Part 1 Understanding spoken English

1 Real-life listening

1.1 Purpose and expectation

1.2 Response

1.3 Visibility of the speaker

1.4 Environmental clues

1.5 Shortness

1.6 Informal speech

Redundancy

'Noise'

Colloquial language

Auditory character

2 Listening to English as a foreign language

2.1 Hearing the sounds

2.2 Understanding intonation and stress

2.3 Coping with redundancy and 'noise'

2.4 Predicting

2.5 Understanding colloquial vocabulary

2.6 Fatigue

2.7 Understanding different accents

2.8 Using visual and aural environmental clues

3 Planning exercises

3.1 Listening materials

Producing suitable discourse

Using recordings

3.2 The task

A pre-set purpose

Ongoing learner-response

Motivation

Success

Simplicity

Feedback

3.3 Visual materials

Contextualization

Learning and motivation

Pictures and diagrams as task-bases

Part 2 Suggestions for classroom activities

4 Listening for perception

4.1 At word-level

Oral activities

Reading and writing activities

Meaning-based activities

4.2 At sentence-level

Oral activities

Reading and writing activities

Meaning-based activities

5 Listening for comprehension

5.1 Listening and making no response

Following a written text

Listening to a familiar text

Listening aided by visuals

Informal teacher-talk

Entertainment

5.2 Listening and making short responses

Obeying instructions

Ticking off items

True/false exercises

Detecting mistakes

Aural cloze

Guessing definitions

Noting specific information

Pictures

Maps

Ground-plans

Grids

Family trees

Graphs

5.3 Listening and making longer responses

Repetition and dictation

Paraphrase

Translation

Answering questions

Answering comprehension questions on texts

Predictions

Fillinggaps

Summarizing

5.4 Listening as a basis for study and discussion

Problem-solving

Jigsaw listening

Interpretative listening

Evaluative and stylistic analysis

A postscript:conversation

Bibliography

Index