Listening Comprehension [antikvár]

This course is designed not only for those intending to take the Cambridge First Certificate in English exam, but alsó for all advanced students who would like to try a different approach to listening. Its aims are two-fold. Firstly, it exposes the student to First Certificate-style material. The listening passages are similar in level and content to those of the Listening Comprehension paper and the exercises follow closely the types favoured by the Cambridge examiners. Broadly speaking, practice is given in three types of exercise: multiple choice, identifying pictures, and form-filling. Secondly, and of equal importance, the course aims to improve the student's listening ability. This is an aspect of listening work that is often neglected. We tend to assume that the more listening texts a student is exposed to, the better will be his or her understanding. This is not necessarily so. This course therefore tries to ensure that the student gains something concrete from each listening experience. It tries to pinpoint the areas in each passage where understanding may have broken down, and it provides practice in interpreting similar material, to ensure that misunderstood, wrongly segmented or misheard words will be recognised correctly next time. From the teaching point of view, the Units fali into fi ve stages. 1Pre-listening (5 minutes). The aim of the first stage is not to teach vocabulary or language material. To do so would be to give the student help which would not be available under exam conditions. The intention here is to motivate the listener, to help him or her with minor pronunciation problems (e.g. place names), and to try to develop a strategy of looking in detail at the formát of the test paper before hearing the listening passage. 2Listening. Each listening text should be played twice by the teacher, following the practice of the Cambridge exam. There should be a pause of about 15 seconds between each playing - again, as in the exam. This should provide ample time for rewinding. Before the first playing, students should be told to listen carefully, and to make brief notes of what they hear. During the pause, they should relate their notes to the exercises, and work out roughly what their answers will be. During the second playing, they should check their intended answers with what they hear. Finally, they should enter the answers. This can be done during or after the second playing.