The audio stories and the development listening skill

 

 UNIVERSIDAD TECNICA DE AMBATO

 

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS Y DE LA EDUCACION

 

CARRERA DE PEDAGOGIA DE LOS IDIOMAS NACIONALES Y EXTRANJEROS 

¨The audio stories and the development listening skill¨

 

Name: Lorena Abril

Date: 11 November 2020

The Problem

In recent years Ecuador has been more demanding with the use of authentic auditory material, owing to the support that it has been given to education within the country, by the government, for this reason educators have been more efficient and show results to the government through assessments applied to students, but unfortunately educational institutions are only based on texts from the Ministry of Education, and additional material is needed to improve the four skills such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. Private institutions are established in the country that it offers a more advanced teaching method, so that the educational requirement becomes higher over time.

The lack of implementation of authentic material such as audio stories, it has as results that the students' learning being limited. Furthermore, it also limits the development of listening skills in students which it could be reflected at the time of rendering exams that require a more advanced level of English and the use of techniques in understanding listening activities. For that reason, the activities that allow students to develop their listening skill at any level of English language learning should be added. 

In the Educational Unit La Salle, the use of auditory activities has not been applied, this is because the teacher is limited to use only the activities of the book, in addition the teacher doesn’t have knowledge of how to take advantage of the technological benefits, currently available. Therefore, this aspect should be considered, since, at present, education has several requirements to execute, and when determining the results, the learning process that it was carried out in the institution is not taken into account.

For this reason, the researcher directs his research to the importance of audio stories material and its influence on the development of auditory skills, especially within the classroom, since it contributes to the better understanding of the sounds of each word.

Independent Variable Theoretical Support

Authentic material for learning

Authentic materials are important methods intended for the audience of native speakers, it also implies samples of real language, not only written but also spoken, typically of that culture (Colorado and Dilley, 2006).

Similarly, Álvarez (2011) states that real or real objects are important for learning a foreign language (English), since their authenticity, vocabulary and grammatical forms arouse interest of students in the target language and culture; while they grant a variety of activities.

Authentic material is important as it was created for academic purposes and plays a necessary role as learning tools, since they are authentic. Authentic material was designed for native speakers, so it is common to distinguish the real language and culture in them. In addition, authentic material is a thing of everyday life (Ianiro, 2007).

To conclude, the authentic material also called realia are real everyday objects that show a legitimate language about a culture, these are used for learning purposes so that students, this allows students to familiarize themselves with authentic expressions, vocabulary and forms grammatical.

Authentic listening material

One could consider that there are several definitions of what it is to listen to authentic material, however, the most relevant are the following:

García & Arreza (2004) states that listening to authentic material is a type of oral or written language samples, which were initially used to communicate between native speakers in different real contexts. For this reason, those are not part of a specific subject, that is, neither the linguistic nor the grammatical point were involved in them.

Any material that has not been created for use in the language teaching-learning process (Nunan, 2009).  It means that the first objective was to listen to the authentic material that has allowed people to share their ideas with each other, however, some experts thought about using it as part of the academic material, in which students could realize how these language productions They expressed themselves in real situations.

Garduño (2005) states that authentic listening materials are radio programs, audio conferences, calls, fax. In distance education, audioconferencing is considered a form of primitive communication that has had a pedagogical approach.

Currently, everyday tools to teach listening are: songs, phone calls, messages, conversations and radio and television broadcasts.

Brown (1990) expresses that the most useful material for foreign students are those that contain many examples of authentic discourse used in a real native context. Therefore, students will be trained to face such situations.

Audiostories

Storytelling is a teaching method in the language class that improves communicative teaching. In developing writing skills, storytelling not only makes the writing procedure motivational, educational, challenging and creative but also helps students know their strengths and weaknesses, as well as helps teachers provide help. suitable for students to reach their potential as English language learners (Karlsson, 2012).

Stories transfer cultural heritage. They are also related to the present time and the last time. This allows students to become aware of the dreams, sufferings, joys and life of their predecessors when they hear stories. Stories are the bridge that takes students from today to the past and describes how a type of historical teaching through stories and an image of the past is open to listeners (Daemi and Ali Farnia, 2013).

 Stories can be a very useful way to illustrate and express complex, multi-dimensional ideas, emotions and information. Telling stories can transfer one's competencies and commitments to others (Sole and Wilson, 2009).

Bouache (2010) stated that the stories keep the interests in the classroom alive and motivate the students, create a comfortable environment and enjoyment environment. To decide whether the hypotheses formulated can be rejected or not, the following steps were taken to select topics, materials and procedures used in the study.

Dependent variable

Linguistic skills

Linguistic or language skills are also named as communicative abilities, and therefore it is the proper way of using the language, depending on social situations. There are four linguistic skills, but a current study pretends to add the oral interaction as another skill because the expression and hearing simultaneously enliven at the beginning of a conversation (Martos F. , 2012).

However, the four skills are the only ones regarded as linguistic skills while learning a language. Hinkel (2017) describes the connection of linguistic skills in two ways: “the direction of communication (in or out) and the method of communication (spoken or written).”

People who use English language to express their ideas have different skills, such as talking by phone, writing letters, listening to radio broadcasts, reading books, etc. It means, this group of people have the basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Harmer, 1991). Thereby, the priority of linguistic skills is the human communication. The capacity of sharing individual thoughts, ideas, or needs with others, and likewise working productively within the society.

Receptive skills

In compliance with SIL International (1999) the receptive skills are the ones in which learnes decode the message to reach a correct perception of what transmitters want to communicate.

In accordance with Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams (2011), receptive skills involve learners’ responses to language rather than producing. In reading, it would be making sense of texts while in listening the focus is on the sounds of language, but always relating the message with the knowledge of the world.

Receptive skills are linguistic skills where the main aim is to understand and assimilate the information or data, in this direction students do not produce the language at all; and that is the reason why they are also named as passive skills.

Actually, they are categorized by their direction of communication, because students have the role of receivers for comprehending the information instead of having an active and direct participation.

Listening skill

Listening skill is defined as a process in which the ideas that the transmitter wants to express are received by the addressee, therefore the meaning is represented with the supporting of the imagination and empathy. This receptive skill is a practice in which the person who receives the message must connect it to previous knowledge (Rost, 2002).

Cruz & Tápanes (2010) in their book, define listening skill as an active process that is not natural, that is why it needs to be taught. Listening ability works in conjunction with the speaking, and indeed the level of these skills are equitable most of the time.

In this active process students acquire listening comprehension abilities for understanding a foreing language. These abilities include:

- Clearly understanding of the message: the listener must have clear global idea of the whole message, it means he does not need to understand every single word, but connect all of them to create the main idea.

- Determine the principal ideas: more than one principal idea can be found in the listening, so students should pay attention to all the ideas given by the speakers to differentiate between the main ideas and the secondary ones.

- Identify speakers’ attitude: most of the time, the listener is not able to see the gestures, or body language; so, he needs to figure out the attitude of the speakers to know, for example, if they are expressing sarcasm.

- Establish the relation between the speakers, speakers’ attitude, and the context: this is probably one of the most important abilities, because the listener should perceive speakers’ relationships, attitudes among each other’s,