WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS IN YOUNG LEARNER THROUG AUDIO TOOLS?

As the acquisition of a new language is a long process and even when we are adults we are still learning

new grammar structures and stuff like that there is a necessity in many classrooms specially in the 9th

grade of “San Pedro Alejandrino” school which I observed and is related with the listening exercise in

the English class.

I got to some conclusions from the lack of understanding and production in the target language students

have in the questioned school; first of all we need to focus on the fact that when learning any foreign

language, people (and teenagers in this case) have to be surrounded by that language, which means the

students have to listen a lot, no matter if they understand just a bit at the beginning, because with time

they will be able to understand (cause is a process).

In the classroom, I observed that:

- There was not interaction in the target language

- During the class there was a focus just in the writing and reading skills

- And the teacher spoke in Spanish all the time

By the end of some classes I tried to have a short interaction in English with some students but they

didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate even with easy vocabulary they already knew and

they weren’t able to speak a single word.

Hence I focused my attention on what is the necessity in the classroom. As we know, in Colombian high

schools we don’t have native speakers working as teachers, so is really complicated to get the real

context or real English, but as teachers we need to look for tools and to set at least the rule of using just

English in the class (Jeremy Harmer, how to teach English).

As Harmer says, to learn English, it is important to listen to the real language, because there is a lot of

accents in English, and the globe is becoming smaller so it is necessary for the teacher (if is not native) to

use audio tools when teaching English.

ANDRÉS MAURICIO POTES

051350302009