The Teaching Of Listening

In the previous entries we will certainly exposing some features in general regarding the teaching of speaking and listening skills.

Listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of English. In other words, 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.

Characteristics of Listening/Spoken Discourse:

• The listener must process it ''on-line''' and there is often no chance to listen to it again.
• It strikes the second language listener as being very fast, although speech rates vary considerably.
• It is usually unplanned
• It has a linear structure compared to a hierarchical structure for written discourse.
• It is usually delivered one clause at a time and longer utterances in conversation generally consist of several or adjuncts.
• Variation of accents.

I invite you to watch this video about Listening Comprehension by professor Jack C. Richards.