Unit 7: Listening

 

UNIT 7: Listening

 

The English language is made up of four core skills, which are divided into productive skills and receptive skills. Listening belongs to the second group since it is related to the collection of information as opposed to productive skills that focus on producing information. This skill is related to the art of catching and listening to the meaningful sounds of a language to construct meanings by interpreting the words that the different sounds form, and in turn, understanding the meaning of a sentence or complete idea formed by several words without ignoring the additional information that context gives to build the precise meaning of the spoken message.

Listening, along with speaking, are usually the skills that cause the most problems for people who want to learn English as a second language. The problem lies in nature and means by which these skills come into contact. For example, when we are writing, we can almost always take the time necessary to structure our ideas and then write them down on paper. In the same way, to receive that information we have the opportunity to read and reread to understand in a better way. This is different when we want to communicate verbally. Both to speak and to listen we must be precise. To correctly understand the speaker's message, several factors must be considered, such as the influence of the environment, body expressions, intonation, and the emphasis on certain words. Here is a table where you can find the main differences between written and spoken language:

 

 For more information about differences between written and spoken language look at the following video:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HMQXDoPpyw

 

In the same way that happens in written language. In spoken language, there are also different types of text. This means that we can speak to share a story, introduce ourselves, sing a song, make a suggestion, and so on. The importance of this is that the characteristics and quality of the spoken message may vary according to the type of text we want to express. Among these characteristics, we can find the quality of the grammatical structure and the level of vocabulary we use.

The listening skill is quite difficult due to the difficulties that are often involved in getting the message. These difficulties are caused by differences within accents, the use of colloquialisms and contractions that are common in spoken language, the union of sounds between words that is known as connected speech, stress in certain words in the sentence, and other aspects that influence the meaning of the message. This skill, like the others, is broken down into subskills, look at the following chart:

 

 

Glossary:

Interaction patterns: This corresponds to the different ways in which people can interact while communicating verbally.

Linking words: It refers to the union of words during their pronunciation to achieve that a sentence has harmony in the sound of its words.

Functions: Functions are practically the intentions that the speaker has to convey the message.

Authentic materials: These are materials that were not created specifically to be used in language teaching, however, they are very useful for that.

Introductory activities: They are activities that the teacher plans in order to motivate students to learn.

Bibliography:

•         Wanger, J. (1997). What is Morphology? - Introduction to Linguistics - ielanguages.com. Retrieved October 24, 2020, from https://ielanguages.com/phonology.html

•         What is Listening? | Listening | EnglishClub. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2020, from https://www.englishclub.com/listening/what.htm