Intermediate Listening Comprehension How to Listen Critically By Sherri Wei

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How is listening different from hearing? Do you listen or hear in the following situations? A.listen / hear When your alarm clock sets off at 6 o’clock in the morning. B.listen / hear When your teacher is telling the class what would be included in midterm. C.listen / hear When the dog next door is barking at 3 o’clock at midnight. D.listen / hear When you play the soundtrack of The Wedding Singer to learn the song for a singing contest. E.listen / hear When your mom asks you to do the dishes right away. F.listen / hear When you overhear the couple sitting next to you fighting with each other in the cafeteria.  We might hear all kinds of sounds and messages all day long, but we don’t listen to all of them. Thus, listening is a rather selective meaningful action and we could choose what we want to listen to. Ex. 1 :The Role of Listening

Ex 2: Different Purposes of Listening Step 1: As you read each sentence, try to replace listen with another word.each sentence Step 2: Answer the following questions. –Who is listening (or not listening)? –Why are they listening? –What do they expect?

Exercise 2 1.She’s just split up with her boyfriend, so I bet I’ll have to listen to the whole story. 2.I keep telling him that his boss is not paying him enough, but he just won’t listen. 3.I really like listening to Iris singers like Mary Black and Van Morrison. 4.Listen to me! I’ve had just about enough of your rudeness! 5.I usually listen to the news in the car on the way home. 6.Keep your mouth shut! Be on your guard! Enemy ears are listening to you! (public poster in World War I) 7.I find I always listen for my son coming back from the disco before I can go to sleep. 8.“Midland Bank—The Listening Bank” (advertisement)

Possible answers 1.Sympathize with/ go over/ follow 2.Believe 3.Being entertained by 4.Obey 5.Pay attention to 6.Checking on/monitoring 7.Worry about, wait to hear 8.Caring When do you “listen” in everyday life? Please give another 3 examples. Adapted from Goodith White’s Listening (2003: 13-14)

What Does Listen Critically Mean? Concentration Be able to block the distraction Select information with a real and meaningful purpose—Why are you doing this listening? Be able to take the next move to respond. Be able to predict, infer and fill in the missing information.

Think about the Context… Use the following questions to further define the context of the listening task: How many people are talking? What is the relationship among the speaker? Are they friends? Customer and waitress? Or complete strangers? What is the topic of discussion here? How do they sound like? Excited? Friendly? Nervous? Depressed? Could you predict the following development of their conversation?

“Listening is not merely not talking…it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where sounds comes back fuller and richer.” by Alice Duer Miller

Let’s start listening …