In EFL contexts, particularly in Japan, listening comprehension is taught merely as a means of preparing learners to take standardized tests. This emphasis may miss critical skills in terms of second language acquisition. An alternative and possibly more beneficial approach to teaching listening is discussed in detail.

Literature

Importance of Developing Listening Skills

Listening plays an important role in language acquisition (Winitz, 1981) and is the natural precursor of speaking (Nation & Newton, 2009). To be more precise, extensive listening has a number of benefits:

• learning stressed and unstressed words and phrases, and differences in pronunciation
• developing sensitivity to natural intonation rhythm of sentences and grammaticality
• learning expressions with their meaning and usage as they appear naturally in context
• fostering sensitivity to language use
• promoting restructuring, i.e., reorganizing learners’ internal representational framework of language

Acknowledging the aforementioned benefits, claims are that more than 50% of the time learners spend functioning in the second language (L2) is devoted to listening, especially in the early stage of learning (Nunan, 1998). However, listening has been long neglected in L2 classes (Nation & Newton, 2009), and listening comprehension tasks are predominant.

The Interactive Approach and Its Rationale

Communicative language teaching suggests a number of L2 teaching principles. One indicates that L2 listening can be taught effectively using three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening (Nunan, 1998). The pre-listening stage provides relevant background information and vocabulary for comprehension of the text. The while-listening stage makes learners engage in listening so that they understand the main points and then the details. Finally, the post-listening stage encourages learners to use the information and vocabulary learned to summarize and discuss the information with a view to drawing on it in future listening. Speaking, reading, and writing skills are naturally incorporated into the listening activity. For example, in the pre-listening stage, learners present the background information, discuss their knowledge of the theme, and read a passage or article to obtain the information for the listening task. In addition, at the post-listening stage, learners write a summary of the text and their reaction to it, or discuss the issue covered in the text.

This interactive and integrated four-skill approach, especially the combination of speaking, listening, and writing, is recommended in teaching listening for several reasons:

• In real-life communication, listening is interactional, i.e., an active and interpretive process in which a message is not fixed but is created through the interaction of those involved (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2002).
• The interactive approach can help learners realize that the four skills are closely related in real life, and encourage learners to develop a well-balanced approach to language learning (Nation & Newton, 2009).
• The interactive approach may enhance learner motivation because it accommodates diversified student needs, learning styles, and proficiencies (Onoda, 2011).
• The integration of the four skills helps improve learning outcomes because learners can understand the text more easily, and it provides them with opportunities to repeat vocabulary and grammatical items (Nation & Newton, 2009).

In order to maximize the benefits of this approach, teachers need to design teaching procedures and tasks carefully. Nation and Newton (2009) claim that language teaching should be based on four strands of teaching: meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output, and fluency development. This approach has pedagogical implications for teaching listening. Different kinds of activities can be used within each strand to promote language learning. For instance, when the emphasis is on meaning-focused input, an oral introduction, story-listening, or story-telling are useful activities. To promote language-focused learning, fill-in-the-blanks listening comprehension questions, listening for particular words, dictation, and dictogloss are effective tasks. In terms of meaning-focused output, story-telling and story-retelling can be beneficial for language learning. Finally, to develop fluency, activities such as listening to a particular topic extensively, story-listening, listening while reading, prediction activities, and extensive listening are helpful. Nation and Newton (2009) claim that

a well-planned language course has an appropriate balance of these four strands. It is through these four strands that learners achieve the learning goals of a language course, namely fluent control of the sounds, spelling, vocabulary, grammar and discourse features of the language, so that they can be used to communicate effectively. (p. 2)

This approach, when applied to the teaching of listening, seems to complement the aforementioned three-stage procedure of teaching listening; both suggest that the teacher simplify materials by providing background information and vocabulary before listening and use output tasks to recycle and reinforce the learning of information and vocabulary obtained through listening.

Given the reality that language-focused learning tasks are still used mainly in Japanese EFL contexts, the incorporation of meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, and fluency development tasks in listening classes would be one way to improve student proficiency.

Listening-Based Sample Lessons Integrating the Four Skills

The following sample lesson plan covers two consecutive lessons. The listening text is a BBC News clip titled “Is marriage becoming a thing of the past?” (Onoda & Cooker, 2008) addressing the decreasing number of married couples in the United Kingdom. Please note a few abbreviations: listening task (L), speaking task (S), reading task (R), and writing task (W).

Class Meeting 1 (50 minutes)

Pre-listening tasks

1. Prediction from a graph showing the decreasing number of married couples in the United Kingdom and marriage-related expressions, such as “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” (L, S; meaning-focused input and output).
2. Silent viewing: Learners make predictions about the subject of the news story based only on the visual images (S, W; meaning-focused input and output).
3. Reading a newspaper article covering the decrease in marriage in many countries, and discussing the main points (S, R; meaning-focused input and output).
4. Oral introduction of the theme, key words, and text (L, S; meaning-focused input and output).

While-listening tasks

1. Listening for main points (L, W; language-focused learning and meaning-focused input).
2. Partial viewing with comprehension: Given a comprehension question, students watch for the answer in a particular statement (L, S; meaning-focused input).
3. Gap completion (L, S; language-focused learning or meaning-focused input).
4. Inference task, for example: What does “I think they’d just rather window-shop” mean? (L, S; language-focused learning and meaning-focused input).

Post-listening tasks

1. Expression analysis: Students think about new expressions used in the text, such as “tie the knot” and “commitment” (S, R; language-focused learning).
2. Paraphrasing the interviewee’s statement (R, W; language-focused learning and meaning-focused output).
3. Summary completion (L, S, R; meaning-focused output).
4. Assignment: News story-retelling and preparation of answers to discussion questions (L, S, R, W; meaning-focused input and output.

Class Meeting 2 (50 minutes)

Post-listening tasks

1. News story-retelling in pairs (L, S; meaning-focused output and fluency development).
2. Dictogloss: Learners listen to a news story summary twice while taking notes. Then they form small groups and reconstruct the summary in written form (L, S, W; language-focused learning and meaning-focused output).
3. Small-group discussion led by a student from an expert group using a handout on why the number of unmarried people has been increasing in Japan in recent years (L, S, R, W; meaning-focused input and output, and fluency development).
4. Reaction paper writing: Using the handout and based on the small-group discussion, students write their own opinions as to why the number of unmarried people has been increasing in Japan (W; meaning-focused output and fluency development).
5. 4/3/2: A news story reporting task based on students’ extensive listening assignment. Students summarize a selected news story in their own words and comment on it. They discuss it with a first partner for 4 minutes, a second partner for 3 minutes, and a third partner for 2 minutes (L, S, R, W; meaning-focused input and output and fluency development).

Final Word

This course design draws on the four strands of teaching applied to a three-stage listening instruction procedure. It was found (Onoda, 2011) that this design was well received by second-year English majors and that their speaking and listening skills improved during the academic year. Although the results might not be generalizable, this teaching approach, supported by the author’s teaching experience, can be an alternative approach to the widely practiced approach to teaching listening.

References

Lynch, T., & Mendelsohn, D. (2002). Listening. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), An introduction to applied linguistics (pp. 193–210). London, England: Arnold.

Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. New York, NY: Routledge.

Nunan, D. (1998). Approaches to teaching listening in the language classroom. In Proceedings of the 1997 Korea TESOL Conference. Taejon, Korea: KOTESOL.

Onoda, S. (2011). Design and teaching techniques for enhancing student learning in Media English courses. Media, English and Communication, 1, 1–18.

Onoda, S., & Cooker, L. (2008). Unit 9: Is marriage becoming a thing of the past? In BBC: Understanding the News in English 5.(pp. 49–54). Tokyo, Japan: Kinseido.

Winitz, H. (Ed.). (1981). The comprehension approach to foreign language instruction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Sakae Onoda is a professor of English education at Kanda University of International Studies, Japan. His research interests are: English-teacher education, developing listening and speaking fluency, and facilitating self-regulated language learning. He recently obtained an Ed.D. from Temple University, Japan.