Types of Classroom Listening

Performance

Types of Classroom Listening Performance

• Reactive • Intensive • Responsive • Selective • Extensive • Interactive

Reactive Listening

☻requires little meaningful processing☻This role of the listener as merely

“tape recorder” (Nunan, 1991b:18) must be very limited, otherwise the listener as a generator of meaning does not reach fruition.

☻ the only role that this performance can play in an interactive classroom is in brief choral or individual drills that focus on pronunciation

Intensive Listening

☻ Techniques whose only focus is to focus on components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of discourse

☻ Include bottom-up skills

☻refers to using the incoming input as thebasis for understanding the message

Examples of intensive listening performance:

• Students listen for cues in certain choral

or individual drills • The teacher repeats a word or

sentenceseveral times to “imprint” it in the student’s mind

☻ The teacher asks students to listen to a sentence or a longer stretch of discourse and to notice a specified element, e.g., intonation, stress, a contraction, a grammatical structure, etc.

Responsive Listening

☻A significant proportion of classroom listening activity consists of short stretches of teacher language designed to elicit immediate responses.

☻The students’ task in such listening is to process the teacher talk immediately

and to fashion an appropriate reply.

Examples include:

☻Asking questions ☻Giving commands☻Seeking clarification☻Checking comprehension

Selective Listening

☻Task of the student is not to process everything that was said butrather to scan the material selectively

for certain information☻Requires field independence on the

part of the listener

☻ Differs from intensive listening in that the discourse is in relatively long lengths

• Examples of such discourse include:

☻speeches☻media broadcasts☻stories and anecdotes☻conversation in which learners are

eavesdroppers

Techniques promoting selective listening skills could ask students to listen for:

☻peoples names ☻dates☻certain facts or events☻location, situation, context, etc.☻main ideas and/or conclusion

Extensive Listening

☻could range from listening to lengthy lectures to listening to a conversation and deriving

a comprehensive message or purpose☻aims to develop a top-down, global

understanding of spoken language☻refers to the use of backgroundknowledge in understanding the meaning of a message

☻may require the student to invoke other interactive skills (e.g., note taking, discussion) for full comprehension

Interactive Listening

☻include all five of the above types

as learners actively participate in discussions, debates, conversations, role-plays, and other pair and group work.

☻their listening performance must be intricately integrated with speaking (and perhaps other) skills in the authentic give and take of communicative interchange

ReferencesHedge, T. (2001). Teaching and learning in the language

classroom. New York: Oxford University Press.Richards, J. C. (2008). Teaching listening and speaking from

theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wallace, T. (2004). Teaching speaking, listening and writing. Switzerland: International Academy of Education.

Osada, N. (2004). Listening comprehension research: A brief review of the past thirty years. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from http://talkwaseda.net/dialogue/no03_2004

/2004dialogue03_k4.pdf• Meskill, C. (n.d.). Listening skills development through

multimedia. Retrieved November 25, 2011 from http://www.albany.edu/etap/faculty/CarlaMeskill/publication/TESLIST.pdf

***END***Thank You

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