Elena Núñez Delgado

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch39  

ABSTRACT

The skill of listening is challenging to teach, especially for teachers who were not taught how to teach listening to second language (L2) learners. Similarly, listening is also challenging for L2 learners to learn. You probably faced this same challenge when you were learning a new language. You might have wanted strategies that would “open your ears” and allow you to listen and understand. In this chapter, you will learn about theories related to L2 listening and, also, practices and strategies to teach listening to L2 learners who are at different language levels. You will learn to identify the most challenging aspects of listening, organize the listening part of a lesson in cycles and stages, incorporate different listening processes (e.g., top-down and bottom-up), and guide learners to expand their listening ability by doing extensive listening. You will also learn about using leveled listening soundbites from authentic sources such as podcasts, videos, and music. 

Keywords: listening comprehension, L2 listening instruction, top-down and bottom-up processes, intensive listening, extensive listening

Núñez Delgado, E. (2023). Strategies to Teach Listening. In V. Canese & S. Spezzini (Eds.), Teaching English in Global Contexts, Language, Learners and Learning (pp. 465-475). Editorial Facultad de Filosofía, UNA. https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch39

INTRODUCTION

Learners of a second or subsequent language (L2) often view speaking as the most difficult skill to learn from among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). However, L2 teachers often view listening as the most difficult skill to teach. This is especially true of teachers who did not learn how to teach L2 listening during their teacher preparation programs. Because of not being trained to teach listening, such teachers tend to exclude explicit listening strategies from their language lessons. Hence, with less class time dedicated to listening than to the other language skills, listening has often been called “the forgotten skill” (Walker, 2014, p. 167). 

Listening is very difficult for most L2 learners because of challenges related to comprehending a listening passage (Scrivener, 2011). Speakers might use words unfamiliar to the learners and talk so quickly that L2 learners are unable to follow. L2 learners might also experience challenges at distinguishing where words start and stop, recognizing which parts of the listening passage are most important, and determining what attitudes are being expressed by the speaker. Moreover, L2 learners are often unable to identify specific details, much less capture a general sense of the message (i.e., gist). 

The four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) operate together in the brain and interconnect during language use (Sousa, 2022). Because of how these skills are interconnected, you can focus on more than one skill during a single lesson. However, before planning and implementing listening activities, whether in a lesson that is focused exclusively on listening or in a lesson that connects listening with other skills, you need to know how to teach listening. This chapter, which focuses on teaching L2 listening, can help you plan and implement your listening activities. This chapter describes theories and practices to teach listening to L2 learners at different language levels and explains how to implement strategies to help learners more effectively acquire the skill of listening. This chapter also explores how to consider the challenges of L2 learners for more effectively selecting instructional materials and planning activities to support listening comprehension.  

BACKGROUND

The teaching of listening was not a major component in early approaches to language teaching. Before the 1950s, language teaching focused mainly on reading and writing. During the 1950s and 1960s, language teachers asked students to repeat phrases without considering if learners understood what they were saying (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). However, in the 1970s, the Total Physical Response approach emphasized the importance of listening and required that language learners comprehend oral prompts before responding with physical actions (Asher, 1982). During that same decade, Krashen revolutionized second language teaching and learning by positing comprehensible input and the silent period (Brown & Lee, 2015). This established a basis for the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983), which focused on having students understand oral interactions in their language learning context, thus, further emphasizing the role of listening.

In the 1980s, “significant developments in terms of listening to L2” were introduced through Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which “emphasized authenticity of materials, contexts, and responses” (Wilson, 2008, pp. 18-19). CLT was widely adopted in the 1990s and continues to be a prevailing method in the 21st century. Yet, just because an institution uses CLT, this does not mean that these L2 classes include as many activities for listening as they do for speaking, reading, and writing. To include listening activities, teachers first need to know how to effectively plan listening lessons and select materials that support the development of listening comprehension. Only then can quality listening instruction be provided.

MAJOR DIMENSIONS

To effectively integrate explicit listening instruction in your ELT classroom, build your knowledge about the following:

Top-Down Listening and Bottom-Up Listening 

Speech-processing theorists have identified a top-down process and a bottom-up process that are used by L2 learners to develop their listening comprehension skills (Brown & Lee, 2015). To help your learners improve listening comprehension, implement activities for them to practice both processes: top-down listening and bottom-up listening.  

Top-down listening is when “students first attempt to understand the overall, general meaning of what they are listening to” (Harmer, 2015, p. 337). Teaching strategies include “activation of schemata, with deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the interpretation of a text” (Douglas & Lee, 2015, p. 333). Use prediction to activate schemata, build students’ background knowledge, anticipate the lesson’s language event, and pre-teach vocabulary for the activity (Harmer, 2015). To further improve learners’ listening skills, use different listening tasks with the same or related topic.

Bottom-up listening is a continuum that “proceeds from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings, and so on, to a final message” (Brown & Lee, 2015, p. 333). Because bottom-up listening is complementary to top-down listening, both processes need to be included in each lesson sequence. Less proficient learners usually need more practice with bottom-up strategies until they feel more confident in their language skills, especially because sound recognition and connected speech are challenging tasks for learners at lower L2 levels (Harmer, 2015). Have these L2 learners participate in different types of bottom-up strategies such as listening selectively for grammatical endings, discriminating among final intonation patterns, and doing dictation and dictogloss. 

Different Ways to Teach Listening

One way to teach L2 listening is the task-recording-feedback cycle (Scrivener, 2011). This cycle has three steps—task, recording, feedback—for implementing activities and lessons with the goal of developing learners’ receptive language skills (listening and reading). The teacher sets a task, and learners complete this task. When implementing the three steps of this listening cycle, introduce increasingly more complex tasks until a given task is overly difficult, thus signaling cycle completion. This three-step cycle is effective because listening passages are re-played as often as needed.  If additional listening is needed to ensure learner comprehension, repeat the steps, and add related tasks. This cycle is outlined in Table 1.

Table 1

Task-Recording-Feedback Cycle to Teach L2 Listening

Note. Compiled from Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching (3rd ed.) by J. Scrivener, 2011, Macmillan Publishers.

Another way to teach L2 listening skills is by using pre-while-post stages (Wilson, 2008). These three stages are pre (before listening), while (during listening), and post (after listening). These pre-while-post stages are outlined in Table 2. 

Table 2

Pre-While-Post Stages to Teach L2 Listening

Note. Compiled from How to Teach Listening by J. J. Wilson, 2008, Pearson Education.

In the pre-listening stage, implement activities to prepare L2 learners for successful listening. Here, students learn new vocabulary and recall existing vocabulary needed for the listening task. They make predictions, generate interest, and activate schemata about the topic. 

In the while-listening stage, implement short activities that students do while listening. Before starting each listening activity, give students a specific purpose, such as listening for gist or listening for specific details. Depending on several factors (e.g., difficulty, length, pedagogical focus, potential boredom), replay the recording a second or third time (Wilson, 2008). To help students listen and comprehend long recordings, consider pausing at intervals—as needed. 

In the post-listening stage, implement activities for students to conclude the listening task. Students compare their answers, check the accuracy of their predictions, clarify doubts, and identify possible connections among grammatical structures, vocabulary items, and sentence elements (Wilson, 2008). Students can also reflect on which listening aspects were difficult to understand and why. In this stage, determine if students should respond orally or in writing.

Intensive Listening and Extensive Listening 

Intensive listening refers to the listening activities, mainly teacher directed, implemented in L2 classes to develop learners’ listening comprehension skills. Because learners in the same class often develop their listening skills at different rates, classroom-based listening activities usually do not align directly with the evolving listening skills for any specific learner (Harmer, 2015). Nonetheless, focus on implementing well-structured listening activities to prepare your students to be good listeners outside the classroom. 

Extensive listening is independent listening that students do outside of class. As such, extensive listening entails little or no teacher intervention. Moreover, extensive listening is usually done for pleasure, selected by the student, and at the student’s own pace. 

Technology Support

Technology helps students process aural input more effectively (Reed & Liu, 2020). The internet can be a valuable resource to find appropriate listening materials. Many websites offer computer-aided pronunciation activities to help L2 learners identify individual sounds and suprasegmental features of English and, more importantly, help them develop their listening and speaking skills. To help learners benefit from technology-based listening activities, first explain troublesome phonological differences between English and their L1. Furthermore, help your learners navigate the world of global Englishes by having them listen to internet selections spoken by native English speakers from diverse English varieties who represent a wide diversity of accents. Also have your learners listen to selections spoken by non-native speakers of English from several different countries.

PEDAGOGICAL APPLICATIONS

For incorporating explicit listening activities in your classroom, do the following:

Identify Effective Listening Materials

Effective L2 listening materials can entail commercial listening materials targeted for L2 learners or authentic materials targeted for L1 speakers. Commercial L2 materials are usually labeled with levels based on international language frameworks, thus identifying competencies needed for successful listening. Authentic materials can be soundbites from recordings on internet initially for a wider audience (i.e., L1 users). If these authentic materials provide captioning, decide whether to allow students to view the captions and, if so, when to show these captions— such as before, during, or after the initial listening experience. When selecting passages for your listening lessons, be sure to ask yourself questions like those in Table 3 (Wilson, 2008).

Table 3

Questions to Guide Teachers With Identifying Good Listening Material. 

Note. Compiled from How to Teach Listening by J. J. Wilson, 2008, Pearson Education.

Implement Activities for Intensive Listening

Several intensive listening activities can be implemented in both the task-recording-feedback cycle and the pre-while-post stages. Adjust these listening activities, as needed, for learners at different L2 levels. An effective way to do this is incorporating the listening activities while learners listen to a song. When selecting a song, be intentional that it supports your instructional goal, meets your learners’ ages and interests, and serves to motivate your learners. When using a song to build listening comprehension, follow the steps in Table 4.

Table 4

Building Listening Comprehension by Using a Song During the Pre-While-Post Stages

Note. Compiled from “A Framework for Planning a Listening Skills Lesson” by N. Peachey, n.d., British Council. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/framework-planning-listening-skills-lesson 

Rather than using a song, consider choosing spoken segments from the internet on topics that interest your learners or choose leveled soundbites from sources such as podcasts (Houston, 2016). Depending on your learners, such topics might be sports, movies, politics, or current events. Based on your learners’ language level, determine length and difficulty of the listening segment. After selecting a listening segment, follow the pre-while-post stages in Table 5.

Table 5

Building Listening Comprehension by Using Spoken Segments from the Internet

Note. Compiled from “The Three Stages of a Listening Activity” by H. Houston, 2016, EFL Magazine. https://eflmagazine.com/the-three-stages-of-a-listening-activity 

Support Extensive Listening

Language learners can greatly improve their listening proficiency by doing extensive listening on their own. Motivate your L2 learners to do extensive listening by first describing it and explaining its benefits. Then, jointly with your learners, reach an agreement as to the targeted source and topic of their extensive listening (Harmer, 2015). Have students track their extensive listening activities by completing a log where they “list the topic, assess the level of difficulty, and summarize the contents of what they have listened to” (pp. 339-340). To help learners comprehend their extensive listening selections, suggest that they listen first with captions and then without captions. Among their choices might be free online resources such as songs, YouTube videos, podcasts, and TEDtalks. When targeted for native speakers, these unleveled resources are called authentic material. Also available are resources targeted for language learners and designed specifically to develop L2 listening. 

In this chapter, you learned about the challenges of teaching L2 listening and how to help learners develop listening comprehension skills. You learned about top-down and bottom-up listening activities. You also learned how to implement listening activities within the task-recording-feedback cycles and the pre-while-post stages.

Here are some key concepts about listening strategies:

• Teach listening comprehension explicitly. Do not expect that your learners will develop good listening skills without explicit instruction. Build schema and share purposes for listening. 

• Implement listening comprehension lessons by integrating the listening skill with other skills (speaking, reading, writing).

• Consider speech-processing theory and provide opportunities for students to practice top-down and bottom-up comprehension.

• Organize lessons using the task-recording-feedback cycle or the pre-while-post stages for students to gain practice with developing their listening comprehension skills.

• When planning and organizing activities for pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening, make sure that these activities are appropriate to student needs and language levels. 

Based on strategies to teach listening, develop meaningful answers to these questions:

1. Think about your own experience. What made listening difficult for you when learning English or another language? Which type of processing do you think was involved: top-down processing or bottom-up processing? Why?

2. How is classroom listening similar and/or different from real-life listening? 

3. Can listening lessons be interactive? If so, how?

To practice strategies to teach listening, do the following:

1. From this website https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening or from your textbook, select a listening lesson for a targeted language level. Analyze how the lesson is organized. Does it follow the task-recording-feedback cycle or the pre-while-post stages? Identify listening activities in this lesson as being bottom-up or top-down and, also, as being either intensive or extensive. 

2. Plan an intensive listening lesson using the task-recording-feedback cycle or the pre-while-post stages. Use graded listening material or an authentic listening piece and include activities for both top-down and bottom-up processing.

To expand your knowledge about listening strategies, visit these websites:

• Computer-aided pronunciation teaching recommended by Reed and Liu (2020). www.englishaccentcoach.com , www.posetest.com , and www.es-youglish.com 

• Listening and notetaking for ESOL students. https://lib.pstcc.edu/esl/listening  

• Listening lessons from the British Council. https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening  

• Listening skills for young learners. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/57_3_44-48.pdf  

• Search “listening” on the website for the TESOL International Association: https://www.tesol.org/search/?search_field=listening   

• Understanding fast speech with online videos and quizzes. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/etf_59_1_pg28-30_0.pdf 

Aspects related to listening are also addressed by other chapters in this book: 

Chapter 11 Using Social Media to Enhance Language Awareness by S. Terol and J. Amarilla

Chapter 16 Incorporating Interjections to Facilitate Conversational Flow by A. Rodomanchenko

Chapter 22 Strengthening Communication Through Classroom Discourse by K. Buckley-Ess

Chapter 30 Incorporating Music in the ELT Classroom by O. Carrasquel

Chapter 40 Strategies to Teach Speaking by S. Spezzini

Chapter 43 Strategies to Teach Integrated Skills by L. Fuller

Chapter 44 Strategies to Teach Pronunciation by S. Spezzini

Chapter 48 International Frameworks to Assess Language Development by E. Nuñez 

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Houston, H. (2016, August 2). The three stages of a listening activity, EFL Magazine. https://eflmagazine.com/the-three-stages-of-a-listening-activity 

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Reed, M., & Liu, D. (2020). Technology-enhanced L2 listening: Triangulating perception, production, and metalinguistic awareness. In O. Kang, S. Staples, K. Yaw, & K. Hirschi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference, ISSN 2380-9566, Northern Arizona University, September 2019 (pp. 173–185). Ames, IA: Iowa State University. https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/psllt/article/id/15422/download/pdf/ 

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Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching: The essential guide to English language teaching (3rd ed.). Macmillan.

Sousa, D. A., (2022). How the brain learns (6th ed.). Corwin.

Walker, N. (2014). Listening: The most difficult skill to teach. Encuentro, 23, 167–175. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58911108.pdf 

Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to teach listening. Pearson Education 

Elena Nuñez holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the Instituto Superior de Lenguas (ISL) at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (Paraguay), master’s degree in education from the University of Alabama (USA), and CertTESOL from Trinity College London (England). She also pursued a master’s in educational leadership at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado-Instituto Superior de Estudios Humanísticos y Filosóficos (Chile). Elena teaches at the ISL and is the bilingual education coordinator at a local school. She has served as a board member of PARATESOL (Paraguayan affiliate of the TESOL International Association) and Asuncion Maker Faire (annual event that promotes the Maker Movement in Paraguay). 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0527-7714 

Email for correspondence regarding this chapter: isl-enunez@fil.una.py

Cover Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash