EXTENSIVE LISTENING FOR
THE BEGINNER PROFICIENCY LEVEL OF EFL STUDENTS
Introduction
Listening is simply to give
attention by means of hearing or attend closely for the purpose of hearing. According to Yagang (1993), listening is the ability to
identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a
speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping
his meaning. Discerning listening is the mainly fundamental type of listening,
through which the distinction between differentt sounds is recognized. If you can’t perceive different sound, then you
can’t make sense of the meaning that is uttered by such differences. However,
how do we manage the problems in listening? Expressing a particular idea or
thought is the outcome in understanding English. The fast rate of speech and new vocabulary are just one
of the few problems that students are
face in listening.
Yet, why do listening matter in English language learning?
Yagang (1993) mentions
that listening is
one of English major concerns. This means
that the importance of listening plays an important role in students. People frequently focus on their speaking skill,
supposing that excellent speaking equals good communication. The capability to
speak well is a compulsory element to successful communication for students nevertheless the ability to listen is equally as important.
In order to attain complete understanding in English Yangang (1993) suggests learners should complete the basic listening process,
which is at the first stage. By simply pay
attention to make sure you have heard the message. For instance, if your mum says, “Haris, I need the car washed
before 4pm tomorrow!" and you are able to imitate the sentence, then you
have heard her.
The second stage is interpretation. Failure to interpret the speaker's words accurately
usually leads to misunderstanding. Different people interpret words differently
because of varied experience, knowledge, vocabulary, culture,
background, and attitudes.
According to
Field(1998), the essential
sources of listening problems include, speaking rate, distraction, not capable recognizing words that the student’s have known, new vocabulary, missing subsequent input,
nervousness, sentence complexity, background knowledge, anxiety and frustration
and unfamiliar pronunciation.
Realizing the problems in listening, the listening strategies, and the
other incorporated listening requirements will facilitate beginner proficiency
students expand their listening skills. Adding to this, the main purpose
is to help students in the EFL classes to
comprehend the nature of listening approaches and understanding on how to
process spoken language with simplicity and automaticity.
Firstly, we are going to find out and elaborate
what are the problems in listening are. Secondly, we are going to discuss and
examine about the strategies in order to attain complete understanding in
English which is to altercate extensive listening strategies and knowledge on
how to process spoken language with simplicity and automaticity. Lastly, using
extensive listening in daily routine from teachers can help students reach the
comprehension needed.
Listening in Beginner
Proficiency Level
Now let’s start with discussing listening in beginner proficiency level.
Listening in beginner proficiency level includes students in the first semester
of the English department. They study English from the Basic English programme
of study and meets listening as one of the major subjects in their course. In
the class itself, Renandya (2008) stated that students learn listening by short conversation fill in the
blanks listening course, song lyrics fill in blanks and simple listening
comprehension. Short conversation fill in the blanks contains a short passage
of story and missing words which the students have to fill in.
Other materials are song
lyrics fill in the blanks. The songs are usually songs from the 80s-90s which
the students aren’t familiar with. Both of the fill in the blanks are usually
one missing caption in each line. This enables them to not only fill in the
captions, but also understand the story. This course enables them to understand
and recognize Basic English listening course. Students in this level are
introduced to listening as a medium to attain fundamental English listening
skills.
According to Renandya (2011), the problems to listening in English Language
teaching, the sources of listening in English Language teaching includes speaking
rate, distraction, unable to recognize words they knew, new vocabulary, missing
subsequent input, nervousness, sentence complexity, background knowledge,
anxiety and frustration, unfamiliar pronunciation. These problems appear due to
the student’s condition and disabilities to their listening skills.
Each
and every student reported that the mainly imperative source of their listening
comprehension problem is the fast rate of speech. While the second most
important source of their listening problem is distraction. If the speech rate
is too fast and the students cannot catch the words, they unsurprisingly get
distracted and will be unable to continue to process the information.
The
last most complex problem gives further evidence that the fast speech rate,
down with the other features of speech discussed above, made it hard for the
students to identify the words that they actually knew. As a result, they were
not able to comprehend the text.
Yagang (1993) points out that in ordinary conversation or even in much extempore
speech-making or lecturing we actually say a good deal more than would appear
to be necessary in order to convey our message. Redundant utterances may take
the form of repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections,
elaborations, tautologies, and apparently meaningless additions such as I mean
or you know. This redundancy is a normal feature of speech and may be either aid
or an obstacle, depending on the
students’ level. It may make it more difficult for beginners to understand what
the speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may present students more time to
tune in to the speaker’s voice and speech style. Learners tend to be used to their teacher’s accent
or to the standard variety of British or American English. They find it hard to
understand speakers with other accents.
Listening Strategies
Listening
engages not just accurately interpreting received speech but also responding
correctly to the speaker. According to Field (1993), several listening
strategies can be teacher-directed dictations, read-aloud and self-directed
listening, discrimination, segmentation, identifying unrecognized words,
anticipation, referencing, monitoring and relevant materials that are needed in
listening.
Considerably, exercises for practicing
listening skills are crucial in the process of language learning. As Field (1998) mentioned, many of the exercises involve
dictation, a much wider-used technique in improving listening. Exercise types are discrimination which includes distinguishing minimally different words.
For instance, ear training in minimal pairs and teacher dictates minimal
pairs.
Next is segmentation,
which contains identifying words in continuous speech. With teacher
dictates sentences which include contractions, weak forms, elision,
assimilation, and criticized items (e.g. 'drinka
pinta milk'). Learners
should write down a section of an authentic passage, as well as listen with a text,
paying attention to weakly stressed items.
Another strategy is on
working out the spelling of unrecognized words. These includes, the teacher dictates words in spelling groups (laugh, cough, enough). On the other hand, learners guess the
spellings of difficult-to-recognize words. A further strategy is anticipation. Through working out what
comes next with the teacher plays half a sentence, learners complete, or answer
multiple-choice questions.
A different strategy that should be used is reference.
This includes relating pronouns and what the items they refer to. This method
is process with the teacher pauses cassette after unclear referring expressions
and learners say what they refer to. Teacher lists referring
expressions/general nouns; learners listen for them and write down what they
refer to. Adding to this, Yagang (1993) added that by practicing
in liaisons and elisions in order to help students get used to the acoustic
forms of rapid natural speech. It is useful to find rapidly uttered colloquial
collocations and ask students to imitate native speakers’ pronunciation.
Students should be aware of different native-speaker
accents. Of course, strong regional accents are not suitable for training in
listening, but in spontaneous conversation native speakers do have certain
accents. Moreover, the American accent is quite different from the British and
Australian. Therefore, it is necessary to let students deal with different
accents, especially in extensive listening.
The last approach to Yagang (1993) is through 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, whereas advanced listeners may benefit
from messages being expanded and paraphrase. Therefore, by applying
these strategies students are closely able to perceive and understand the
listening material.
The applications of Extensive
Listening Strategies for the Beginner Proficiency Level of EFL Students
The main job as an educator of foreign language listening is to help our
students develop routine information, about how to recept spoken language. In
Extensive listening, listening itself is to hear something with thoughtful
attention or give consideration.
The skill to perceive sound by detecting vibrations through an organ called
ear. Suarcaya(2006) states that discriminating listening is the mostly primary type
of listening, during which the difference between different sounds is
recognized. In order to perceive different sound, uttering the difference in
the sound is notable.
Listening in beginner proficiency level incorporates with students in
the first semester of the English department. These students study Basic
English programme of study and assemble listening as one of the major subjects
in their course. During the class, they learn listening by short conversation
fill in the blanks listening course, song lyrics fill in blanks and simple
listening comprehension.
According to Field (1998), under the present comprehension approach, success
in listening is measured by correct responses to questions or tasks. Teachers
focus upon the outcomes of listening, rather than upon listening itself, upon product
rather than process. When a learner supplies a correct answer, there is no
warning as to how that answer has been arrived at. Whether the meaning has been
constructed by correctly identifying all the words in a particular piece of
text, or by identifying one word and making an inspired guess?
Through
employing listening strategies such as
teacher-directed dictations, read-aloud and self-directed listening, discrimination,
segmentation, identifying unrecognized words, anticipating, referencing,
monitoring and relevant materials; students are able to understand meanings
from the listening message. The way of approaching listening difficulties reflects
current practice in the teaching of reading.
Yagang (1993) also mentioned
that practicing in
connection in order to assist students
get used to the auditory forms of fast natural speech. It is constructive to locate
rapidly uttered colloquial collocations and ask students to imitate native
speakers’ pronunciation.
Make students aware of
different native-speaker accents. Moreover, there are several English accenst that teacher’s
use. Therefore, it is
necessary to let students deal with different accents, especially in extensive
listening.
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, whereas advanced listeners may benefit from messages
being expanded and
paraphrase.
Field (2008) added that it has been obvious that
more reading does not necessarily mean better listening. Typically, teachers of
L2 reading seek to train learners in skimming, scanning, prediction, inferring
unknown words, and a number of other techniques. It is curious that the same
approach has not been applied systematically to listening, given that the sub
skills of listening closely parallel those of reading. Moreover, these
strategies are considered necessary in extensive listening.
Conclusion
Listening is basically to provide awareness by a
way of hearing or attend closely for the purpose of hearing. Listening is one
of English main apprehensions. This indicates that the significance of
listening in communication is highly needed. The crucial foundations of
listening problems include, speaking rate, distraction, not capable to
recognize words that the student’s knew, new vocabulary, missing subsequent
input, nervousness, sentence complexity, background knowledge, anxiety and
frustration and unfamiliar pronunciation.
Students accounted that the commonly necessary source of their listening
comprehension difficulty is the fast rate of speech. While the second most
important source of their listening problem is distraction. The last most
composite problem gives additional confirmation that the fast speech rate, down
with the other features of speech discussed above, made it tricky for the
students to categorize the words that they actually knew. Consequently, they
were not able to comprehend the text.
These causes of listening problems in English Language Teaching within the
materials, such as sentence complexity, speaking rate, and unfamiliar
pronunciation can be restore with dictations, read-aloud and self-directed
listening.
In
conclusion, students should be provided with background knowledge
and linguistic knowledge, such as complex sentence structures and colloquial
words and expressions, as needed.
Students
should try to get as much feedback as possible. Throughout the course the
teacher should bridge the gap between input and students’ response and between
the teacher’s feedback and students’ 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 develop
confidence in their ability to deal with listening problems. Student feedback
can help the teacher judge where the class is going and how it should be
guided.
Teachers should 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 tasks and exercises at different levels with different focuses.
Through employing
these strategies in extensive listening for
the beginner proficiency level of EFL students, they should be able to achieve
the targeted goal in Extensive listening.
References
Field J. (1998)
Skills and strategies: towards a new methodology for listening. English Language Teaching Journal 52 (2) (Apr. 1998) Retrived from
http://lib.atmajaya.ac.id/Uploads/Fulltext/170442/artikel/2011.1.52.full.pdf
Suarcaya P. (2006) Web-Based
Audio Materials For EFL
Yep, this is me! And what the hell am i wearing? Burqa! The Burqa is a piece of clothing that covers a woman from head to foot. There is an opening for the eyes, but the rest of the body, except the hands, are covered. 
