Thursday, 12 March 2015

Regaining Lost Listening Skills

Listen and pronounce the language properly

Learning a new language means developing skills that allow students to process what other people say in another language and to communicate what they want to say. The goal of the language learner is to achieve communicative competence.
Why children learn language easily compare to adults? Why adults need lots of time and practice to learn new language? It is because, people learn their native language and stop listening for the sounds those they never heard, and then they lose the ability to pay attention to those new sounds.  
When students want to learn correct pronunciation of English language and they learn lots of spelling rules that take them further away from real sound of that language.
So many times, when I use audio recorder in the adult ESL classrooms for listening skills, they heard what a native speaker said in the audio files and translated it into their own accent. This made me think why? I think because they knew how to say it, in the same way they are using their native language?
Interference from the mother tongue with regards to pronunciation will naturally happen with all the learners. As long as they are clear, it’s okay. It only becomes problem if it impedes intelligibility of speaking.
Students need several practice activities which help new learners to discriminate between sounds.Listening, one of the means of language communication is used most widely in people's daily lives. Listening helps students to pronounce correctly. Write down exactly what they hear, regardless of spelling sometimes helps pronounce correctly. Students have misconception about the sounds of English, that misconception is the basic reason of wrong pronunciation.Listening practice will help students to regain their listening skills. 
By : Aayesha Qureshi 

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