Teaching listening and speaking skills

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Teaching listening and speaking skills

Hesenova T. N., Azerbaijan University of Languages

У статті описано проблеми розвитку мовлення іноземною мовою. Кожна мова має свою граматичну, фонологічну систему і словниковий запас. Коли ми починаємо вивчати або викладати нову мову, ніхто не замислюється над тим, як справлятися з граматикою або новими словами. Іноді ми можемо вивчити, запам'ятати і правильно використовувати граматичні правила без педагога. Але дуже важко самостійно розвивати навички слухання і говоріння, не перебуваючи в мовної країні. У статті вказані методи навчання та розвитку навичок слухання і говоріння в немовних країні.

Ключові слова: слухання, говоріння, комунікативні навички, активне слухання, пасивне слухання, дискримінаційне слухання, всебічне слухання.

The article describes the problems of speech development in a foreign language. Each language has its own grammatical, phonological system and vocabulary. When we begin to learn or teach a new language, no one thinks about how to cope with grammar or new words. Sometimes we can learn, memorize and correctly use grammar rules without a teacher. But it is very difficult to develop your own listening and speaking skills without being in a language country. The article indicates the methods of training and the development of listening and speaking skills in a non-linguistic country.

Key words: listening, speaking, communicative skills, active listening, passive listening, discriminative listening, comprehensive listening.

“Speech is a joint game between the talker and the listener against the forces of confusion. Unless both make the effort, interpersonal communication is quite hopeless”, sais Norbert Weiner (1989).

Every language has its own grammatical, phonological system and vocabulary. When we begin to learn or teach a new language no one has any kind of hesitation about how to manage with grammar or new words. Without any doubt we try to learn, remember and use grammar rules in the right way. We can't imagine using the grammar rules of our mother tongue. We learn how, where and when it is possible to use the given point, which words are more suitable for expressing our thoughts in a given case.

No one will replace the words of studied language by the words of mother tongue. We even learn different styles of writing. All these are about a written language. Do we do the same when with oral speech or when we begin to improve our speaking skill?

Do all of us learn the rules of oral speech and intonation of the utterances?

Do we try to pronounce the sounds correctly?

Do all learners put the stress on it`s right place?

Do all students pay much attention to the intonation of their speech?

Do we worry about the correct style our speech?

In most cases - NO. Why this happens just in case of oral speech?

Our speech introduces us more than our CV or our appearance. In most cases people who learn a foreign language do not have dictionaries with the correct transcription. We cannot create a new pronunciation of any words or new way of intonation of utterances.

Do we ever try to make a new grammar rules in any language? No. So, it is very strange that in some cases people don't want to follow the rules of oral speech.

Why many people don't want to learn the correct pronunciation of foreign language? Those who study foreign language, especially English, such kind of attitude will not allow them to speak

English well, because they don't pay attention to the listening as well. And it is obvious why having no problems in reading and writing, they have lots difficulties in listening and understanding, in making a conversation. What is the problem? This has several reasons:

When people learn the grammar of English, whey never mix it with that of their mother tongue. So they learn grammar accuracy of English language.

They do not learn the correct pronunciation of words, the reduce form of the words, rules of oral speech, the melody of different types of sentences - all these become annoying problems.

They do not listen much, thinking that listening - is the wasting time. Because of this they can't improve their listening skills. It stays at the same level for a long time.

Let's try to analyze the situation. In most cases we learn foreign language in our country. This means we don't have English speaking environment. There is no chance to talk with native speakers. So the learner does not have any idea how the language sounds, what he / she will hear in real communication. It is easy to learn grammar by the help of self-study books. But it is almost impossible to manage with English phonetics by self-study, because English phonetics has lots of rules, exceptions to these rules.

A student, who is going to learn English needs a teacher, good materials for listening, must work hard for improving listening skill. In this process the most difficult thing to manage - is the listening activities. Even “motivated” students will fail if they will not do lots of listening exercises.

In order to improve the listening skills, it is very important to form an attentive habit, too. The listening exercises depend on the level of students and their age. Listening exercises are not confined to the dreaded audio CD that accompany the text books. There are great amount of audio resources nowadays. This has its own milestones - students face with variety of English accent, among which they can be lost.

Choosing the appropriate record is a very complicated process. Just the teacher can manage with this and offer an appropriate listening version. It is very useful and motivated if listening exercises offer to students collective working, moving activities, critical thinking.(racaHOBa, 2016, с. 25).

Today improving listening and speaking skills is the most difficult skills to teach and learn. The variety of listening make it easy and at the time difficult one.

Listening is the process of receiving constructing meaning from respond, spoken and non-verbal messages. Listening types are differentiated as discriminative and comprehensive listening.

Discriminative listening. This is the most basic form of listening and does not involve understanding of the meaning of words or phrases but merely the different sounds at early childhood we can distinguish different voices and sounds. While growing up we begin to recognize voices and the meaning of sounds. We gain the ability to distinguish different languages, regional accents, clues to the emotions and the speaker's feelings.

Comprehensive listening. The other basic type of listening is comprehensive listening. It involves the understanding the meaning of message messages that are being communicated. Like a discriminative listening comprehensive listening is fundamental to all listening substantial types. For this king of listening the listener needs good vocabulary and language skills.

Sometimes two different people while listening to the same thing may understand different things. Because listening maybe complicated either by submessages, by tone of voice, gestures, actions. This may potentially lead to misunderstanding.

There are also specific types of listening. They may be defined by the goal of listening. In this case types of list may be differentiated by the goal of listening.

In communication three different types of listening are defined:

Informational listening

Critical listening

Empathetic or Therapeutic listening

Informational listening. During the informational listening the listener's goal is to get any kind of information. It is some kind of passive listening. The listener is just listening.

At different places, because of many reasons we do an informational listening. For performing successful informational listening, especially foreign language learners need lots of new words. This type of listening requires a concentration.

Critical listening. This is the main critical thinking activity. It is some king of intensive listening when we listen to a favorite person or when we have goal to catch as much as possible.

This listening involves critical thinking, because we are not just listening, but analyzing the message we get. During this type of listening authenticity is very important for us. It may be called “understanding from inside”.

Critical listener is an active listener. A person does not just hear, but interprets evaluates, responds to the arguments analyze and criticize. It is very important skill at all stages of human being.

Empathetic listening. Empathetic listening is an active listening too. It is more than hearing and critical listening. It has the emotional attitude too. During this kind of listening we listen, hear, criticize and show our interest proving it by asking questions and interjections.

This kind of listening improve our communicative skills.

During empathetic listening the listener should nod, use temporizers encouraging the speaker to continue conversation. In this case we can talk even about the art of Empathetic listening. It is very useful to facilitate students' interactions with learning materials in small groups, too.

In his book, Richard I. (1988) explain that, “a final aspect of promoting positive discourse in classrooms is for teachers to learn to listen to students and their ideas”. We consider such kind of attitude absolutely wrong. From a long time practice we know how much important listening from the beginning of learning. Even before learning the words and grammar rules it is very useful to listen the language we learn or are going to learn. Because the goal in learning a foreign language is to have skills which can help to communicate, listen and understand.

If the teacher's goal is to help students understand the lesson or to build a discourse for a productive learning environment, carefully listening to each students ideas and pointing out errors if they exist, but remaining nonjudgmental and inquiry oriented, is probably a better strategy than challenging and arguing with students” (Richard, 1988, p. 188).

E. I. Passov noticed in his book that, it is very important to perform English speaking environment for students, who study foreign languages (Пассов, 1991).

Some teachers differentiate teaching monologue and dialogue. Being just different types of speaking, they shouldn't be isolated. Because it is the aim of language learning on the whole.

Madelyn Burley-Allen is writing in her book that there is a definite connection between listening skills and improved interpersonal communication, professional growth, and career satisfaction (Burley-Allen, 1995).

She considers, if you are a skilled listener, more people will respond to you in a positive way. You can sell yourself in job interviews, cut down your problem solving time and smooth out work relationships. People will respond to you more favorably in any situation (ibid., p. 2). According to Madelyn Burley-Allen listening involves a more sophisticated mental process than hearing. It demands energy and discipline. Listening is a learned skill. The first step is to realize that effective listening is an active, not a passive process. This is a difficult concept, but it is true. A skilled listener does not just sit there and allow listening to happen (ibid., p. 33) but we think, that for the students at beginning and even intermediate level passive listening is much more useful.

The years of teaching listening and speaking, phonetics, speech practice proved that for improving listening and speaking skills students need to listen. As they said, if you want to learn to speak - speak. I think, listening process should be as we do teach little children to swim, pushing them into the swimming pool. We should do the same with listening - surround learners with English. The same happens when the students pre-intermediate and intermediate, even advanced level do exercises when they have to listen to unknown text and write it. Sometimes they need to listen more than 20 times. They are not allowed to stop record. They listen from the beginning up to the end listening writing and filling the gaps, adding the words they missed before. They do such kind of exercise 3-4 times a week. these kind of exercises are for home work. At a lesson we check the texts, discuss the listening. Then students work on pronunciation and intonation of the text. From the beginning it is discriminative listening, then it is replaced by comprehensive one. At classes the students are taught the rules of oral speech. In three months almost all students of the group can listen and understand the texts without any difficulties. After five months of such listening exercise, they listen and interpret the text they heard. By the end of academic year they have final exam at course for listening and understanding. 95 % of them have no problems at exam. Improving the listening skill by this way, they improve the speaking skills, too. Step by step they begin to speak with British accent. It becomes easy for them to differentiate the English speech of different nationalities.

We study a foreign languages for getting discourse skills - to listen, understand and speak to people. We need to communicate with people. So, there is no speaking without listening.

References

speaking language listening linguistic

1. Burley-Allen M. (1995). Listening: The Forgotten Skill: A Self-Teaching Guide. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

2. Weiner N. (1989). The Human Use of Human being. London.

3. Richard I. (1988). Arends Learning to teach Random House. New York.

4. Гасанова Т Н. (2016). Особенности взаимосвязи речи и музыки. Баку: “Nur Art”.

5. Пассов E. И. (1991). Коммуникативный метод обучения иноязычному говорению. Москва: Просвещение.

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