Teaching and developing listening skills in ESP classes
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Abstract
The article deals with the difficulties faced by students who study in the International Relations programme at the initial stage of learning professional foreign language when listening to authentic texts with socio-political content. The survey conducted among the 2nd year students of one of the Moscow higher education institutions showed that the main reasons are difficulties of grammatical, lexical and psychological nature, as well as difficulties related to the comprehension of individual peculiarities of the speaker's speech. Lexical difficulties include lack of professional vocabulary, failure to understand the meaning of the text listened and having no knowledge of the topic of the message. Difficulties related to the comprehension of the individual peculiarities of the speaker's speech include the speaker’s accent, pronunciation and the pace of speaking. Psychological difficulties in listening comprehension can be caused by the students' fear of making lexical and/or grammatical mistakes, fear of failure to grasp the meaning of the text listened, lack of experience in listening to messages of socio-political content (news programmes) and lack of self-confidence. The author offers a number of recommendations for solving the problems causing difficulties with comprehension of professional texts identified in the course of the survey. In particular, in order to help students to understand the topic of the text, it is suggested that before listening they should read news on the BBC website or other English news channels, followed by practicing such professional vocabulary that is often found both in written and broadcasted texts. To overcome grammatical difficulties, it is recommended that before listening to the text the students should practise those grammatical structures that may cause difficulties in the comprehension of the text.
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References
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