The challenges of teaching listening skills

Beare, Kenneth the challenge of teaching listening. English as a second language, Retrieved 04/23/2009, from http://esl.about.com/cs/teachinglistening/a/a_tlisten.htm

The author started the topic convincing that listening is the one of the most difficult
skills in teaching language and students can become frustrated because of this; they can come to an end that they can’t understand any thing from what they listen to so mental block will happen. Although listening is a global learning style and a lot of students have this style, but they can learn better when they listen to topic using their own language. The author said that it’s important to train student to listen to short topics like five to ten minutes and then gradually they can expand the time of listening like learning other skills, for example if some body wants to learn to jog for a long time, he should start with jogging for a few minutes and then gradually he will be able to become fit. The author thinks that the human brain can become amazing if it has given time to do that.
As a teacher of foreign language, I believe that this author gave a very effective explanation to the strategy of teaching listening, and teaching Arabic language should have the same strategy of enhancing listening. In DLI, and by using the available technology, it’s easy for teachers to follow objective steps to help students to develop their listening skills. In my counseling sessions for the students, I found that many of the students are suffering from listening and so many teachers may observe the same phenomena so all teachers should encourage students to practice listening step by step until they come to the result that they are able to listen for a long time.