Teaching Listening Skill In Public High Schools In The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Essay Example

Teaching listening skills in Saudi Arabia Teaching listening skill in public high schools in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Introduction Listening is an essential part of second language learning process (Bentley & Bacon 1996, p.64) Listening is a mental process that involves constructing meaning from spoken input. It is conceived as an active process where listeners select and interpret information from auditory and visual clues so as to define what is going on and what the speakers intend to pass on. The listening skill is the foundation of understanding and developing other language skills. It plays a major role in communication and learning language (Rubin 1994, p. 199). However, despite the unlimited equipment and facilities such as the Internet, MP3 players, CDs and PlayStation. Most teachers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are still reluctant to use technology and often rely on their own voices, for repetition of phrases and or individual words for teaching listening skills. This is a problem as the level of listening achievement remains low, which was evident for me as there was very little improvement in listening abilities in students who had been receiving listening practice/instruction for several years. In connection to this, the main objective of this paper is to illustrate how to teach listening skills in Saudi Arabia. Listening comprehension is a process in which listeners take part in the role of discriminating between sounds, understanding grammatical structures and vocabulary, interpreting stress and intonation, and consequently interpreting the utterance within the context. It is not easy to master listening skill and for this reason most second language learners feel frustrated about it. They cannot also control the speed of speech and hence they tend to have difficulties decoding sounds that are non-existent in their first language. Alternatively, even when they hear sounds correctly, many are the times when they experience interpretation problems due to lack of sufficient knowledge of vocabularies. It is important for learners to build up their listening vocabulary, make themselves acquainted with English intonation and rhythm, get exposed to as much English as possible and utilize appropriate listening strategies when listening to English. Teachers should in turn give students sufficient opportunities for them to practice listening. They should as well teach them effective listening comprehension strategies (Kemp,2010p.385-395). In studying the contribution of listening comprehension in learning second language, focus is on the role of different linguistic units such as words, phonemes and grammatical structures, situation and context, listener’s expectations as well as background knowledge and topic. Students can learn what is expected of them and how to act upon information and instructions through listening (Wong & Waring, 2010p. 235). It is an active skill that needs to be taught to language learners. One can be said to be an effective listener if he/she is capable of receiving information, attending to it and understanding the information. Receiving is all about being ready to listen with an open mind. Attending is paying attention to the speaker and information. One should pay attention to what he/she believes is important and discard what seems irrelevant. Understanding what is the speaker intends to communicate is the most important facet of effective listening. My objective in this paper is to understand what is listening, why it is important, different types of listening, sub-skills of listening and the approaches to teaching listening effectively. Models of the Listening Process A number of models have been designed to explain how the process of listening takes place in adults. Below is a discussion of the most common models. The Bottom up Model It was the first model to be developed between 1940s and 1950s. According to this model, listeners build understanding by starting with the smallest units of a message that is, different sounds and phonemes. They are then combined into words, phrases, clauses and sentences in that order. It is sentences that are finally combined to create ideas, concepts relationships between them. According to this model, different types of data necessary in the listening process are applied in a hierarchical fashion. This model follows the traditional view of information. A sender transmits a message to the receiver through a medium of information and the receiver decodes the information to derive meaning. The bottom-up model holds that information is guaranteed as long as there is no breakdown in the medium used and the sender and the receiver are using the same message code (Eysenck 2001, p.36). The Top Down model This model suggests that individuals use past data to interpret texts and not the words and sounds in that particular text. During the research, subjects were unable to identify words in isolation from words they form part of but the same subjects were able to identify truncated words when they were presented together with other words that accompany them. In respect to utterance interpretation, listeners use pre-established patterns of experience also known as structures of expectations stored in the memory. They are conceived in a number of ways that are, schema, frame, script and situation. Schema deals with the organization of, the frame organizes information about properties of objects, actions and events which belong together, scenario consists of the analysis of situations from long term memory and script deals with event sequences. The underlying idea is that human experience is organized and stored in memory depending on recurring events. Once the structure of the event is recorded in one’s memory inform of schema, it aids the person to negotiate future events. In the same way, knowledge of past spoken texts helps in making predictions about subsequent texts. Levels of comprehension are thus considerably higher when listeners have of such spoken texts compared to when they lack such experiences. In this model, listening is purpose driven, and listeners attend to what they need (Rumenlhart 1997, p.89). Interactive Model This model is a combination of the bottom up and top down models. Language is processed simultaneously at different levels. This model is advantageous in that it gives room for variations in linguistic processing. It also opens up possibility of sensitive design as it is sensitive to different learning style and group needs. Importance of teaching listening The main goal of developing listening skill is to allow learners to acquire second language. Teaching listening skill promotes learners’ acquisition and comprehension of the language. Cumulative meaningful listening activities are important since they allow students acquire independent learning skills including the ability to evaluate their performance, make decisions and act on them (Kemp,2010p.385-395). What has been leant may not be evident after a single listening event instead the effect may be cumulative. Language learners reorganize linguistic knowledge and develop new schemata on a foreign culture through cumulative listening experiences. Emphasis should be placed on cumulative listening effect for the acquisition. Listening skill helps to establish a meaning-form link which is necessary for vocabulary instruction. Listening to targeted language items several times in different settings help second language learners master the language more easily. Participation in more communicative activities enhances learning through increased input and output which is crucial in promoting acquisition (Schimtt 2008, p.329). Input serves as the basis for intake when it entails features not already in the learners’ linguistic collection and which are difficult for the learners’ communicative needs. Learners should engage in activities which require them to experiment newly noticed language forms so that new learning items may be incorporated into their linguistic repertoire (Richards 2005, p. 89). Listening helps prevent the conversation breakdown, through repair practices. Repair practices entail ways of addressing problems in speaking, understanding of the report and hearing (Wong & Waring 2010, p. 212). Learners equipped with repair practices can use them to negotiate meaning and are hence encouraged to engage in second language conversation with less anxiety. Learners especially those who have advanced their second language learning should be motivated to be independent so as to be able to exploit potential learning situations. Listening comprehension skill plays a significant role in autonomous learning. Empowering learners gives them the freedom to learn outside the teaching context and the capability to continue learning even after instructions have been stopped giving them opportunities to gather linguistic information from other sources (Field 2008, p.37). Types of Listening Discriminative Listening. The objective of this listening is to distinguish sound and visual stimuli. It does not take into account the meaning; instead it focuses is mainly on sounds. For example, distinguishing the gender of a speaker or predicting the number of the speakers from the voice, etc. It involves making the ears accustomed to the sounds. Learning the first language starts with discriminative listening. A child responds to the sound stimulus and shortly recognize its parents voices amidst other voices. A student discriminate against sounds so as to identify different words depending on his/her level (Goh 2002, p 15). Comprehensive Listening/ Informative Listening. This listening focuses on understanding the information. The writers consider this as the basis for the next three types of listening. Understanding an information can, however, be problematic because it depends on a number of factors that are either individual or social. Students tend to understand the same information differently. Teaching much listening is required so as to facilitate students to develop their comprehension skills. Therapeutic Listening/ Relationship is Listening. It is a listening where the listener shows sympathy to the sender without much verbal response. This listening allows somebody to talk through a problem. The listener should pay attention to the speaker and be supportive. The listener needs to keep the information in confidence and employ a non-judgmental attitude. It is equally important to understand if the speaker requires you to suggest a solution or only wants you to hear. This listening is vital in building good interpersonal relations (Goh 2002, p.15). Critical Listening. In this case, we hear to make a decision or form an opinion. Forming an opinion or making a decision depends on the information; we focus on three things: the credibility of the speaker, the logic of the argument, and if the message is psychologically appealing. In an instance where one of those areas is lacking, one may create a poor opinion or make no decision at all. Listeners should consequently respond to the information by giving their opinion. Appreciative listening. In this listening, the focus is on enjoying what one listens to. One can listen to music and enjoy even if he/she does not understand. One would, however, appreciate the same song better after listening severally and understanding the lyrics. Sub-skills of Listening Sub-skills are specific behaviors that language users do so as to be effective in each of the language skills. For example sub-skills of reading include; skimming in scanning. Below are sub-skills of listening (Richards et al.1994, p. 98). The listener ability to deduce meaning from the use of lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues in utterances and spoken text. Another sub-skill of listening is the learner’s ability to recognize and understand phonological features of speech which may encompass social-linguistic factors such as accent and intonation. The listener should be able to understand relationships within the sentence that is, the syntactic and morphological characteristics of spoken language. The listener should be able to understand the relationship between parts of text and utterances by using through cohesive devices. Cohesive devices are words or phrases that are linked together in a sentence or an article. Examples of cohesive devices used in English include; basically, eventually, after all, normally and firstly. Understanding relationships between parts of text by identifying and interpreting the use of discourse markers. Discourse markers are used when concluding ideas, when objecting contrary views and for turn-taking. Understanding the function of communication and value of spoken text with and without explicit markers. Understanding conceptual meaning in spoken text and utterances for example the audience of the text, purpose, cause and effect. Understanding the attitude of the speaker towards the listener and its meaning through the use of intonation. Identifying the major points or significant information in discourse through vocal underlining and verbal cues. Distinguishing the main ideas from the supporting details. That is, drawing a line between the whole & its parts, statements & examples, propositions & arguments and facts & opinions. Ability to understand explicitly stated ideas and information. Understanding ideas and information which are explicitly stated in spoken text and utterances for example through the use of inferences. Interpreting spoken text by not only using information in the text but also information outside the text. Transferring and transforming spoken information to diagrammatic display for example through completing a table, diagram or chart. Skimming. This is listening to obtain the general picture of spoken text. Scanning. This is listening for specific details in spoken text. Note-taking. Recording important points after listening to a spoken text. Difficulties of using Listening sub-skills They have problems with different accents. Students in Saudi Arabia experience difficulties listening to their English teachers since they are non-natives and hence tend to have foreign accents. Accent interferes with the right pronunciation of words. Teachers with foreign accents can make listening a possibility through rerecording it with other teachers before class. If it is an accent they need to familiarize themselves with, for example, in the case of outsourcing, they should spend part of the lesson learning the features of that accent. Ability to deal with different accents can be enhanced by just listening to a lot of English, e.g. TV without dubbing or BBC. They do not recognize the words that they know. Majority of the students do not know English vocabularies at all, and this is a major problem. They find it difficult to recognise words since they are unable to distinguish between different sounds. For example, there are those who can’t identify sounds l and r in "led" and "red," or don’t not any differences on trying to listen. Others know words like "there," "their" and "they are" which are homophones, but can’t differentiate them in a spoken text. Other challenges are problems with word stress, sentence stress, and changes in sounds especially when words are spoken together in natural speech. For language learners, sometimes pronunciation work is the most vital part of listening comprehension skills building (Field 2008, p.14). They get left behind trying to understand what a previous word meant. This is a problem that all people learning a foreign language have experience at some point. This mostly happens when a listener hear a word that he/she half remember and find he/she has completely lost track of what was being said by the time he/she remembers the meaning. It can also happen when one is trying to work out words that sound like other words in the listeners first language, words the listener is trying to work out from words he/she have heard several times before and is trying to guess the meaning. Learners can deal with this problem with vocab pre-teach where they can get students to talk about the same topic so as to bring the relevant vocabulary for that topic area so as to get an overview. Listeners can also use a shorter segments listening or use the pause button so as to give their brains a chance to catch up. This will equally teach them to cope with the demands of listening and working out the meaning (Goh 2002, p.15). They cant cope with not having images. Most of the students find it difficult to listen if spoken text in a foreign language is not accompanied with body language and other cues. Teachers should set scenes with photos of the people speaking when assigning tasks to students where they put the pictures in order as they listen and using video help people guess vocabularies from the context. They have a mental block. This is caused by the student having struggled with bad grades in listening texts, exams or self-study materials and a national myth that citizens from their country find listening to English hard. They lack listening stamina/ they get tired. Students learning foreign languages at times reach saturation point when their brains rejects more information and are forced to withdrawal listening for some minutes. It is important to employ strategies that would build on the length of the texts the learner uses. Teachers can make the first time the learners listen to longer texts a success so as to boost their confidence. Approaches to teaching listening A number of approaches have been used to teach listening. One way of improving teaching is through the use of instructional materials (Richards et al. 1994, p. 3).These approaches have evolved over time with the old approaches giving little attention to listening skills. Some of the approaches from the oldest to the most current include; Grammar approach, audio-lingual, discrete item, communicative, task-based and integrated approach. The best methods for teaching effective listening have been discussed below; The Integrated Approach This is where teachers use a number of approaches to teaching listening skill. Textbooks offer a wide range of activities to improve listening skill. Exercises do not only focus on traditional features of listening, but they also help students develop critical listening skills. For example, Rixon’s (1987) Listening: Upper Intermediate is a textbook that employs an integrated approach to developing listening skill. Units are based on a number of pre-listening, listening and post-listening activities. The learning goals of this approach are to develop listening, critical listening, critical thinking and effective speaking. Task-Based Approach The main goal of this approach is to improve listening skill so as to make students active listeners. Students are expected to listen to authentic situations and do something with the information, for example, complete a diagram or chart, drawing a picture or filling a table. Information is changed from the spoken form to graphic form. Since the texts are authentic, students easily cope with the language being spoken at a normal pace and with other features such as fillers, hesitations and accents. While listening, students are required to make notes and draw diagrams. When learners are using task based approach, the result of learning is an unpredictable interaction between task and the task situations (Kumavaradivelu1991, p. 100). The process used by students to find a successful outcome is important than understanding the spoken task presented to them. Communicative Approach It is based on the premise that what is leant in class should have a real-life communicative value. Real life listening is integrated into the communicative approach. This approach gives implications of information. Communicative approach looks at what people do with language leant and how they react to what they hear. Communication activities are based on a number of principles. These principles are; any activity should be communicatively helpful to learners; activities should operate above the sentence level; activities should be real life aspects to information, activities should involve actions and that mistakes can be tolerated so long as they do not hinder communication (Kumavaradivel 1991, p. 100). Discrete Item Approach This approach deals with segmental and suprasegmental features of spoken text and their contextualization. Segmentals are vowels and consonant sounds while suprasegmentals are stress and tone. The approach deals with the features in a highly structured manner (Anderson 1995, p.86). Most features of spoken text are presented and drilled and are then compared and contrasted with other sounds in a language so as to familiarize learners with the sounds. Many students experience difficulties hearing English sounds as these sounds may not exist in their first language (Ur 1994, p.12). It is a crucial for learners to achieve familiarity with common phonemes of second language. This approach should only be used at the beginning of a language course. Teachers should identify sounds students are likely to have difficulties with and consequently design listening activities that will help the students practice listening to the sounds. Schema theory of teaching listening skill This theory is a cognitive model for listening comprehension. Cognitive psycholinguists came to a consensus after long periods of research that linguistic information is processed by a number of cognitive systems which include attention, perception, and memory (Rumelhart 1997, p.58). Information is altered in various organized ways in the working memory, and meaning is created by linking what is seen or heard to the information stored in long term memory. The brain processes linguistic information in three ways: Attending to signals and consequently identifying them as words; processing information in an efficient way and drawing on information stored in the long-term memory to respond to the new information (Eysenck, 2001p.324-367). We get to understand how these processes interact by considering a model of language comprehension by J. R. Anderson, a cognitive psychologist. According to the design, the comprehension process comprises of three phases which represent different levels of processing that is, understanding, parsing and utilization. These phases are recursive, extensive and overlap in most cases (Anderson 1995, p.86). The term schema was used for the first time by Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932) in his study of the role of memory and language processing in a natural situation. Schema is a term that implies an organized structure of information comprising of stored in the long term memory. It is the basis for learning and processing new information. It is also referred to as the building blocks of cognition (Rumelhart 1997, p.21). The Schema listening design evolves from information–processing model that centers on two kinds of cognitive processes; the bottom-up and top-down processing. When one encounters explicit signals or stimuli in the environment, the bottom-up processing is used to gather related information on phonology and grammar to build up an understanding of what is perceived. The top-down processing applies previous knowledge and experience (schema) to interpret the information received. Research has indicated that the accumulation of schemata contributes to retention of new listening material. Teachers should thus be encouraged to arouse students’ schema than introduce new things to learners (Rumelhart 1997, p.85). Observational tasks A job is any classroom assignment which engages learners in comprehending, producing, manipulating or interacting in the target language (Nuncan 1989, p. 10). They are activities that learners engage in with the guidance of their teachers so as to enhance their skill. For example, by giving learners a listening activity teachers help them gain perfect their listening skill. It does this by providing a collection of tasks which direct the user all the way through the process of observing, analyzing, reflecting and developing the ability to observe. They assess classroom tasks with the aim of evaluating and designing good learning tasks. (Kathyleen & Bailey 2006, p. 17). Task one This is an observational job under the integrated approach of teaching listening skill. The activities under this task will be subdivided into; activities before listening (pre-listening stage), activities while listening and activities after listening (follow up). Pre-listening The teacher should provide students with a picture and a check list. Students should be requested to tick boxes in the checklist to indicate their feelings towards the topic. They should give their predictions on what they expect to hear about the topic. They should be given time to engage in a small debate, in the target language and finally read a text about the topic that they have prepared. Listening The teacher should provide listeners with a spoken text that entails information on the topic that is symbolically outlined in the form of a picture above. Learners should listen to the main ideas while completing a chart availed to them. They should also take note of the details and fill in the missing words in the text with gaps given to them. They should also take note of the pronunciation. Follow Up Teachers should present their as far as the performance of the learners in the exercise is concerned. They should also present their complete and detailed notes while making corrections to the mistakes made by the listeners by giving them the exact words. The spoken text should be listened to one last time. Task two This task is based on the discrete item approach. English learners in Saudi Arabia have difficulties pronouncing some English words. For example, students pronounce Olives as Olive with a silent ‘s. The teacher should identify words the students are unable to pronounce and read them out as they listen and at the same time writing the words down. Conclusion All humans are born with an innate ability to hear, though, hearing is not listening. A number of factors must be considered to help second language students develop effective listening skill. Models of the listening process which include the bottom up, interactive and top down are basic in teaching listening skills. Children gain the entire list of phonemes for the first language so easily early in the language acquisition process. This is, however, not the case with adults intending to learn a second language; it is usually very problematic. When one is past puberty, the brain has already programmed all first language phonemes that it intends to recognize into fixed categories. Creating another set for the phonemes of second language is difficult. Second language speakers tend to assimilate the second language phonemes into their established first language system. It is for this reason that speakers find it challenging to distinguish between their native language and the second language. For example, French speakers of English might experience difficulties differentiating between ‘ship’ and ‘sheep. Listening is an important aspect of communication competence and hence the need to merit is equal treatment with other skills such as speaking, writing and reading. References Bentley, S., & Bacon, S. E.1996. The all New, State-of-the-Art ILA Definition of Listening: Now that we have it, what do we do with it? Listening Post, 1-5. Eysenck, M. W. 2001. Principles of Cognitive Psychology. Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Field, J. 2008. Bricks or Mortar: Which parts of the input does a second language listener rely on? TESOL Quarterly, 42, 411-432. Field, J. 2008. Promoting Perception: Lexical Segmentation in Second Language Listening ETL Journal 57, 325-334 Goh, C .1998. How Learners with Different Listening Ability use Comprehension Strategies and Tactics. Language Teaching Research, 2, 2, 124-147 Goh, C. C. 2002. Teaching Listening in the Language Classroom. 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