Modern textbooks are awfully clever in the
way they slip seamlessly from an interesting listening text into explanation
and practice of a grammar point. It is hard to see how such a system could
possibly be worse that just launching into a grammar point- until, that is,
your students have listened three times and still haven't understood enough to
answer the first question, let alone move onto the final language point. You
can only imagine that none of the teachers who reviewed the textbook before
publication had that problem, and indeed listening comprehension skills vary a
lot from country to country and from person to person. The reasons why some
people find listening in a foreign language difficult vary just as much, so
eleven possible reasons why it might be so are given below, along with some
ideas on how to tackle each point.
Why
some students find listening difficult
1. They are trying to understand every word
Despite the fact that we can cope with
missing whole chunks of speech having a conversation on a noisy street in our
own language, many people don't seem to be able to transfer that skill easily
to a second language. One method of tackling this is to show them how to
identify the important words that they need to listen out for. In English this
is shown in an easy-to-spot way by which words in the sentence are stressed
(spoken louder and longer). Another is to give them one very easy task that you
know they can do even if they don't get 90% of what is being said to build up
their confidence, such as identifying the name of a famous person or spotting something
that is mentioned many times.
2. They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant
This is one aspect of the problem above
that all people speaking a foreign language have experienced at one time or
another. This often happens when you hear a word you half remember and find you
have completely lost the thread of what was being said by the time you remember
what it means, but can also happen with words you are trying to work out that
sound similar to something in your language, words you are trying to work out
from the context or words you have heard many times before and are trying to
guess the meaning of once and for all. In individual listenings you can cut
down on this problem with vocab pre-teach and by getting students to talk about
the same topic first to bring the relevant vocabulary for that topic area
nearer the front of their brain. You could also use a listening that is in
shorter segments or use the pause button to give their brains a chance to catch
up, but teaching them the skill of coping with the multiple demands of
listening and working out what words mean is not so easy. One training method
is to use a listening or two to get them to concentrate just on guessing words
from context. Another is to load up the tasks even more by adding a logic
puzzle or listening and writing task, so that just listening and trying to
remember words seems like an easier option. Finally, spend a lot of time
revising vocabulary and doing skills work where they come into contact with it
and use it, and show students how to do the same in their own time, so that the
amount of half remembered vocab is much less.
3. They just don't know the most important words
Again, doing vocabulary pre-teaching before
each listening as a short term solution and working on the skill of guessing
vocab from context can help, but please make sure that you practice this with
words that can actually be guessed from context (a weakness of many textbooks)
and that you work on that with reading texts for a while to build up to the
much more difficult skill of guessing vocab and listening at the same time. The
other solution is simply to build up their vocabulary and teach them how they
can do the same in their own time with vocabulary lists, graded readers,
monolingual dictionary use etc.
4. They don't recognise the words that they know
If you have a well-graded textbook for your
class, this is probably a more common (and more tragic) problem than not
knowing the vocabulary at all. Apart from just being too busy thinking about
other things and missing a word, common reasons why students might not
recognise a word include not distinguishing between different sounds in English
(e.g. /l/ and /r/ in "led" and "red" for many Asians), or conversely trying to
listen for differences that do not exist, e.g. not knowing words like "there", "their"
and "they're" are homophones. Other reasons are problems with word stress, sentence
stress, and sound changes when words are spoken together in natural speech such
as weak forms. What all this boils down to is that sometimes pronunciation work
is the most important part of listening comprehension skills building.
5. They have problems with different accents
In a modern textbook, students have to not
only deal with a variety of British, American and Australian accents, but might
also have Indian or French thrown in. Whilst this is theoretically useful if or
when they get a job in a multinational company, it might not be the additional
challenge they need right now- especially if they studied exclusively American
English at school. Possibilities for making a particular listening with a
tricky accent easier include rerecording it with some other teachers before
class, reading all or part of the tapescript out in your (hopefully more familiar
and therefore easier) accent, and giving them a listening task where the
written questions help out like gap fills. If it is an accent they particularly
need to understand, e.g., if they are sorting out the outsourcing to India,
you could actually spend part of a lesson on the characteristics of that
accent. In order to build up their ability to deal with different accents in
the longer term, the best way is just to get them listening to a lot of English,
e.g. TV without dubbing or BBC World Service Radio. You might also want to
think about concentrating your pronunciation work on sounds that they need to
understand many different accents rather than one, and on concentrating on
listenings with accents that are relevant for that particular group of
students, e.g. the nationality of their head office.
6. They lack listening stamina/ they get tired
This is again one that anyone who has lived
in a foreign country knows well- you are doing fine with the conversation or
movie until your brain seems to reach saturation point and from then on nothing
goes in until you escape to the toilet for 10 minutes. The first thing you'll
need to bear in mind is to build up the length of the texts you use (or the
lengths between pauses) over the course in exactly the same way as you build up
the difficulty of the texts and tasks. You can make the first time they listen
to a longer text a success and therefore a confidence booster by doing it in a
part of the lesson and part of the day when they are most alert, by not
overloading their brains with new language beforehand, and by giving them a
break or easy activity before they start. You can build up their stamina by
also making the speaking tasks longer and longer during the term, and they can practice
the same thing outside class by watching an English movie with subtitles and
taking the subtitles off for longer and longer periods each time.
7. They have a mental block
This could be not just a case of a student
having struggled with badly graded listening texts in school, exams or
self-study materials, but even of a whole national myth that people from their country
find listening to English difficult. Whatever the reason, before you can build
up their skills they need their confidence back. The easiest solution is just
to use much easier texts, perhaps using them mainly as a prompt to discussion
or grammar presentations to stop them feeling patronized. You can disguise
other easy listening comprehension tasks as pronunciation work on linked speech
etc. in the same way.
8. They are distracted by background noise
Being able to cope with background noise is
another skill that does not easily transfer from L1 and builds up along with
students' listening and general language skills. As well as making sure the
tape doesn't have lots of hiss or worse (e.g. by recording tape to tape at
normal speed not double speed, by using the original or by adjusting the bass
and treble) and choosing a recording with no street noise etc, you also need to
cut down on noise inside and outside the classroom. Plan listenings for when
you know it will be quiet outside, e.g. not at lunchtime or when the class next
door is also doing a listening. Cut down on noise inside the classroom by doing
the first task with books closed and pens down. Boost their confidence by
letting them do the same listening on headphones and showing them how much
easier it is. Finally, when they start to get used to it, give them an additional
challenge by using a recording with background noise such as a cocktail party
conversation.
9. They can't cope with not having images
Young people nowadays, they just can't cope
without multimedia! Although having students who are not used to listening to
the radio in their own language can't help, most students find not having body language
and other cues to help a particular difficulty in a foreign language. Setting
the scene with some photos of the people speaking can help, especially tasks where
they put the pictures in order as they listen, and using video instead makes a
nice change and is a good way of making skills such as guessing vocab from
context easier and more natural.
10. They have hearing problems
As well as people such as older students
who have general difficulty in hearing and need to be sat close to the
cassette, you might also have students who have problems hearing particular
frequencies or who have particular problems with background noise. As well as
playing around with the graphic equaliser and doing the other tips above for
background noise, you could also try setting most listening tasks as homework
and/ or letting one or more students read from the tapescript as they listen.
11. They can't tell the difference between the different voices
This was the problem that took me longest
to twig, but voices that are clearly distinct to a native speaker can be completely
confusing for a non-native speaker. I haven't quite worked out why those
problems occur on some occasions and not on others, but the native speaker could
be identifying a lisp, an accent or a difference in range of tone that escapes
a student. You can avoid these problems by using texts with one woman and one
man, or you can practice them with tasks where the students only have to count
how many times the speaker changes.
