The theme: Listening: Problems & Solutions 7th grade.
методическая разработка по английскому языку (7 класс) по теме

Solodyankina Olga

My Scientific Work

The theme:

Listening: Problems & Solutions

7th grade

LISTENING: PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS.

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding  speakers accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. A well-trained listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Some scholars, for example, Willis lists a series of micro-skills of listening. They are called enabling skills:

predicting what people are going to talk about,

guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking,

using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand,

identifying relevant points, rejecting irrelevant information,

retaining relevant points / note-taking, summarizing/

recognizing discourse markers, e.g., well, Oh, another thing is; Now, finally, etc.

recognizing cohesive devices, e.g. such as and which, including link words, pronouns, references, etc,

understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc*, which give clues to meaning and social setting,

understanding inferred information, e.g., speakers* attitudes or intentions.

What are some listening problems met by the students? The listening problems come mainly from four sources: the message to be listened to, the speaker, the listener, and the physical setting.

The Message.

Many learners find it more difficult to listen to a taped message than to read the same message on a piece of paper, since the listening passage comes into the ear in the twinkling of an eye, whereas reading material can be read as long as the reader likes.

The listening material may deal with almost any area of life. It might include street gossips, proverbs, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the students. In many cases listeners cannot predict what speakers are going to say. Messages on the radio, TV or recorded on the tape cannot be listened to at a slower speed. Even in conversation it is impossible to ask the speaker to repeat something. There may be some linguistic features due to rapid speech. It's difficult for the students to distinguish or recognize individual words in the stream of speech. If listening materials are made up of everyday conversation, they may contain a lot of colloquial words and expressions, such as stuff for material, guy for man etc., as well  as slang.  As for the  students  they  know  more  bookish  English.  In spontaneous conversation people sometimes use ungrammatical sentences because of nervousness or hesitation.

The Speaker.

Students 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. The speaker with redundant utterances, false starts, re - phrasing, self- corrections, elaborations, tautologies are difficult to listen to.

The Listener.

Students are not familiar enough with clichés and collocations in English to predict a missing word or phrase. Of course» they don't know , for example, that rosy often collocates with cheeks. In fact, foreign language learners usually devote more time to reading than to listening.

Physical Setting.

Noise, including both background noises on the recording and environmental noises, can take the listener's mind off the content of the listening passage. Not seeing the speaker and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker's meaning.

What can we f teachers, do to help students master the difficulties? Not all the problems described above can be overcome. But we should provide the students with suitable listening materials, background and linguistic knowledge, enabling skills, pleasant classroom conditions, and useful exercises to help them. Here are a few helpful ideas suggested by the famous scholars.

The Message.

1. We should give the listening material taking into account the students' level.
2. We should design   task - oriented exercises to engage the   students* interest
   and help them learn listening skills subconsciously.
3. We should provide students with different kinds of input, such as lectures,
   radio   news,   films,   TV   plays,   announcements,   everyday   conversations,
   interviews, storytelling, English songs and so on.
4. We should try to find visual aids or draw pictures   and diagrams associated
   with the listening topics to help students guess or imagine actively.

   ---

The Speaker.

1.        It is useful to find rapidly uttered colloquial collocations and ask students to imitate native speaker's pronunciation. Here are some of the examples:

let's have    ['letsəv]

there isn't any     ['ərizndeni]

you shouldn't have   [ju:'∫udndəv]        

2. Make students aware of different native - speaker accents. Of course* strong
   regional accents are not   suitable   for training in listening. Moreover» the
   American accent is quite different from the British or Australian.
3. Select  short,  simple listening texts with   little redundancy for lower – level students and complicated authentic materials with more redundancy for
   advanced learners.

The Listener.

1. It is necessary to provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge, such as complex sentences, structures and colloquial words and expressions as needed,

2. Throughout the course the teacher should bridge the gap between input and the students' response and between the teacher's feedback and students'
   reaction in order to keep activities purposeful.
3. We 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.

Here is a typology of different activities for a listening lesson. It is suggested a variety of exercises, tasks, and activities appropriate to different stages at a listening lesson / pre - listening, while - listening, and post - listening /. The list covers a wide range of listening activities from simple to more sophisticated.

TYPOLOGY OF ACTIVITIES FOR A LISTENING LESSON

Well, I don't think that listening is the easiest skill to teach. I do know that most students think it is the most difficult aspect to improve. Of course, this is not the only matter of playing the tapes and testing the students' comprehension. We must find out all we can about how listening can be improved and what activities are useful.

I suggest you a part of the lesson 22 Longman, Students* Book   showing the steps of working with listening. The aim of the lesson is the development of the intensive listening.

Teacher: You've answered the questions and told us about the seasons. I am glad you remember some poems about the weather. Now we have a very serious work - listening С   First, have a look at the photos of a girl Lucy and the Majave Desert in California. Is the desert   shown in spring or in summer?

Pupils:     ......

Teacher: It is spring, you are right. By the way, I spoke to the teacher of geography. I've got to know something interesting about deserts. The matter is that deserts are not always dry sand dunes. / to check if they know the word dunes/ When it rains the deserts awaken. After the rain lots of plants and flowers start growing. And there are lots of insects and small animals like desert frogs and birds. When is hot and dry lots of insects and small animals are dormant under the ground. / to explain the word dormant /

We are going to hear an interview with Lucy describing the weather in the desert. Before it, read the questions, you will have to answer them after listening. Do you know the meaning of all the words given in the task?

Listen to the cassette: / the text of the cassette enclosed /

Have you understood? Shall I put it once again? Read the answers if you are ready.

1. Hinkley California.
2. Hot and dry.
3. Months without rain.

1. A few weeks.        /to check the answers properly show them on the
   blackboard /

We have task D now. You should order the events that happened in the text using the linking words: first, then, after, that, finally, /the words are on the blackboard / We should remind the students when we use the words: first, finally and the rest.

Now, listen to the cassette and try to put the events in the right   order. Read the sentences:

1. First it rains hard.
2. Lots of insects and small animals come out to breed.
3. Then the plants start growing.
4. After a few days the desert is full of flowers.
5. Finally after a few weeks the plants die and it gets hotter.

TAPESCRIPT

Listen to Lucy. Answer the questions in your book.

interviewer: So Lucy, you're from Bristol, aren't you?

LUCY: That's right.

interviewer: But you and your family lived in California for two years... whereabouts exactly?

LUCY: Well, we lived in a really small place called Hinkley ... it's not too far from Los Angeles ... and it's right in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

interviewer: A desert? You mean a real desert with lots of sand dunes and everything!

 LUCY: Well, not quite ... but it is a desert. It's got these fantastic plants called Joshua trees ... they're enormous, you know.

interviewer: And what's it like living in a desert?

LUCY: Well, it gets pretty hot in the summer, too hot… and it's really dry.

interviewer: So does it ever rain?

LUCY: Well, it doesn't rain for months... and suddenly it can rain really heavily and it's fantastic after that.

interviewer: Why?

LUCY: There's a kind of spring ... after the rain, lots of plants start growing.

interviewer: Yes?

lucy: Yeah, it can be really beautiful... you know, the whole desert green and just full of flowers.

interviewer: Rowers?

LUCY: Yes, it's covered with them. And there are lots of insects and small animals like desert frogs and birds.

interviewer: And where do they come from?

LUCY: Well ... when it's dry, lots of insects and small animals like frogs are dormant under the ground. When it rains, they wake up and come out to breed... just like that ... it's really amazing! And then ... I guess the desert spring lasts for a few weeks ... and after that all the plants start to die and dry up and, everything goes back to normal.

interviewer: So it all happens really quickly. It sounds strange.

lucy: Yeah, it is. But it's fantastic!