Listening used to be considered a ‘passive’ skill for a long time, which is a completely false idea. To understand a foreign language when it is spoken one has to be active and master a lot of things.

Teachers used to consider listening a ‘passive’ skill for a long time since the listener was thought to do nothing actively. Now we, of course realize, that this idea was completely false and the listeners have to master a lot of things when they decode the original message trying to understand what was meant. In this article I will deal with …

• Language-related skills in listening
• How messages are decoded in our minds
• Practical advice, tips and strategies on how listening skills can be improved

The other topics in this unit are

Listening	CLT-type listening tasks, free time listening
	Listening, a historical view
	Listening strategies in exams
	N.B. See also ‘Model text-based lesson’ – listening

Even the language skill terminology has changed over the years: speaking and writing are now called ‘productive’ skills and listening and reading ‘receptive’ skills (instead of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ skills.)

Student-centred methods done the way I recommend in my article ‘The structure of a textbook-based lesson’ automatically lead to the development of listening skills thanks to the ample use of recordings and emphasis on oral activities as well as the versatile repetition of the vocabulary and content.

There are two layers in listening comprehension which operate simultaneously: the first one is related to language skills and the other one to decoding the message. The first one can be taught but the second one only indirectly.

Language-related listening skills

To understand spoken language the listener has to …

• know the meaning and pronunciation of words and phrases; this is the most important thing since the combination of words and gestures often tells us what the essence of the message is
• know grammatical rules (at least subconsciously) and how to use language in situations; knowing grammar is often vital but in simple situations we understand the message because of the words without any knowledge of grammar, (these first two items are known also as bottom-up strategy)
• be able to take intonation into account; especially in everyday speech intonation reveals how the words are to be interpreted, sometimes intonation gives you a completely opposite meaning to the utterance (sarcasm)
• get used to different accents of English; English is spoken in many different ways in the English-speaking world and depending on our needs we have to get used to them

Most of the language-related matters above can be taught but the message decoding takes place in the heads of the individual listeners and we have no direct access to the processes of minds. Nobody in this world can actually explain what happens in our brains when we interpret messages. Therefore decoding the messages can be taught only indirectly. See the 16 tips and strategies below.

Decoding spoken messages

By decoding we mean the mental process in the listener’s head when he/she tries to figure out what the message is.

The listener has to …

• be able to make conclusions or inferences on the basis of what he/she hears
• make use of general background knowledge about the situation and context (known also as top-down strategy)
• know many ways of saying the same thing since the same idea and message can be expressed in very many ways
• indicate to the speaker that he/she understood the message by responding to what was said

Listening comprehension is a vital skill and it is integrated with many other language skills. In lessons much of the listening practice takes place when students speak in groups. If speaking is neglected, listening suffers too.

Practical advice, tips and strategies on how listening skills can be improved

1. Listening does not develop unless we keep on practising it all the time at school. Encourage your students to listen to English sources in their free time. Listening is part of nearly every lesson when we connect with speaking. The internet is full of recorded English-speaking materials.
2. Make sure your students study the chapters in advance at home. When they understand the text, listening gets much easier. Reading the text aloud and talking about it improves understanding as well.
3. For beginners the teacher is the most important source of listening practice. Later on it is textbook recordings and authentic materials with various accents.
4. Some students prefer to close their eyes when listening to the text because it helps them to concentrate. Others need to look at the text or the exam bookletIall the time.
5. Group work done in English automatically means a lot of speaking and listening. One should not underestimate the importance of the oral practice between students.
6. Beginners need a lot of support from the teacher. It all starts in recognizing sounds and words and moving on to phrases and longer sentences and finally dialogues and whole texts.
7. In my junior high lessons we listen to the whole text first, check if we understand it and then listen to it again sentence by sentence and repeat the sentence after me or mimic the recording.
8. Reading texts aloud and in groups enhances listening skills as well. Our brains need every kind of listening practice that is possible.
9. Senior high chapters may be up to two pages long and my advice is to divide them at least in two parts. Senior high students listen to long texts in parts only once and read some part, usually about 20 lines anywhere in the text, without a model. The discussion between students that follows is to be seen as listening comprehension as well.
10. With your permission, some students might benefit from recording the listening and reading part of the lesson on their phone. Thus they would be able to practise listening at home too.
11. Having listened to the text the student have a good understanding of the text and they can move on to talk about the text.
12. Publishers recordings are mostly excellent in quality and they should be made use of in lessons. Listening to natives speakers in recordings as a model for speaking is a must.
13. Difficulties in listening may be due to a variety of reasons: lack of knowledge of words, grammar or pronunciation, untrained ears to recognize sounds or weak forms or the strategies in listening are poor. Listening skills will not improve until the problems are identified and a remedy found.
14. In pair and group work the students should be encouraged to ask the others to repeat what was said if they did not understand. “Sorry, it did not catch what you said. Can you repeat it please!” “Please, can you clarify what you said.” “I missed that. What did you say.” “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
15. Listening requires a massive amount of practice and input. In ordinary lessons the listening takes place without pressure if the students have studied the chapter at home. Reading aloud hammers in the messages.
16. Listening comprehension exams are another matter and they deserve another article since there are many listening strategies that we can teach our students to reduce stress and get better results.

Luckily native speakers have a natural tendency to try to understand foreigners even if their language is awful and faulty.

I have already touched upon these matters in my article ‘Pre-task, Listening and clarifying content’. It is part of the unit where I discuss ‘The structure of a textbook-based lesson’.

The topics of the next three articles on listening are

• CLT-type listening tasks, free time listening
• Listening, a historical view
• Listening strategies in an exam