In the past, listening was assumed to be a passive skill and considered the lowliest in terms of its impact on the learners. This was due to the dominant influences of audiolinguism wherein its primary concern was on teaching learners to speak the second language. With this, the belief seemed to be, that if one learned to speak the language, listening comprehension would occur simultaneously. Aside from that, listening was merely used as a tool to teach speaking and was not an instructional goal in itself. If ever there was an instructional procedure to teach listening, it was done directly. The end-product was a skill building in speaking more so in reading and writing, but not the development of listening comprehension skills.
Today, listening is known an as active process. To become better listeners, they must employ active thinking as they listen, active attitude about understanding, and active strategies for making sense of what they hear .The role of listening as a tool in the learning of a language has now taken place within language teaching to develop systematically alongside the other three skills (speaking, reading and writing). Listening to understand meaning is clearly recognized to be primary importance in the learning of a second language.
It is observed that most students with the absence of books to read find difficulty in understanding texts be it in the form of a poem or a short story given orally by the teacher. This problem further affected their class performance on other macro skills such as speaking, reading and writing.
Based on the findings of the a study, the following recommendations are presented. After having found that the students exhibited satisfactory performance in inferential and critical dimensions, students should be provided questions that elicit their inferential, critical answers derived from the listening selection. Teachers should not have the students listen for facts all the time. Teachers should provide pre-listening activities, so that the students are prepared on what they will hear and can predict. Teachers should give the students a purpose or reason for listening and ask them to listen for something specific.
By: Mary Jane V. Dela Rosa | Teacher II | Limay National High School
