Approaches to Teaching Listening Skills

Approaches to Teaching Listening Skills Among the other four skills, listening is the one that has been most forgotten and neglected in second language classrooms. So teachers don’t pay much attention to this skill and teach it carelessly. In the field of language teaching and learning proficiency has tended to be viewed as the ability of speaking and writing in language in question. Listening and reading skills are in the second position. One reason for this situation might be the demanding characteristic of the listening skill. Listening has gained a new importance in language classrooms after spreading IT technology based information in society in Iran. Moreover it should be mentioned that most of the students’ class time is devoted to the listening. Despite this, we often take importance of listening for granted, and it is the most overlooked skill among other skills. In natural order of learning any language, listening stands at first rank. Without any reception one can not produce anything. Though, if a teacher wants to have fluent and productive students, he/she should pay much and necessary attention to teaching listening skill. Listening Some of the teachers believe that speaking should be actively discouraged. One of the reasons of emphasizing listening and delaying speaking is based on an opinion. Those who give importance to speaking view the language as a product and think that language is a behavior and speaking is the manifestation of this learning or happening. On the contrary, there are approaches that gave more importance to listening Nation, Newton (2009). in this approach of language learning , listening is at the center. All of the information necessary for building up the knowledge for using language comes from receptive skills: listening, and reading. When the knowledge of language in this regard is built the learner can write and speak. In other words, with out any input, the outcome or output should be nothing. Gray and Gray (1981) described the benefits of del aying speaking and concentrating on listening. These benefits include the following: † 1. The learner is not overloaded by having to focus on two or more skills at the same time-a cognitive benefit. 2. Speed of coverage -receptive knowledge grows faster than productive knowledge. 3. It is easy to move very quickly to realistic communicative listening activities. 4. L earners will not feel shy or worried about their language classes. Having to speak a foreign language, particularly when you know very little, can be a frightening experience. 5. Listening activities are well studied to independent learning through listening to readings.† Critics believe that producing a language is not sufficient for learning. In language learning substantial quantities of receptive activity should be included in the mind for future use. To speak communicatively and to convey and understand the meaning, one should have a previous language knowledge and information in his/her mind. Models of listening Traditionally listening was viewed as a passive skill through which the listener or hearer received information sent by message senders. More recently listening is viewed as an active and interpretive process by which the message is not fixed but is made or created by participants. (Newton,Nation.2009)