LISTENING SKILL

Hearing must precede listening. Therefore, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the human ear before we proceed to discuss the listening process. The ear has three parts. They are: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear.

The Outer Ear: It consists of the Pinna, the auditory canal and the eardrum. The pinna helps to direct the sound waves to the auditory canal. Wax glands and hair are present in the canal which together protects the ear from dust, germs and insects. They also control temperature and dampness in the canal. The canal ends in the eardrum which separates the outer ear from the middle ear. It is connected to the Ossicles (small bones) of the middle ear.

The Middle Ear: It is chamber having air circulation, containing three small bones called Malleus, Incus and Stapes. The oval which separates the middle ear and the outer ear is connected to the stapes. The bones are connected to each other by ligaments and they are capable of vibrating. The middle ear is connected to the Pharynx by Eustachian tube which helps to regulate air pressure on either side of the eardrum.

The Inner Ear: The inner ear comprises of three parts. They are the semicircular canals, the vestibule and the cochlea. The cochlea is like tubule like the interior of a snail shell. The semicircular canals stand perpendicular to one another. Each canal has a swollen end called Ampulla. The chambers found above and below vestibule are the Utricle and the Saccule. They are connected with the tube. The semicircular canals begin from the Vestibule, goes round and rejoins the Vestibule. All these are filled with a fluid called Endolymph and are e surrounded by Perilymph.

Sound is a physical phenomenon and hearing is perceptive. Sound is made by vibration of objects and is transmitted through the atmosphere. Sound waves will not travel in vacuum. The atmosphere consisting of molecules is elastic. Vibration makes motion in the air. According to the force of vibration sound moves forward in waves. The auricle receives the sound waves and transmits them through the auditory canal to the eardrum and makes it vibrate. This is the first stage of hearing. When the membrane vibrates, the ossicles vibrate together. The vibrations of the ossicles convert sound energy into mechanical energy and the waves of mechanical energy reach the inner ear. The mechanical energy is again converted into hydraulic energy and again electric impulses are made. Thus sound energy through several stages is converted to electric energy by the cochlear microphonic process. The electric impulses reaching the hair cells move to the auditory nerves and they carry them to the auditory cortex. Thus we experience sound as hearing.

LISTENING PROCESS

Listening is hearing and perceiving a message. Hearing is a physiological process while listening is a mental process. As the auditory mechanism accepts a sound or a sequence of sounds, it sends it to the nerve centre concerned for interpretation and to give meaning. For communication there should be a speaker and a listener and a medium for communication. The listener on hearing the sounds, with understanding according to his experience, shapes the message. Listening is receptive skill but it is an active process.

The listening process has three stages – hearing, processing and evaluating. If a person can repeat what the speaker has said, hearing has taken place in him. And on hearing if the hearer thinks about how the information can be interpreted against his background, it means processing has taken place. In the third stage, the listener will assess the validity of the information that is evaluation stge.

The objectives of listening are related to the levels of knowledge, understanding, application and aptitude.

Their specifications are developing the ability to:

1. Receive information – general and specific.2. Distinguish between sounds.3. Formulate attitudes and opinions.4. Arrange events in sequence.5. Know the interests of the speaker.6. Be familiar with functional categories.7. Organise ideas

There are number of barriers affecting normal listening and comprehension. They are given below.

1. Linguistic: If the speaker’s linguistic level is very high and the listener’s very low, the latter will understand only a low percentage of what he heard.

2. Use of hard words/registers: If the speaker uses hard words or registers of particular branch of study, an ordinary listener will fail to grasp the ideas.

3. Noisy environment: In market place having noisy atmosphere listening will be difficult. Or while the T.V or radio is working with high volume, one will not be able to listen a phone call.

4. Psychological: When a person lacks interest, due to weariness, impatience or other negative feelings one will not be able to listen to a speech effectively.

5. Negative attitude: In case the speaker happens to be a person whom we don’t like to accept, we shall not be listening to him.

6. Physiological: This is the most unfortunate and most difficult of all barriers to overcome – partial or total hearing impairment. Hearing is not possible due to damage to the hearing mechanism; listening will not follow and speech will be a mirage.

Impatience, interruptions, preoccupation, etc..... are other barriers to effective listening.Good listeners will overcome the barriers. To make listening effective:

1. Practice note - making/ note – taking.2. Keep alert without distracting attention.3. If handouts are available in advance, read them before the speech starts.4. Take a seat conducive to proper listening.5. Focus attention more on the content of the speech than on linguistic or non –

verbal language.6. Identify the main ideas and the supportive ideas.

SUBSKILLS Basic listening skills are the ability to hear clearly and to discriminate the sounds heard. Of the four basic language skills, we seem to be giving least important to listening forgetting that listening is a pre – requisite for speaking and that language is primarily speech. If we want to train our pupils in oral communication, there is no other way than giving those practices in listening ie.developing their listening skill in advance. Not only that, the time we spend for listening is 50% more than the time we spend for speaking. But it is the listening skill on which serious studies and researches have not been conducted. James L Brown has pioneered in this field. According to him reading has primacy over listening for learning up to the seventh grade and that listening skill does not improve long after. We are less critical while listening than while reading. It may be because the listener is not able to take a reverse to a speech to catch a part of it which has been missed, where as it can be done in reading. According to Miss Althea Beery, listening skill can be developed by1. Sensing relationships of listening to the other phases of communication.2. Understanding the psychological process of learning.3. Providing general conditions conductive to learning.4. Utilising opportunities for children to listen.5. Understanding the developmental levels of listening.6. Keeping alert to new inventions which will aid the programme. Sub - skills of listening are manifested in terms of behaviour. Richard has identified about 50 micro level sub – skills that learners of English as L2 have to master to understand day – to – day conversational English. The sub – skills of listening may be broadly divided into two classes 1) listening for sound perception 2) listening for meaning (comprehension). In the former class, the sub – skills are:

1. Distinguishing between the sounds of L1 and L2 which are identical, non – identical and partly identical.

2. Understanding the tone, melody, rhythm, stress and intonation of L2.3. Learning how to speak a word before learning how to write it.4. Understanding the lack of concord between pronunciation and spelling of words in

English.

Listening for meaning (comprehension) has the following sub – skills:1. Predicting what the speaker’s main theme would be and guessing the word he

would use next.2. Understanding the collocation of words (adjectives, adverbs etc...). For example,

Time is precious.3. Grasping the mood of the speaker, his attitude and the meaning implied by stress,

intonation etc...4. Understanding how the speaker develops his idea, logically and subsequently and

his stylistics.5. Inferring and selecting information of interest to the listener.6. Understanding the implications and suggestions contained in the speech.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPING THE SUB – SKILLS The sound system of L2 will have to be got familiarized to the learners. If each of the sounds of L1 were congruent to each of the sounds of L2, there would have been problem with regard to learning the sound system of L2. But there is no such one – to – one close identification of sounds, in general among languages. Therefore, it is the concern of the teacher to give enough exposure to the learners to grasp the sound system of L2. With regard to English, the sound system should be introduced much before the graphics is introduced. This is because listening and speech have primacy over reading and writing especially during the early stages of language acquisition. Therefore while introducing vocabulary or short utterances, the teacher should be a model in his pronunciation, stress, and intonation. To teach the learners how meaning changes on change of sound, the teacher can use a number of words or pairs of words. For example: cat/rat During the initial stage, the learner should be given practice in introducing sounds after the teacher. Listening is not merely receiving sounds but construction of meanings depending upon the listener’s cultural background, mood, attitude and so on. Listening will be more effective, if the speech is given in meaningful phrases at normal speed and volume. Speaking with gestures, eye contact and facial expressions, and making use of charts, maps, graphs, etc.... will make listening more intense. The teacher can give instructions to the learners to make them do some physical movements. This is also a testing device for listening. Exercises on making objects can be given. For example: the making of paper boats or kites. Grids can be used as tasks for testing. A passage is read out; say information about two or three countries and filling out the boxes with the information.

A resourceful teacher can find out numerous tasks to give the learners to develop the sub – skills of listening. The most important thing is to motivate the learners for listening as it is a basic skill for language acquisition especially a foreign language.

PHASES OF LISTENING ACTIVITY The phases of listening activity can be broadly divided into three: pre – listening, on listening and post – listening. In the first phase Pre – listening the learner’s role is not significant, whereas the teacher has to think and plan for the speaking – listening activities in the class. The teacher should detect whether there are any students with hearing problems and plan to seat them in the front row of the class. The students may be seated in the class so that the distance of the student from the teacher’s position is uniform as far as possible. This can be made possible by arranging the seat of the students in a semicircular form. The classroom should be free from outside disturbances. The teacher has to collect materials for information, gap filling activities, functional purposes, recording facilities, grids, maps, riddles etc...during this phase. The learners may be asked to bring corresponding materials to the class. In the second phase On listening the teacher should arouse interest in the learners and motivate them to listen to something very interesting and useful to them. The teacher makes the topic familiar to them and gives instructions about what they are going to listen and act. Having accomplished the task with the help of the teacher, he goes round and understands how satisfactorily they have performed as a part of feed back. In the post listening phase, follow up tasks can be given with a variety of materials to suit the learner’s home conditions, intellectual and linguistic levels.

TYPES OF LISTENING SKILL

EXTENSIVE AND INTESIVE According to purpose, listening can be extensive or intensive. The chief objective of extensive listening is enjoyment in general without any immediate specific purpose like facing an interview board or taking an examination. As thinking speed is three times more than listening speed, one can do other little intellectual exercises while listening is partially casual. Intensive listening is with more concentrated attention and is purposeful. For example: listening to the teacher, the radio, the television etc... In discussions, seminars, debates etc...intensive listening is required. Intensive listening is followed by some specific tasks.

FOCUSSED, SELECTIVE AND CASUAL LISTENING Focussed listening means converging all attention to a specific purpose at a time. While listening to the description of an experiment to produce a required result, one has to focus one’s listening faculty to its process and product. In focussed listening, the listener

has a purpose. For example. In an unfamiliar city, if one asks the way to the bus stand, one listens to the speaker who guides, with focussed listening. In the listening process the listener can focuss his attention to intangiable linguistic content areas and have a follow – up. In classroom teaching learning process the learner should render to focussed listening. We do not react to all that we listen, but react only to that which we are interested in or bound to. That is our selective listening. Not purposefullynwe may happen to listen to a speech, a news, or an announcement. This is casual listening. To a casual listening, we may react or may not, depending upon our attitude, situation, culture etc...

Listening can be more subtly classified as:

1. Discriminative listening which helps develop logical thinking.2. Critical listening helps to accept or reject an argument or opinion on the basis of its

validityor utility.3. Comprehensive listening helps to understand a message clearly providing for follow

– up action.4. Therapeutic listening helps to grasp the meaning of a message superficially without

evaluating it.5. Appreciative listening helps device enjoyment or appreciation for delight.