A. Listening strategy to reinforce listening skills in the lesson plan
One can incorporate the use of summarizing in the lesson to help the listener understand and remember the main ideas captured in a presentation. A summary of the main points will assist the listener to remember and understand ideas in a presentation. Summarizing and paraphrasing a speaker’s speech helps the listener to increase the chance of recalling. Notes taken in the course of the presentation will help the listen to make future reference (Cordella & Musgrave, 2010). To learn a language depends on the listening strategy. Listening provide an aural input that act as a basis to acquire language to enable learner's interact with others through communication. An effective language instructor will instruct students to change the listening behavior that matches an appropriate strategy in every listening situation. In a top-down strategy, the listener uses the background information of the topic. The background information will activate the expectation to assist the listener to interpret the message and anticipate other messages. In a bottom-up strategy, the listener will rely on the language in the message in the grammar and the sounds so as to derive meaning.
B. An activity to develop focus and attention
The listening area should be free of distractions to enable the listener to have focus on the speaker (Jackson, 2013). The listener should face the speaker directly and put off phones to avoid interferences. The learner can participate in making summaries to illustrate a listening comprehension and clarification of the presentation. Listening serves as the first language skills in children followed closely by language arts skills. An oral skill and the listening enable literacy development. Students face the challenge of transiting from one language to another in the academic learning since it places an additional load on the listening ability. The effort to improve listening uses different approaches to enhance the success in the classroom. One of the approach focuses on the physical aspect of listening to enhance the success in the classroom. The difficulty with listening and the literacy skills extend over the childhood years. The effort to improve listening uses the physical aspect of listening and acoustic issues in the classroom (Jackson, 2013). Teachers use amplification of devices that decrease interference from high levels of sound in the classroom. Student strategies focus on the word instruction to improve visual and auditory stimuli that demand the listener’s attention in the critical details of the reading process. An underlying premise targets unique types of input as the brain functions optimal for reading. Activities in listening strategies process information in the appropriate starting points.
C. Supporting the learning of listening skills
A listener must use active and consistent skills to avoid forgetting important ideas in the presentation. A listen has to clarify the meaning of the presentation to understand the purpose. The listener should remain focused on the speaker such as maintaining a firm eye contact and the use of body language. A listener can respond to the speaker using a non-verbal response or verbal response. A listener should focus the presentation while minimizing on the internal and external distractions. A listener should have an open mind approach to comprehend the idea from the speaker’s viewpoint. A listener should not interrupt the speaker (Cordella & Musgrave, 2010). All the questions to the speaker should come after the end of the message. The listener should apply active listening strategies by interacting with the speaker in the process of learning. Active listening entails the use of verbal and the non-verbal response, focus attention on the speaker, encouraging a speaker, and making notes for future reference. In active listening children take turns selecting a favorite character in the story and identify what the character does in the pantomime. Some of the children in the group guess the character pantomimed. Groups of students assign a certain phase and listen to oral reading as they chant a character they hear.
D. The importance of listening in the development of language
Listening helps to develop language since it is one way that exposes language in the use of verbal communication. The distinction between listening and hearing is that hearing is a physical way to receive sound while listening is a process to decode and understand the sounds. Babies learn to speak by mimicking sounds from their parents as they learn to communicate with other people. As students listen to auditory input, they can discover new information that is applicable as knowledge. Children can respond to auditory input that will enable them to develop language skills. Listening and speaking are crucial parts of communication. Language development enables people to hear and speak. Children should have stimuli to enable them facilitate language development.
A listening task requires students to integrate lesson content as they select specific types of information to process, isolate, and remember the linguistic element of information. Listening depends on some of the factors such as the environment, learner-specific skills, and task complexity. The poor eye contact, body movement, and talking in the course of the lesson indicate a behavioral problem in listening. The problem can lead to a mismatch between the student experience and the teacher in the learning environment. A learner can lack motivation to listen due to lack of realization of the importance of the speaker’s message. Additionally, the listener may lack confidence in the application of skills necessary for listening to learn.
References
Bond, C. D. (2012). An Overview of Best Practices to Teach Listening Skills. International Journal of Listening, 26(2), 61-63.
Cordella, M., & Musgrave, S. (2010). Oral communication skills of international medical graduates: Assessing empathy in discourse. Communication & Medicine, 6(2), 17-28.
Jackson, D. (2013). Business graduate performance in oral communication skills and strategies for improvement. The International Journal of Management Education, 23, 34.45.
