Week 6: Listening Skill

With this week’s reading, it gives me a basic sense of what objectives ESL learners should achieve in terms of their different stages of skill in listening classes. Besides, it also helps me the understanding of what kind of materials and activities we, as language teachers, can provide in classroom properly. I know there is no clear cutting line among beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels and there are some transitions in between but this reading provides me how a language learning/teaching process looks like. We know that language skills are not like something you can accomplish in two hours three times a week. Indeed, it is a long run to go and is built up step by step.

Among different levels of listening skill, different teaching approaches are referred in the textbook. In beginning level, providing learners simplified codes and modified speech are needed. With intermediate level learners, hearing to authentic texts with reduced forms are necessary. The first two are simply learning to listen or listening to learn the language. On the stage of between high-intermediate and advanced levels, they learn about the context of other areas. They also need to learn jokes, slang, and culture references toward to the target language.