As a beginner language learner, it’s pretty difficult to understand dawistekikni as meaning I didn’t know that. Improving listening skills is a challenging process for many language learners, and is also challenging for language teachers. This is why language teachers from Linguapolis and the Ghent University Language Centre (UCT) attended an inspiring workshop with Chrissy Hosea, and they now wetewetwel.
Do you ever dare to sing along loudly to songs on the radio? We do. Well, up to the point where we no longer recognise the words and have to resort to humming.
Recognising words in a foreign language is often harder than we think, even if we know those words. It’s because when we’re listening, we rely on sounds, intonation and stress patterns that we know from our own mother tongue. For example, in Chinese, there’s no acoustic difference between [r] and [l], making it very difficult for native Chinese speakers to hear the difference between rice and lice .
What’s more, real spoken language is often very different from the written version, like with dakankni, for example. So it means that language learners miss a lot of the communication with native speakers, making them feel uncomfortable or even excluded.
Listening is difficult, both for language learners and language teachers. After all, it’s a real challenge to find out exactly where the problems lie and how to target them.
Chrissy Hosea, NT2 teacher, teacher trainer and materials developer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, gave an inspiring workshop full of hands-on tips and strategies. The language teachers from Linguapolis and the UCT went home with ready-to-use tools to not only understand listening skills, but also to effectively develop them in the classroom. And that matters, because listening isn’t an afterthought, it’s the key to successful communication...and to a flawless karaoke night.
