АБЫЛАЙ ХАН атындағы ҚазХҚжӘТУ ХАБАРШЫСЫ «ФИЛОЛОГИЯ ҒЫЛЫМДАРЫ» сериясы
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4. Different environmental features
Authentic listening materials have background noise while inauthentic listening
materials have no background noise. It occurs when the listener cannot receive or
understand information because of interference. ―Noise maybe caused not only by
some outside disturbance, but also by a temporary lack of attention on the part of the
listener or by the fact that a word or a phase was not understood because it was
mispronounced or misused or because the listener simply do not know it. In any case,
a gap is left which is filled, as far as the listener is concerned, by a meaningless
buzz‖. In an informal conversation the listener may request a clarification and
redundancy may often help him to construct the meaning. However, the inauthentic
listening materials are all graded to suit the level of the foreign language learners
without any ―noise‖.
We can see that authentic listening materials reflect the naturalness of spoken
language, which can narrow the distance between the learners and the actual social
reality. If students constantly receive the authentic listening input, they will find it
easier to communicate with native speakers in real life, and their true listening ability
can be developed.
Factors to consider when selecting authentic
listening materials
A. Learner‘s language proficiency level and the linguistic demands of the
listening text Teachers need to bear the following questions in mind:
Is the critical vocabulary in the recording (words central to an understanding of
a topic) likely to be familiar to the listener?
To what extent does the task rely upon the ability to decode the linguistic
content?
To what extent can the task be achieved without a full understanding of the
linguistic content?
Learner level is an important factor in selecting authentic listening materials.
Spontaneously spoken language is too complex to be introduced in the classroom in
the first stage of foreign language learning, but in the second or intermediate stage of
foreign language learning, all the factors of the spontaneously spoken language come
into action. So for the lower
level learners, we should provide easier materials such as
the short headline type reports, audio and radio advertising, or short news broadcasts
or children‘s songs. For the intermediate levels, there is a wider range of choices.
Four or five minutes TV or radio news reports, the slightly adopted movies, or even
whole TV programs can be included. As for the advanced level students, they have
learned the target language for years and have the ability of dealing with the possible
difficulties with their linguistic competence and world knowledge. Teachers now can
choose some political speeches, ceremonial formulae, gossip, family quarrels etc. as
the teaching materials. These materials are either very formal (ceremonial formulae,
political speeches) or fairly informal (gossip, family quarrels), which are considered
very difficult for foreign language learners.
ИЗВЕСТИЯ КазУМОиМЯ имени АБЫЛАЙ ХАНА серия «ФИЛОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ НАУКИ»
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B. Learners‘ interest and the intrinsic interest of
the topic
Teachers have to think how easy it is to create interest in the topic at a pre-
listening stage and how familiar the topic is to the students. Learner‘s interest is
another important factor that should be taken into consideration when selecting
authentic listening materials. An applied linguist once said that it‘s no good trying to
get your students fascinated by a text on the latest art movies if they are all fans of
action films. You might as well save your time and energy and just use the textbook.
So it‘s necessary for teachers to know students‘ likes and dislikes on listening
materials and it‘s wise for them to make a survey among students before the
selection. For example, the teacher gives each student a form like the following one,
and asks them to fill it, and then makes a summary of the survey. In this way, the
selected materials may be accepted by most of the students and successful listening
teaching may achieve.
C. Cultural appropriateness
If there is any cultural specific content in the recording,, the teachers should
consider whether they can reduce its comprehensibility to the listeners from other
cultural backgrounds or whether it can potentially cause cultural offence.
D. Cognitive demands
How complex are the ideas in the recording? How dense are they? How
complex are the relationships between the ideas? How complex is the overall
argument structure
E. Exploitability
Can you design any learning tasks based on the text to ensure the learners‘
comprehension? There are other factors need to be considered: the information
density, the accent, the speed of the speaker, the relevance of the listening material to
the syllabus and the students etc.
It is the advantages that attract us to accept and
use authentic materials in foreign language classroom, but when using them, it‘s
inevitable that we‘ll face some problems. For most students, the challenges are that
authentic materials may be ―too culturally based‖ and often contain ―difficult
language, unneeded vocabulary items and complex language structures [4]. So
students are required to have sufficient cultural background knowledge and a large
amount of vocabulary and a good command of grammar knowledge. Therefore,
lower-level students are easily de-motivated when confronted with this kind of
materials. Authentic materials often create problems to teachers too. Since the
language of authentic listening materials is difficult, teachers need to do special
preparation before class that is often time consuming. These disadvantages can be
avoided in selecting and lesson planning. Actually if used appropriately, the
disadvantages can be turned into advantages.
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