LANGUAGE IN INDIA

1. i. Listen to and identify the elements that initiate a convesation.
2. ii. Listen and identify the elements that change the topic of the conversation or direct the progress of the conversation.
3. iii. Listen to and identify the natural ways of using the gap fillers used in the language, such as um, ah, etc.
4. iv. Listen to and identify those elements that signify the use of fillers.
5. v. Listen to the intonations, and infer what these signify. Stress in English, significant pauses in Indian languages, and tones in Panjabi and Sindhi, the use of juncture in the target language, etc., will help the students to comprehend the message correctly.
6. The special characteristics of negative exposition in the target language.
7. Use of sentence conjunctives such as but, and, because, etc.
8. Use of sacrcasm. An affirmative sentence may give a negative meaning. It may convey some contempt even. Obviously such expressions have context attestations and also carry different intonation patterns.

20. SELECT NATURAL SENTENCES FOR LISTENING DRILLS

While selecting discourses for training the students to listen to discourses, care must be taken that the selected discourses are real and natural situations. We should ask the native speakers to verify whether the sentences are indeed used the way we wish to present them to our students. In some ways even Hindi language teaching becomes artificial in our classes. For English we tend to create our own sentences that may be natural in the Indian English context, but not so for the native spekers of English.

21. REDUNDANCY FEATURES

The students should be told that it is not always possible to get full information at first instance from the natural speech. That is, the speed with which the natural speech is given to the second language learner may be beyond his capacity to grasp. It is hard to fully understand the dialogues at first instance in the second language. Even if the student is very attentive, he may miss a few points. We need to help the students to look for certain redundancy features. These redundancy features are found in the elements of sounds, and morphological, syntactical, and intonational formations. These features reinforce the focus of the message in a repetitive manner. For example, in a sentence such as Are you willing to join me for a cup of coffee this evening?, the word are signals that the sentence is a question. This is supported by the other features such as the rising intonation. Even if the student fails to listen to the interrogative form are, he may be guided by the rising intonation and this will signify that the question raised is to be answered with Yes, or No. The two features convey the same element of meaning. Hence, one of them is redundant. Yet for a sentence to be natural both the elements are necesssary.

The teacher should identify such redundancies in selected model sentences and ask her students to look for such features in order to understand the meaning of the sentences. These features function as cues to the structural meanings. Students can be very efficient in their listening if they can identify such features. Students may miss a part of the sentence or sentences, but the identification of redundant features helps them to arrive at the meaning generally intended. The very same technique helps also in vocabulary development.

22. GRADATION OF THE LISTENING ACTIVITIES

As stated earlier, the listening skill is the basis for the development of all the other language skills. Since this is the most fundamental skill, and since most learners, whether they learn their mother tongue or learn another language, have great difficulty in developing the listening skill, we should organize our materials from the known to the unknown, and from the simple to the complex. In other words, we need a proper grading of the materials we wish to have our students exposed to.

The material for listening comprehension at an ELEMENTARY LEVEL may consist of the following:

• Simple sentences with repetitive words which give the key points of the sentence.
• Simple conversational situations that are very short.
• Short but complete stories.
• Passages which give simple illustrations in order to explain a point.

After developing the necessary confidence in the students that they can indeed recognize and even understand the new material, we may take them to the next stage: PRIMARY AND UPPER PRIMARY LEVELS.

• More complex sentences that do not have any repetitive words which explain the key points.
• Longer conversations involving various sentence conjuntives, and the use of several points simultaneously at one stretch.
• Longer and complete stories that involve more complicated topics and characters.
• Incomple stories that will inculcate in the students the habit of guessing while they listen to a passage.
• Listening to indirect sources such qas recorded audio tapes, telephone conversations, and radio broadcasts, etc.
• Still at a higher level the materials may have
• • Group conversations
  • Period literature, with varying styles and content. (These passages often help the students to focus on spelling and idiomatic usage, even as these help them understand elements of the culture represented by language.
  • Poetry that usually has a different syntax.
  • More complex sentences involving more than three to four ideas embedded in one sentence.

23. LANGUAGE SKILLS ARE INTER-CONNECTED

Remember that listening comprehension is not a skill that can be mastered once for all and then ignored while other skillsa re developed. There should be constant practice with increasingly difficult and stylistically variant materials. By its very nature, the listening comprehension increases with the growing familiarity with the vocabulary and structures of the language. Students need to develop an inclination to listen, and if they are interested in listening to a variety of materials and a variety of persons, they will soon develop excellent listening in the target language. And this inclination is also an important key to the development of other language skills.

24. SOME LISTENING EXERCISES

• One letter, one word. Listen to individual words and recognize these words through pointing out to the object or performing the action indicated by such words.
• Story-telling by the teacher, for total immersion with no particular emphasis on any item. This helps the students to attune their ears to the melody of the language.
• Testing the level of comprehension.
• Guided questions.
• Information related to the environment of the listener.
• Yes-No questions.
• Meaning changes caused by the changes in the sound units.
• Predicting the sound that may follow.
• Comprehending the full meaning or the intended meaning of culture specific, idiomatic, sarcastic, and negative expressions.
• Exposure to different dialects, registers, styles, and pronunciation.
• Comprehension of the non-verbal communication strategies.
• Dialogue listening.
• Listening to telephone conversations.
• Listening to poems.
• Listening to modern and period literature.

25. PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

• Presence of "foreign" sounds in the material or in the pronunciation of the characters.
• Teacher's pronunciation.
• Monotony caused by the length of the class or assignment, or the method of teaching, etc.
• Sentence complexity.
• Language style used.
• Diglossic nature of the language.
• Mixing the speech varieties.
• Lack of coherence in the speech the students are exposed to.
• Dialectal usage.
• Disinterest of the students.
• Unfamiliarity of the topic.

In the next article we will explore the aspects of teaching speaking skill.

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