Effective Listening Skills for English Language Learners

• Different types of listening includeː Identifying details, listening for gist, following signposts, inference, listening to stress, rhythm and intonation

Importance of Listening

• Listening occupies about 45% of adults' communication time, more than speaking (30%), reading (16%), and writing (9%)
• Despite its importance, listening often receives insufficient attention from students and teachers alike
• Learners often report that listening is the most challenging skill in English

Challenges for English Language Learners

• Understanding talks, lectures, or conversations in a second language can be difficult
• Difficulties may arise from the speaker, the situation, and the listener
• Contributing factors include the speaker's speed, background noise, lack of visual cues, limited vocabulary, lack of topic knowledge, and inability to distinguish individual sounds
• English learners can employ skills or strategies to overcome these challenges

Predicting Content

• Predicting content involves using context to anticipate what a speaker will say
• For instance, if seeing a person in a suit in front of a weather map on TV, the natural prediction is a weather forecast
• This involves anticipating the kind of words and language style the speaker is likely to use based on the context
• Predicting the topic activates relevant vocabulary in the brain, aiding understanding
• Practice involves watching or listening to recorded programs, pausing to predict what will happen next
• During a listening test, skim through the questions first to anticipate what information to listen for

Listening for Gist

• Listening for gist involves understanding the 'whole picture' of what is being said
• Crucially, with listening the information comes in a sequence
• Content words (nouns, adjectives, verbs) help form that picture and derive a sense of what is being discussed
• The sequence of words helps form the context
• Practice involves watching short videos with subtitles, using the title to predict content, and listening for content words is helpful for improving your understanding
• New words should be grouped with other words used in a similar context, and mind maps can be helpful for improving this process

Detecting Signposts

• Signposts in language are words that link ideas and help listeners follow what is being said
• Signposts are particularly important in presentations and lectures
• Examples include phrases like "first of all," "moving on to," and "in summary" to indicate the next part of a talk
• Other phrases clarify, give examples
• These phrases are very important for presentation

Listening for Details

• Listening for details involves focusing on specific information, such as a number, name, or object
• Extraneous and irrelevant information is ignored to narrow the search and get the needed detail
• In listening tests you must listen out for; 'old', 'young', 'years', 'date of birth', etc
• You may have to wait to hear; 'How old.. ?

Inferring Meaning

• Inferring meaning involves using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to work out the meaning of what one hears
• Example: A tourist inferring a restaurant doesn't accept credit cards when the server responds apologetically to the credit card
• Clues and prior knowledge can also help determine the relationship between people based on the words they use
• Practice involves listening to dialogues and inferring what is taking place, who is speaking, and their relationship
• When hearing a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning from the context or situation

Summing Up

• The listed strategies are not stand-alone
• While prediction is mainly a pre-listening skill, others should be used simultaneously.

Signposting Language

• Signposting language consists of phrases that guide the listener coherently through what is being said
• Signposting clarifies what has just happened and what will happen next

Examples of Lecture Signposting Language

• Signposting language guides listeners on the topic and content of lectures, as well as when different sections are being discussed

Inference

• Inference is finding the meaning of answers from clues and prior knowledge rather than directly.

Rhythm, Intonation, and Stress

• Speakers avoid directly saying something by speaking with implication effectively
• The intonation is what it sounds like. Is it merely sounding friendly or is there more to it?
• Intonation is common to all languages. It includes aspects of stress, rhythm, connected speech and accent
• Intonation is how something is said much more than what we say. The pitch can change the meaning of what we say
• Intonation is referring to the way the pitch of voices are used to express particular meanings and attitudes.

Different Functions of Intonation in English

Attitudinal

• Listeners around the world and especially in British English can listen to someone's attitudeː boredom, interest, surprise, anger, appreciation, happiness etc
• You can show an understanding of something through music and tone of voices without saying much at all

Grammatical

• English possess intonation patterns, which, for the most part, correspond to the use of particular grammar structures
• Questions from;
  • 'who', 'what', 'why', 'where', 'when', 'which', and 'how' can have questions with use of falling intonation
  • Questions that require a 'yes' or 'no' answer, usually have upward intonation.

How to Improve Your Intonation

• You must improve your intonation and simply become more aware of it
• You can record your intonation and analyze it, this will then help express the attitude to the ways you hope
• Always try a better version of your intonation as recordings are a great way to keep track of your process

Useful Resources for Improving Speech

• BBC and British Council podcasts
• YouTube clips of your favourite characters on the small screen and listen to how they sound

Sentence Stress

• This is very important for pronunciation, remembering that people are probably using it correctly most of the time
• It is unlikely that your intonation is causing a breakdown in communications

Tips for English Language Learners

• You should be more confident about your intonation, it is certainly worth spending time noticing how others use it or recording your own voice
• It matters where we put stresses in a sentence
• It is easy to put life into a student's sentences simply by reminding them on how logical words can be and practiced
• Students are able to stress perfectly, whatever their mother tongue

"And You Have the Nerve to Call Me Colored!" Poem

• This poem shows both the African American and it compares two races.
• As he compares the skin colors, he praises the African American's bold skin color
• The white skin always changes
• Some major themes in it areː
  • Gender discrimination, bitter realities of the world, and irony

Poetic and Literary Elements in the Poem

Alliteration, allegorical, Consonance & Imagery

• You can see imagery and constant appearance in the poem to emphasize sounds
• The poet has used imagery, repetition, metaphor and symbolism

Stanza, Repetition

• This is a poetic form with several lines in the stanza
• There are only have two stanzas in the entire poem with 7 verses in each

Sum Up

• draws attention to world's common problems and it has a few verses on biased attitudes of the world.