Major premises for listening

Listening to a language involves participation – not in the classroom sense of answering questions, but in the ‘real world’ sense of dealing with the message received. Spoken language is not understood in isolation. The listener is actively involved in the communication process and understanding is, therefore, not a purely receptive process (Anokhin’s Theory of a Recipient’s Active Involvement).

The listener is engaged in anticipating what the speaker’s going to say and constantly checks and readjusts his predictions as the speaker provides him with further clues. If a flow of speech were cut off in the middle of a sentence, the listener could make a reasonable guess about the remainder of the utterance. It follows then, that in the classroom pupils should be encouraged to develop their sense of anticipation in order to prepare for using the language in the real world. This could be done by stopping a tape/reading in mid-flow and asking the students to guess what is coming next.

In the real world, people usually have a purpose in listening to something, for example, they may switch on the radio to listen to the weather report because they want to go out somewhere, or they may want to check the time. If we are listening to the news and we want to know about the condition of the roads, we will first listen, then identify and reject those items we are not interested in. Students can be given tasks, which involve selecting and rejecting information. It is particularly important, however, to make sure that we always give students a reason for listening. Setting a pre-question could do this. Assessing the attitude of a speaker might be an alternative goal of the listening, as might be the relationship between speakers.

Although it should be made clear to students that you do not expect them to understand every word, it is useful if they can understand or recognise signal devices. Signal devices are built into the spoken (and written) language. They alert the listener to a change in the content. They may indicate an end of a long continuous flow of speech (in conclusion…; I’d like to finish with…) or review the points made and draw a speech to an end (by way of summary…; to sum up…). They may indicate a continuation of the same opinion, or a supporting fact (moreover, furthermore, also, another point is…). The attitude of the speaker can often be inferred through the use of modal verbs (it would seem that…; it could be that…) or through more overt phrases (in my opinion…; I think that…; I believe that…; my guess/feeling is…). Although the devices mentioned above may be peculiar to certain types of listening text, they form a framework for the information to hang on. Whenever there is a switch of focus, an introduction of new ideas, the listener is made aware by such devices that what follows will be similar, different, related, unrelated etc. to what has gone before.