Teaching Listening Skills to Young Learners
through “Listen and Do” Songs
Number 3 | English Teaching Forum
Listening
skills and young learners
Listening is the
receptive use of language, and since the goal is to make sense of the speech,
the focus is on meaning rather than language (Cameron 2001). Sarıçoban (1999)
states that listening is the ability to
identify and understand what others are saying. For learners, listening is how
spoken language becomes input (i.e., it is the first stage of learning a new
language). In the classroom, this happens by listening to the teacher, a CD, or
other learners. It is the process of interpreting messages—what people say.
Two
theories of speech perception portray listeners as having very different roles.
In the first view, listeners play a passive role and simply recognize and
decode sounds, and in the second view, listeners play an active role and
perceive sounds by accessing internal articulation rules to decode speech
(Crystal 1997). Whether speech perception is active or passive, or a
combination of both, Phillips (1993) says that listening tasks are extremely
important in the primary school setting, providing a rich source of language
data from which children begin to build up their own ideas of how the foreign
language works. This knowledge is a rich source that YLs draw on to produce
language.
Listening is the initial stage in first and second language
acquisition. According to Sharpe (2001), the promotion of children’s speaking
and listening skills lies at the heart of effective learning in all subjects of
the primary curriculum. Therefore, ESL/EFL teachers have to make the
development of children’s listening skills a key aim of primary teaching and
equip them with the best strategies for effective listening.
Linse (2005) also considers the teaching
of listening skills as foundational to the development of other language
skills. We should, however, be aware that any kind of listening comprehension
activity needs to be well guided with clear aims. To this end, Ur (1996) argues
that a listening purpose should be provided in the definition of a pre-set
task. The definition of a purpose (a defined goal, as in the “wake up” example)
enables the listener to listen selectively for significant information.
Providing the students with some idea of what they are going to hear and what
they are asked to do with it helps them to succeed in the task; it also raises
motivation and interest. The fact that learners are active during the listening,
rather than waiting until the end to do something, keeps the learners busy and
helps prevent boredom.
Songs and young learners
The most prominent features of songs that reinforce language
acquisition include their rhythmic and repetitive nature and the joy that the
association between melody and content brings to the learning activity. Children
have a keen awareness of rhythm, and they have not yet experienced the anxiety
that can accompany learning a second language (Krashen 1981). Therefore, songs
are considered to be a sine qua non of teaching ESL/EFL to YLs. I feel
that among the many advantages of using songs in YL ESL/EFL classrooms, the
most striking ones are the following.
Songs
are key to primary practice
Most primary school teachers generally
use songs as a teaching technique, and Cameron (2001) claims that the use of
songs and rhymes is also important for YLs in foreign language classrooms.
Likewise, Johnstone (2002) claims that teachers of YLs may make an important
contribution to children’s early language education by introducing their
classes to recorded songs. Demirel (2004) makes the strongest claim when he
argues that the most effective way to teach listening comprehension,
pronunciation, and dictation to YLs is through teaching songs.
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