20100503

2010.05.03 Mon.

I realized that I should intently listen to the lectures as a listening practice. It is sure that we carefully listen to lectures when we have not understood the contents. However, we tend to listen to the lectures less seriously when we have already understood them. I argue here that we should not do so.

Generally, for the improvement of language fluency, we need a lot of time on practicing processing the language. It is also true to the listening ability. And, attention! The entire lecture is given in French; this can be precious time for the processing practice. So, in order to take the most of the class, we have to consider it as a listening-practice opportunity and listen to it intensively.

Another thought on listening. Is there any significance in the noises in the background of listening materials for practices? In some listening materials, there are noises that hinder the understanding. For example, in the background of dialogue on the street are noises of cars. I believe these noises are to interfere with our understanding, and they works when we want to examine the ability to listen to words, in spite of the noises.

Ordinarily, however, listening in the class should be supposed as a practice. In practicing the process of understanding languages, we need materials that we can understand easily, because we can exercise the ability only when we understand materials. On this ground, I believe noises that hinder the understanding must be harmful to nurturing listening proficiency.