By María de la Lama
It’s not an uncommon practice for
English teachers when preparing exams to include a listening comprehension
section. In many tests, listening
comprehension receives the same weight as any grammar or vocabulary section. But,
is this a fair practice? Can we evaluate listening comprehension in the same
way that we evaluate grammatical or lexical knowledge? The answer depends on whether our students’ listening comprehension skills
have been developed during the course, a development that implies a systematic training throughout
the course with a practice that
goes beyond the automatic playing of CDs to students . Listening as a receptive skill
requires the training of more complex cognitive skills that cannot be developed
with our overused listening exercises to get main ideas or specific information.
There are two important
factors that need to be considered in the development, and hence evaluation, of listening skills: the
teacher’s understanding of what it is implied in developing good listening
comprehension skills and what our students need to reach this goal.
Regarding teachers, a good
first step would be banishing from their daily teaching practice the oversimplification
of the listening practice reduced to promoting the ability of listening by
getting the main idea or specific information. In order to develop good listening skills in our students we must consider that there are other micro skills that
need to be worked in class, such as recognizing
stress and rhythm patterns as well
as cohesive devices; distinguishing word boundaries or reconstructing and inferring situations, goals and participants, just to
mention a few.
Regarding our students, if we
want to include a listening section in our exams or tests it is worth considering
whether we have given them the needed strategies to deal with this challenging
skill. Information such as what to do before, while and after listening to a text
is a valuable practice. Thus, before listening
students should predict, activate their background knowledge of the topic, and most importantly, remember that the
understanding of every single word of the text is not necessary to complete the task successfully. In the
same token, while they listen they can be taking notes, focusing on content
words and paying attention to contextual cues.
If students have had the
chance to develop sound strategies to deal with listening texts and received thorough training aimed to develop important micro
skills, then their performance in this skill can be graded in exams.
Now YOUR turn:
What do you think? Which viewpoints do you agree or disagree with? Would you like to share your own experience related to this topic?
Let us know by dropping a few lines! Until soon!
BIODATA:
DE LA LAMA, MARIA,
Licenciada en Educación, cuenta con una maestría en Lingüística Aplicada y
Bachillerato en Lingüística, ambos obtenidos en la Universidad de California,
Davis. Posee además un MBA por la
Universidad del Pacifico. Actualmente se desempeña como Directora
del Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad
del Pacifico.
