, the distinction should be made between the two
concepts.

1.Listening: is a mental procedure.

Hearing: is a physiological procedure.

2.Listening: involves understanding of the sounds.

Hearing: does not involve understanding of sounds.

3.Listening: is more than hearing, it is a skill.

Hearing: is a natural process of receiving oral and visual stimuli.

4.Listening: is an active step of speech reception.

Hearing: is a passive step of speech reception.

5.Listening: is a sub process of communication that involves not only hearing but
also remembering and understanding.

Hearing: is the first step of listening process and good hearing need for effective
listening.
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- Listening and speaking are considered to be vital skills in communication.

- A listener needs to pay attention and listens carefully to the speech in order to
respond accurately in the communication process.
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Q\What are the processes that listening consist of?
Listening consists of many processes such as perception, interpretation, evaluation,
recalling and reacting to the speaker.
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Q\In which case listening cannot be happened?
So listening the skill cannot be happened unless there is a speech to listen in which
the speaker tries to produce a meaningful output and the listener receives it and
responses effectively.

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The relationship between listening and other skills

Listening and speaking

Productive and receptive are two sides of the same coin. Connection involves
sending and receiving a message. One skill will reinforce the other.
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Reading and listening

reading and listening are considered to be reception skills in which both of the
listener and reader receive the message and try to response in suitable way.
Moreover, both of listening and reading skills need to interpret the main ideas
presented in the message, response to the message recognize the intent of the
speakers or writer as well as evaluate his idea.

Q\Is listening more difficult than reading?

Listening skill seems to be difficult than reading skill because of two reasons:
1.Listener needs to pay more attention to the speech.
2.The listener cannot go back and listen again to the speech while on reading the
reader has opportunities to reread the text.
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Writing and listening

Many language teachers are already utilizing listening activities in the classroom, so
students may have to listen to a conversation in a foreign language and then
discuss the exchange among their peers. Reading instructors might also incorporate
listening in their assessment practices. While these practices certainly cannot be
effective, they rarely encourage a connection between listening and writing.
But with the right tools and thoughtful lesson planning, teachers can't easily
incorporate listening writing activities into their curriculum, such as dictation, writing,
revisions, and complete the story, fill in the blanks and etcetera.
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Listening processes :
1.Bottom up process
2.Top down process

Bottom up listening process

This can be seen as an approach to understand the text which focuses on
recognizing the elements of the text such as sounds, words, grammar
to create meaning. It's also known as a text based approach because it depends on
building the message by understanding its elements word by word rather than by
understanding learners background knowledge of the situation or topic.

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Top down listening process

is an approach of understanding the message by enhancing the learners to use his
or her background knowledge of the situation in order to get the meaning of the
message. It is also known as a learner based approach because it depends on the
learner’s previous knowledge of the message. In this process, the listener uses
previous knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening happened
to make sense of what he or she hears.
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The following points show the barriers(Factors) that affect listening Process.

1.Learners must have some background knowledge which helps them to

comprehend.

2.Environmental factors such as noise, temperature, and uncomfortable seating,

while can confuse the learner and make understanding what the
speakers say difficult.

3.Learners attention toward the speech can affect on the listening a process
because listeners here may try to switch off consciously or unconsciously.

4.The learner must give attention to every part of the speech and try to understand
it. Unfortunately, some learners ignore uninteresting and difficult words of the
speech because they think these parts or points may be unimportant.

5.In some cases, a learner may not be interested to complete listening so that he or
she tries to jump to the conclusion and close his or her mind to the rest of speech.
This happened because of learner bias towards a group of people or some
individual.

6.The length of the text and amount of information which the text contains may
affect listening because learner will not be able to get a lot of information in limited
time.

7.The text, the text may contain unfamiliar words which confuse listening
comprehension.

8. Non-verbal distractions can confuse the listener, such as when the speaker looks
different from what the listener used to view as a normal.

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Stages of teaching listening:

- Pre-listening
- While-listening
- Post-listening

Pre-listening stage: is the first stage that learners face in listening process before
they listen to the speech which prepared the learners and stimulate them to listen in
order to enable the learners to comprehend the text. It is a preparatory stage of
instruction which is designed for the purpose of activities which aim to encourage
the learners to comprehend upcoming information. Or it could be consisted of this
course frameworks which enabled them to connect with listening text. It aims to
create motivation by asking learners to guess what information that they will hear
and activate their background knowledge as well as encourage the students think
about what they will listen while listening.

While- listening stage: in this is stage, learners are engaged to the listening process.
They listen in order to get specific information to listen for details. The teacher
encourages the learners to work in groups or pairs in order to work together and
check their answers. This will encourage them to discuss another point. It is
important that the teacher should provide different types of activities which enable
the learners to develop their listening skills.

Post-listening stage: It is the last stage of listening comprehension which is also

called evaluation stage. In this stage, the learners check up their answers and they
discuss together the difficulties faced during listening, such as unfamiliar words, and
also respond to the message orally or sometimes in written form.

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