Be A Good Listener To Be A Good Speaker

Be A Good Listener. To be A Good Speaker

• Tanusree Choudhuri
  
  In recent years interest in English has been growing- interest not in the literature, but in the language, which has proved its usefulness in Indian society. As soon as a person steps out of his own language group, the need for a link language comes up. This is a problem very peculiar to India because we are a multilingual society. Small wonder then that a large number of students, lawyers, doctors, chartered accountants even house wives are finding it necessary to use English for effective communication. The English they had learnt at school is not enough for this purpose. Hence the needs for coaching classes or the guidance of an able teacher who can help the learners to launch their career have come up.
  It has often been seen that the learners who want to acquire proficiency in this language are generally poor listeners. Their inability to listen and understand the language has rendered them handicapped in this field. For example a child listens and picks up the language gradually since childhood. Suppose the child has a hearing problem then the process of learning language also gets hampered. Here also the problem is similar.
  We often find a non speaker who finds it difficult to communicate in this language, generally avoids all types of resources which develop listening ability like English programmes on TV or radio, English movies, English songs and many other activities. The common complaint is that they find the programmes boring. The reason is they don’t understand the way the language is spoken or simply they don’t know how to listen. Hence the programmes appear boring to them and in the process they avoid these medias and grow weaker and weaker.
  However this problem can be handled effectively if certain rules can be followed
  1. Find out why you listen and how they affect the way you listen. Lets take an example of some T.V. program. Suppose there is an announcement in English of all the programs and you are interested in listening to a particular program. Decide your reasons for listening you may want to know about some specific information like when is that particular program is on? Don’t try to understand every word you hear – you don’t need to. Listening is the process of selecting what is relevant to you.
  2. When people speak naturally they know what they want to say. There speech may contain some of these features.
  a) Hesitation and fillers – Sometimes they may use expressions like ‘err’ ‘um’ ‘well’ ‘ I mean’ ‘ actually’ and so on.
  b) If while speaking they change their mind how to say a certain thing they may start a new sentence without finishing the last one
  c) Repeatations and rephrasing-they may sum up the whole information at the end.
  d) They may make grammatical mistakes as they pass on the idea or information
  Because of these features natural speeches require more words than scripted one. Now what should the listeners do?
  Don’t concentrate on the language. Concentrate what the speaker is trying to say. If you are aware the characteristics of natural speech then it becomes easier.
  3. Predicting what you will hear- If you have got used to a same kind of programme then it is often easier to predict what they are talking about.
  4. Identifying important information-A speaker always stresses important information. Read the following and find out which words are more stressed in the man’s answer to the woman’s question. Concentrate on the words.
  Man: I found fifty rupees in the road yesterday
  Woman: How much?
  Man: Fifty rupees!
  Woman did you say fifteen or fifty?
  Man: Fifty rupees.
  Woman: God. When was that?
  Man: I found it yesterday.
  5. Repeatation and Rephrasing: when people speak they often repeat what they have said or say it again in different manner. They do it to think while speaking or make their point more clear. Repeatation helps listeners because it helps him to listen the same things more than once. Most of the times the information is summarized at the end of the speech.
  6. Understanding spoken English is a bit like following a detective story. You have to pick up the clues as you go along. Making intelligent guesses is an important part of successful listening. What kind of clues you should look for? They include references to people and places and ideas. They include numbers and dates. There may be little words like ‘but’ or ‘already’ and phrases like to be honest with you. Your common sense and your knowledge about the world will help you.
  7. You should increase your vocabulary by systematic listening. If you listen to a radio program and the topic is cookery then it is easy enough to predict certain sets of vocabulary that are likely to be used e.g.: flour, sugar, oven, teaspoon, to boil, to beat, to add, to put to serve. Make out the meaning of a new one by guessing and thus increasing your vocabulary.
  8. HOW TO FOLLOW NEWS BROADCAST? -The news broadcast has a structure. -The Head Lines
  The News
  The Main Points Again
  Stage1: Identify the different parts of the news broadcast
  Stage2: Concentrate on the headlines and decide where the stories took place and what they are about?
  Stage 3: Choose headlines and ask questions about it then concentrate on that news story and see if you can answer the questions.
  
  If the above guidelines are followed and practiced with discipline then a person can become a competent listener and hence his speaking abilities will improve.
  REMEMBER: when you are spending your waking hours in a non English speaking environment then you have to take necessary steps to change your environment and create your own world by reading books and listening to news and other programs on TV and radio. English movies directed by Indian directors can be a great help for the listeners as they are easy too follow. Hence systematic approach and good habits can make a person a winner and overcome the problem.