Teaching Listening Comprehension Listening Comprehension Ability
whenever we want to communicate with others using a language, we should listen to the speaker. So listening is very crucial to convey ideas, thoughts, and
also feelings. 3.
Teaching Listening Stages
For students to fully benefit from listening lessons, it has been increasingly recognized that listening lessons should be planned to include
different stages. These stages can be classified as pre-listening, while listening and post listening Field, 2002, pp. 242
–247; Harmer, 2007, p. 136 Each stage has different functions that should be linked together to provide constant
support for the students to successfully understand the listening text in order to complete the tasks set.
Pre Listening Stage 1 The Importance of Pre Listening Activity in Listening Comprehension
Although authors argue that pre-listening activities have positive effects, there is little research regarding the effectiveness of classroom
activities designed to improve performance on a specific listening comprehension task Chang and Read, 2008, pp. 375
–394. According to Chang and Read 2008, pp. 375
–394, pre-listening activities investigated in the literature have taken two main forms: teaching relevant vocabulary and
giving information about the topic. One clear finding from previous research is that vocabulary teaching by itself is not an effective means of
enhancing listening comprehension and may in fact be counterproductive. It appears that introducing learners to key vocabulary in a listening text may
have an effect only when combined with other pre-listening activities. On the other hand, the provision of topic-specific information such as giving
visual support and textual support, led to good results Chang, 2007, p. 320.
One interesting result which is relevant to the present study is that topic preparation can help low proficiency listeners to compensate for the
limitations in their knowledge contribute to creating meaningful context within which a listening activity should take place. However, more research
is needed to confirm the value of this kind of topic preparation for L2 listeners and to give more guidance on what form it should take.
2 Activities in Pre-Listening Stage In real life situations a listener almost always knows in advance
something which is going to be said, who is speaking or what the subject is going to be about. Pre-listening stage helps learners to find out the aim of
listening and provides the necessary background information. According to Field 2002, pp. 242
–247 at pre-listening stage, two simple aims should be clear; the first is to provide sufficient context to match what would be
available in real life and the second is to create motivation, perhaps by asking learners to speculate what they will hear. These can be done as little
as 5 minutes.
Pre-teaching of vocabulary is very rarely performed nowadays. It makes sense since in real life learners cannot expect that somebody will
explain unknown words to them. And in the classroom they have to learn how to ignore or guess the meaning of unfamiliar words in order to perform
communication tasks Sivachenko, 2012, p. 255. According to Field 2002, p. 242
–247 it is necessary to present several words before the listening activity. But these words should be key words
–the words without which any understanding of the text would be impossible. If teachers suspect that there
are gaps in their learners’ knowledge concerning the topic input, listening itself can be preceded by schema-building activities to prepare learners for
the listening activity Nunan, 2002, pp. 238 –241.
While Listening Stage While-listening activities can be shortly defined as all tasks that
students are asked to do during the time of listening to the text. The nature of these activities is to help learners to listen for meaning, so that they can elicit a
message from spoken language Pospieszyńska, 2000, p. 2. During this stage
students’ usually respond somehow to a listening text, for example by indicating appropriate pictures, sequencing of some picture and reordering
them is necessary, answering multiple-choice questions, completing a cloze test, filling in the blanks of incomplete sentences, or writing short answers to
the questions etc.
Listeners do not pay attention to everything they hear, they listen selectively, according to the purpose of the task. The task, in turn determines
the type of listening and the way in which listeners will deal with the task. There are a lot of different types of listening which can be classified according
to different principles, including purpose for listening, the role of the listener, type of the text for listening. In practice these types are mixed in different
configurations and each require a particular strategy to be used to approach it Nunan, 2002, p. 238.
Teachers should realize that learners listen in an unfocused way if questions are not set until after the passage has been heard. Unsure of what
will be asked, the listeners cannot judge the level of detail that will be required of them. Therefore, Sherman cited in Buck 2001, p. 137 found that the most
powerful improvement in performance came from showing the questions after listeners had heard the passage once, but before they heard it a second time.
According to Nunan 2002, p. 239 by designing appropriate listening tasks, the teachers can teach listeners how to adopt a flexible range of listening
strategies. This can be done by letting learners listen to the same text several
times, however, providing listeners with different instructions before each listening.
Post Listening Stage The post-listening stage comprises all exercises done after listening
to a text. Some of these activities may be the extensions of those carried out at pre- and while-listening stages but some may not be related to them at all and
present a totally independent part of the listening session. Nowadays the practice of examining the grammar of the input is no longer addressed in the
language classroom. However, it remains appropriate to pick up any functional
language and draw learners’ attention to it Field, 2002, p. 243. The listen and repeat activities have been dropped as well, positing that it is not effective and
does not correspond to CLT. Though, Field 2002, p. 243 argues for it, saying
that it develops listeners’ ability of segmentation of speech flow, which is an important skill for the development of listening comprehension.
According to Nunan 2002, p. 240 as a part of post-listening, the teachers can personalize the content of the sequence so that learners can bring
something of themselves to the tasks. In particular, it is possible to increase the involvement of the learner by providing extension tasks to listening activities
but which will engage learners into providing part of the content themselves. 4.
Teaching Listening For Junior High School
Listening is one of the four language skills has always formed part of the syllabus in the teaching of English. Brown 2006, p. 6 stated that the
process of listening itself is the invisible, inaudible process of internalizing meaning from the auditory signals being transmitted to the ear and brain. And
product of listening is a spoken or written response from the students that indicates correct or incorrect auditory processing.
It is important to have much practice in listening besides speaking, reading and
writing. Every teacher of language knows that one’s oral production ability other than monologues, speeches, reading aloud and the like
is only as good as one’s listening comprehension ability Brown, 2006, p. 10. Teaching listening for Junior High School is not an easy job, because
the range of age of Junior High School students varies between twelve to fifteen years old. They can call as teenagers. Teenagers are between childhood and
adulthood, so it is the period of transition and growing. In this period, they will experience the confusion, self-consciousness, and changing bodies and minds.
They will be very sensitive to how others perceive their changing physical and emotional selves along with their mental capabilities. As Brown 2006, p. 15
stated that one of the most important concerns of the secondary school teacher is to keep self-esteem high by; avoiding embarrassment of students at all costs,
affirming each person’s talent and strength, allowing mistakes and other errors
to be accepted, de-emphasizing competition between classmates, encouraging small-group work where risks can be taken more easily by teen.
Based on the statement above, the writer concludes that the teacher’s role is very important to motivate students in teaching learning process while
students in a transition period. Therefore they will have good discipline and responsibility if their teacher encourages them to learn in writing in the target
language. The methods for teaching should maintain the characteristics of students in the order that the students can learn the target language optimally. In
language learning context, it is believed that children will learn a foreign language more effectively under certain conditions. When teaching learning
process is fun and natural, then it will make the students more effectively in learning the target language.