Listening is one of the four integrated language skills and one of the two receptive skills. It is very important to teach listening skill in the classroom because it is really difficult for the foreign learners to understand oral English spoken by the native speakers at a normal speed.
When we acquire a new language, productive skills tend to follow receptive skills. Learners can usually understand more than they can say- so listening naturally comes before speaking in the learning process. This means that we must give students the chance to hear language and understand it before we ask them to produce it themselves. We cannot develop our students’ speaking skill unless we develop their listening skill since most speaking situations require listening as well. Students in countries where English is a foreign language, as for example Bangladesh, do not have plenty of exposure- so the more opportunities we can give them to listen English in the classroom, the better.
In the classroom, students listen mainly to the teachers. Typically, they listen to classroom instruction, teacher reading from the text book, the teacher’s questions. Many teachers tend to translate what they say into Bengali so that the students will understand better. The result of doing this is that the students will not bother to listen to what the teachers says in English. They therefore get very little listening practice.
They also listen to their fellow students. Again this can provide a very useful source of listening practice. Most of the students do not bother to listen to one another; they only listen to the teachers. A useful source of listening is thus removed. Tape recorders, radios or other technological aids are very useful aids, especially for exposing the class to a greater variety of voice and accent. For bringing real life situation teacher can give the class very useful listening practice just by using their own voice.
In Bangladesh, in most of the cases, teachers do not have necessary resources According to their curriculum they do not have opportunity to do any listening practices. There is no listening and speaking test in exam and so students and parents are not interested. In case of foreign teaching and exams like IELTS, students cannot understand the foreign pronunciation and accent. Students do not fully realize the discourse point of view. Most of the students may not have exposure with English spoken by native speakers. Another problem is recognizing phonetic contrasts. Unfamiliar with how the sounds are produced by the native speakers is a great problem. In English all sounds are not pronounced in the right way. Consequently students face listening problem.
In the classroom situation we are usually concerned with focused listening. We expect the teachers to listen carefully and remember afterwards what they have heard. The students have no expectation about what they are going to hear. This is not a very natural situation. They students will not know what to listen for, because they do not know what questions the teacher will ask them. Their listening will consequently be unfocussed.
Teachers can help the students focus their listening by giving them some idea about what they are going to listen to before they ask them to listen. They can also give them a few guiding questions or a simple listening task before they start listening so that they know what they have to listen for. The guiding questions should focus on a few relevant and important points, rather than on insignificant details. They should also be quick and easy. Tasks like listen and complete, listen and do, listen and draw, listen and decide: True or False can be given
Listening is undoubtedly important. So, care should be taken to develop this skill among the students. An authentic and interesting listening practice can be helpful to achieve this goal.
