LISTENING STRATEGIES.

In every language the ability of listening is really important, but in students who never had
listened another language, English in this case, it could be hard to develop this skill, we have
to look for ways to help them with this important area.
Like babies who do not understand grammar rules but they learn how to speak, this is the
best example with students, they do not know rules about speaking but they could learn how
to communicate.

One of the most common problem in this case is the shy or uncomfortable feeling when they
speak, so we have to wake up the confidence in the students. We can motivate students
making questions about the topic or audio. In this step there are two important methods; the
top down and the bottom up, let’s know more about them.

● Top down: with it you can use images or keywords with your students to predict the
topic in the audio. They can use the previous knowledge to understand the new
information. For example; students can guess the meaning of a word or understand
the meaning without distraction listening to a conversation and try to guess where it
is happening and try to identify if same ideas are repeated. The top down strategy
is used to identify general ideas.

● Bottom up: with this strategy students need to listen to audios even when they do
not know the vocabulary or grammar structure. If students do not understand or
understand just a few words this is not enough information to know what is
happening but it is necessary to impulse of obtaining knowledge. An example is try to
do a dictation and students could write the words they understand and listening again
students could write more words, because they already know the sounds and
meaning in a second or third time. the bottom up strategy is used to identify
details and comprehension of words with specific tasks.

while the listening is playing students can take notes or write some important information,
this information could be useful when the listening ends and students can solve doubts or
compare information or ideas with others students.

There are four important steps to extract the meaning from a listening task:
1. To figure out the purpose for listening trying to anticipate ideas.
2. To try to recognize specific information.
3. To select the best strategy to apply while the listening is playing; top down or bottom
up.
4. When the listening task is over try to monitor the comprehension fails.

All the listening tasks have to be as close as possible to the reality and define the goal to
achieve with the audio:
● Identification: to recognize the specific aspect of the message.
● orientation: to decide the major facts of the message such as topic or text type.
● Main ideas comprehension.
● Detail comprehension.
 ● Replication: to reproduce the message orally or witeng.

As conclusion is important to say that an important thing is to identify the difficulty of the
listening. Things that are rare to students could be hard to listen to and select audios
according to students’ level.