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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. General Concept of Listening

Listening is probably the least explicit of the four languageskills, making

it the most difficult one to learn. It is evident that children listen and respond

to language before they learn to talk.1 When it is time for children to learn to

read, they still have to listen so that they gain knowledge and information to

follow directions. In the classroom, students have to listen carefully and

attentively to lectures and class discussions in order to understand and to

retain the information for later recall.

Shelton defines listening is a demanding process. Learners must be able

to deal with different accents or pronunciations, unfamiliar lexical items and

syntactic structures, competing background noise, and also make a conscious

effort to not “switch off” or become distracted while listening. All of this

must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to

identify and understand the meaning in any given message.2

Furthermore, Purdy (1991) offers a definition of listening as giving an

assign meaning to the stimuli received from the brain. 3 It allows learners to

build relationship, develop intellectually, and control their environment.

Listening is an active, conscious process that requires pattern recognition and

differencing.

Moreover, Nunan (1989 as cited in Richards and Renandya) assumes that

listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning. Listening is

assuming greater and greater importance in foreign language classrooms.4 In

addition to this, as Rost (1994, p. 141-142) points out, listening is vital in the

1 Ghaderpanahi, Leila, “Using Authentic Aural Material to Develop Listening Comprehension in the EFL Classroom.” English Language Teaching vol. 5 (2012): 146.

2 Shelton, Scott, Teaching Listening for Advanced Learners: Problem and Solution, retrieved from: <http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/list1_scott.htm>, accessed on October 19, 2014.

3 Tomorszki, Kristen R., Developing Listening Comprehension with Internet Resources, (Washington: George Washington University, 2013), p. 2.

4 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Methodology in Language Teaching, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 238.

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language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without

understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.

The importance of listening in language learning can hardly be

overestimated. In classrooms, students always do more listening than

speaking.5 Listening comprehension is universally “larger” than speaking

competence. It has not always drawn the attention of education than recently.

B. Definition of Teaching Listening for Advanced

Teaching listening for advanced is derived from three main words,

namely teaching, listening and advanced. According to Oxford Dictionary,

teaching is the act of giving lessons to students in a school, college or

university in order to help them learn something by giving information about

it. While listening is defined as taking noticed and paying attention to what

somebody says. Lastly, advanced is the state off being at a high or difficult

level.6 Then, it can be assumed that teaching listening for advanced is the

process of giving listening lessons for the highest level of learners i.e.

advanced level.

Teaching listening can be hard for both teachers and students. Students

who are fine with speaking at their own pace and reading may have trouble

listening to a recording that is a regular-speed conversation. Listening is often

confusing for an English learner.

The pedagogy of listening is one of the least understood, least explored

areas in the field of EFL/ESL. Listening is often referred to as outher most

important language skill, perhaps because of the considerable amount of time

spent on doing it. The importance of listening and listening skills

development in the process of acquiring language proficiency features

prominently in the scholarly literature of EFL/ESL.7

5 Brown, H. Douglas, Teaching by Principle: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents, 1994), p. 233.

6 Hornby, A S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8th Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 1531, 21, 868.

7 Laclare, Elton & Rowberry, Jon, “Using Moodle for Listening Skills Development.” Proceedings of Moodle Moot Japan 2014, Moodle Association of Japan, 2014, p. 337.

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Teaching listening for advanced is not as easy as pie. The majority of

advanced learners have many of the same problems that beginners and

intermediate learners have. They may understand more as a general rule, but

still have gaps in their understanding and experience difficulties in

comprehension in less than optimum listening situation. Ur (1984) points out

several potential problems areas that may be faced by advanced learners in

listening comprehension course, namely:

1. Listening the sounds

2. Understanding intonation and stress

3. Coping with redundancy and ‘noise’

4. Predicting

5. Understanding vocabulary (mostly colloquial)

6. Understanding different accents

7. (Not) using visual or environmental clues

8. Fatigue. 8

In conclusion, as one of the major subjects in language teaching, listening

does need to be given more attention. Not only does listening lead all other

courses such as speaking, reading and writing, but also it is always being the

main part in their everyday lives.

CHAPTER II

8 Ur, Penny, Teaching Listening comprehension, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 20.

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EXPLANATION

A. Kind of Teaching Listening for Advanced

Harmer (2007) in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching,

stated that there are two kinds of teaching listening for advanced, namely

extensive and intensive listening. Learners can improve their listening skills,

along with gaining valuable language input, through a combination of

extensive and intensive listening material and procedures. Listening of both

kind is especially important since it provides the perfect opportunity to listen

voices other than the teacher’s, enables learners to acquire good speaking

habits as a result of the spoken English they absorb, and helps improve their

pronunciation.

1. Extensive listening

Extensive listening involves a teacher that encourages the learners to

choose for themselves what they listen to and to do so for pleasure and

general language improvement. Extensive listening helps learners acquire

vocabulary and grammar and also make them better listeners. Extensive

listening will usually take place outside the classroom such as in the

students’ home, car, or on personal MP3 players which they can bring any

time.

Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of

sources. One of the most effective materials is an audio version of reading

text on cassette or CD. These provide ideal sources of listening material.

Many students will enjoy reading and listening at the same time, using a

source both in a book form and on an audio track.

In order to encourage extensive listening teacher can have students

perform a number of tasks. They can record their responses to what they

have heard in a personal journal, or fill in the report forms which we have

prepared, asking them to list the topic, assess the level of difficulty, and

summarize the contents of a recording. The purpose of this or any other

tasks is to give students more and more reasons to listen. If they can then

share their information with colleagues, they will feel they have 4

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contributed to the progress of the whole group. The motivational power of

such feelings should not be underestimated.

2. Intensive listening

In the intensive listening, teacher might employ audio materials.

However, using audio material still has advantages and disadvantages.

Despite the disadvantages, teacher still need to use recorded material at

various stages in a sequence of lessons. In order to counteract some of the

potential problems, teacher need to check audio and machine quality

before taking them into class.

Another way of ensuring genuine communication is live listening,

where the teacher and/or visitors to the class to talk to the students. This

has obvious advantages since it allows them to practice listening in face-

to-face interactions. Students can also, by their expressions and demeanor,

indicate if the speaker is going too fast or too slowly. Above all, they can

see who they are listing to and respond not just to the sound of someone’s

voice, but also to all sort of prosodic and paralinguistic clues. 9

For advanced learners, teacher might use several forms of live

listening such as story-telling, interviews, conversations, and reading

aloud. Live listening is also required certain roles of the teacher. Although

this is purposed for advanced learners, the teacher should also take

important roles such as the organizer, machine operator, feedback

organizer, and prompter.

B. Type of Teaching Listening for Advanced

There are many types of listening, which can be classified according to a

number of variables, including purpose for listening, the role of the listeners,

and the type of text being listened to. These variables are mixed in many

different configurations, each of which will require a particular strategy on

the part of the listener. Listening purpose is an important variable. In

designing listening tasks, it is important to teach learners to adopt a flexible

9 Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching, 4th Edition. (England: Pearson Education Longman, 2007), p. 303-307.

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range of listening strategies. This can be done by holding the listening text

constant and getting learners to listen to the text several times.10

On the other hand, Purdy (1991) offers five types of listening employed

in varying conditions as follows:

1. Discriminative, having an awareness of the speaker’s mood and intention.

2. Comprehensive, for understanding and learning.

3. Critical/evaluative, for making a decision and assessing the logic of what

is heard.

4. Therapeutic, showing empathy without judging and helping others feel

better.

5. Appreciative, for enjoyment and relaxation.11

Furthermore, exercise types of listening for advanced learners can be

divided up into several goals, among others:

1. Use features of sentence stress and volume to identify important

information for note taking. The learners listen to a number of sentences

and extract the content words, which are read with greater stress. Then,

they write down the content words as notes.

2. Become aware of sentence level features in lecture text. The learners

listen to a segment of a lecture while reading a transcript of the material.

They are supposed to notice the incomplete sentences, pauses, and verbal

fillers.

3. Become aware of organizational cues in lecture text. The learners look

at a lecture transcript and circle all the cue words used to enumerate the

main points. Then they listen to the lecture segment and note the

organizational cues.

4. Become aware of lexical and supra-segmental marker for definitions.

The learners read a list of lexical cues that signal a definition. Moreover

they also listen to signals of the speaker’s intent such as rhetorical

questions.

10 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 239.11 Tomorszki, Kristen R., Op. cit, p. 2-3.

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5. Identify specific points of information. The learners read a skeleton

outline of a lecture in which the main categories are given but the specific

examples are left blank. Then, they are supposed to listen to the lecture

and find the information that belongs to the blanks.

6. Use the introduction to the lecture to predict its focus and direction.

The learners listen to the introductory section of a lecture then reading a

number of topics on the answer sheet and choosing the topic that best

expresses what the lecture will discuss.

7. Use the lecture transcript to predict the content of the next section.

The learners read a section of a lecture transcript. They are supposed to

stop reading at a juncture point and predict what will come next then they

read on to confirm the prediction.

8. Find a main idea of a lecture segment. The learners listen to a section of

a lecture that describes a statistical trend. While listening, look at three

graphs that show a change over time and select the graph that best

illustrates the lecture.

9. Use incoming details to determine the accuracy of predictions about

content. The learners listen to the introductory sentences to predict some

of the main ideas they expect to hear in the lecture. Then they listen to the

lecture as it played. They are supposed to note whether the instructor talks

about the points they predicted. If she/he does, then they note a detail

about the point.

10. Determine the main ideas of section of a lecture by analysis of the

details in that section. The learners listen to a section of a lecture and

take notes on the important details. Then they relate the details to form an

understanding of the main points in that section.

11. Make inferences by identifying ideas on the sentence level on that

lead to evaluative statements. The learners listen to a statement and take

notes on the important words. They indicate what further meaning can be

inferred from the statement. They also indicate the words in the original

statement then decide which one serves to cue the interference.

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12. Use knowledge of the text and the lecture content to fill in missing

information. The learners listen to lecture segment to get the gist. Then

they listen to a statement from which words have been omitted. They are

required to use their knowledge of the text and of the general content,

then fill the missing information.

13. Use knowledge of the text and the lecture content to discover the

lecturer’s misstatements and to supply the ideas that he/she meant to

say. The learners listen to a lecture segment that contains an incorrect

term. Then, they write the incorrect term and the term that the lecturer

should have used. Finally, the learners indicate what clues helped them

find the misstatement. 12

C. Characteristics of Teaching Listening for Advanced

The theoretical, empirical, and practical aspects of listening

comprehension should have been set out. Listening classrooms need to

develop both bottom-up and top-down listening skills in learners. Such an

approach is particularly important in classrooms where students are exposed

to substantial amounts of authentic data, because they will not (and should not

expect to) understand every word. In summary, an effective listening course

will be characterized by the following features.

1. The materials should be based on a wide range of authentic texts,

including both monologues and dialogues.

2. Schema-building tasks should precede the listening.

3. Strategies for effective listening should be incorporated into the materials.

4. Learners should be given opportunities to progressively structure their

listening by listening to a text several times and by working through

increasingly challenging listening tasks.

5. Learners should know what they are listening for and why.

6. The task should include opportunities for learners to play an active role in

their own learning.

12 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 249-250.

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7. Content should be personalized.13

The role of the teacher and the learners should both understand those

characteristics in order to make the learning process run well. Moreover, these

characteristics should also be the main guideline for both learners and teacher.

D. Principles of Teaching Listening for Advanced

There are several principles underlying the process in teaching as follow.

1. In an interactive, four-skill curriculum, make sure that you don’t

overlook the importance of techniques that specifically develop

listening comprehension competence.

If the curriculum is strongly content-based, or otherwise dedicated to

the integration of skills. Remember that each of the separate skills

deserves special focus in appropriate doses. It is easy to adopt a

philosophy of just let-ting students “experience” language without careful

attention to component skills. Because aural comprehension itself cannot

be overly ”observe”, teacher something incorrectly assume that the input

provided in the classroom will always be converted into intake. The

creation of effective listening techniques requires studied attention to all

the principles of listening already summarized in this chapter.

2. Techniques should be intrinsically motivation.

Appeal to listener personal interests and goals. Since background

information (schemata) is an important factor in listening, take into fill

account the experiences and goals and abilities of your students can be

both facilitating and interfering in the process of listening. Then, once a

technique is launched, try to feel self-propelled toward its final objective.

3. Techniques should utilize authentic language and context.

Authentic language and real-world task enable students to see the

relevance of classroom activity to their long term communicative goals.

13 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 251.

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By introducing natural text rather than concocted, artificial material,

students will more readily dive in to the activity.

4. Carefully consider the form to listeners’ responses

Comprehension itself is not externally observable. We cannot peer into

a learner’s brain through a little window of some kind and empirically

observe exactly what is stored there after someone else has said

something. We can overt responses (verbal or nonverbal) to speech. It is

therefore important for teacher to design techniques in such a way that

students’ responses indicate different ways that we can check listeners’

comprehension:

Doing-the listener respond physically to a command

Choosing- the listener selects from alternatives such as picture,

object, texts

Transferring-the listener draws a picture of what is heard

Answering- the listener answer questions about the message

Condensing-the listener outlines or takes notes on a lecture

Extending-the listener provides an ending to a story heard

Duplicating-the listener translates the message into the native

language or repeats it verbatim

Modeling-the listener orders a meal, for example, after listening to

a model order.

Conversing-the listener engages in a conversation that indicates

appropriate processing of information.

5. Encourage the development of listening strategies.

Most foreign language students are simply not aware of how to listen

one of your jobs is to equip them with listening strategies that extend

beyond the classroom, draw their attention to the value of such strategies

as:

Looking for keywords

Looking for nonverbal cues to meaning

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Predicting a speaker’s purpose by the context of the spoken

discourse

Associating information with one’s existing cognitive structure

(activating schemata)

Guessing at meanings

Seeking clarification

Listening for the general gist

For tests of listening comprehension various test-taking strategies.

6. Include both bottom-up top-down listening techniques

Speech processing theory distinguishes between two types of

processing in both listening and reading comprehension. Bottom-up

processing proceed from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to

lexical meaning. Etc....to a final “message.” Top-down processing is

evoked from “a bank of prior knowledge and global expectations”

(Morley. 1991:87) and other background information that the listener

brings to the text. Bottom-up techniques typically focus on sounds. Word,

intonation, grammatical structures. And other components of spoken

language. Top-down techniques are more concerned with the activation of

schemata. With deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the

interpretation of a text. It is important for learners to operate from both

directions since both can offer keys to determining the meaning of spoken

discourse.14

However, this principles, in a communicative, interactive context, teacher

is supposed to dwell too heavily on the bottom-up. For to do so may hamper

the development of a learner’s all-important automaticity in processing

speech.

14 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 244-246.

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E. Procedures of Teaching Listening for Advanced

From the late 1960s, practitioners recognized the importance of listening

and began to set aside time for practicing the skill. A relatively standard

format for the listening lesson developed at this time:

- Pre-listening. Pre-teaching of all important new vocabulary in the

passage.

- Listening. Includes extensive listening (followed by general questions

establishing context) and intensive listening (followed by detailed

comprehension questions).

- Post-listening. Analysis of the language in the text (Why did the speaker

use the present perfect?) Listen and repeat: teacher pauses the tape,

learners repeat words.15

However, the following eight processes are the procedures offered by

Brown are all involved in comprehension, with the exception of the initial and

final processes below, no sequence is implied here; they all occur. If not

simultaneously, then in extremely rapid succession. Neurological time must

be viewed in term of microsecond.

1. The hearer processes what we’ll call “raw speech” and holds an “image”

of it in short-term memory. This image consist of the constituents

(phrases, clauses, cohesive markers, intonation and stress patterns) of a

stream of speech.

2. The hearer determines the type of speech event that is being processed.

The hearer must, for example, ascertain whether this is a conversation, a

speech, a radio, broadcast, etc., and then appropriately” color” the

interpretation of the perceived message.

3. The hearer infers the objectives of the speaker through consideration of the

type of speech event, the context and content. So, for examples, one

determines whether the speaker wishes to persuade. To request, to

15 Richards, Jack C., & Renandya, Willy A., Op. cit., p. 242.

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exchange pleasantries, to affirm, to deny, to inform, and so forth. Thus the

function of the message in inferred.

4. The hearer recall background information (or- schemata- see chapter 16

for more on this) relevant to the particular context and subject matter. A

lifetime of experiences and knowledge are used to perform cognitive

associations in order to bring a plausible interpretation to the message.

5. The hearer assigns a literal meaning to the utterance, this process involves

a set of semantic interpretations of the surface strings that the ear has

perceived. In many instances, literal and intended meanings match. So, for

example, if one of your students walks into your office as you are madly

grading papers and says she has a question that she would appreciate your

answering. Then says “do you have the time?” the literal meaning (do you

possess enough time now to answer me) is appropriate however, this

process may take on a peripheral role in cases where literal meanings are

irrelevant to the message, is in metaphorical or” idiomatic” language. If,

for example, a stranger sitting beside you in a bus has been silent for a

period of time and then says.” Do you have the time” the appropriate

response is not a” yes” or a “no” but rather “ it’s quarter to nine” or

whatever second language learners must, in interpret correctly.

6. The hearer assigns an intended meaning to the utterance. The person on

the bus intended to find out what time of day it was, even though the literal

meaning didn’t directly convey that message. How often do

misunderstandings stem from false assumptions that are made on the

hearer’s part about the intended meaning of the speaker? A key to human

communication is the ability to match perceived meaning with intended

meaning. This match-making. Of course, can extend well beyond simple

metaphorical and its breakdown can be caused by careless speech,

inattention of the hearer, conceptual complexity, contextual miscues,

psychological barriers, and a host of other performance variables.

7. The hearer determines whether information should be retained is short-

term or long-term memory. Short-term memory-a matter of a few second-

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is appropriate, for example, in contexts that simply call for a quick oral

response from hearer. Long-term memory is more common when, say you

are processing information in a lecture. There are, of course, many points

in between.

8. The hearer deletes the form in which the message was originally received.

The words and phrase and sentences themselves are quickly

forgotten-“pruned”-in 99 percent of speech acts. You have no need to

retain this short of cognitive “clutter.” Instead the important information, if

any is retained conceptually.16

In addition, it should be clear from the foregoing that listening

comprehension is an interactive process. After the initial reception of sound,

we human beings perform at least seven other major operations on that set of

sound waves in conversational setting, of course, immediately after the

listening stage, further interaction takes place as the hearer then becomes

speaker in a response of some kind. All of these processes are important for

you to keep in mind as teaching. They are all relevant to a learner’s for

listening, to performance factors that may cause difficulty in processing

speech, to overall principles of effective listening techniques, and to the

choices you make of what techniques to use and when in your classroom.

F. How to Apply Teaching Listening for Advanced

Teaching listening for advanced is considered the highest level of

teaching listening. In the teaching listening for advanced, the learners would

focus on teaching listening as comprehension, also called proficiency level.

This view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of

listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken

discourse. Two different kinds of processes are involved in understanding

spoken discourse. These are often referred to as bottom-up and top-down

processing.17

16 Brown, H. Douglas, Op. cit, p. 235-236. 17 Richards, Jack C., Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 4.

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1. Bottom-up processing

Bottom-up processing refers to using the incoming input as the basis

for understanding the message. Comprehension begin with the received

data that is analyzed as successive levels of organization – sounds, words,

clauses, sentences, texts – until the meaning is derived. Comprehension is

viewed as a process of decoding. The listener’s lexical and grammatical

competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing.

The input is scanned for familiar words, and grammatical knowledge is

used to work out the relationship between elements of sentences. Clark

and Clark (1997) summarize this vies of listening in the following way:

a. Learners take in raw speech and hold a phonological representation of

it in working memory.

b. They immediately attempt to organize the phonological representation

into constituents, identifying their content and function.

c. They identify each constituent and then construct underlying

propositions, building continually onto hierarchical representation of

propositions.

d. Once they have identified the propositions for a constituent, they

retain them in working memory and at some point purge memory of

the phonological representation. In doing this, they forgot the exact

wording and retain the meaning.18

However, teaching bottom-up processing to the advanced learners

requires the learners to have a large vocabulary and a good working

knowledge of sentence structure to process texts bottom-up. Exercise that

develop bottom-up processing help the learner to do such thing as the

following:

a. Retain input while it is being processed

b. Recognize word and clause divisions

c. Recognize key words

18 Clark and Clark, Psychology and Language: An introduction to Psycholinguistics, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 49.

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d. Recognize key transitions in a discourse

e. Recognize grammatical relationship between key elements in

sentences

f. Use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence functions.

Furthermore, in the language classroom, examples of the kind of tasks

that develop bottom-up listening skills require listeners to do the

following kinds of things:

a. Identify the referents of pronouns in an utterance

b. Recognize the time reference of an utterance

c. Distinguish between positive and negative statements

d. Recognize the order in which words occurred in an utterance

e. Identify sequence markers

f. Identify key words that occurred in a spoken text

g. Identify which modal verbs occurred in a spoken text.

2. Top-down processing

Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of

background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message.

Whereas bottom-up processing goes from language to meaning, top-down

processing goes from meaning to language. The background knowledge

required for top-down processing may be previous knowledge about the

topic of discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, or knowledge in

the form of “schemata” or “scripts” – plans about the overall structure of

events and the relationship between them.

Much of human’s knowledge of the world consist of knowledge about

specific situations, the people that someone might expect to encounter in

such situations, what their goals and purposes are, and how typically

accomplish them. Likewise, the knowledge of thousands of topics and

concepts, their associated meanings, and links to other topics and

concepts. In applying this prior knowledge about things, concepts, people,

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and events to a particular utterance, comprehension can often proceed

from the top-down. The actual discourse heard is used to confirm

expectations and to fill out details.

In addition, teaching top-down processing for advanced learners

involves several exercises that may develop the learner’s ability to do the

following:

a. Use the key words to construct the schema of a discourse

b. Infer the setting for a text

c. Infer the role of the participants and their goals

d. Infer causes and effects

e. Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation

Besides, the following activities develop top-down listening skills:

a. Students generate a set of questions they expect to hear about a topic,

then listen to see if they are answered.

b. Students generate a list of things they already know about a topic and

things they would like to learn more about, then listen and compare.

c. Students read one speaker’s part in a conversation, predict the other

speaker’s part, then listen and compare.

d. Students read a list of key points to be covered in a talk, then listen to

see which ones are mentioned.

e. Students listen to part of a story, complete the story ending, then listen

and compare endings.

f. Students read news headlines, guess what happened, then listen to the

full news items and compare.

In real-world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing

generally occur together. Moreover, successful listeners use both bottom-up

and top-down strategies.19 The extent to which one or the other dominates

depends on the learner’s familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the

19 Nunan, David, Language Teaching Methodology, (London: Prentice Hall, 1998), p. 25

18

density of information in a text, the text type, and the learner’s purpose in

listening. A typical lesson in current teaching materials involves a three-part

sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening and

contains activities that link bottom-up and top-down listening (Field, 1998).

The pre-listening phase prepares students for both top-down and bottom-

up processing through activities involving activating prior knowledge,

making pre-dictions, and reviewing key vocabulary. The while-listening

phase focuses on comprehension through exercises that require selective

listening, gist listening, sequencing, etc. The post-listening phase typically

involves a response to comprehension and may require students to give

opinions about a topic. However, it can also include a bottom-up focus if the

teacher and the listeners examine the texts or parts of the text in detail,

focusing on sections that students could not follow. This may involve a

microanalysis of sections of the text to enable students to recognize such

features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken

discourse that they were unable to process or recognize.

In addition, successful listening can also be looked at in terms of the

strategies the listener uses when listening. Does the learner focus mainly on

the content of a text, or does he or she also consider how to listen? A focus on

how to listen raises the issues of listening strategies. Strategies can be thought

of as the ways in which a learner approaches and manages a task, and

listeners can be taught effective ways of approaching and managing their

listening. These activities seek to involve listeners actively in the process of

listening.

Buck (2001) identifies two kinds of strategies in teaching listening for

advanced, as follows:

1. Cognitive strategies: Mental activities related to comprehending and

storing input in working memory or long-term memory for later retrieval.

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2. Metacognitive strategies: Those conscious or unconscious mental

activities that perform an executive function in the management of

cognitive strategies. 20

Another approach to incorporating listening strategies in a listening

lesson for advanced involves a cycle of activities. There are five steps in

guided metacognitive sequence in a listening lesson from Goh and Yusnita

(2006), namely:

1. Step 1 – Pre-listening activity. In pairs, students predict the possible

words and phrases that they might hear. They write down their

predictions. They may write some words in their first language.

2. Step 2 – First listen. As they are listening to the text, students underline

or circle those words or phrases (including first-language equivalents) that

they have predicted correctly. They also write down new information they

hear.

3. Step 3 – Pair process-based discussion. In pairs, students compare what

they have understood so far and explain how they arrived at the

understanding. They identify the parts that caused confusion and

disagreement and make a note of the parts of the text that will require

special attention in the second listen.

4. Step 4 – Second listen. Students listen to those parts that have caused

confusion or disagreement areas and make notes of any new information

they hear.

5. Step 5 – Whole-class process-based discussion. The teacher leads a

discussion to confirm comprehension before discussing with students the

strategies that they reported using.21

20 Buck, G, Assessing Listening, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 104.

21 Richards, Jack C., Op. cit., p. 13-14.

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G. Example of Teaching Listening for Advanced

A lesson plan is a framework for a lesson.22 In the teaching listening for

advanced, the example of the lesson plan would be as follow.

Lesson Plan

Level: Advanced level

Time: 60 minutes

Aims and objectives:

1. Main aim: To provide input on listening tasks through the vehicle of a

listening task itself, i.e. "Loop input", and provide practice in listening for

specific information in an exam type format.

2. Subsidiary aims: To raise awareness of exam strategies for the listening

portion of the exam, provide practice in listening for gist, predicting

before listening, collaborative speaking and intensive reading.

3. Assumed knowledge: A general familiarity with listening task

procedures derived from previous in-class practice.

Teaching planning:

1. Some of the students in attendance have joined the group recently, and

have not had as much exposure to and practice with the listening portion

of the exam format as others who have been with the group since October.

Teacher suspects that in the warmer stage, where he will ask the students

to discuss what they know about it, the newer ones may have little to say

and have a difficult time coming up with any tips for others. The solution

will be pairing or grouping the newer and less experienced students with

the ones who have been in the class longer, as they should be able to

provide some of the information that the others may lack. It should be

noted, as well, that it is not essential nor even desirable that everyone be

completely familiar with the exam format in great detail, as the absence of

knowledge should encourage them to listen carefully to others that have

ideas and remain engaged throughout the lesson.

22 Robertson, Cullum and Acklam, Richar, Action Plan for Teachers: A Guide to Teaching English, (English: British Broadcasting Publishing, 2000), p.7.

21

2. The recording that is going to be used in the lesson is homemade and the

quality may be less than what the students are used to listening to, and

therefore this may make it more difficult to understand and follow. The

conversation is also quite natural and contains many of the features of

natural conversational speech that the students often find difficult, such as

topic shift, turn taking, colloquialisms, redundancy, false starts, and

features of connected speech. Although not all of these potentially

difficult features are ones that can be compensated for in the lesson itself,

teacher is supposed to reduce the difficulties inherent in following a

recorded conversation on a potentially unfamiliar subject by giving the

class the opportunity to activate any background knowledge they do have

(collectively) in the warmer stage, and in that way make it easier on them

when they listen for the first time, activating their 'schemata', or 'script' to

aid their understanding. In the same way, by giving them very general

information 'gist' questions to focus on before the first listening, and

allowing them to predict associated lexical items, teacher is supposed to

give them a purpose for listening as well as aids to better follow and

understand the conversation.

3. The multiple choice task, which is in exam-style format, may prove to be

quite difficult for some of the 'weaker' students as the questioning is

purposefully somewhat complicated. And as teacher has previously

mentioned, the conversation is quite natural in speed and in

conversational speech features that may make it difficult for the weaker

students to easily 'pull out', as it were, the information required to answer

the questions. By breaking down the five main topics covered

chronologically in the taped conversation into five questions, teacher is

supposed to make the task reasonably accessible even for the 'weaker'

students in the class. Also, by encouraging everyone to predict and

underline key words in the time before they listen a second time, teacher

is supposed to simplify the processing load and improve their chances of

success. In the unlikely event that the majority of the class found the

22

taped conversation and listening tasks simply too hard to do, the teacher

might have to make adjustments. One such adjustment could be to break

down the tape into sections and play each one at a time. This would

potentially throw the timing of the lesson off but because the students

must come first, it could turn out to be the appropriate action to take.

4. In the course of the lesson, there are several different activities that

require time, such as pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening

activities and there is always the possibility that time management will

become an issue. The teacher is supposed to compensate for this

eventuality by allowing reasonable timing for each activity, at times

explicitly telling the class how much time they have for each activity, and

by providing feedback on an OHT in order to save time.

5. In the second listening task, the teacher is asking the class to follow the

flow of turn- taking and recognize which speaker is making which

statement. When they check their answers in the transcript, it may be

difficult and time consuming to pinpoint the information in the text,

having such a large amount of text to deal with. By providing the line

number in the transcript, teacher is supposed to aid the students in

locating the information quickly in order to check their answers. As

mentioned above, if the listening task and recording prove, or have proven

to be much too difficult, at this point. A possible solution could be to

break down the recording into sections, pausing after each question, and

in that way help the class deal with the unforeseen difficulties.

6. In the final part of the lesson, the teacher asks the class to take on roles

and briefly act out a short exchange using information learned in the

lesson. Some students may be overloaded by now and not be able to think

on their feet. If time allows, the teacher will ask the students playing the

same roles to work together and think of or predict a few problems or

answers to problems in order to make the brief activity more

communicative and with the idea that two heads are sometimes better than

one. In the event that time is running too short to allow this kind of

23

interaction, teacher will simply provide each student with a few problems

or prompts to anticipate problems and ask them to get on with it after they

have had time to think on their own for a minute.

H. Material of Teaching Listening for Advanced

Porter and Roberts (1981) stated that teacher cannot expect learners to

handle types of language they have never, or hardly ever been exposed to.23 It

would be nice if teacher could only use authentic listening materials in the

classroom. One way to approach this is to use materials which are very close

to real English, but take into account some of the weaknesses or problems

that learners at advanced level are likely to have.

In most classrooms, CDs are now replacing tapes as the main way to

present listening materials. There are many reasons for this; CDs are cheap,

easy to use and can be used to expose the students to a wide range of accents

and listening situations.24 However, there is no reason to limit ourselves to

only using recorded materials. Consider for a moment that in most real-life

listening situations, we can actually see the person who is speaking. The

speaker's body language also provides a myriad of additional hints to help us

understand what is being said. Movies or television shows, or even an invited

speaker can be used to add spice to the classroom and to make the listening

more real for the students.

Furthermore, teaching listening for advanced based on the lesson plan

mentioned above requires the following materials:

1. A 'homemade' recording of two teaching colleagues discussing tips and

advice for students preparing for the advanced listening exam.

2. Two 'homemade' handouts in the style and format of the advanced

listening exam, section C, based on the recording.

23 Porter, D. & Roberts, J., Authentic Listening Activities, in M.H. Long &J.C. Richards (Eds.), Methodology in TESOL, (Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, 1981), p. 179.

24 Howell, Simon, “Teaching Listening Comprehension.” Listening Good Listeners Internet Listening, 119.

24

3. A copy of the transcript, transcribed as faithfully as possible, by the

teacher.

I. Media of Teaching Listening for Advanced

Nowadays, many media can be used for teaching listening. As Ur (1984)

puts it into clear that both recorded and live speech should have a placed in

the classroom.25 Moreover, the following media is required to fulfill the

lesson plan initially explained:

1. An OHP and OHTs of the two handouts with the answers for feedback

purposes.

2. Prompts on card for the warmer and post listening discussion.

3. A tape recorder –to play the recording, obviously.

CHAPTER III

25 Ur, Penny, Op. cit, p. 25.

25

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

Teaching is not merely transfer knowledge from teacher to the learners.

Rather, teaching is assisting learners in order to be able to do something.

Teaching listening is one of the four skills most required in English. The

highest level of listening is the advanced. Therefore, teaching listening for

advanced is the process of giving listening lessons for the highest level of

learners.

There are two kinds of teaching listening for advanced, namely extensive

listening and intensive listening. On the other hand, the types of teaching

listening advanced learners occupies five different types, namely

discriminative, comprehensive, critical/evaluative, therapeutic, appreciative.

There are many strategies, approaches, methods, or techniques that can

be employed. In this paper, the teaching process involves cognitive strategies

and metacognitive strategies. The technique being occupied is bottom-up and

top-down processing.

Teaching listening for advanced requires many elements, including

media and the materials. The materials could be transcript of the listening

while the media definitely employs tape recorder or CD player.

B. Suggestion

May this paper be of some benefits for all the readers or teachers that

intend to conduct or compile a teaching listening at advanced level of the

learners?

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