Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1922142 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 290 pages

Customer Reviews

Gem of useful techniques and ideas to benefit any teacher!
New Ways in Teaching Listening is an original collection of 140 practical
ideas for new ways of teaching listening comprehension It contains
contributions from practicing classroom teachers from around the world to
students of various age groups and levels of proficiency.

As easily applicable as recipes not requiring exotic ingredients nor too
much preparation time and effort, all recommended tasks can not only be
adapted to teach any second/ foreign language, but in many cases they can
also be adjusted to different language proficiency levels.

What makes these activities all the more valuable is their inherent
versatility. Perhaps, due to the complexity of listening comprehension and
its intimate association with the other language skills, many of the
suggested tasks can actually fit into more than one of the six categories in
the book, referred to as parts. Teachers looking for specific listening
activities are thus encouraged to browse through more than one category they
are interested in and ideally to have a look at all the activities.

Part I of the book is dedicated to ways of developing important cognitive
strategies such as listening for the main idea, listening for details, and
predicting upcoming messages. A number of tasks, listed in other parts,
however, could also be used for training learners to listen for main ideas
or detail (pp. 182, 197, 216, 217), as well as, for predicting information
(pp. 137, 245). Although the development of listening skills remains in the
focus of the book all the way through, the editors recognize that all
language skills are tightly intertwined and should not be taught in
isolation.

That is why Part II focuses on the development of listening in con-junction
with other language skills such as speaking, pronunciation, vocabulary
building, and although not mentioned in the subheadings, some tasks teach
spelling, as well (pp. 113, 115, 146). What is more,.Reviews / Critiques 139
many activities throughout the entire book, also draw upon or develop other
skills, side by side with listening, such as writing (pp. 15, 43-44, 78),
speaking (p. 22), and translation (p.70).

Part III is exclusively devoted to the use of authentic materials in the
classroom, even though a good number of all the listening activities also
employ authentic resources. Authentic materials are frequently delivered
through audiotapes and videotapes, and so is a bulk of scripted tasks,
featuring in all six parts of the present collection. Nevertheless, Part IV
is specifically dedicated to the use of technology for the teaching of
listening. One should not expect anything too fancy, however. Except for the
activity where students learn English prosodic by sitting in a Body Sonic
Chair and using verbotactile aids (p. 209), recommended technical resources
include regular VCRs, cassette recorders, overheads; videotaped TV programs
and films; audio recordings of Telephone Information Lines, radio shows, and
teacher-made materials. Unfortunately, computers and software are not even
mentioned.

Part V addresses the issue of listening for academic purposes. While, a
number of these activities are quite specific, others can be applied outside
an academic setting, as well (pp. 230, 234, 240).

Finally, Part VI offers ways of listening for fun, such as listening to
songs. There is no doubt that all of these activities can be lots of fun,
but some would also allow a more ambitious exploration, such as making
predictions (p. 245), attending to specific details (p. 247), and learning
vocabulary (pp. 256, 259) without losing the entertainment value of the
exercises.

Although one may disagree that each of these contributions could
unswervingly qualify for 'new ways' in the teaching of listening, the book
is certainly a gem of useful techniques and ideas that any teacher may
benefit by reading! Perhaps teachers may find the book inspiring enough to
conceive original listening comprehension tasks of their own, especially as
they are beginning to use more recent technology.

All in all, not bad and genuinely recommended for any ELT school's
methodology library.