An Overview of Listening and L2 Listening Process

Abstract

Anyone who uses languages rightly will have a number of abilities for example listening to the radio, speaking over the telephone, reading books, writing letters, watching television and so on. Therefore, language is called a complex skill. It comprises of four major skills. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Speaking and Writing skills come under productive skill whereas, Listening and Reading under receptive skills. Listening is a passive skill so that many teachers assume that it is quite easy. But it should be remembered that there are many factors related to listening over which the student in ESL classroom has no control,therefore it should be taught systematically along with the speaking skill, the learners should be exposed to learn with different types of listening passages as much as possible in the classroom. Moreover, consistently it is recommended that one should begin with the Listening skill before focusing on the Speaking skill.