Aim
In
this research, the importance of listening skill, speaking skill and what are
the methods have to be followed in
listening and speaking skills are discussed. For this, three tests are
conducted at 9th standard level in order to improve their listening
and speaking activity.
The main aim of this research is to
develop the listening and speaking skills of learners at 9th
standard level by conducting pretest, revision test and post test. Through the
pretest performance, the investigator has come to know the standard of the
learners at 9th standard, by the revision test and post test performance
one may come to know the improvement of the learners listening and speaking
skills.
This research includes the
importance of listening and speaking skills, methods adopted in teaching the
listening and speaking skills, and the performance of learners in the three
tests. This research work also includes statement of marks of the learners in
three tests and the difficulties faced by the learners and remedies suggested to
overcome their problems.
Listening:
Listening to spoken English is an
important way of acquiring the language. Listening enables us to pick up
vocabularies and structures too. Therefore, one needs as much opportunity to
listen to spoken English as possible. Developing one’s spoken skill depends on
developing one’s listening skill. The ability to understand spoken English is
very important for listening to the radio, watching television, understanding
instructions and announcements. The primary objective of listening
comprehension practice in the class room enables pupils to learn to function
effectively in real life listening situations. It is always advisable to be
aware of the different listening experiences that occur.
Acquiring listening skill is to
improve one’s speaking skill. Speaking skill depend on a great deal on one’s listening
skill. Unless one understands spoken English, one can’t give responses.
Listening to others spoken English also helps in improving one’s own spoken
English. Listening and speaking are the two sides of the same coin of effective
communication.
Listening skill comes under four
headings,
v Understanding
a speaker’s accent or pronunciation.
v Understanding
his/her grammar.
v Recognizing
his/her vocabulary, and
v Being
able to grasp the meaning of what he/she says.
There
are two kinds of listening skill practices,
1. Intensive
listening or Focused listening.
2. Extensive
listening or Casual listening.
1.
Intensive
Listening:
It
can be divided into two groups they are,
i.
Exercise to train educational
comprehensive of memory.
ii.
Exercise which get the learners to
listen to particular features of languages such as vocabulary, grammar or
pronunciation.
Students
listen carefully, keenly, and closely to find out the information what they
need to know. Listening seriously to the news bulletins on the radio or TV,
important announcements etc, are a few examples of focused learning purpose. It
is also called oriented listening. This type of listening helps to increase the
student’s concentration.
2. Extensive Listening:
The purpose of extensive listening
practice is to give the learners plenty of opportunity to develop and exercise
his listening skill in a natural way.
Extensive listening need not be
tested in any detailed, will be done for its own sake. The pupils will be
following the means of listening, because they are interested in the
information of it. For this the material should vary. Then sometimes the
students listen to television or Radio commentaries or programmes while they
are doing some work or talking with their friends. Majority of the audience is found busily
talking among themselves rather than listening to what the speakers are
blasting out the microphones. This type of listening without any specific
purpose is called “casual listening”. Recording of stories on other texts taken
from books or magazines can often be used to improve listening skill for native
speaker or a particular language, some different passage should be given, but
for non-native speakers, something condensed in normal and easy vocabulary to
understand. Such passage must contain
familiar words and phrases.
Major
components of improving one’s Listening Skill:
v To
improve one’s power of vocabulary.
v To
avoid problems of communication.
v To
strengthen one’s pronunciation.
v To
decipher the meaning clearly.
v TO
sharpen one’s memory power.
v To
know the proper structure of grammar.
Five stages of
listening process:
1.
Receiving:
Hearing
will take place, when one receives messages through the range of auditory
stimuli.
2.
Understanding:
Understanding in
other word, one can say the ability of comprehending. To understand symbols the
students have seen and heard. The students must analyze the meaning of stimuli
which they have perceived. The meanings attached to such kind of things like a
function of our past associations and of the content. The listener must
understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender.
3.
Remembering:
Remembering is a process which
place to recall things from mind is storage. Remembering depend upon the memory
capacity.
4.
Evaluating:
This stage is, which active listeners
participate, it is at these point that the active listener weighs, evidence,
sorts fact from opinion and determines the presence or absence or bias or
prejudice in a message.
5.
Responding:
This stage requires that the
receiver completes the process through verbal and nonverbal feedback, because
the student has been received. This stage becomes the only overt means by which
the sender may determine the degree of success in transmitting the massage.
How
do people listen?
Most of the listeners are not like dry sponges
ready to absorb everything the speaker gives them. They are continually
assessing, digesting, rejecting or accepting what they hear. The listeners are
measuring it against their own bank of experience , prejudice and evaluating
its worth, listeners are also judging the speaker. Sometimes listeners fail to
concentrate and can be distracted by what the speaker is saying and also
distracted by his behavior or appearance.
Why
is listening Difficult?
v Internal
and external distractions.
v Messages
are received through fitters of experience and prejudices.
v Listener’s
selectivity listen to what they think is important or what interests them.
v Poor
speakers, i.e. dull voice, irritating mannerism etc.
v Poor
speaker i.e. jumbled thinking, no structure, unsuitable vocabulary, in appropriate level for audience.
Barriers
to listen effectively:
While listening to the speaker’s speech, the
listener may feel some of the barriers arise at th.at time There are bias or
prejudice, language differences or accents, noise, curry, fear or anger and lacattention
span. Then the listeners should consciously avoid or eliminate the listeners
are engage in a conversation.
1.
Environmental Distractions:
Environmental
distractions are any cause that divided attention of an individual or group
from the chosen object of attention onto the source of distraction. It is the
lack of ability to pay attention, lack of interest in the object of attention,
or the great intensity, novelty or attractiveness of something other than the
object of attention. Distractions come from both external sources and internal
sources. External distraction can include electronic gadgets like personal
computers or laptops, cellular Phones, music players, television, portable
gaming condos and etc. Internal distractions can be absent mindedness lack of
interest, lack of attention etc. These two distractions are the common barriers
for effective listening. People can observe it is common at home, in school, at
work or in community, To eliminate this type of listening barriers, when
conversing with people, put listener self in a good environmental position
without external and internal distractions. Take time to stop and give full
attention to the person listeners are talking to. It will not only help the
listeners understand the other person better, but also can create more
meaningful and deeper relationship with them.
2.
Pride:
This
is another type listening barriers. That is called pride or ego. Most often,
the people let our pride or ego to take over the conversation. The listeners
think that they are already smart enough to even listen from other people. Then
the listeners think that they are better than other people and also nothing
more to learn from them. When the people close their selves and stop listening
to other people. The listeners are doomed because they stop learning. To
eliminate this barrier, be more open-minded to listen and learn from other
people. The pupil may learn more things if they open their self and listen. But
be mindful or selective listening. Remember that they do not have to agree with
everything, but it’s helpful if they at least consider listening.
3.
Assumptions:
Human
mind is mysterious and it can process a lot of information especially in
between conversation, ever while the other party is still talking. That is why
the listeners have the tendency to interrupt, because the listeners assume that
they already know what the other person is telling. Such behavior is cause by
another listening barrier called assumptions. Assumptions are statement that is
assumed to be true and from which a conclusion can be drawn quiet often, when
the listeners make assumptions, they already create conclusion in our mind
without even considering the thoughts and feelings of the other person. And as
such, listener creates more gap and unresolved problems. To resolve and
eliminate this listening barrier, proactive keeping an open mind and listen
before the listeners make any assumptions. The listener may try putting their
self in the shoe of another so they can fully
understand and foal the sentiments of the other people.
4.
Close – Mindedness:
Another listening
barrier to effective conversation is close-mindedness. This is intolerant of
the beliefs and opinions of other, stubbornly unreceptive to new ideas. When
listener think that they all have the answer, and that the things the listeners
know always the right answers, then their mind will close for new ideas. In
order to eliminate this Listing barrier, strive to always keep an open mind
for effective listening. The listener will learn and build deeper relationship
if they stop being close minded.
5. Defensiveness:
This type is the last barrier of listening.
That is an attitude or position of defense. It’s when the listeners constantly
protect their slues from criticism, exposure of one’s shortcomings, or other
real or perceived threats to the ego. Defensiveness is a primal response to
feel in attacked, threatened, misunderstood or disrespected. This will normally
results to newer ending argument, protest, denial and blaming. To eliminate
this listening barrier, remember not to view comments and eroticism as personal
attack. Instead make them as a tool for personal assessment, improvement and
growth.
6. Listening
Problems:
The
evidence that show why listening is difficult comes mainly from four sources.
The massage to be listening to, the speaker the listener and the physical
setting.
The Message:
Many learners find the context more difficult
to listen to a toped massage than to read the same massage on a pillow of
paper, since the listening passage comes into the ear in the thinking of eye,
whereas reading malarial can be read as long as the reader likes. The listening
material may deal with almost any are of lie. It might include street gossip,
proverbs, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the students. Also in a
spontaneous conversation speakers frequently change topics the content is
usually not well organized. In many cases listening can’t predict what speakers
are going to say, whether it is a news report on the radio, an interviewer’s
questions an everyday conversation etc.
Messages on the radio or recorded on tape
cannot be listened to at a slower speed. Even
in conversation it is impossible to ask the speakers to repeat something as
many times as the inter locater might like. Linguistic features, liaison the
linking of words in speech when the second begins with a vowel e.g. an orange
an elision (leaving out a round or sonless, e.g. suppose may be pronounced in
rapid speech) are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to
distinguish or recognize individual words in the stream of speech. They are
used to see words written as distending materials are made up of everyday
conversation, they may contain a lot of
colloquial words and expressions, such as staff for material guy for man etc,
as well as slang students who have exposed mainly to formal or bookish English
may not be familiar with these expressions. In spontaneous conversation people
sometimes use ungrammatical sentences because of nervousness or hesitation.
They may omit elements of sentences or add something redundant. This may make
it difficult for the listening understands the meaning.
The Speaker:
Ur (1984:7) points out that “in ordinary conversation or
even in much extempore speechmaking or lecturing the speaker actually says a
good deal more than would appear to be necessary in order to convey our
massage. Redundant utterances may take the form of repetitions, false starts,
re-phrasings, self – corrections, elaborations, tautologies and apparently
meaningless additions such as the speaker means or the listeners know”, this
redundancy is a natural feature of speech and may be either a help or
hindrance, depending on the student’s level. It may make it more difficult for
beginners to understand what the speaker is saying. On the other hand it may
give advanced students more time to “tine in” to the speaker’s voice and speech
style. Learners tend to be used their teacher’s accent or to the standard
variety of British or American English. The listeners find it hard to
understand speakers with other accents spoken prose, as in news broad casting
and reading aloud written texts, is characterized by an even pace volume, pitch
and intonation. Natural dialogues, on the other hand, are full of hesitations
pauses and uneven intonation. Students used to the former kinds of listening
material may sometimes find the latter difficult to understand.
The listener:
Foreign language students are
not familiar enough with clichés and collocations in English to predict a
missing word or phrase. They cannot for example be expected to know that rosy
often collocates with cheeks or to predict the last word will be something like
rage when they hear the phrase he was in a towering ….. This is a major problem
for students. Lack of socio cultural factual and contextual knowledge of the
target language can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is
used to express its culture (Anderson and Lynch 1988) foreign – language
learners usually elevate more time to reading than to listening, and so lack of
exposure to different kinds of listening materials. Both psychological and
physical factors may have a negative effect on perception and interpretation
of listening material. It is tiring for
students to concentrate on interpreting unfamiliar rounds, words and sentences
for long periods.
Physical Setting:
Notice including both back noise on the recording and
environmental noise. Can take the listener’s mind off the context of the
listening passage. Listening material on tape or radio lacks visual and aural
environmental clues. Not seeing the speakers body language and facial
expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the
speaker’s meaning/. Unclear sounds resulting from poor – quality equipment can
interfere with the listener’s comprehension.
Nine Symptoms of poor
listening:
i.
Condemning the subject as uninteresting without
Healing:
“There is no such thing as an uninteresting
subject” wrote G.K. Chesterton, “there are only uninteresting people”. Many
have defined their “interests” and built them like town walls around their
lives. The people have to storm the gates to get in. A variation on this
symptom is to pre-judge a speaker as uninteresting for some reason or another.
So the speakers condemn large numbers of people to silence because the speakers
do not believe they have an interesting contribution to make, or because their
lost efforts have been unconstructive or long winded. Photo one of the words
top ten intellects, loved to listen to seamen, farmers and craftsman taking
about their skills.
ii.
Criticizing the speakers delivery or Aids:
One way of expressing ones non – listening
ability is to fasten on to the speaker’s delivery or the quality of his/her
audio – visual aids. Some trick of production, an accent or impediment,
involuntary movements on mannerisms. All these can be sized upon as excuses for
not listening to the meaning. The audio –Visual aids can go on rampage and
distract a week listener. It is hard to listen when the delivery is hard and
audio-Visual aids out of control, but such occasions do sort out the learners
from the listeners.
iii.
Selective listening:
Selective
listening should not be confused with listening in waves of attention, which is
infecting a characteristic of the good listener. Selective listening means that
you are programmed to turn a deaf ear to certain topic on themes. Adolf HITLER
ONLY WANTED TO HEAR GOOD NEWS. Those who brought him the truth encountered a
glassy look and personal insult, if not worse. The danger in selective
listening is that it can become habitual and unconscious. The listeners become
totally unaware that the listener only wants to listen to certain people or a
limited range of ego. Boosting news, or that the people are filtering and
straining information.
iv.
Interrupting:
Persistent interrupting is the most obvious
badge of the bad listener. Of course interrupting is an inevitable past of
everyday conversation, springing from the fact that the listener can think faster
than the other person can talk. So the listener can often accurately guess the
end of the sentence or remark. The nuisance interrupter, however, either gets
it wrong or else-even worse –elbows in with a remark which shouts out the fact
that the listener has not been listening to the half-completed cap rule of
meaning. The listener may often be working on their own next piece of talk and
therefore be literally too busy to listen.
v.
Day Dreaming:
Day dreaming can be a symptom of poor
listening. It is difficult to think two things at the same time. The day
dreamer has “Switched Off” and turned his/her attention to an inner television
screen. Some inner agenda has gained precedence over what is being said to him.
Emotions can project color pictures on the inner screen and turn up the sound.
Then farewell to listening.
vi.
Succumbing to External Distractions:
Comfortable
chairs, noise, heat or cold. Sunlight or gloom. The situation can master the
listener and drown the speaker and the content. The good listener will try to
deal with the distraction in some helpful way; the poor one allows it to
dominate his/her mind and rob him of attention. The higher quality of
listening, the less power extends have over the relationship of communicant and
communicator. Listening affirms or builds the relationship in the teeth force
at work to disintegrate it.
Vii.
Evading the Difficult or Technical:
Such is our addiction
to the clear simple and ivied that none of us care for the difficult. Long and
dull presentation and the speaker throw the sponge in too soon. What is at
issue is not the ability of the speaker but our skills as listeners. If the
path has to be tortuous and uphill, the stout hearted listener will follow. The
lay listener gives up at the first obstacle.
viii.
Submitting of National Words :
A symptom of the poor listener is
his/her vulnerability to trigger words, which enter the atmosphere carrying
certain associations, pleasant or unpleasant. An unskilled speaker can trigger
off a minefield in the minds of an audience and yet be as innocent as a child
at play. Our minds are like conveyers in this respect, and the poor listener
gives in at first mind explosions. Thought stops at once, and the listener’s
readymade come into play.
ix.
Going to sleep:
When indulged in frequently nodding
off can be a symptom of a poor listener. Floor the art of listening requires a
background of sufficient sleep is a fact which the poor partitioned habitually
ignorer tiredness affects our listening.
Some Solution for
Effective listening:
v Grade
listening materials according to the student’s level and provide authentic
materials rather than idealized filtered samples. It is true that natural
speech is hard to grade and it is difficult for students to identify the
different voices and cope with frequent overlaps. Nevertheless the materials
should progress step by step from semi-authenticity that displays most of the
linguistic features of natural speech to total authenticity, because the final
aim is to understand natural speech in real life.
v Design
task-oriented exercises to engage the student’s interest and help them learn
listening skills. Subconsciously. As urn (1984-25) has said that “listening
exercise are most effective if they are constructed round a task. That is to
say, the students are required to do something in response to what they hear
that will demonstrate their understanding”. And also it suggested some tasks
are expressing agreement or disagreement, taking notes, marking a picture or
diagram according to instructions, and answering questions, compared with
traditional multiple – choice questions, task based exercise have an oblivious
and advantage, they not only also encourage them to use different kinds of listening
skills and strategizes to reach their destination in an active way.
v Provide
students with different kinds of input such as lectures, radio news, films, TV
plays, announcements, everyday conversations interviews, storytelling, English
songs and so on, Brown and Yule (1983) categorize spoken texts into three broad
types. Static, dynamic and abstract. Texts that describe objects or give
instructions are static texts these that tell a story or recount an incident
are dynamic texts, these that four on some one’s ideas and beliefs rather than
on concrete objects are abstract level. They draw a figure in which difficult
increases from left to right and with in any one type of input complete exit
increases from top to bottom.
v Try
to find visual aids or draw pictures and diagrams associated with the listening
topics to help students guess or imagine activity.
v Give
practice in liaisons and elisions in order to help students yet used to the
acoustic forms of rapid natural speech. It is useful to find rapidly uttered
colloquial collections and ask students to imitate native speaker’s
pronunciation.
v Make
students aware of different native speaker accounts of course strong regional
accounts are not suitable for training in listening but in spontaneous
conversation native speakers do have certain accents. Moreover the American
account is quite different from the British and Australian. Therefore it is
necessary to let students deal with different accounts especially in extensive
listening.
v Select
short, simple listening texts with little redundancy for lower-level students
and complicated authentic materials with more redundancy for advanced learners.
It has been reported that elementary –level students are not capable of
interpreting extra information in the redundant messages where as advanced
listeners may benefit from messages being expanded paraphrased etc.
v Provide
extra background knowledge, such as complex sentence structures and colloquial
words and expressions as needed.
v Give
and try to get as much feedback as possible. Throughout the course the teacher
should bright the gap between input and students response and between the
teacher’s feedback and student’s reaction in order to keep activities
purposeful. It is important for the listening class teacher to give students
immediate feedback on their performance. This not only promotes error
correction but also provides encouragement. It can help students redevelop
confidence in their ability to deal with listening problems. Student’s feedback
can help the teacher judge where he class is going and how it should be guided.
v Help
students develop the skills of listening with anticipation listening for
specific information listening for gist interpretation and inference listening
for intended meaning listening for attitude etc, by providing varied task and
exercises at different levels with different focuses.
Tips to Effective
listening:
i.
Show Respect:
Respect that every human beings are
different other people’s opinions and stories may be different from ours
shouting respect is essential for effective listening.
ii.
Be Sensitive:
Sometimes people just
need someone who can listen to their problems and stories so preaching and
acting like a problem expect in this situation can cause deeper problems. There
will be mounts you need to be a little more sensitive on what other people
think and feel especially if the listeners want to resolve the problem or save
the relationship.
iii.
Pause:
Learn to leave at least a couple of
seconds pause after the speaker talks before giving your reply. On the other
hand before steering a conversation set a rule or agreement that both rides
will let the other person listen both rides will let the other person listen
first before speaking or replaying. This may feel backward or weird at first
before speaking or replaying. This may feel backward or we real at first but
this effective way to create a good conversing environment. This will uneasy at
first but this will be much easier when this becomes a habit.
Listen to understand:
Most of the people are listening because they
want to have a good reply. This kind of attitude often give a problem when this
come to communication keep in mind that the most effective conversation are the
ones where the listener have used our eases more than our mouth. Their main
goal is to avoid those effective listening barriers above. The listeners need
to set aside our defuses open their minds for new ideas an start listening not
just with their ears but with their hearts. Because sometimes is not in the
words the listeners just heard. The listeners need to hear the words not being
said.
The Techniques of
listening:
i.
Developing listening through Dialogue:
The teachers can easily develop listening
skills in students through dialogues. The teachers may follow the steps given
below while introducing a dialogue to redevelop listening skills.
Introduction of the topic
To provide prior
knowledge.
v Asking
lead questions
To four their attentions on the main
points of the dialogue.
v First
leading by the teacher
To give practice in listening again
v Asking
Questions
To check comprehension.
v Third
reading by the teachers
To help the students follow the reading
with their books open.
v Practice
:
To strengthen the listening skills.
ii.
Monologue:
Prepared but unscripted talks such
as lessons and lectures delivered from outline notes. This will contain some
repetition, rephrasing and hesitation but not as much as spontaneous
conversation.
Formal scripted talks, lectures and
news bulletins read aloud, there are very similar to written texts. They have
high information density and little repetition. The speakers will most
frequently use whatever accent in considered standard in their past of the
world.
iii.
Developing listening through cassette
Recorder:
Cassette recorder provider a
variety of voices and makes the class lively. This helps to create spoken
English situation the class and thus helps the teacher to give enough practice
in listening to spoken. The teacher can record whatever the student wants to
listen and listen to it whenever they get time. The teacher can play it again
and listen to the specific information till the listening. Teachers should select
recorded cassettes for giving practice.
iv.
Developing listening through Guessing:
Making
the students guess what they are going to hear next is an important technique
of developing listening skills. This makes the class active and fully involved.
This is very useful to tell stories or to narrate incidents; stories can be
used easily to make the students guess what they are going to hear next. The
students will be always in expectation or anticipation of the incident
according to their guessing ability. While telling the story the teacher should
step at every stage and ask questions to find out whether of listening skill in
students increase memory and thus enable learning earlier and faster. The
boredom in the traditional classroom teaching of English will disappear leading
to young brain listening to understand learn and practice.
Ten Guides to Good
Listening:
i.
Find area of Interest:
This may be the golden rule of good
listening. This is a rare subject who does not have any possible interest or
use for the student, our friends or families. Listener naturally screens what
is being said for its interest and value.
ii.
Judge content, not Delivery:
The good listeners say to their
self the listeners not interested in their personality or delivery and want to
find out what the listeners know. Does this man know some of the things I need
to know?
iii.
Hold your fire:
Over stimulation is almost as bad
as under stimulation and the two together constitute the tue in evils of
inefficient listening. The aroused person usually becomes preoccupied by trying
to do three things simultaneous by. Calculate what harm is done to listeners
own pet ideas, plot an embarrassing question to ask the speaker; enjoy all the
discomfiture going on, subsequent passages.
iv.
Listen for ideas:
The good listener focuses on the
main ideas. The speaker not faster on to the peripheral themes, or size on some
fact or other which may black their mind from considering the central ideas.
v.
Be Flexible:
There is no one system for making notes.
The good listener may employ four or five methods depending on the other
factors in the communication star such as the content and situation.
vi.
Work at listening:
Good
listening takes energy. Attention is a form of directed energy. The speaker
ought to establish eye contact and maintain it to indicate by pasture and
facial expression that the occasion and the speaker’s effort are a matter of
real concern to the teacher. When the speaker does these things, teacher help
the speakers, express him more clearly and teacher in turn profit by
understanding better the improved communication teachers have helped him to
achieve, The teacher roles silence can be as expressive of the listener
personality as words are for the speaker. If a sculpture is a work of art
compounded of materials and space. So communication makes up words and silence.
For from being a negative vacuum silence can convey warm and positive feelings
which may help or hinder the communicator. The best silence corrected and
departed by asking the questions, is an influence felt by the other person
willing the students to give of their best.
vii.
Resist Distractions:
A
good listener instinctively fights distraction. Sometimes fight is easily
won-by closing door shutting a radio off mowing closer to the person talking or
asking the students to speak lender should distractions not be death with that
easily this becomes a matter of
concentration.
viii.
Exercise the students Mind:
Good listeners regard apparently
difficult or demanding presentations or speakers as challenges to their mental
abilities.
ix.
Keep the students mind open:
Effective listeners try to identify
their prejudice, blind spot and semiconscious assumptions. Instead of Turing a
deaf ear. The listener seeks to improve upon their perception and ability of
understanding precisely in those areas.
x.
Capitalize on Toughly speed:
Most
persons talk at a speed by 125 words a minute. There is good evidence that if
thought were measured in words per minute most of the learner could easily
think at your times that rate. The good listener uses his /her thought speed to
advantage. They constantly apply their space thinking time to what is being
said. This is not difficult one has a definite paten of thought to follow. The
speaker does not always put everything that’s important into words. The
changing tones and volume of their may have a meaning. So may their facial
expressions the gestures the speaker makes with his/her hand movement of their
body.
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