Different types of Listening Materials

Listening texts can be classified according to the contents, complexity, authenticity, sphere, theme, quantity, etc. The linguistic and thematic level of listening input and its adequacy to general teaching purposes or concrete goals of each lesson are defined by a sort of criteria. The main language and content elements of the particular listening text mostly provide the style and type of working on it, though this does not exclude the general approach. Listening texts can be classified according to the contents, complexity, authenticity, sphere, theme, quantity, etc. The linguistic and thematic level of listening input and its adequacy to general teaching purposes or concrete goals of each lesson are defined by a sort of criteria. The main language and content elements of the particular listening text mostly provide the style and type of working on it, though this does not exclude the general approach. Thus, for example language work takes much more time and place at pre-listening level than at while or post-listening stage as the attention here is essentially focused on the gist of the listening material. According to A. Anderson a recent survey of the preferences for particular published listening materials among EFL teachers working in Britain, Europe, and Japan suggests that the following are among the reasons for teachers' satisfaction with particular listening materials: 1) good for starting discussions 2) can be used for self-access learning 3) contains a variety of tasks 4) entertaining and amusing 5) easy to use 6) practices guessing from context 7) uses authentic material 8) integrates different skills The selection of listening activities (making a list of the participants or giving their description) is affected not only by the level of the material itself, but by the language level of learners as well. Quite often it is necessary to pre-teach lexical and grammatical units owing to the linguistic difficulties, sphere and topic of the text. Sometimes it is better to explain the meaning of new language elements at while listening level. Some of the texts demand working on their stylistic peculiarities beforehand especially if learners are quite ignorant to them. Dialogue and monologue are universally acknowledged to be the main types of oral comprehension. Most of the listening text should contain dialogues for general ELT course, as they are the significant part of authentic * Ph. D., High School Project Director, IBSU, [email protected], [email protected] IBSU International Refereed Multi-diciplinary Scientific Journal