COMPREHENSION questions are by far the most common type of listening tasks our students are given in class. Sometimes they will be multiple choice questions, sometimes true false statements and sometimes open W/H questions. In many ways there is nothing wrong with this. But how often do we really do these kinds of tasks in our everyday lives? Do you sit down to watch TV or listen to the radio with a set of questions in front of you? Such types of activities aren't developing students' abilities to understand and process what they've heard in any meaningful kind of way.
Nik Peachey, a teacher, trainer and material writer at The British Council, encourage teachers to adopt an approach to dealing with listening texts that approximates more closely an authentic experience.
Teachers should select tasks that are "authentic". It means real tasks that real native speakers would do if they were listening to a similar text. "Authentic" tasks should be ones that resemble as much as possible the original purpose for which the text was intended. If we listen to a train announcement we do so in order to make sure we know the time of the train we want to catch. If we listen to someone giving directions we do so in order to be able to find a destination. The purpose of the text should define the task teachers assign students. In doing so students develop their abilities to understand and process what they hear rather than just achieving a score.
Language is a constantly developing form and when we listen in our native language we still hear words that are new to us or that we may not fully understand. This doesn't lead us to check lists of unknown words in dictionaries or learn word lists before we listen. We have evolved a process of deducing the meaning of new words. This is a process teachers also need to develop in students.
Students need to be challenged and to struggle to find meaning for themselves, with teachers' guidance and support. To make this happen, teachers need to do less pre-teaching and more developmental and post listening work so that students' first listening to a text is as close as possible to an authentic experience. Teachers can then use this first listening experience diagnostically to assess the problems that they are having and what they need to do to overcome those problems.
