12 Jan 2024
Listening comprehension is increasingly portrayed as an active and interpretative language process in which listeners actively participate in forming meaning. Listeners who pay attention to spoken language do more than passively sample incoming messages; they are also said to be actively involved in predicting topic developments, using a series of definable listening strategies, and relating what they hear to their stores of prior knowledge. This theoretical understanding of the hearing process derives from the broad cognitive science framework and has been heavily affected by reading process research over the last 15 years. This explanation of listening sometimes contradicts many frequently held ideas about aural understanding.
For tutors: How to apply hermeneutics in listening skills
A complementary approach in the classroom is to focus on a theoretical foundation for the listening process, which includes a discussion and explanation of some of the underlying concepts from cognitive science, hermeneutics, and inner speech. We also need to allow pupils to experience the practice of listening firsthand. Once children have begun to explore the process, they must be guided in expanding their listening, reviewing, integrating, and studying skills. Such exercises will help kids get a more realistic awareness of the nature of the listening experience, which may be linked to their growth as readers, presenters, and writers. Along with the realisation that L2 learners require more incredible experience in dealing with academic lectures, language teachers must become comfortable and skilled in delivering content-area oral presentations in their lessons. In other words, instructors must communicate with kids on academically challenging themes. Frequent interactive lectures for global understanding, note-taking, review, study, and debate will be an excellent supply of listening activities in the classroom. The substance of the topics utilised must be adjusted to the students' competence, experience levels, and interests. Still, the themes should imitate the type of lecture material that would be offered in mainstream academic settings. With many colleges returning to core curriculum requirements, resources frequently found in core courses may be best suited for these reasons. This is not to argue that English learning programs should use the same pattern as conventional university sessions. We must compare teacher-centered lecturing for academic listening to the variety of small group, student-centered, and interactive forms now being considered in the literature. They require chances to ask questions, summarise, seek contextual explanations, agree, dispute, and demand elaboration on significant themes. This authentic, spontaneous, and unplanned engagement is less likely to occur if the lecture is not delivered live.