Listening: |
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TEFLChina Teahouse: Teaching: Listening:
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From sounds to meaning
Most Chinese students learn English not from sound, but from the letters. We have to transform what they have as images into the invisible sounds.
If we involve reading and writing by translating the sounds into visual letters and words, we will make listening very difficult. Instead teach our students to go directly from audio to meaning (from the sound version of the word directly to its meaning).
Students have to understand that there is little 'studying' to do about listening -- it's 'ear-to-the-grindstone' practice.
Learn and teach your students to play language *sound bites* over in their heads. I use this technique to understand fast speech in Mandarin. Zip -- someone says something so fast I haven't a clue what they said. I play the sound bite back in my head and slow it down until I recognize the sounds. It might only take me a few seconds. Once I recognize the aural words which I am playing back in my head slowly, I associate them directly to meaning, no translation into written Chinese nor any form of English. Just as I do this in Mandarin, our students can do it in English. Playing back sound bites in our heads and associating them directly with meaning is what listening class is all about.
Easier phrases and sentences students will readily associate directly to meaning without mental replay. Harder ones will require actual replay on your audio tape player. The association of sounds directly to meaning is what aural language is about.
Be careful that students do not get caught
up in trying to reproduce the sounds....it's not a pronunciation course...it's
a listening course - but the temptation to repeat what they hear is great. The
point to maintain here is that receptive skills always precede productive skills.......in
time, they'll acquire (to a certain extent) those pronunciation sounds.
For the time being we cannot stop using VOA as listening material. The ability to listen to the news is included in the syllabus. The band 4 and band 8 will have tests of this kind. That's why we have to train students to copy.
As clear as these broadcasts are, they are not very realistic, i.e. street-English and your students might just improve their listening ability to have conversations with VOA newscasters, who probably don't speak that way when they are out of the studio.
We have a spot dictation item in the exam. First we play a short passage twice, then give students question sheet with 15-20 blanks for them to fill. If one can not fill 10-15 blanks correctly, he might fail this item.
Some students get very nervous when they come into the language lab. They begin to worry about how to answer the questions even before they listen to the tape. And one time listening never seems enough for them.
That's a bonus! Now your job as the teacher is to get them to channel that nervous energy into the pre-listening skill of predicting what they think they will hear, based on the questions they read. This will help set the stage for what they're going to hear....prepare them.
When you have the students in the sound lab, before you start on the tape tell them to read the questions . As they are reading ask them to underline any vocabulary they are unfamiliar with. Walk around and make a note of any words they have underlined . You will probably have an idea already about what is going to cause trouble. Explain the vocabulary. Also it might help to give them the meaning of the words as they are used in the text. Finally go over the questions with them once again asking them to tell you if they don't fully understand the questions. Then play the tape.
One thing that caught me by surprise was that my Asian students didn't know that Rachel (for example) was a girl's name and this tended to throw them out of line especially if Rachel was the boss and the one who was asking the questions. It helps to explain that they are going to here a woman who is called Rachel and a man called Frank .
The problem with most students is that they don't know how to take down important information from what they have just heard. Some would say: I take down everything except the words required to fill.
