Teaching Listening Skills

The importance of teaching listening and speaking skills in the classroom to second language (L2) learners stays vital to develop and integrate with other skills taught. In the acquisition of English, reading and writing skills are most developed, but one communicates through listening and speaking. To be a good listener and speaker, these skills need developing, especially if travelling abroad. Listening and speaking tend to be the more complicated acquisition skills, and challenging to acquire when one does not live in an English-speaking country, as there are not enough opportunities to practice these skills.
The Purpose of Communication
English aids communication and interaction with others, purposely for business, academics, personal development,

The importance of learning speaking skills constructs from the ability to perform conversation in language, and give learners the ability to use the language correctly and effectively in communication. Speaking not only relates to saying words, it equally relates to conveying a message using words.
When dealing with the speaking process, the two variations for performing tasks include:
1. Direct approach: known as the natural approach, presented orally using actions and pictures. Grammar rules taught stay generalized and learnt from practice and experience in the target language. The students’ native language under no circumstance permits speaking, and focus on only using the target language with no translations.
2. Indirect approach: the learner acquires language indirectly, constructing or transforming language into meaning, through acquiring language indirectly using abstract concepts, patterns, gestures, facial expressions, and voice tones to communicate a

The student should understand spoken words, through representation of answering, displaying a listening process. The necessity of both speaking and listening roles needs incorporation.
2. Provide students with topical related information, to enable the application of language with regards to world related topics, and develop long term memory and impact speaking performance.
3. Correct students’ errors positively, and support and persuade them while speaking. Directly correcting students’ errors demotivates them and prevents talking.
4. Motivate students’ positively, and remain sensitive to language pronunciation and accent.
5. Offer students’ the opportunity in selecting choice of topic. The lack of vocabulary influences understanding and speaking, and involving the student results in helping the speaker feel comfortable, decrease anxiety, persuade speaking, encourage self-confidence, improve vocabulary knowledge, and improve speaking skills to interact with others, and learn from choice of topics and learners’