“One of great arts of communication is the skill of listening to people” Sunday Adelaja
Sometimes, Listening is seen as somehow less important than other skill However, in the AGUSL Prep. Program, we believe that the only way learners can really understand English is by listening to English, carefully, and for a great number of hours. Thus, at AGU Listening is taught as an important subject in its own right; four hours a week are given both to the development of listening skills and vocabulary expansion that helps students understand more of what they hear. The teaching and the learning of Listening is highly rewarding for students and teachers alike. There's so much you can learn when you can listen! And there is, especially via the Internet, so much available to listen to.
By the end of Listening 4, students are equipped with the proficiency and the strategies they need to survive in an academic listening environment in their Faculty, including note-taking. Furthermore, students are able to find online useful texts to listen to, and continue to learn English from, according to their own interests and needs.
Basic Listening (Levels 0 & 1)
In Listening 0 (Foundation) and Listening 1, students learn to understand basic information in spoken form: they learn how to write words that are spelled to them; they learn the sounds of English (that SHIP sounds very different from SHEEP, but that the words BEAN and BEEN sound exactly the same); they learn how to recognise basic vocabulary by hearing only.
Note that Listening 1 is extra important from 2021 - until they pass LIST 001, students are not allowed to take English for Maths, or Electives.
Listening 2
By the end of Listening 2, students have listened to a wide range of Listening texts and have learned to extract factual details. Some of these texts will contain less concrete and more abstract ideas. Students will also have been exposed to variations in accent; for example, US English sounds different from UK English.
Listening 3 & 4
In Listening 3 and Listening 4, students concentrate on listening to more academic texts: talks and more formal lectures. Students are expected both to understand and to be able to take notes, learning strategies for recording information and ideas. In both levels (3 & 4) part of the examination process requires listening to an academic talk, without knowing what questions will be asked; after finally seeing the questions students do not listen to the extract(s) again – they have to answer the questions using their notes only.