LISTENING SKILL

The Importance of Listening

 As a language teacher and as a learner of other languages, think of one or two reasons why listening is important

Listening is also important because it:

• occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating in the language. Think about the times you spend listening to others speak or listening to songs, news, lectures, YouTube, etc. Recent advances in technology have served to raise the profile of the listening skill in language teaching.
• provides input that can be very significant for second language acquisition in general and for the development of the speaking skill in particular.
• promotes non-linear processing of language and encourages learners to develop "holistic" strategies to texts.

As language teachers, we need to think of how we can incorporate listening into our teaching and provide opportunities both inside and outside the classroom for our students to be exposed to significant listening input.

For learners, listening presents a challenge for a variety of reasons, among which are the following:

• Listening involves multiple modes: Listening involves the interpersonal and interpretive modes of communication. It requires the listener to assume either a participative role in face-to-face conversations, or a non-participative role in listening to other people speak or present.
• Listening involves all varieties of language: In addition to listening to lectures and presentations in academic and formal settings, learners have also to partake or listen to exchanges that involve various levels of colloquialism.
• Listening involves "altered" and "reduced" language forms: In addition to dealing with the vocabulary and structures of the language, listeners have to learn to comprehend reduced forms of the language (e.g., I wanna go, Just a sec).
• Listening involves variable rates of delivery: Unlike a reading text that is at the learner's control, a listening text is constantly moving and at variable speeds that often cannot be controlled by the listener.

Because of all these factors, listening activities often create high levels of anxiety and stress among learners that can interfere with comprehension.

For teachers as well, addressing listening in the language classroom poses some challenges.