Teach English in Gejia Zhen - Weihai Shi

Of the integrated skills that an English learner must learn, listening is very important for fluency. While all integrated skills are important, listening can be overlooked in its importance because of how difficult it is to teach. Some teachers decide to overlook its importance because of the difficulty, but that is not right. The difficulty shows how important it is for students to learn English. When a student interacts with English speakers, they have to be prepared to listen to what they say, understand it, and come up with a response. Listening skills are important because they are half of the necessary skills that you need to have a conversation in English and are vital to surviving in an English speaking country, meaning they should not be avoided by teachers. When conversing in English one must be able to listen. English conversations, as is with any language, can be fast paced. While people do often slow down while talking to foreigners, it is often still a fast paced environment that a non-native speaker needs to navigate. In order to prepare students for communicating in the real world, conversations must be practiced in the classroom. There are many activities that practice listening skills through group or partner work where the students must work together in order to reach an end goal. Communicating in English is how they will reach that goal. Some communication activities that can help to teach listening skills, while also working on speaking at the same time are jigsaw texts where partners each have a part of a text and have to work together to read it and complete it, jumbled text where the paragraph text is jumbled so the partners have to communicate to put it in order, or role-play where students partner up and each play a part in a conversation. An example of a role-play conversation could be at a grocery store. One student is the customer while the other is the cashier. They will use their knowledge of food, numbers, and currency to communicate what they would like to buy and how much it costs. It is important for each pair to listen to each other so that they know what information to give. If one asks the price of oranges, the cashier needs to listen to know the price of oranges to give. If the customer is on a budget, they have to listen to the cashier in order to figure out how many oranges they can buy. Listening in conversations like this along with basic social life in English speaking countries is important for a non-native speaker to function, whether they are visiting or staying. There is more to surviving in a foreign country than having conversations. Part of it is consuming the language around you. A person may need to find out what’s going on in the country they live in. They can do this by either reading a news paper, website, or by watching the news. They options evenly split the need to read and the need to listen. In a grocery store there might be a notice about a sale announced over a speaker. A foreigner may want to go participate in community events which often include listening to a speaker, listening to music, or listening to instructions. In order to fully enjoy the experience, the non-native speaker must have good listening skills so that they can join in rather than feel awkward. There is also the chance that something could happen in the country, like a hurricane, where announcements could be made for people’s safety over a radio. If you are driving to a safe place away from a hurricane, you need your ears to be able to hear the radio speaker so that you can know what’s going on. A good way to practice this is by listening to pre-recorded English speech in the classroom. This could be through videos, audio recording, or through the teacher speaking to the class. A teacher could also arrange for the class to be split up into groups or pairs for listening exercises so that they can work together and feel more confident. At times it can still be hard for students to understand, so the teacher can replay the audio or slow it down as needed for students. Listening is a vital skill for surviving in English speaking countries. Whether visiting or living in an English speaking country, a non-native speaker in that country will need to consume various bits of English throughout their experience. When teachers avoid teaching listening skills because of its difficulty, they do a disservice to their students because of how important listening is for everyday life. There are various activities and tasks that a teacher can give to students to practice this skill. They will need to have conversations and absorb other media, such as speakers or radios, while in another country and should be prepared to do so.