It has been observed that one of the most difficult skills to develop in a learning process is the listening comprehension. That is why, for the majority of learners this issue involves different kind of feelings like frustration, panic or boredom. According to Underwood (1989, 4) by ‘learning to listen’ we mean that “we want our students to attend to what they hear, to process it, to understand it, to interpret it, to evaluate it, and to respond to it. We want them to become active listeners”.
However, for many students, to obtain what was mentioned above is not an easy job. According to Brown (1993) there are some factors which make listening difficult: Clustering, Redundancy, Reduced forms, Performance Variables, Colloquial language, Rate of delivery, Stress, rhythm, intonation, and Interaction. But, if students take into account these aspects and they are awared of them, it will help us, as teacher, to challenge them appropriately and to assign weights to items.
You are right. The teacher should listen to their students because it represents promoting listening skills in communicative situations which are authentic real-life situations. Since interactions in a respecful and low-anxiaty context relies on teacher attitudes and practices, it is the teacher reponsible of leading a succesful process because he is the one conducting meaningful activities including factors such as Brown´s proposal giving authentic learning opportunities in an appropiate environment.
ResponderEliminarTati,what do you think we should do to avoid these kind of feelings in students? should we make them aware of all these factors that make English difficult?
ResponderEliminarMeasuring students' listening skill has been a challenge for teachers. It's not only about observing the person's performance, but also about the importance of listening to understand and listening to be develop a critical thinking.
ResponderEliminarAny answers for your classmates, Tatiana? Also, I think making people aware of the difficulties they may encounter is a good idea, but isn't it maybe a bit overwhelming to give them all this info?
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