1. Teaching Listening in TEFL classes Proposed by: Mrs. Neila Ben Rejeb
KAU/ELC Summer 2008
Teaching Listening in TEFL classes
Proposed by: Mrs. Neila Ben Rejeb

2. Plan Introduction: What are the possible solutions?
1) What is listening ?
2) Why it is the hardest skill to master
What are the possible solutions?
1) Importance of warming up Tasks
2) While listening Tasks
3) Post listening Tasks
4) Difficulties met by listening teachers and useful tips
Workshops: Group work
1) Preparation of a listening lesson
2) presentation of the work by groups spokeswomen
3) Peer observation feedback and discussion
Conclusion:
To what extent can a teacher be successful in a listening class ?

3. What is the main topic of the passage?
How to transmit successfully information to learners is of a major importance to us as practitioners in the classroom not theorists
What is the main topic of the passage?
How many types of health care systems are there in Britain?
The general practitioner has many roles in Britain (True / false)
“family medicine’’ is popular in:
Britain / USA / both of them / all over the world

4. Introduction Listening to any material requires some
particular kind of preparation prior to the act of listening
1) What is listening in the first place?
Listening is the ability to identify and understand a speaker’s accent or pronunciation , his vocabulary and his grammar, and grasping his meaning .
An able listener is capable of doing these things Simultaneously (Howatt and Dakin)

5. 2) Why is listening the hardest skill to develop?
Wills lists a series of listening micro skills, she calls:
Enabling skills:
Predicting what people are going to talk about.
Guessing at unknown words.
Using one’s own knowledge of the subject that helps understand.
Identifying relevant points (note – taking, summarizing)
Recognizing cohesive devices
Understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress that gives clues to meaning and social setting
Understanding inferred information, speaker’s attitude or intention.

6. Listening is a challenging activity for students because:
They are trying to understand every word
They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant.
They just don’t know the most important words
They don’t recognize the words they know
They have problems with different accents
They lack listening Stamina , they get tired .
They have a mental block
They are distracted by background noise
They can’t cope with not having images
They have hearing problems
They can’t tell the difference between the different voices

7. What are The possible solutions?
1- Importance of pre-listening tasks:
In real life, it is unusual for people to listen to something.
Without having some idea of what they are going to hear.
To avoid boring students.
To arouse interest among students, by using a picture or a
Humor story.
To make the students familiar with the context.
Warm-up exercise step is an important preparation for the while listening stage.
We can say how well students had done in class depends mostly on how well they had been warmed up.

8. Examples of warming -up tasks
Setting the context
Generating interest
Activating current knowledge , what do you know about …?
Acquiring knowledge
Activating vocabulary
Predicting context
Pre-learning vocabulary
Checking/ understanding the listening tasks

9. Selection Criteria The time available The material available
Selecting the appropriate tasks depends on:
The time available
The material available
The ability of the class
The interests of the class

10. While-listening activities
“How to listen” Tasks:
Listen for gist (general idea, skimming)
Listen for specific detail ( scanning)
Listen for implication (What a statement implies)
Listen for speaker’s attitude

11. “Listen and …” Activities
Listen and repeat
Listen and record
Listen and memorize
Listen and transcribe
Listen and take notes
Visual support: Pictures, maps, graphs,
diagrams, supplying cultural notes

12. Post-listening Activities
Role-plays
Group discussion
Making researches on the Net
writing essays on the same topic
Fill in the blanks, cloze test using the
vocabulary acquired in the listening.

13. Difficulties met by listening teachers and useful tips
Successful listening skills are acquired over time and with a lot of practice
There are no rules in listening that can lead to improved skills as in grammar , writing or speaking
Mental Block is a main inhibitor
A large number of learners are unable to understand something unless they see it

14. Useful tips Ask questions about stressed words
Give them an easy task that you know they can do even if they don’t understand 90% of the words
Cut the listening into short segments
and use pause button to give their brains a chance to catch up

15. Make sure the quality of the tape
CD, and the recording is fine
Plan listening for when you know it
will be quiet outside, e.g. not at a lunchtime or when the class next-door is also having listening
Make students who have hearing problems sit in the front
Convince students to listen to English as often as possible but for short periods

16. Conclusion The role of the listening teacher is:
A guide who is to give students help
A diagnoser who can identify listening problems and put them right.
A designer who is able of selecting the adequate techniques, suitable tasks for students

17. Reminder Do not over-stuff your students,
Remember they are a captive audience
for a limited lapse of time , so you have
to give them the fundamental knowledge that a student must walk away with

18. To what extent are you able to make your students: enjoy the listening, acquire as much as they can the skill you’re teaching?
That’s all what teaching is about.