The article is about the ways of improving listening skills in primary classes. Presented in the content and technology of the organization of interactive learning, as well as the proposed teaching methods can be used in the educational process in primary classes.
Key words: listening, interactive, develop, sticks, content, teaching, interest, approach.
Статья о способах улучшения навыков слушания в начальных классах.
Представленные в содержании и технологии организации интерактивного обучения, а также предлагаемые методы обучения могут быть использованы в учебном процессе в начальных классах.
Ключевые слова: слушать, интерактивно, развивать, придерживаться, содержание, обучение, интерес, подход.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen
In Uzbekistan, special attention is paid to education of harmoniously developed young generation. President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev pays great attention in teaching English in Uzbekistan.
As we know listening is key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstand. That’s to say most children have good listening skills. So what can teachers do to improve students’ listening skills? We need, I think, to focus on giving students a real reason for purposeful talk. For a start, we can surprise them! Surprise makes human beings want to talk, to exclaim, to check out with others what might be happening, to explore ideas about the event and so on. They are able to understand and follow the activities conducted in English. Most children respond to the teacher in single words or short phrases. Some children can express themselves and give reasons in English. As early as 1966 RIVERS (pp.196, 204) advocated for more attention to listening comprehension. „Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached“ [1].
I think children should be enabled to listen to and simple understand conversations in everyday life. Teachers should provide children with opportunities to listen to and speak in English through conversations. What should we do to build on children’s listening skills and further develop them?
I think we have to find easy ways of improving listening skills in primary classes. As an English teacher we have to develop children’s interest in learning English through interesting interactive listening skills at our English lessons.
Singing songs together is a catchy way to teach children language. Choose a song that has rhythm, rhyming and repetitive lyrics.
The following activities always are used by me at my lessons. They are:
Activity 1. Listen and sing songs. Objective: to improve pupils’ listening skills
Teacher plays the DVD. Teacher asks the students to listen to the song. Teacher asks the students to hold up pictures of farm animals as they sing the song together so that our students can associate the image with the word. After singing the same song a few times, we may ask our students to make a pause so my students can sing the lyrics without my help. We should help our students make up his/her own rhyming sentences and sing them together to memorize new words and definitions. The children's songs «Old MacDonald Had A Farm» is easy for students to learn and uses simple vocabulary and universal animal sounds that all children will recognize, no matter what language they speak.
Activity 2. Look, listen and repeat. Objective: to improve pupils’ listening skills.
Teacher sticks different flashcards on the blackboard and asks the students to look at them and listen to their pronunciation and repeat the words after him/her.
Then teacher takes out the first one and asks the students to repeat from the beginning. Teacher takes out the second one, the third one and etc. By this way teacher will achieve the result.
Activity 3. Listen and do. Objective: to improve pupils’ listening skills.
Teacher asks the students to listen to the sounds of the animals and analyze what animal is it. Teacher divides the class into 3 groups. The groups will listen each other and find what animal is it and they have to show by doing the actions.
At end of the lesson teacher should encourage the winner groups.
Activity 4. Listen and write. Objective: to improve pupils’ listening skills.
This is a competition activity. Teacher divides the class into 3 groups. Teacher explains the instruction. Teacher plays the DVD and asks the students to listen 2 times different words and phrases belong to the previous lessons and then they have to remember and write the listened words. 5 minutes will be given for doing this task. After that the groups stick their ready written poster and teacher will check up them and encourages the winner group.
Activity 5. Listen to the text. Objective: to improve pupils’ listening skills.
Teacher can do some pre-listening and then have students listen to the text and perform a variety of tasks. Teacher evaluates students’ comprehension based on the correctness of their responses and proceeds to the next activity. Teacher implicates here is the focus on the result, the product of listening in the form of correct answers. This approach tests students’ listening comprehension, informing them that they failed at certain points, but does little to teach how to listen, that is, to help them understand what went wrong with their listening and how it could be repaired. How often do teachers rush to supply a “correct” answer when a student fails to respond to a listening task? Teachers may play a recording several times and ask for other students’ input to make things right, missing an opportunity to determine the reason for the listening error. To revise this approach, a teacher could identify problems by making a note of students’ lapses in comprehension as she checks their answers. She would then discuss with students how they arrived at a certain answer, what prevented them from understanding parts of the text, and what could be done to improve their listening facilities. Finally, she would follow up with activities that target specific listening problems that emerged during the discussion.
To sum up I came to this conclusion if you are teaching a song or telling a story, don’t stay on that song or story the whole class time. We should follow up the song or story with a related TPR activity to keep the momentum of the class going. Then have students play a quick game in pairs. As shown in this brief example, varying the types of activities also helps to keep young learners interested.
References:
- RIVERS, W. M. Listening comprehension. Modern Language Journal, 50
- Anderson, A. and T. Lynch. 1988. Listening. London: Oxford University Press.
- www.ziyonet.uz.
- http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/
