SAMPLE RESPONSE PAPER (LISTENING COMPREHENSION)

In ESL/EFL classrooms, there are four main skills; listening, reading, writing and speaking. Each of these language skills is very important on its own, but listening is the most challenging part of language teaching. Being able to understand what they hear has always been a difficult task for learners. It has been also difficult for teachers to teach listening. Foreign language learners find it difficult to catch the words and sentences because of the speed and the level. Because teachers aren’t aware of unique features of listening skill, they can’t teach how to listen effectively. When we were in high school, teachers didn’t pay attention to listening skill. What they did is just playing the recording and expecting us to listen and choose the correct answers. By doing this, they thought that we could improve our listening skill, but it didn’t work. Now we will examine listening and its historical overview and cognitive process and classroom applications in detail.

Listening and hearing are not the same things. Listening is not just hearing the voices. It is a process that have some unique features. It begins before the speech act occurs and it goes on after the speaker stops. It takes place in two ways: one-way and two-way listening. In one-way or non-participatory listening, learners don’t have any opportunity to interact in speech. For example radio or television programs, songs, films are included in one-way (non-participatory) listening. In two-way or participatory listening, learners are active participants of the conversation and there is spontaneous interaction. For example casual conversations, group discussions, telephone conversations so on. Active learners should have goal and purpose. When teachers prepare listening activities, they should pay attention to leaners’ interests. If they don’t want to listen, they can’t understand what they hear. Listening skill becomes a natural process as a person is exposed to a language. People who are good at listening can understand without a deliberate effort. For example; we are native speakers of Turkish. While people are speaking Turkish, we can understand even if we don’t listen deliberately, even if it is impossible not to understand. Surely, there are some strategies to listen for a specific purpose such as improving comprehension and communication.

With communicative approaches, the methods of teaching listening has changed. Old methods such as drills and dialogues have lost their importance. Teachers have understood that drills and artificial dialogues don’t work anymore. Learners need to be exposed to daily language. We were always exposed to drills in secondary and high school. In class, we were always repeating the sentences. But there was no authentic recordings. We didn’t know how native speaker use the language. Some researchers state that learners can learn to listen by themselves with appropriate and useful materials. So, there is no need for teachers in listening lessons. But, in my opinion, teacher is always a must for learners. It is a teacher who guides and helps learners. No matter which language skill is taught, there must be teachers as facilitators.

J. R. Anderson outlines three phrases: perception, parsing, utilization, which can explain the function of cognitive process through listening.  Perception is the part of the speech that occurs when the learners match the sounds they hear to words they know. In other words, they decode the sounds they hear. In the parsing stage, decoded words analyzed in larger units according to grammar and lexical units. When utilization takes place, comprehension is achieved. To understand effectively, all of these three phases must occur. Constructed meaning can be transferred to long term memory or can be hold in working memory in interactive listening. Absolutely, for first language speakers, perception and parsing occur automatically and don’t need deliberate effort. Cognitive process occurs when sound signals interact with learners’ prior knowledge. As an example of these processes I explained, when we receive input in the form of speech, our brain matches the sounds to words we already know. At the same time our brain works on the understanding the spoken message by drawing grammatical knowledge and on other stored knowledge about experiences. And finally comprehension is achieved. In the information processing literature the term bottom-up processing generally describe the stage the sounds that have been decoded (perception). Top- down processing describes the way meaning is inferred from the application of prior knowledge stored in long term memory (parsing). All these process are directed by learners’ metacognition.

There is some knowledge that facilitates comprehension during listening. Schema, which is the person’s background knowledge about the world, is a type of knowledge allows learners to process information in a top down manner. Knowledge of language is about the sounds of English which facilitates the perception. At the segmental level of this knowledge learner should know how vowels and consonants combine and how they create meaningful words. At supra-segmental learners need to know that words in English have different stress patterns. Also learners should know that the spoken language and written language are not exactly the same. For example when learners hear “coffee?” they can understand the prior meaning: “would you like to coffee?” Conversation with respect to this listening take place different environment such as shops, hospitals, schools, cafes and so on. Consequently, different type of discourse appropriate for these different environment. Knowledge of discourse and language use is about what I want to mean now. Learners can understand incomplete sentences and abbreviations. For example learner can get the word “as soon as possible” from the word “asap”.

When we look at the classroom applications, there are six skills needed for understanding of discourse. Good learners use these six skills to direct their attention to spoken input according to their listening purpose. For example, learners may not need to listen to all spoken input and they pay attention on overall meaning only, or they try to get details in the headlines. According to their purpose for listening, they can use these skills: listen for detail, listen selectively, listen for global understanding, listen for main ideas, listen and infer, listen and predict. All these skills can facilitate the listening and competent learners knows which skill they should use when needed.

There are two methods that are used in planning listening lessons: task based metacognitive instruction and metacognitive pedagogical sequence. Both methods aim to improve learners’ metacognitive awareness. They are the complementary methods and allow learners to practice listening skills. Task based metacognitive instruction integrates task based learning with metacognitive instruction as the name refer. It gives importance the comprehension of meaning according to learners’ purpose for learning. For example if learners need detail information, they concentrate on attending to details; or if they need to catch up overall meaning, they don’t need to listen every detail. As we mentioned before task based learning refers to one-way and two-way communicative listening tasks. One way listening task don’t require learners give responses. It is only about learners understand the conveying message without a reaction. Two way listening task or in other words interactive and participatory listening task require participant’s responses to themselves. There is immediate interaction between participants.

Now I want to talk about our metacognition ability which is thinking about our own thinking and learning. It has an important role in language learning, since it has enable learners to plan, monitor and evaluate themselves. Listening comprehension also the other three skills are hidden process which occur inside our brain. Thanks to metacognition activities learners can aware of process of comprehension and evaluate themselves and thus, improve their learning process. For example overviewing what we have put in our pocket at the end of the lesson, we can evaluate ourselves whether we have learnt anything or not. I mean, through metacognitive activities learners can be more self-directed and more motivated and more self-regulated. Metacognitive activities can include the use of self-directed listening guide, listening diaries, process based discussions, self-report checklist and developing task based metacognitive lesson. Developing task based metacognitive lesson is done by three stages: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. In pre-listening stage teacher introduce the text to learners. They can show learners a picture and want them to brainstorm or discuss it. In this way learners can predict what they are going to hear. While-listening activities develop listening skill and fluency. And lastly, post-listening activity enable learners make use of meaning they have derived from listening to the text. Pre and post- listening activities focus on learner’s metacognitive knowledge about themselves as an ESL/EFL learners and aims to develop learners’ metacognitive awareness.

Metacognitive pedagogical sequence is based on four processes: planning, monitoring comprehension, solving comprehension problems, evaluating the approach and outcomes. These processes are essential to successful listening development. Also there are five stages that are applied while listening activity takes place. These stages provide a planned listening lesson. In pre-listening or planning and prediction stage learner have a goal for listening. They share their previous knowledge about topic with others. In first listening stage they listen to the text and take notes the word they have predicted and recognized. And they compare and criticize what they have understood so far. After that they know what they need to pay special attention when they listen to it again. In second listening, learner listens very carefully the parts they need to pay attention. In third listening stage, learners have already decided which strategies they would like to use when they listen again; and while listening they pay attention how problematic words and utterances sound. Finally, in evaluation and planning stage, they summarize what they have learned and understood from the listening text.

To conclude, listening is more challenging from other skills. Affective learners know how to listen to a text, they don’t need to listen to all text and they don’t have a deliberate effort to understand the message. To be an affective learner, ESL/EFL learners have to improve their speed and aware of different listening strategies. If the learners use the correct strategies while listening, understanding the listening text won’t be so demanding. Listening proficiency depends on speed and accuracy of the processing of spoken input, and listening performance improve with time. So learners should need lots of listening practice without giving up. Metacognitive activities should be used to help learners to develop self-knowledge and they become familiar with using strategies to support their own listening. Also teachers have big role to motivate learners and monitor them in listening process. Teachers should examine the process of teaching listening and they should pay attention to new trends not to fall behind. Teachers are important in teaching listening process. Learners should be taught necessary strategies and skills to be more effective learners.