Teaching Micro-skills of Listening - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages While Attention Theories support the use of “consciousness-raising activities to increase learners’ awareness of grammatical structures” conversation theories associated with Communicative Language Teaching “stress the importance of second language listening since it is not possible to participate in a conversation and take advantage of conversational feedback without understanding what your partner is saying” (Horwitz, 2008, p. 67). It is thus evident that sufficient exposure to the target language is an essential prerequisite for developing any micro-skills of listening. In an EFL classroom listening plays a dominant role and as such the ESL teachers have a pivotal responsibility in choosing the most appropriate activities and listening comprehension passages that cater best to the language needs of the learners. The second language teacher needs to take into account the background knowledge of the learner on a particular topic and familiarize the content of the listening comprehension through effective previewing. Similarly, the use of advance organizers “to help integrate new information into the student’s pre-existing knowledge” also is significant (Horwitz, 2008, p. 68).  
Once the listening comprehension text (oral or written) is offered to the learners with ample meaning support the learners need to recall the ideas they are able to remember and for this, the teacher can make use of recall questions to elicit responses from the students. These listening comprehension questions should be both engaging and appropriate. Similarly, inference questions can also be made use of in order to assess whether the students have understood the oral or written text correctly. Intonation (rising and falling of the tone of voice) is another aspect that is related to effective listening skills.  ...Download file to see next pagesRead More