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| Teaching Basic Skills |  While teaching a language, it is logically that listening should be the first skill you teach. In fact, however, the majority teachers get their students talking on the first day of class, and many make speech the main center of their lessons. They are inclined to downplay the ability of listening, as do the majority of foreign language textbooks. Yet listening is almost certainly the more significant skill involved in foreign language learning, as it definitely is in the acquisition of one’s native tongue.
It is a well-known fact that we acquire language best by using it in communicative ways. Language learning engages dissimilar mental processes and those processes play definitely secondary roles to those people use when they acquire language naturally. Language develops through exposure to and use of understandable input – target language the learner can understand and assimilate.
Consequently the language learners should realize what they are listening to previous to beginning to speak. Particularly at the initial phase of language acquisition, teachers should avoid oral practice to some degree. In its place, they should have their students focus on understanding what they hear.
A communicative language teacher needs to include active listening into their classes in order to use listening-focused learning. This is done with activities in which the learners show that they comprehend and receive gentle correction when they make a mistake. More advanced students must be openly taught to distinguish reduced language forms heard in colloquial speech. In addition part of aural understanding is learning to decipher nonverbal clues.
Pure listening is not often a good approach for continuous language acquisition. Even if students are still in their silent period a general stage for beginners, in which they speak very little if at all, teachers should give confidence active participation from them. This is the only way to corroborate that they have understood. Participation can be showed as little as a nod or a headshake or with the help of such words as “yes” and “no” in English or their native language. Listening with no speaking is significant for foreign language learners, particularly when their language learning has just begun, but at some level that listening should be participatory.
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