Abstract

It is well known that classroom activities are mainly speech exercises in which a student hears a vocal stimulus and then immediately imitates it or gives another verbal response. When students listen to and participate in partial sentences, backwards construction, pattern exercises, and pronunciation exercises, they hear unnatural speech. As important as this exercise is to developing speaking skills, the question may arise: "When do students hear a language as it is actually spoken?" Texts, manuals, and training courses often include texts to assess success in listening comprehension, but they rarely include specific learning materials designed to systematically develop this skill. Until such materials are available, teachers who want to work more with listening comprehension can adapt current materials for this purpose. These issues are also discussed in the article.