Listening: The Cinderella Skills In Language Learning

Today, in the world of language learning and teaching, nobody turns a blind eye to the very fact of skill integration. All scholars and theorists in the field of language teaching and learning believe that teaching skills and elements of language results in a better learning outcome because skills and elements of the language are mutually enhanced. Besides, in skill integration approaches, listening is one of the most crucial elements of learning and teaching in both EFL and ESL contexts.

Listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning. All too often, it has been overlooked by its elder sister: speaking. For most people, being able to claim knowledge of a second language means being able to speak and write in that language. Listening

According to Brown and Yule (1983), listening comprehension means that a person understands what he/she has heard. If he/she learns the text through hearing it, he/she will understand it. Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) defined listening comprehension as the product of teaching methodology and is matched by terms such as speech understanding, spoken language understanding, speech recognition, and speech perception. Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension as an interactive process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning. Comprehension is a specialized type of reasoning process that brings about a mental representation of a message when attempting to understand both oral and written text (Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005). In Ll learning, listening comprehension is strongly related to reading comprehension because both depend on the ability to interpret words, sentences, and larger units of text. Listening comprehension remains the least researched area of the four language skills, not only due to its implicit nature but also as a result of the difficulty in observing comprehension processes. Listening comprehension begins with an acoustic signal, speech sounds that form words. The listener must derive the meaning of the words and group them into meaningful units as a foundation for

Phonological awareness refers to an individual 's awareness of the phonological structure, or sound structure, of words (Gillon, 2004). Phonological awareness is one component of a larger phonological processing system used for speaking and listening( Catts, & Kamhi, 2005; Wagner, & Torgesen, 1987; Wagner, Torgesen, Laughon, Simmons, & Rashotte, 1993). Phonological awareness is different from other phonological abilities in that it is a metalinguistic skill, requiring conscious awareness and reflection on the structure of language (Gillon, 2004; Mattingly, 1972). Other phonological abilities: such as attending to speech, discriminating between sounds, holding sounds in memory: can be performed without conscious reflection. However, these other phonological abilities are prerequisite to the development of phonological awareness. Therefore, general listening skills are often among those included in phonological awareness instruction.

According to Lonigan, Burgess, and Anthony (2000), phonological awareness skills develop in a predictable pattern similar across languages progressing from larger to smaller units of sound (that is, from words to syllables to onsets and syllable rimes to phonemes). It should be noted that the acquisition of phonological awareness skills does not progress in a linear sequence; rather, children continue to refine skills they have acquired while they learn new skills (Treiman, & Zukowsky,