Conditionals

 
Teaching Listening
Strategies for Developing Listening Skills
Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition andenables learners to interact in spoken communication.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input,and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.
Listening Strategies
Listening strategies aretechniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.
Top-down strategies arelistener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations thathelp the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include
* listening for the main idea
* predicting
* drawing inferences
*summarizing
Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include* listening for specific details
* recognizing cognates
* recognizing word-order patterns
Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate theirlistening.
* They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
* They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
*They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.
Listening for Meaning...