The role of neurology(neuroscience) in overcoming the difficulties of EFL students with listening in the target language

Аннотация

This paper provides information about how to improve EFL students’ listening comprehension with the help of techniques and approaches adapted from the field of neuroscience. This paper also discusses the findings of the author in terms of students’ listening performance during EFL classes. Key words: EFL classes, language comprehension, listening, neuroscience, visual memory, visual materials, TED talks Language skills, mainly listening, are considered one of the most essential parts of learning the English language. Because of the fact that all aspects of a foreign language comprehension is connected to the listening skill, particularly in English, that is to say, the English phonetic system and even the speech organs of native English speakers are totally different from those living in Central Asia. Which is why understanding what is being said in a context of the foreign language plays a crucial role in EFL teaching. There has been a lot in order to improve all of the skills of foreign languages. For example, designing school and university classrooms with the latest technologies in order to make it easy to acquire the English language such as modern 255 Topical issues of language training in the globalized world TV sets which are easy to access to the internet and play videos, even sensory gadgets for students to learn. Tompkins (2002) argues that listening is an important skill for young learners and it is assumed that about 50 percent of classroom time involves listening. In classroom settings, spoken language prevails over written language, especially in the primary stages of language education. Listening and speaking are both active uses of language (Cameron, 2001). However, many learners find it difficult to listen to foreign people even if their comprehension of reading, speaking and writing is excellent. It is a fact that some students often complain that even though they understand well their English teachers during the class as they speak slowly and clearly, they are in trouble of understanding what the native speakers are talking about on the record. Why is this a matter? What is actually wrong in english classes with particularly listening. The first and the biggest problem students are facing is that even though the essence of learning a foreign language, namely improving listening, is widely understood in Uzbekistan, the relevant teaching listening materials haven’t been provided. According to Rubin (1995), “For the foreign language learners, listening is the skill that makes the heaviest processing demands because learners must store information in short term memory at the same time as they are working to understand the information” (p. 8). Furthermore, as she explains, “Whereas in reading learners can go over the text at leisure, they generally don’t have the opportunity to do so in listening” (p. 8). O‘Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) claim that “listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constitutes meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge...” (p. 434). Of course, it is evident that the cognitive process of listening is invisible to us. Nonetheless, we might reconsider our approaches to teaching listening if we have a better grasp of the listening process. The extent to which the methods underlying the generally positive outcomes of such studies have reached classroom practice seems, from my perspective, to be limited, a view that is also expressed by other authors across a range of contexts who 256 Topical issues of language training in the globalized world comment on teachers doing listening activities or tests with their learners rather than teaching them how to listen (Suzanne Graham, 2016). This ‘doing‘ or ‘testing‘ approach dates back a long while in England; thus Chambers (1996) outlines what he sees as the typical approach to listening in foreign language classrooms in that context: learners listen to a text and complete an accompanying exercise, which is then corrected. Listening becomes principally a test of comprehension, typically based on an exercise from a textbook, which, as an examination of such materials indicates, usually requires the understanding of specific details rather than the global meaning of the text (thus probably depriving learners of a sense of achievement if they rarely feel they understand more than a few snippets of class listening materials). This constitutes what Field (2008) calls the ‘Comprehension Approach’ and which, he argues, does little to develop effective listening skills. There have been some studies involving the use of TED Talks in extensive listening. Takaesu (2017), for example, reported using TED Talks to teach his college EAP (English for Academic Purpose) students whose proficiency levels were quite varied. About 78% of the higher proficiency students felt that the use of TED Talks for extensive listening improved their listening skills. Nearly an equal numbe