How - to - develop - English - listening - and - speaking - skills

How to Develop English Listening and Speaking Skills?

Abstract：This paper first introduces the current situation of Chinese students’ listening and speaking skill. Then the paper shows the importance of each skill and gives ways of developing these two skills.

Key words: developing skills, listening, speaking

1. Introduction

Teachers in middle schools and high schools always attach great importance to students’ reading and skills. But they barely help to develop students’ listening and speaking skills because listening and speaking questions don’t appear on the papers of college entrance examinations. Thus, when students go to colleges and universities, their English listening and speaking skills are very weak. Although teachers in China’s high education spend great efforts to develop students’ listening and speaking skills, and there are specific standards on students’ listening and speaking skills brought about by the college English curriculum, the students’ listening and speaking skills are still not very satisfactory. According to the data of the commission of college English test, in the six oral English tests from January 1999 to May 2001, 18550 students get the B level out of 32107 students. That is to say, only 58.7% students can communicate with people in English based on the familiar topics, which means the speaking skill of college students is very poor. In addition, according to the research by Lydia So (1999:34), only the speed of speaking of English major students in their second year meets the standard. Other aspects of speaking cannot meet the required standard, such as the language used is not accurate, the fluency is not good, the content of speech lacks creativity and deep thinking, unfamiliar with the rules used in communication and so on. Therefore, it is high time we developed and improved students’ listening and speaking skills because those students who are more effective communicators experience more success in school and in other areas of their lives.

2. Developing listening skills

2.1 The importance of listening skills

Listening is a very important skill that we use in all aspects of our life. We spend more time using our listening skill than any other kind of skill. It is estimated that we listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write (Rivers 1981; Weaver 1972). This means listening plays a very important role in our daily life. For example, we listen to news from the radio program and watch TV programs to seek information or get entertainment, we listen to lectures and speeches to gain knowledge, we listen to broadcast at airport or railway station to know the arrival or departure time, we listen at an interview or a meeting to exchange information and so on. As an important aspect of communicative competence, listening comprehension calls for special attention and effort. That is to say, like other skills, listening takes practice. Don’t worry if your listening skill is not good because effective communication can be taught, practiced and improved.

2.2 What does it mean to real listen?

Real listening is an active process that has three steps, namely, hearing, understanding and judging. Hearing just means listening enough to catch what the speaker is saying. If you can repeat the fact, then you have heard what has been said. The next step of listening happens when you take what you have heard and understand it in your own way. After you are sure you understand what has been said, you would think about whether it makes sense. This is the judging step. Knowing the steps happening during our listening can help us find ways to improve our listening skills.

2.3 Ways to develop listening skills

2.3.1 Pay full attention.

When you are listening to something, give your full attention to it. Don’t look out the window or at what else is going in the room. This is very important but always ignored by students. For some students they listen to English materials almost all day long but they don’t get much improvement. The reason is that they don’t concentrate on what they are doing. Some students listen to English while reading newspaper or magazines, others even doing housework. These are not efficient and effective listening practice. To achieve effective listening practice, the first thing is to pay full attention and make sure your mind is focused. Only when you pay full attention to what you are listening can you fully under the material. Once you understand what you have heard, you will feel successful. And this successful feeling can in turn stimulate your learning desire. Thus, attention is very important. During the listening process, if you feel your mind wandering, change the position of your body and try to concentrate on what you are listening to. But one thing you should know is your brain can not focus on one thing for too long. It is estimated that one can only focus on one thing for as long as an hour (Celce-Murcia, 2006；90), so practice listening for no more than one hour each time with your full attention.

2.3.2 Listen for main idea or the gist.

The main ideas are the most important points the speaker wants to get across. We often listen to things to get the main ideas of the text, without paying much attention to the details. The main ideas may be mentioned at the beginning or the end of a talk, and repeated a number of times. Pay special attention to statements that begin with phrases such as “my point is…” or “the thing to remember is…” . For example, when we listen to news, it is very important to catch what is said in the first one or two sentences because the main idea of a piece of news is always written at the beginning of it. When we first catch the gist of a piece of news, it would be easy to understand the whole news. If we are listening to a lecture, to get the main idea, we should pay attention to the beginning of the whole lecture where the speaker gives us a description of what is going to be said in the speech as well as the end where the speaker summarize the whole speech and gives conclusions.

2.3.3 Take notes while listening

Notes are indispensable if you want to gain information from what you have heard. Notes are also helpful to get the main idea of a listening material. There are some ways of note-taking, like outlining, mapping, categorizing, taking down key words and specific information like date, data and place and so on. Do not try to get every word down because it is impossible unless you are doing a dictation practice. Just take fewer, more meaningful notes to help you remember what has been said later. In order to take effective notes, one can develop his own note-taking style. For example, use abbreviations for certain words and acronyms for the names of well-known organizations and so on.

2.3.4 Deduce meaning from the text

While listening, listeners may come across some words they do not know. In this situation, many people have the tendency to linger on certain unknown words they hear at the expense of more incoming information. For example, when listening to a piece to news, some listeners may linger on the unfamiliar words like names of people and places. By doing so, they also miss the more important information coming later in the news. We should bear in mind that we don’t need to concentrate on every bit of information in the text. We should just focus on the gist or specific information we need. Guessing word meaning from the context while listening can be helpful. Guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word form the nearby sentences or associate it with words appear nearby because they can be antonyms. Therefore, when confronting with unfamiliar words in a text while listening, we should not sacrifice the global meaning of the text by lingering on those unknown words. We should just guess the meanings or even ignore them to get the gist of what we are listening.

2.3.5 Listen to different kinds of listening materials. There are two types of listening materials, namely, authentic and non-authentic texts. When we are in class, for most of the time, we are listening to non-authentic materials like texts from textbooks and exam papers. These materials have the disadvantages of being artificial and extremely unvaried and they do not reflect the features of listening material we may encounter in real life, thus they are not very helpful for preparing students for real life communication. Therefore, we should also listen to authentic listening materials. They have these advantages as being interesting and motivating to listeners, better reflecting the culture reality of the target language and thus better preparing learners for real life listening, and providing a variety of language input. Authentic listening materials include radio programs, say VOA or BBC, movies, TV programs, say talk shows, TV series or interviews, speeches and so on. The popular TV series Friends is highly recommended by a lot of English learners for the language used there is authentic, easy to understand and with standard pronunciation. Therefore, in order to develop real listening skills, we should listen to a variety of listening materials.

2.3.6 Practice listening persistently

Learning a language is a life long task. One can not expect to gain much improvement within a short period of time. It takes time and effort to achieve the goal. Practicing listening everyday can make you familiar with the English sound and English speaking environment. With persistency and hard working, as well as efficient and effective practice method, the listening skill can be improved.

3. Developing speaking skills

3.1 The importance of speaking skills

Speaking also plays a vital role in our daily life. Speaking is used for different purposes with different skills. For example, we chat with people to gain information or entertainment. We talk with an interviewer to exchange information and express our ideas. We talk with our teachers to acquire knowledge and information. We discuss with people to express opinions, to persuade people or to clarify information. We give public speeches to inform the audience of the message we want to convey. We also speak to give instruction or to get things done, to describe things, to complain, to make request, or to entertain people with jokes. We can see speaking really plays an essential role in our daily life as well as in academic world. Having good speaking skills is necessary for everyone.

3.2 Ways to develop good speaking skills

3.2.1 Acquire knowledge about English pronunciation and intonation

If one wants to speak in English, the very first thing one should do is to know how to pronounce an English sound. In order to do this, one should learn the basic knowledge of pronunciation, including phonetics, word stress, and intonation. Only when one acquires the knowledge of pronunciation can one be able to articulate English clearly and accurately. This is the very first step leading to speaking good English. There are several ways of practicing pronunciation. First, learn the International Phonetic Alphabet. If you know how to pronounce each IPA, then you will be able to pronounce an unknown word with the help of its IPA when you consult a dictionary. Second, read after the tape to imitate the sound. Imitation is a very quick, direct and immediate way to practice pronunciation. You had better imitate a native speaker in order not to make and mistakes. Third, record your sound, compare it with a native speaker and try to find the difference. Through comparison, you can find the incorrect part in your sound and this can help you adjust your sound to what sounds like a native speaker. English is language which depends upon air-flow, lip shape, tongue position, teeth position and jaw movement. Since the places and manners of articulation are all very different from our mother tongue, we had better pay great attention to practicing pronunciation. In a word, practicing pronunciation is the fundamental step towards speaking good English.

3.2.2 Practice grammar and vocabulary

These two skills are closely related to speaking skills. In order to speak English fluently and accurately, a good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is indispensable. Being familiar with grammar allows you to speak with hesitation and prevent you from making mistakes, thus English can be said fluently. Vocabulary is also a very important part in English speaking. Having a good amount of vocabulary enables you to express your ideas easily and the larger your vocabulary is, the more options of words and phrases there will be when you speak, which also helps you with the fluency. In order to imprint words on your memory and also to feel comfortable about pronouncing them at a moment’s notice, it is necessary to practice vocabulary a number of times. Choose about ten new words to practice everyday. Practice them until you are word-perfect. Then use them in real life situations, like conversations, with a s many people as possible. The more you manage to use them in conversations, the better you will be able to say them fluently in the future. You can enlarge your vocabulary through listening and reading extensively, like radios, TV programs, newspapers, magazines, novels and so on. The newspaper 21 century is highly recommended by English learners because it is interesting to read and the language used there is not very difficult. Classic novels like Jane Eyre, the Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, The Pride and the Prejudice are all good resources for you to enlarge your vocabulary. When you have a good amount of vocabulary and a good knowledge about grammar, you will be able to speak fluent English because you have things to say and you can say accurately. Remember that fluency in English is accuracy with good pronunciation and correct grammar—not speed.

3.2.3 Recite certain amount of articles

This is a basic way of learning English but also an effective way. Many students whose speaking skills are poor always say they do not know what to say when speaking English. This is the problem of the amount of language input. Their language input is not enough to allow them to speak freely. Speaking is an act of output. In order to fulfill the act of output, one must first have a good amount of input. Reciting articles can be a good way to enlarge the amount of input. There are various kinds of materials for you to recite, such poems, prose, songs, rhymes, passages and so on. The famous English learning book New Concept English is a good resource for you to recite. Articles in this book are written by famous native writers which are standard, classic, interesting and also easy to learn. During the process of reciting, you not only practice your speaking skills, like pronunciation, but also you can extend your vocabulary. It is like killing two birds with one stone. Therefore, to develop speaking skills, reciting articles should not be forgotten by language learners.

3.2.4 Retell stories

Story retelling can be used to practice both your speaking and listening skills. While listening, you can take notes to help you remember information and try to understand it in your own way. After listening, you try to retell the story in your own words with the help of your notes. During this process, your listening, note-taking, and speaking skills are all practiced.

3.2.5 Go out and talk with people

Speaking is a communication skill that requires interaction and real life situation. One can not develop real speaking skills just by sitting in the classroom and learning from textbooks. It is like learning how to drive. One can not learn how to drive from a book. He should go out and try it. The same goes for practice speaking. Through talking with people in real life situations and discussing with people on certain topics, one can quickly improve the speaking skills.

3.2.6 Be confident

Language learners should reduce the fear of speaking and making mistakes. Attitude and confidence are two important psychological parts in developing speaking skills. Remember that no one is born to be able to speak good English and it is inevitable to make mistakes during the process of learning. Therefore, from now on, you should feel confident about yourself and just speak out loud.

4. Conclusion

Listening and speaking are two vital communicative skills which play important roles in all aspects of our life. It is high time we developed these two skills. During this process, there are certain efficient and effective ways that we should follow.

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