LISTENING TO THE CHAPTER RECORDING

Great listening skills are a result of a lot of input during the lessons: teacher talking, playing recordings or students talking and listening to others.

So far I have briefly covered the first three stages in my ordinary text-based lessons. The next step is to listen to the recorded version of the Chapter. Why? Firstly, because it gives the students a chance to check one more time if there is something in the text they do not understand. Secondly, listening provides a model for pronounciation and intonation of the text. Thirdly, ears need to be trained for the characteristics of the foreign language.

• 1 Studying the chapter at home in advance
• 2 Checking homework exercises
• 3 Working orally on the new words of the next chapter
• 4 Listening to the chapter on a CD, DVD, via the internet or read by the teacher
• 5 Checking if the content was understood, clarifications
• 6 Reading the text aloud
• 7 Questions on the text, or multiple choice, true-false, black holes …
• 8 Doing oral exercises in class

Why listening at this point? Why before reading aloud? Simply because there is no point in reading a text that you do not fully understand. In addition a model is needed for pronunciation. Neither is there a point in doing exercises on a chapter if it is not understood.

1. Listening is an important skill and it does not develop unless we keep on practising it at school as well. That is why listening should be part of nearly all lessons.
2. In most countries we are lucky to have native speakers who speak authentic English for us to listen to in the textbook recordings. Sometimes the recordings are even produced abroad. It does not really matter which accent is used since students need to get used to different versions of English anyway.
3. Difficulties in listening may be due to a variety of reasons but I will deal with them in more detail under title ‘Listening’.
4. If there is a lot of speaking in class, it means a lot of listening. Even if the speakers are students still learning the language, one should not underestimate the importance of the practice between students.
5. Under title ‘Pronunciation’ I argue that good pronunciation is best learnt by mimicking / copying what the students hear. Still, some sounds, weak forms and intonation may require explaining and special training. Listening to native speakers as a model for speaking is a must.
6. Beginners need a lot of support from the teacher who may be the most significant source of English they hear and listen to.
7. Publishers recordings are mostly excellent in quality and they should be made use of in lessons. Junior high texts are usually rather short and can be listened to as a whole. Senior high chapters may be up to two pages long and my advice is to divide them into at least two parts.
8. In my junior high lessons we listen to the text, check if we understand it and then listen to it again sentence by sentence and repeat the sentence mimicking the recording.
9. Senior high students listen to the text in parts only once and read some part, usually about 20 lines anywhere in the text, without a model.
10. Having listened to the text the student have a good understanding of the text and they can move on to talk about the text.

CHECKING UNDERSTANDING OF THE TEXT AND ASKING FOR CLARIFICATIONS

In short, at this stage of the lesson it should be quite clear to the students how well they understand the text. They have studied the text at home, done oral vocab exercises on it and listened to the text.

Still, we need to give the students one more time to ask us to explain any unclear parts of the text or let them present something they wonder about the text.

Teacher: “Is there anything in the text you still do not understand or wonder about? Words, phrases, grammar, anything?“

Usually we people are unwilling to admit that we do not understand something and therefore it is vital that we present the idea of asking for clarifications in a positive light not to embarrass the students. No-one is to be humiliated no matter what they ask. Sometimes the teachers have to keep up a real poker-face: “Thank you, Jim. That was an interesting question.”

When I try to ‘sell’ the idea above to my students I say:

There are no stupid questions. If you are wondering about something, there are certainly others who are wondering about the same thing. And it is my job to give you an answer. If I don’t have one, I will find out.

In fact there are three options how to deal with clarifications / translations. This is the moment differentiation steps in during the lesson.

1. Ask the students to translate the whole text into their mother tongue, with the teacher or in groups where a good student is checking the work. This is advisable with beginners no matter what age they are.
2. Only the difficult parts are translated with the teacher or in groups. The rest of the text is supposed to be a piece of cake as for understanding. This is the case with intermediate students whose level the teacher knows well.
3. No translation at all, unless the students ask some part of the text to be clarified.

The principle: The final aim is to have as little translation into the mother tongue as possible since it tends to eat up too much time.