Listening is the Black Sheep of Language Learning Skill ▬ Transparent Language

Listening is the Black Sheep of Language Learning Skills

Listening Skills

Transparent Language: 7.30.2018 

When learning a language, there’s one skill that’s more neglected than the others. It’s underestimated both in terms of its complexity and its utility. It’s less glamorous than speaking, and more difficult to master than reading. Listening, unfortunately, is the black sheep of language learning.

A recently-posted discussion thread on Quora began with the question, “Why is listening so difficult for people studying Spanish?”.

Although, in this case, the question was posed by a learner of Spanish, the sense that listening is a far more difficult skill to master than reading is a feeling shared by many language learners across the full spectrum of languages, and for good reason.

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Why do language learners struggle with listening more than other skills?

The problem comes in the fact that even though listening, as a skill, is much more complex than reading, most classroom-based listening activities fail to move beyond the kinds of highly simplified and inauthentic representations of spoken language that mask most of those complexities.

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A survey of the skill level descriptors for the receptive skills of reading and listening across a number of the most reputable proficiency scales, including the CEFR, ACTFL, and the ILR, would seem to suggest that there is very little difference between these two skills. Consider, for example, the following can-do statements from the CEFR’s self-assessment grid for level A2.

Reading A2

I can read very short, simple texts.

I can find specific, predictable information in simple everyday material such as advertisements, prospectuses, menus and timetables and I can understand short simple personal letters

Listening A2

I can understand phrases and the highest frequency vocabulary related to areas of most immediate personal relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).

I can catch the main point in short, clear, simple messages and announcements

One could almost get the impression that listening is just reading done with the ears, rather than with the eyes, when nothing could be further from the truth. The problem with these proficiency descriptors, and others like them, is that they focus more on the ways that listening and reading are alike than on the ways that they are different. This tendency to downplay the unique challenges of listening has led some to refer to listening as the red-headed stepchild of language proficiency.

Is listening really all that different from reading?

A good illustration of just how much more complex and demanding listening is than reading can be found in the news ticker that crawls across the bottom of the screen on most cable news broadcasts (sometimes called a chyron).

There’s no way to re-read or pause when listening in real time.

The fact that the text moves across the screen at a rate that can be challenging even for some native speakers, let alone non-native speakers, and then disappears into the ether never to be seen again, makes this kind of reading a significantly more challenging undertaking than reading the exact same information would be if it were encountered as static text on the page of a newspaper, where it can not only be read at a pace that is comfortable for the reader, but where it remains available for re-reading or review as the reader works their way through the text, constantly self-monitoring for correct understanding of the author’s communicative intent.

There are no visual clues (spaces, punctuation, etc.) when listening.

Now, let’s try to imagine how the experience might become even more challenging if we were to modify our crawling news ticker to reflect another way in which the spoken word is different from the written word by removing the capitalization, the punctuation, and all of the spaces between the words.

Listeners are exposed to many different accents, voices, and ways of speaking that aren’t present in the written word.

Let’s add another wrinkle to our scrolling news ticker by changing the block print to messy handwriting to simulate the differences in the regional accents and idiosyncratic vocal qualities of the various speakers we listen to on a daily basis.

Listening and speaking are inseparable skills.

When most people think about learning another language, speaking seems to be the skill that first comes to mind. We ask people how many languages they speak, not how many languages they read – and certainly not how many languages they can listen in! When we think about traveling to a foreign country, the first thing many of us think about buying is a phrase book that will teach us how to order dinner in a local restaurant, ask for directions, or talk to shop vendors in the market.

How can you improve your listening proficiency?

While there are no silver bullets that will suddenly or magically simplify the task of listening in another language, there are several practical strategies that can help to build this essential skill.  READ MORE ➤➤

 

Automatic Readability Checker

Based on 7 readability formulas:

Grade Level: 14

Reading Level: difficult to read.

Reader's Age: 21-22 yrs. old

(college level)