earners the opportunity to listen to and analyze ways in which native speakers and users of the target language carry out the target task).
3) Identify enabling skills (to provide learners with explicit instruction and guided practice in those grammatical elements needed to perform the target task).
4) Devise the pedagogic task (to provide learners with the opportunity to mobilize their emerging language skills through rehearsal) (Nunan, 1993, p. 55).
In listening, the learner must hear and identify the phonemic sounds; the sequences of sounds and their groupings, lengths, and patterns of stress and intonation; the function words and their required sound changes; the inflections (plurality, tense, possession, etc.); the sound changes and function shifts; the structural groupings; the word-order clues; the meanings; the formula, introductory, and hesitation words; and the cultural meanings embedded in the message. No small task. Listening involves decoding as facilitated by the listener's knowledge and expectations. This, thus, is the complex of skills which need be taught.
There are many types of aural activities, among which: listening to the teacher as she or he presents sounds, sound sequences, intonation patterns, and utterances with contrasting stress and pause; gives direction related to classroom routines; gives model sentences; gives cues or ask questions to stimulate appropriate responses; tells a story; reads a passage, poem, or playlet orally; models a dialogue; tells about an incident or experience of mutual interest; gives a dictation; gives a listening comprehension exercise; gives a lecture on L2 culture; etc. (Finocchiaro & Bonomo, 1973, p. 108).
Here is an example of an aural comprehension exercise:
1. Teacher summarizes a passage in order to motivate learners.
2. Teacher clears up any difficulties.
3. Teacher states exercise's objective(s) and procedure(s).
4. Teacher reads the passage twice ...