Implementing blended learning in teaching listening

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Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute

Implementing blended learning in teaching listening

Tarasiuk N.I.



Introduction

To learn a foreign language a lot of skills should be mastered. One of the most important skills is listenings skills. Listening comprehension is a basic skill for mastering a foreign language. Listening skills are vital for all language learners as listening is interrelated with all other language skills. It is impossible to learn English without developing listening skills. Nowadays we live in a digital society and we use the internet, and web technologies in all spheres of life. There are a lot of new methods and technologies in teaching foreign languages. In this paper, we focus on implementing blended learning for developing listening skills.

The use of technology for teaching English has expanded greatly in recent decades. Field [1] investigated the role of planning in the use of technology. Jones [2] studied students' needs and use of technology, McDougle and Squires [3] focused their research on creating a special environment for language learning with the help of technology.

Nevertheless, there is still a need for a detailed examination of using technology for developing listening skills. The purpose of the study is to consider and analyze implementing blended learning for developing listening skills.



Presentation the main results of the research

Listening comprehensive has been defined differently by various scientists. Vandegrift defines listening as a combined active process during which the student should differentiate sounds, percieve vocabulary, grammar and includes intensive mental activity of the listener [4 ]. Richards destinguished listening as comprohension and listeniong as aqisition.In listeniong as aqisition listening text is used for speaking activities.According to Richards there are 33 subskills in listening comprohension [5]. Rost defines listening comprihention as receptive cognitive activity that gives possibily to percieve spoken speach [6]. In our study we agree with Caldwell who considered listening as process of obtaining and creating meaning via interaction with spoken language [7].

To avoid problems in listening comprehension problems students should use speacial tactics listening strategies. Goh pointed out that it is very important to teach listerning strategies to students [8]. There are different classifications of learning strategies in methodic literature. One of the most popular classification belongs to O'Malley and Chamot. The authors identified metacognotive, cognitive and social strategies [9].

Cognitive strategies focus on manipulating material, using a special skill for a certain task. These are mental activities referred to as understanding and accumulating information in memory. Process of perception connected with linguistic and non-linguistic information.

Bottom-up and top-down listening. Two types of cognitive strategies are known:bottom-up and top-down. Two types of processes are included in inderstanding spoken language. Bottom- up means using incoming information as the base for inderstanding the text. Top-down listening is related to the application of background knowledge for understanding the meaning of the message [10]) .

The student's grammatical and lexical competence is the foundation for bottom-up listening. Incoming information is checked for familiar words and grammar is applied for

identification elements of the sentence. Students need to have substantial vocabulary and awareness about sentence structure. Richards suggested the following exercises for bottom-up listening[10, C.220]:

- identify keywords

- determine word and sentence division

- identify grammatical structures

A lot of class activities are based on bottom-up processing such as multiple-choice questions, dictations, dictogloses.

Top-down processing based on background knowledge of the topic, knowledge of the topic can help the listener to understand the context. The following activities are widely used:

A set of pictures to illustrate the text and put them in the correct order

A number of phrases from the text and put them in the correct sequence

Students read the title of the story and predict the content

Students listen one part of the story and predict the second part

Students read information and after listening identify if it was mentioned in the text or not

Students make a list of questions they expect to hear about the topic and compare their answers after listening

Brown [ 11] suggested the folowing activites for top-down precessing:

For bigginers

Listen to the text and define what are peole talking about

Listen to a number of sentense. Define the general tone : negative or positive.

For Intermediate students

Listen to advertisements. Find out 5 key words for each advertisement.

Listen to adversisements. Circle in the chart the items tha were mentioned.

For Advanced students

Listen to the first part of lecture and note down 3 topics mentioned by lecturer.

For bottom-up processing Brown [11, C.25] defines such activities as :

For Biginners

Listen to a set of sentences with rising and falling tone. Mark the tone in the answersheet.

Listen to pairs of words. Write missing consonats in each word in the handout.

Listen to the short conversation and fill the gaps.

For Intemediate students

Listen to the sen tences which have instressed word. Mark these words in the chart.

Listen to the 3 syllabeled words.Circle stressed syllables.

For Advanced students

Listen to the sentences. Identify key words. Wtrite a list of keywords.

Listen to the excerpt of the lecture and read the script.Note down pauses and incomlete sentences.

In real life, two types of processing are required for developing listening skills in a classroom. The ratio depends on the type of the text, content of the text, amount of information, listener's awareness of the topic. According to Buck [12] listener to get the message of the text should understand phonetic, lexical information and use context situation

Metacognitive strategies can help to observe the process, to evaluate the achievements. To deal with learning problems and accomplish learning tasks learners can use cognitive strategies.

Metacognitive strategies can facilitate awareness of listening tasks. The learner is observing, monitoring, and organizing cognitive processes during metacognition. Metacognition is a process when a student monitors and assesses language learning [13]. These strategies are very important for listening comprehension. They include planning, observing, and estimating. Planning listening teachers can inform students what they will hear and what they should do. While listening students can analyze oral text and compare their predictions. Studies by Vandergrift [4] and Rahimi & Katal [14] reveal that students can be taught these strategies to improve listening skills. Authors emthesized the significance of the staregies for developping listening skills.

Goh [15] revieled that metacognitive strategies as planning, observing and avaluating can be used for teaching listening. Planing referred to identifying objectives and finding out tools to achieve these goals. The author reveals the following steps for general listening development:

- to establish goals for listening development

- to find out means to reach these goals

- establish reasonable short-term and long-term goals

- find time for listening practice

For special listening development the author suggests:

- to predict the main idea until listening

- to practice the language required for the task

- choose what point of the text to focus on

Monitoring strategies refer to examining the progress of listening task and include for general listening development:

- to assess progress based on certain criteria

- to monitor the level of achieving the goal

- to analyze common mistakes

For special listening development it is recommended:

- to examine the awareness of the material

- to identify the difficulties

The evaluation is considered as an identification of accomplishing the listening task. For general listening development :

to estimate listening progress according to certain criteria

to evaluate the efficiency of learning

to check out the relevance of the goal

For specific listening development

to evaluate the correctness of what was said

to identify the efficacy of the chosen strategy

to valuate the understanding of the text

Yusnita Taib and Goh [16] suggested a metacognitive sequence of activities for listening class:

Step 1. Pre-listening activity

Students work in groups and predict words and phrases they could hear in the audio.

Step 2 . Listening for the first time

Students listen and indicate words they have predicted correctly. They also note down information from the text.

Step 3. Discussion in pairs

Students work in pairs and discuss the text. They compare the information they got and determine difficult parts of the text that they should focus on during second listening.

Step 4. Second listening

Students listen to those parts of the text that have difficulties during the first listening.

Step 5. Whole class discussion

The teacher organizes discussions and encourages students to participate. During discussion, teacher checks understanding the text.

Social strategies help learners to collaborate with each other. Using these strategies students can check their understanding and decrease nervousness. Low level of nervesness correlare with high efficiency of listening comprihension.

There are traditionally such stages of teaching listening:

Pre-listening

While-listening

Post listening

Pre-listening stage prepares students for listening activities, helps them to understand the aim of the whole task. During prelistening stage teacher should provide the context and motivate students for further activity. Some authors [ 17] considered that this is the most important stage in teaching listening as far it sets the reason for listening, gives background information and instructions, reviews topical vocabulary. Field [1, C.18] suggested the following tasks for pre-listening:

brainstorming the vocabulary

reviewing certain grammar structures

discussing the topic

questions

During while-listening stage, students listen to the text and discuss the answers in their group. Then they listen for the second time and answer more detailed questions. It should be noted, that students should complete different tasks for each listening but for weak students, it is possible to listen for the second time to check their answers. The most popular tasks for while-listening are:

True or Falce

Fill the gap

Multiple choise questions

False facts

Fill the chart

Put the pictures in the correct order

Dictogloss

During post-listening stagethis stage, students discuss the text in the whole class, comment on difficult parts and reconstruct the content. Activities can include:

Discussion

Problem-solving

Completing the story

Summarizing

Writing a composition

Disappearing dialogues

Lets focust on listening for gist. According to Wilson (2008) listening for gist makes foundation and context for all further work we do on the text. While listening for gist we should understand the main idea of the text. This means listening selectively and analyzing information to find out the topic, main facts, purpose, the general message of the text. Listening for the topic mostly referred to the lower level of language acquisition and listening for the main idea to a higher level. This is considered a complex task that involves:

Distinguishing keywords and phrases

Finding out correlation between words

Understanding connection between ideas

Obtaining general cultural level

Having basic language level

The following gist questions are suggested:

What is the main problem?

What is the topic?

What is the main idea of the text?

What is the text about?

Holden in his work presents a cyclic approach. For prelistening stage he recommends the following strategies [18]:

- employ visual hint, stimulating background knowledge, deducing, predicting, and using context

- practice new words and phrases you can hear

- concentrate on keywords, scanning, analyzing key vocabulary

- find out synonyms and antonyms, replacing words and word combinations

- employ new vocabulary, use collocations, plan activities

- actualize information, selecting and analyzing information

- correlate situation with your own experience, employing your knowledge and imagination

- apply hints that are available in the text, analyzing and evaluating

- determine your purpose, choosing and paying selective attention

During the next stage of listening, students should draw attention to controlling the understanding of the text and choose the best strategy. Students should compare the information they received with the prediction they made in pre-listening stage. Thus, it is difficult and learners need much practice. They should train using these strategies properly for a certain task. The following strategies could be employed [18, C. 260]:

- employ grammar as a baseline, to analyze utterances in the text, find out parts of speech, grammatical constructions

- listen for intonation, analyze phrases, review structures

- determine key phrases to identify the end of the topic, new information, and compare to the patterns

- taking notes, to underline main information and keep it in mind

- check and define the information, review vocabulary and grammar

Activities in the post-listening stage help students to assess the level of understanding and check strategies. Team and group discussions are very important. Students discuss steps in listening activity, share and compare their results. Learners are encouraged to analyze their strategies, evaluate advantages, and chose the best one. The following strategies can be employed:

- recollect information, underlying main parts, assessing structure

- evaluate your result, verify and monitor key information

- scan and check, read, and compare information

- make your vocabulary, writing, and remembering words

- check your understanding of the text, asking questions, discussions

Psychological aspects of teaching listening

Moreover, the psychological aspects of teaching listening should be discussed. From the point of view of psychophysiology, listening is interpreted as a complex process of the perceptual mental mnemonic activity [6, C. 528]. The listening process is determined by psychological, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistics, and linguistic factors. When considering the psychological aspects of teaching listening, it is necessary to consider the difficulties caused by the peculiarities of memory. This problem was studied by R. Atkinson, G. Buck, R. Bullard, O.Tarnopolsky. It should be noted that in research on memory and information processing, there are very different models of these processes and different terms are used to denote them. In this paper, we rely on the concept of Tarnoposky. [19].

In his concept of memory, Atkinson divides it into two components - short-term and long-term. According to R. Atkinson [20], information coming from the external environment is processed by various sensory systems, then enters short-term storage and stored there for some time. Unfortunately, the number of components that can be kept in short-term storage is limited, about 7-9 units. Information lost from short-term storage cannot be recovered. When information is in short-term storage, it can be copied to long-term storage. The transfer of information to long-term storage is determined by the management processes in short-term storage, they depend on the process of information processing, information retrieval, and forgetting.

In his works, O. Tarnopolsky pointed out that the process of information processing was different for experienced and inexperienced listeners. An experienced listener can quickly process acoustic signals, he has time to understand the received information while it is being stored in short-term memory. Then the information is transferred to the next passage, where all parts of the message are assembled. Eventually, this integrated message is transferred to long-term memory and stored there. An inexperienced listener does not have time to process the entire amount of heard information that is in short-term memory, and thus new information replaces the previous one. The same process occurs with the following information. As a result, the listener does not have an entire picture of what was heard.[19, C. 14]

Furthermore, psychological aspects such as irreversibility and short-lived language perception should be taken into account when teaching listening.

Thus, it should be noted that the perception of speech is accompanied by complex mental activity. The process of information processing is different for experienced and inexperienced listeners. When creating a set of exercises for teaching listening to students of non-language universities, it is necessary to take into account the psychological features of the processes of memorization and information processing.

Difficulties that students have durung listening comprihensive

There are a lot of difficulties and barriars that cause problems in listening. Researchers (Hasan, 200) distinguish such problem as:

Difficulties referred to listening material

Difficulties referred to speaker

Difficulties referred to listener

The most commom are grammatical, vocabulary, and phonetic difficulties. Very often students don't know complex grammatical structures and they are not able to understand the part of the text. We consider that Passive Voice, Subjunctive Mood, Modal verbs, Gerund, Participle can often cause problems. Queek temp of speaking influences greatly on the level of understanding. The length of the text is very important. Students with low level should listen to text not longer than 3 minutes. Students can't remember information if text lasts longer and are not able to complete tasks

The quality of listening material plays a great role. Poor quality creates obstacles for listeners and problems for teachers. The quality of listening material is very important for language classes and especially for different tests such as Progress tests, Module tests, Final tests in the course.

Phonetic difficulties shoul be metioned also. One of them is the accent. A native accent can cause considerable difficulties in understanding. Many listeners mentioned that regional accents such as Australian English, American English can cause difficulties during listening.

Lack of knowledge about way of life, traditions, festivals of English-speaking countries can cause a lot of problems for listener. While listening to the news students should identify proper names like London Eye, the City, the Downing Street in Great Britain, the Golden Bridge, the Big apple, the Empire state, White house in the USA. There are a lot of traditional English dishes such as fish and chips, shepherd's pie, black pudding and so on. Students of Life Science should know the meaning of FDA, WHO, GMP, EMA to understand professional texts.

Moreover, we should consider the speaker as one of the factors that influences greatly the process of listening. Speaker's individual temp of speech, emotional pauses, exclamations, and lack of body language that is available in real communication affect understanding of the material.

Speaking about problems related to the listener we should mention students' uneasiness. While listening to the text most listeners are nervous. When they are nervous they can not concentrate and focus on the text. To avoid this situation teachers should create a friendly atmosphere in the classroom and help every student. The next difficulty is the inability of a student to remember all information from the text. Students forget very quickly what they heard in the text and it could be difficult for them to complete listening tasks. Students are recommended to take notes during listening. A great variety of while-listening tasks are designed to overcome this problem. One more problem is that it is difficult for students to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words while listening.

Physical surrounding considered as important factor in studies done by Hasan [21], Hamouda [,22] . According to study, the outside noise and problems with technical equipment can reduce students' ability to concentrate during listening.

Authors have different opinions about the most important barriers for listeners. One of them is that the listener can not control the temp of speech during listening. Students are not able to replay the text and the teacher doesn't know what parts should be replayed.Authors also point out the limited vocabulary of the listener as far as the speaker can use many new words with unclear meaning. Also, they suggest that it is difficult for students to concentrate during the listening process and any break can ruin the whole process. Walker [23] suggests that words that have pronunciation different from written variants can cause great

problems. Weak forms and strong forms should be trained before listening. Bloomfield [24] highlights the local accent as a substantial obstacle for listeners and considers students' cultural backgrounds as an essential part of effective listening. Hasan [21, C.138] mentions that low level of grammar, limited vocabulary, and long texts are the greatest barriers to listening comprehension. He also underlines that not appropriate instructions, severe requirements, and boring listening material influence negatively on the listening process.

There are general recommendations in methodic literature how to overcome difficulties in listening [21, 22]:

- listening activity should be designed to meet students needs teacher should use authentic materials to encourage students to understand natural speech

- teacher should create tasks which can motivate students to employ different listening strategies

- students should listen to different types materials such as new, lectures, conversations, TV shows, movies, podcasts

- teacher should present listening material with different types of accent such British, American, Australian

- students should be taught rule of proninciation how to pronounce vowels and consonts

- students should be provided with cultural information about English-speaking countries

Choosing listening materials.

When preparing materials for listening, it is necessary to determine the criteria for selecting texts. In the modern methodological literature, there are many criteria for the selection of listening materials. There are general criteria for the effective use of listening materials in the classroom [25]:

- authentic materials should be used in the classroom

- the content of materials should correspond to the course and topic of the lesson

- relevance, materials should contain the new, interesting information

- compliance with the level of language acquisition of students

- materials should satisfy students' needs and interests, it is necessary to take into account the age of students, socio-cultural factors.

- different kinds of texts should be used

Many authors [23, 25] highlight that it is very important to use authentic materials. There are authentic, semi-authentic, as well as specially created educational materials in the methodic literature. Authentic texts are examples of real communication due to their inherent characteristics such as an individual temp of speech, excessive emotionality, long pauses, local accent, background noise. Semi-authentic texts are created and developed by native speakers for educational purposes, such texts have been compiled in accordance with students' needs. Many coursebooks use these materials, especially for A1 and A2 levels.

We should also consider that content of texts, their compositional structure, the requirements of the current curriculum should be taken into consideration.

The next requirements are relevance and novelty. Selected materials should contain relevant and interesting information about modern lifestyle, traditions, and culture, be a source of up- to-date data. The materials should include information about new advances in science and technology

Some authors distinguish such requirements as accessibility [22]. The text must be accessible in terms of content and language structure. In order to understand the text, students should have certain grammatical, lexical, phonetic, and socio-cultural knowledge. In most cases, the effectiveness of listening depends on these above-mentioned aspects. The complexity of texts for listening is also influenced by such factors as vocabulary, style, choice of lexical and grammatical means. Moreover, it is necessary to pay attention to such quantitative criteria as the amount of the text, the temp of speech.

Thus, the qualitative requirements for selecting texts for listening are compliance with the age, interests, needs of students, novelty, and relevance. Quantitative criteria include the volume of text, the temp of speech.

In our opinion, one of the most important requirements is to use authentic materials. Also, selecting texts for listening activities teacher should choose texts which correspond to the corriculum and the level of students' language proficiency. Using authentic material, the teacher incourages students to listen and practise the pronunciation of terms, abriviations to get involved in the language environment, which significantly motivates student

Extensive listening

Extensive listening plays a significant role in developing listening skills.

According to Waring [ 26] extensive listening is a variety of listening activities that help learners receive new information. This kind of listening can involve listening to songs, stories, news, discussions, series. Listeners can select engaging, educational, entertaining materials by themselves. Extensive listening means listening to a great number of texts for general understanding. Extensive listening enlarges students' vocabulary and supplies them with comprehensive input. It is a very important foundation for language acquisition. Ellis [27] points out that the best way to develop listening skills is to practice listening.

Researchers [26,27] funderline the following advantages of extensive listening:

- enlarges significantly vocabulary of the learner

- encourages students to learn English

-it raises the detection of words in the utterance

- helps students to get used to native speakers' speech temp

- can affect positively language acquisition

- can expand the amount of material

- benefits students' memory and ability to analyze information

Students choose the level of listening material on their own and completing chosen activity may increase the self-confidence of listeners. Since there is no rigorous assessment and restrictions in this activity listeners can feel comfortable. The absence of assessment makes this activity engaging and creates a positive attitude to learning English. It is very important that the materials for extensive listening should be chosen very carefully. Students usually listen to radio programs, news reports, interviews, movies, TV shows. To understand these sources of information students should have vocabulary of more than 5000 words [ 27, C. 8]. These resources are appropriate for B1 and B2 students. On YouTube, students can use subtitles to reduce difficulties. For beginners, there are a lot of materials online specially adapted for them.

There are some requirements for materials chosen for extensive listening

- up-to-date informative materials shoul be used

- the learner should be able to understand the material without the help of a teacher

- students should understand 80-90% of information

- more than 90% of known vocabulary

The following tasks can be provided [28]:

Storytelling - teacher reads aloud, suitable mostly for beginners

Repeated listening

Listen and predict activity - the teacher stops the audio script on the interesting place and asks students to predict the content.

Tell and check - students should work in teams. Student 1 reads the story, the Student 2 retells it.

Listen and draw - in this task students listen to the text several times and draw. They can listen to detective stories and draw a graph, chart, or plan of the house.



Blended learning

The rapid development of science and technology creates new challenges for educators. There is a need for new methods and forms of learning. Blended learning can meet all these requirements.

Blended learning combines the benefits of using technologies and the advantages of student-centered lessons in the classroom. [ Graham ]. The blended learning model is based on a combination of traditional classroom instructions and the latest online technologies.

Blended learning is an effective form of teaching English for university students. Researchers highlight that blended learning has many advantages[29] :

- it follows student's learning style

- it fosters active collaboration in the classroom

- it makes students more self-confident

- it supports students' autonomy

- it helps students to develop soft skills

- students have much knowledge

- students can get the teacher's support when they need it

- it makes lessons more effective

- it can help to balance learning program

One of the advantages is that learning becomes more personalized. In teaching foreign languages we should take into account the individual psychological characteristics of students. With the help of a remote online component, each student has the opportunity to improve their reading, listening, and speaking skills completing online exercises many times to successfully learn the material.

By watching videos on the podcasts students can work at an individual pace. It allows them to spend more time in the classroom speaking. The next advantage of this model of learning is flexibility. The student has the opportunity to study the material at a convenient time and in a convenient location using online resources. This kind of learning also enables to increase the amount of material learned in a certain period of time.

This kind of learning has a positive effect on the formation of critical thinking and the ability to work individually which helps to form the professional competence of students of higher education institutions. Using the online component in the classroom helps to create conditions for a natural communicative due to the authenticity of video materials and the possibility to interact with the computer.

The most popular tools used for blended learning are educational platforms ALLLO, MyEnglishLab, Moodle, Prometheus, numerous podcasts, language learning sites, YouTube channels.

Blended learning is very beneficial in developing listening skills. The best way to develop listening skills is through practice. Students can practice listening in the classroom and at home completing the listening tasks with the help of technology. Students need much time to train different listening skills and blended learning helps them to do it at any time and location.

Students can listen to podcasts while traveling, jogging in the park, walking around the city or town.

According to Bath and Bourke [29, C.6] there are the following stages for designing blended learning for university course:

1. Planning course in general

Developing course

Preparing materials

Integrating course into curriculum, syllabus

Considering the number of students, their age, faculty

2. Designing elements of the course

Content of the course

Video materials

Web resources and multimedia

3. Employing the course

Preparing students for the course

Guiding students

4. Evaluating the efficacy of the course

Peer evaluation

Students' feedback

According to authors all these stages can be employed for developing listening skills in a blended learning course.

Moreover, it is necessary to mention the problems and difficulties of this form of learning. One of the difficulties is the technical problems. Also, should be mentioned the need for Internet access, teacher and students should have skills to work online and how to use web resources and platforms. Poor time management and lack of self-discipline can also affect the efficiency of students' work.

Designing a course the teacher should select attentively the material, determine which material will be studied in the classroom and online. It is very important to organize properly learning process. Performing activities, the set of teaching methods, and forms of assessment. Developing the course teacher should pay attention to the formation of motivation and selfcontrol skills of the students. The introduction of a blended mode requires a lot of effort, time, and patience of the teacher and students.

Computer technologies

In this paper, we also consider the peculiarities of the use of computer technologies in teaching listening. The recent studies highlight the benefits of using computer technology and its role in foreign language classes.

The problem of using computer technologies in teaching foreign languages has been studied by such researchers as W. Albildi, Z. Bin, R. Blake, T. Fitria, L. Jones, Knight, G. Lord, M. Rost, J. Ralph, S. Rousell, G, Stanley.

The analysis of the literature reveals significant advantages of employing computer technology in foreign language classrooms [30]:

- creating a language environment

- easy access to learning materials

- increasing student motivation

- appropriate organization of work

- the ability to use authentic audio and video materials

- interesting, relevant materials

- an opportunity to review the materials more than one time

- student-centered learning

- it relieves psychological problems in communication

In recent decades podcasts are widely used for teaching different aspects of foreign languages. Using podcasts in teaching listening can increase students' motivation and greatly enrich their vocabulary. According to Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary the word podcast is coined from two words iPod and broadcast. (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary). In podcasts, students listen to formal and informal authentic materials. Lord(Lord ) points out that employing podcasts in the classroom teacher can encourage student-centered learning, inspire learning English, stimulate imagination and soft skills, provide the possibility to create materials that meet students' needs and expectations

Moreover, using podcasts for developing listening skills can have the following advantages [30, 31]:

possibility to use audio scripts

a great variety of materials

materials are easy to download

gradable material that can be used for the particular language class

it is possible to create your own collection of favorite podcasts

using podcasts can develop students' self-determination and confidence

students can use podcasts when it is convenient to them and save time

There is a considerable number of podcasts for developing listening skills. Nowadays teachers can use this great diversity of podcasts for designing listening classes. The most popular are:

The English We Speak. This podcast is created by BBC to develop listening and grammar skills, enrich vocabulary. This podcast includes short episodes to study collocations, idioms. It is comfortable for students due to the appropriate temp of speaking, distinct pronunciation, and up-to-date topics.

https://www. bbc. co. uk/programmes/p0bcb28f

Learn English. British Council podcast is well-known and is frequently used by teachers of English around the world. This podcast contains numerous series, each devoted to a certain topic of everyday life. It can be used in the classroom and for individual work since it has an audio script and exercises to complete.

https://learnengl.ish. britishcouncil. org/general- english/audio-series/podcasts/

Better@English. This podcast is composed of a great number of real-life conversations. Learners can find a variety of stories, dialogues. Audio scripts and vocabulary notes are included. It is recommended for intermediate students.

https://www. betteratenglish. com/be-episode-archives

ESL Pod. This podcast has an impressive collection of listening materials, divided into separate lessons and episodes. Episodes contain glossary, script, guide, and exercises. It is created for intermediate and advanced students mostly. Not very fast temp of speaking will also be beneficial for students.

https://www. eslpod. com

News in Slow English. You can easily download any episode from this podcast. It is focused on developing listening skills and teaching idioms. All episodes have audio scripts, a glossary. It also includes Grammar section and Pronunciation section to practice articulation. Students can use this podcast for individual work. Using this podcast it is possible to practice different aspects of language.

https://www. newsinslowenglish. com

It is beneficial to use video to develop listening skills. Visual perception, emotions of the characters, non-verbal communication contribute to the understanding of the material. A number of authors highlight the benefits of using videos in teaching listening ([31]:

- the authentiic materials create an appropriate language environment

- real-life situations facilitate understanding

- gestures and emotions of the characters and help to pay attention to use language

- it can increase student motivation

YouTube is a very useful instrument to improve listening skills. There are many advantages of using YouTube:

it enables us with up-to-date authentic material

it is possible to use YouTube clips for class activities and outside the classroom

it gives students the possibility to watch real-life debates, conversations, discussions subtitles give the opportunity to use this resource for beginners clips help students to know more about culture and traditions, national cuisine, lifestyle, different communities around the world watching video students get acquainted with pronunciation and temp of speech of native speakers and don't hesitate to imitate it

it greatly motivated students to practice listening and complete tasks comment section gives learners the unique possibility to watch the video and write their own comments, share their ideas and read answers from around the world

it is possible for students to upload their own video, it facilitates language work and helps to organize different classroom projects

it fosters discussion, round-table, even role-lay

YouTube is a powerful resource for developing listening skills if the teacher incorporates it properly in listening class. The teacher can design an engaging, efficient lesson using video clips in accordance with students' needs and curriculum. The level of language and psychological aspects of a certain group should be taken into consideration. The preparation is an essential part of the listening part. The teacher should plan all activities in the class thoroughly, watch video beforehand , design tasks for different stages of listening, consider timing.

The researchers [31] suggested the following steps of exploiting video clips in the classroom:

- choose certain videos according to the topic

- prepare instructions for students

- design tasks for listening activities

- to announce the topic and present the video

- play the video

- replay the video to clarify particular parts of the film

- complete and check listening tasks

- promote discussion on the topic

Standart parts of listening class are:

pre-listening

while-listening

post-listening

During pre-listening teacher previews the topic focuses on new unfamiliar information, teaches new vocabulary. Tasks can be the following:

Look at the photos and match pictures and phrases.

Complete expressions with the words.

Look at the photos and answer questions

Look at the picture. What is the situation in it?

For stronger students we can use the following tasks:

Work in pairs. Discuss the questions.

Discuss the questions and complete the chart.

In pairs talk about new words from the video, can you foresee the topic? [33]

While-listening activities can include 2 types of tasks, listening for general understanding and listening for detail. In the coursebook "Speakout " by Pearson there are the following listening tasks :

1. Watch the video. What problems did the hero have?

Watch the conversation and put scenes incorrect order.

2. Watch the clip. What is the hero doing to solve the problem?

Watch the video and guess if the statements are true or false.

3. Watch the clip and match extracts to correct phrases.

Watch the video and complete the information in the chart.

4. Look at the photo and answer questions.

Listen to people talking about their jobs. Match speaker to the photo.

5. Tick the things in the list which you see in the clip.

Watch the clip and answer questions.

During post-listening activities, the teacher checks and discusses the answers to questions evaluates students' progress, and can promote speaking activities. Students can work in groups and teams. The following tasks can be accomplished:

Work in a group. Prepare and practice a short presentation about the future flying machines.

You are going to create your own channel. Describe your ideas.

Work on the group. Retell the story using keywords.

YouTube clips can be used for developing listening skills in ESP. For instance, the topic "Herbal medicine" can be illustrated:

Pre-listening stage

Look at the photos and match pictures and phrases.

Complete expressions with the words.

Look at the photos and answer questions

Look at the picture. What plants you can see?

What do you know about herbal medicine?

Is it popular in our country?

While-listening activities

Task 1. Watch the video. What are the main principles of herbal medicine?

What does a holistic approach mean?

Task 2. Watch the video and guess if the statements are true or false.

1. Herbal medicine combines modern sciences with traditional philosophies to diagnose diseases.

2. To become a herbalist it is normal to train for 2 years in a degree.

3. During their degree students are taught anatomy and physiology, chemistry, pharmacy.

4. Herbal medicine uses tablets, gels, injections, and teas,

5. Herbal medicine treats each person as an individual.

Post-listening

Discussion about advantages and disadvantages of herbal medicine.

Role-play

Student 1. You strongly believe that people should use herbal preparations. Prove your ideas.

Student 2. You strongly believe that people should use only modern conventional medicines. Prove your ideas.

Students 1 and Student 2 work in pairs and present their ideas.

Employing web-based technologies in the classroom is rewarding. Rousell [34] mentioned that using technologies for developing listening skills has such advantages as autonomy for students, flexibility. There is great variety of platforms to study English. teaching foreign languag listening education

ALLLO is one of the best platforms to teach listening. It includes a great number of materials for developing listening skills. Students can use materials for different levels of English very easily. Script and tasks are available for each audio. Students can play the audio many times to practice listening and train pronunciation. The platform provides also a special section for the academic level. Grammar guides and idioms section help to develop all aspects of the language.

MyEnglishLab platform is a unique platform for blended learning. It can be used for developing listening skills as well as reading and writing skills. The teacher can choose materials according to the level of language proficiency of the students, type of activity, topic, coursebook. It is important that students can use audio and videomaterials at home and study when it is suitable to them. They can study on their own pace. Also, it is possible for teachers to add their own materials and meet partucular students' needs. In our course we use text book "Speak out" and MyEnglishLab platform provides a lot of e-materials for the students. This platform gives students various opportunities. The main advantages of the platform are [34]:

- it safes teachers' time and gives opportunity to spend more time planning classroom activities

- it is student-centered

- students can work individually at any location

- student is offered an online task based on the selected textbook

- student has a great number of exercises on each topic

- students can use video and audio materials at any convenient time

- students can communicate with teachers with the help of the platform

- students can receive reports about their achievements

Using MyEnglishLab platform the teacher also enjoys a number of new opportunities. It should be noted that the teacher can control the performance of tasks by students, get the results of each student and the group as a whole. This saves a lot of time and allows the teacher to plan lessons carefully. The teacher can choose individual tasks for each student, which allows realizing an individual approach to each student. It is easy to work on the platform, the teacher can change settings by himself and doesn't need technical support.

Nevertheless, using the platform teacher can experience several difficulties. Among them is the reluctance or fear of some students to use technology, as well as a formal attitude to completing tasks. To overcome these difficulties teacher should instruct students how to work on the platform, explain how to complete each task, highlight the advantages of the platform, and motivate students.

Thus, the use of authentic materials on the MyEnglishLab platform significantly increases the efficiency of teaching listening. Using a platform contributes not only to developing listening skills but also lexical and grammatical skills, which can develop students' communication skills. In our opinion, individual work with students, a detailed explanation of the work procedure can solve these problems.

The use of computer technology in the classroom can motivate learning a foreign language, develop memory and attention of students, help students to manage time, promotes the formation of soft skills.

https://www.pearson.com/english/digital-

tools/myenglishlab. html

Flipped classroom model is proved to be useful in developing listening skills during current pandemic. The basis for the flipped classroom is the flexibility of the environment. Students can choose what they like to learn and when so time and location. Students can replay the audio many times to understand the main idea and details, make pauses and choose what particular part of the audio to listen to. It is really efficient since weaker students don't have such possibilities in the classroom. Students become more self-confident and motivated and enjoy their success. In the textbook " Oxford English for Socializing" by Oxford University Press there are plenty of tasks for developing listening skills. In flipped classroom model students listen to the audio to text at home and perform tasks in the classroom. Learners play the audio many times, pay attention to pronunciation and accent, imitate the temp of the speech and intonation. Using the audio script is also beneficial for low-level students. The teacher's role in this model is different. The teacher is not a main source of information but an instructor, adviser. The teacher helps to deal with difficulties, supervise and explain the material when necessary. Students become more active in obtaining information, expanding the scope of the field. The teacher selects material and can advise what online dictionary, grammar book to choose to complete the task. Working in the flipped model should follow such steps [31, C.86]:

- listening to the text

- completing tasks in the classroom

- assessment

Before students watch the video teacher should explain the task, clarify unknown moments. Sometimes it is necessary to teach and practice new vocabulary and grammar. A set of exercises can be completed to overcome difficulties. Students listen to the text individually and complete tasks. Students work induvidually, practise listening to the text and use nececery on-line resourses.

Video meetings in Zoom are more and more popular and proved to be efficient for developing listening skills. The teacher can combine online platforms, podcasts, sites, and real-life communication with the students. We can underline the advantages of using video meetings in language class:

- creating a real-time communication

- full access to learning materials

- increasing student motivation

- proper time-management

- possibility to use authentic audio and video materials

- interesting, relevant materials

- an opportunity to review the materials more than one time

- student-centered learning

- it meets students' needs



Conclusions

Based on data analyses it was proved that implimenting blended learning for developing listening skills is effective. Blended learning combines the advantages of teaching listening in the clasroom with devoloping listening skills via technologies. One of the most effective mode is flipped classroom. The use of computer technology in the classroom can motivate learning a foreign language, develop memory and attention of students, help students to manage time, promotes the formation of soft skills. One of the advantages is that learning becomes more personalized. In teaching foreign languages we should take into account the individual psychological characteristics of students. With the help of online component, each student has the opportunity to improve their reading, listening, and speaking skills completing online exercises many times to successfully learn the material. We can conclude that the benefits of using video, podcasts in teaching listening are authentiic materials that help to make an appropriate language environment in the classroom, real-life situations facilitate understanding, natural gestures and emotions of the characters and help create language environment. Differents on-line platforms are powerful tools to improve listening skills. Web resources tenable students with up-to-date authentic material . Teachers can use YouTube clips for class activities and outside the classroom, it gives students the possibility to participate in on-line conversations, discussions.. We see the futher studies in the scope of developing listening course forone of the on-line educational platforms.

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