TEACHING AN INTERACTIVE LISTENING BY USING VIDEO IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TEACHING AN INTERACTIVE LISTENING BY USING VIDEO IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Presented by  :

Ikfi Dwi Andina        2813123080    TBI 5C

Ikvi Nurila Muativa  2813123081    TBI 5C

Khoirotin Ni’mah      2813123090    TBI 5C

IAIN Tulungagung, East Java

Abstract: Listening is one of the basic skills in language learning. Everyone who wants to learn a language, they have to master all of the language skills and components. Teaching listening skill in English as Foreign Language (EFL) is one of the foreign language teacher’s job. To getting a success in their students, a teachers have to know how to teach listening well. In the other hand, usually a students feel bored with a passive listening class, it was a big problem for teachers to teach them. There are a lot of teaching listening strategies by using some media, but to overcome this problem, making an interactive listening class by using video is an alternative way to reduce the students’ bored.

Keywords: teaching in EFL, an interactive listening, by using video

            In this modern era, English is one of the important language. Especially in this country, English is not only as second language but it is as foreign language. Almost all aspects use it, such as tourism, economic, education, social and daily life. In learning English as foreign language, a foreign language learner will learn language skills, for example  listening, writing, reading and speaking and also listening components, such as grammar, vocabularies and pronunciation. This article will focus on teaching listening, especially an interactive teaching by using video.

Listening involves a sender (a person, a radio, or a television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Both L1 and L2 models of the listening process, Anderson and lynch (1988) as cited in Marianne and elite (2000 : 102) acknowledge that listening has both top-down and bottom-up aspect. Top-down listening processes involve activation of schematic knowledge and contextual knowledge. The bottom-up level of the listening process involves prior knowledge of the language system (i.e phonology, grammar, vocabulary).

There are two purpose of listening interactional and transactional. Interactional is language to fulfill an interactional communicative function with other people. As social phenomena interactional use of language content such as weather, food, and beautiful thing.  Transactional is language use focuses in attention such as speech, news, lecturing etc.

In teaching listening in EFL, students able to understand of what they have heard is very important, but there is another thing which have considered from it, there is relationship from student to understand and apply in real time. There are some problems which raise in teaching listening, such as the students feel bored with a passive listening class. Teachers have to know why did their students feel bored and also determine which strategy is suitable for them and making them active in listening class.

Usually in teaching listening teacher just force their students to understand the listening material, which called comprehensive listening. So students didn’t get chance to show their ability, but it was rather different with interactive listening. In interactive listening, teacher may also involved their student in listening activity in order to students are active and able to immitate or speak in English. By using video, the students are expected to understand listening material and more attractive in listening class.

TEACHING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE

In teaching English as a foreign language, teachers have to know what strategies are used in conducting it based on the specification of language skills and components. In general, these seven strategies are designed to help teachers meet the needs of all the students in their classes and to help make the mainstream classroom more inclusive for EFLs.

a.                   Provide comprehensible input for EFLs.

b.                  Make lessons visual.

c.                   Link new information to prior knowledge.

d.                  Determine key concepts for the unit and define language and content objects for each lesson.

e.                   Modify vocabulary instruction for EFLs.

f.                   Use cooperative learning strategies.

g.                  Modify testing and homework for EFLs.

(English EFL retrive from http://www.english-efl.com/teach-english/teaching-tips/seven-teaching-strategies/)

THE PROCESS OF TEACHING LISTENING

According to Brown (1990:144) stated that if you are trying to teach somebody something, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you are trying to teach. It means that teacher have to understand about what they will be taught to their students and also how to teach them. John (2002:242) in his article which codified in Richard’s book stated that from the late 1960s, practitioners recognized the importance of listening and began to set aside time for practicing the skill. A relatively standard format for the listening lesson developed at this time, they are pre-listening, listening, and post-listening.

1.      PRE-LISTENING

Pre-listening is the first stage in teaching listening process. Pre-listening is the activities are thing teacher do before listening activity in order to prepare and give motivation for listening class. Usually the form of pre-listening is recall their background knowledge, involving brain storming vocabulary, reviewing of grammar or discussing the topic of the listening material.

2.      LISTENING

Listening is the second stage in teaching listening process, and listening is main of teaching listening process. In this stage the teacher start the teaching listening with give the material to student. And the student listen carefully and try to understand the material.

            “In the early 1980 it was popular to assume that only top-down skills needed to be enhanced to improve L2 listening comprehension. However, it is now more generally acknowledged (cf. Peterson, 1991) that both top down and bottom-up listening skill should be integrated and explicitly treated pedagogically to improve L2 listening comprehension.” (cf. Peterson, (1991) as cited in Marianne and Elite (2000: 105))

Top-down listening process involves activitation of schematic knowledge and contextual knowledge.

1.             Schematic knowledge have two types of prior knowledge.

a.                       Content schemata: to explain of background information on the topic.

b.                       Formal schemata how student can determine of the purpose of listening.

2.             Contextual knowledge: how to understanding of a specific listening situation.(the student can explain who the participant, what the settings, what the topic and the purpose in listening section)

                      

Bottom-up of the listening process to involves prior knowledge of a language system like a phonology (focus on the sound that form word), grammar (focus on grammar), and vocabulary (focus on a words).

When designing listening activities for your students, it is important to follow these 6 principles as compiled by Brown (2001):

1.                  In an interactive, four-skills curriculum, make sure that you don’t overlook the importance of techniques that specifically develop listening comprehension competence;

2.                  Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating;

3.                  Utilize authentic language and contexts;

4.                  Carefully consider the form of listener’s responses;

5.                   Encourage the development of listening strategies;

6.                  Include both of bottom-up and top-down listening strategies.

During the teachers come into this stage, they will do some activities in teaching listening. As Jerry G.G (2000:147-154) stated that there are a lot of variety of  listening activities which can used by the teacher such as identifying linguistic features, a stress and rhytm listening activity, a minimal pairs listening pairs activity, responding to request and commands, interacting as a listener which included chat, eavesdroping, and matching activity, and etc. Every activities have advantages and disadvantages, so teachers have to selected which activity is required by the students and appropriate with his/her listening objectives.

3.      POST- LISTENING

Post-listening is the last stage in teaching listening process. Post-listening is the activities are thing teacher do after listening activity in order to know to what extent student can understand the listening material. Post listening can be done by repeat the sentence, retell, teacher can ask the student about the content of listening material or make summaries from the listening material.

THE STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AN INTERACTIVE  LISTENING

Actually the main goal of teaching listening is students are expected to understand about message or context what they have heard in listening material, in the other hand if we flash back to the purpose of listening, there are transactional and interactional functions. Both of them not only need a comprehension of the context but also need some feedback, so an interactive listening is including top-down and bottom-up process which focus on students’ attention on how they can maintain social interactive relation. Lynch (1998) as cited in Murcia and Olshtain (2000:105) stated that they call both of transactional and interactional function as nonreciprocal and reciprocal process. 

The strategies of teaching listening have been stated in Murcia and Olshtain (2000:103). There are a lot strategies which can use in teaching listening.

Listening strategies include :

a.     Extract an important detail from ongoing speech.

b.    Identify the gist of a segment.

c.     Predict what will come next in segment.

Medelson (1995, 1998) outlines how to teach strategy-based L2 listening :

a.     Raise learner awareness of the power and value of using strategies.

b.    Use pre-listening activities to activities learner’s background knowledge.

c.     Make clear to learners what they are going to listen and why .

d.    Provide guide listening activities designed to provide a lot of practice in using particular strategy (e.g listening for name or dates) using simplified data initially, if needed.

e.     Practice the strategy using real data with focus on content and meaning.

f.     Use what has been comprehended take notes on a lecture to prepare a summary, fill in a form to gather data, and so forth.

g.    Allow for self-evaluation so that learners can assess how accurate and complete their listening has been (Vandergift, in press)

Metacognition is also type of strategy that learners can use to enhance L2 listening. Metacognition involves the planning, regulating, monitoring, and management of listening. Metacognitive strategies give learners an overview of the listening process. They allow for prediction, for monitoring of errors or breakdowns, and for evaluation (Vandergift, 1997)

VIDEO

“Creating specific lessons for different language skills is challenging and time consuming for English teacher, but it is definietly worth the effort. In my experience, teaching language skills through mechanical exercises and traditional fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and multiple choice asseessment does not interest students as much as we expect.” Yassaei, Shahla (2012:12)

Start from that statement above, can be concluded that teacher have to make a interesting class while conducting the teaching language skills. There are many ways in which EFL/ESL teachers can use of the media in listening class, for example radio, video, song etc. In interactive language teaching the teacher are expected to use a media which can provide good material and also do not make students feel bored. Teaching listening by using video is an alternative media which can improve the students’ motivation. Video is one of audiovisual media which represent picture and sound.

HOW TO USE VIDEO

            Integerating videos lessons creates enticing visual and a special interactive environment in the EFL classroom. Teaching listening through videos also allows teachers to be creative when designing language lessons, especially in interactive listening.

According to Harmer (2007:310); Gebhard (2000:156) suggests a variety of viewing techniques when using film and videos in listening activities, including:

Silent viewing : students view video material without sound to let student consider what is going on and guess what speakers are doing and saying.

Soundtrack only: student hear the soundtrack without the picture. Based on what they hear, they speculate on what speakers look like, the setting, and location

Beginning only: student view the beginning of a sequence, then predict what will happen next.

Ending only: student view the ending and consider what happen earlier.

Split viewing(one): some student view the material without sound. other listen without viewing. Groups come together to create a fuller understanding of a context and content.

Split viewing(two): half the class sits with back to screen. Half can see the screen. Both can hear. Pairs then build a  fuller understanding of context and content.

            After administering those techniques above in teaching listening, teachers ask to the students to conclud what they have heard in listening material. So, teacher are able to see students’ interaction in the class and also knowing to what extent students understand the material. Finally teachers can assess their students performance easily.

            Based on the purpose of the listening activities, can be concluded that teachers should make their listening class more interesting and using student-centered strategies. It means that teachers have to create an interactive class. An interactive class is conducted by using video. Students not only can understand the material, but also to be more active in listening class.

REFERENCES

Brown, G. 1990. Listening to Spoken English 2^nd edition. New York: Pearson Education Longman.

Brown. 2001. Teaching by Principles an Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. White plains, New York: Wesley Logman

English EFL retrive from http://www.english-efl.com/teach-english/teaching-tips/seven-teaching-strategies/

Field, J. 2002. The Changing Face of Listening. Richard, J.C. and Renandya, W.A. Methodology in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge university press.

Gebhard, J. G. 2000 ,Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language:

Ann arbor : the university of Michigan press.

Harmer, J. 2007. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th edition. UK: Pearson Longman

Murcia, M.C. and Olshtain, E. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. USA :Cambridge university press.

Yassaaei, Shahla. 2012. Number 1- English Teaching Forum. United Kingdom. Retrive from

http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/50_1_4_yassaei.pdf