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TEACHING RECEPTIVE SKILLS:
LISTENING AND READING
Alma Delia Frías Puente
Enero 2009.
Views of listening that have dominated
language pedagogy over the last
twenty years
“BOTTOM-UP” PROCESSING
“TOP-DOWN” PROCESSING
“BOTTOM-UP” PROCESSING
Listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one
hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful
units (or phonemes) to complete texts. /s/ /sh/
PHONEMIC UNITS are decoded and linked together to
form WORDS, words are linked together to form
phrases, PHRASES are linked together to form
UTTERANCES, and utterances are linked together to
form complete MEANINGFUL TEXTS.
It assumes the listener takes in and stores messages in
much the same way as a audio-recording, sequentially,
one sound word, phrase, and utterance at a time.
“TOP-DOWN” PROCESSING
The listener actively constructs (or, more accurately,
reconstructs) the original meaning of the speaker using
incoming sounds as clues.
In this reconstruction process, the listener uses prior
knowledge of the context and situation within which the
listening takes place to make sense of what he or she
hears.
Context of situation includes such things as knowledge
of the topic at hand, the speaker or speakers and their
relationship to the situation as well as to each other, and
prior events.
SCHEMA THEORY
Psychologist Bartlett (1932).
The knowledge we carry around in our heads is
organized into interrelated patterns.
These patterns are like stereotypical mental scripts or
scenarios of situations and events, built up from
numerous experiences of similar events.
During the course of our lives we build up literally
hundreds of mental schemas, and they help us make
sense of the many situations we find ourselves in during
the day, from catching the bus to work, to taking part in a
business meeting, to having a meal.
SCHEMA THEORY
It is based on the notion that past experiences lead to
the creation of mental frameworks that help us make
sense of new experiences.
Cross-cultural situations
When we apply the wrong or inappropriate SCHEME to
a situation it can get us into trouble.
-
Taiwan
Business dinner
Host offering a seat
The seat that was facing the door
Seat of honor
The most important person
You should decline it
Perhaps on the fourth or fifth time
that someone insists
It has been demonstrated by research that we do not
store listening texts word-for-word (Bottom-up
approach).
When asked to listen to a text, and then write down as
much as they recall, listeners remember some bits,
forget some bits, and often add in bits that were not
there in the original listening.
In developing lessons, materials, courses, it is important,
not only to teach bottom-up processing skills such as the
ability to discriminate between minimal pairs, but it is
also important to help learners use what they already
know to understand what they hear.
If teachers suspect that there are gaps in their learners´
knowledge, either of content or of grammar or
vocabulary, the listening itself can be preceded by
schema building activities.
Now hear this!
TYPES OF LISTENING
THE TYPE OF TEXT BEING LISTENED TO
Monologues (lectures, speeches, and news broadcasts)
- Planned: Media broadcasts and speeches
- Unplanned: anecdotes and narratives.
Dialogues
- Social / interpersonal
- Transactional
LISTENING PURPOSE
Listening to a news broadcast to get
- a general idea of the news
- specific information
- the results of an important sporting event
Listening to a sequence of instructions for
operating a new piece of computer software.
Listening to a poem or short story.
THE ROLE OF THE LISTENER
Reciprocal listening:
The listener is required to take part in the interaction.
Nonreciprocal listening:
The listener (often to his or her frustration) has no opportunity to
answer back , clarify understanding, or check that he or she
comprehended correctly.
In designing listening tasks, it is important to teach learners to adopt
a flexible range of listening strategies.
This can be done by holding the listening text constant and getting
learners to listen to the text several times, but following different
instructions each time.
LISTEN TO ME
RESEARCH INTO LISTENING
COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
Comprehension-before-production approach facilitate language acquistion
in the early stages.
We should stress comprehension rather than production at the beginning
levels with no demand on the learners to produce the target language.
Language should be associated with things that are physically present in the
environment.
Learners should demonstrate comprehension by listening to and carrying
out instructions.
In the area of listening for academic purposes, knowledge of discourse
markers can facilitate comprehension.
The importance of incorporating authentic data into the teaching of listening.
TASK DIFFICULTY
TASK DIFFICULTY
An important consideration for pedagogy concerns task difficulty.
Grammatical complexity is not the sole factor to determine the order
of tasks.
1. The organization of information
2. Whether the text describes a “static” or “dynamic”
relationship (geometric figure / accident)
3. The explicitness and sufficiency of the information
and the type of referring expressions used
4. The familiarity of the topic
Factors internal to the learner, such as
attentiveness, motivation, interest in and
knowledge of the topic.
Support: How much support is provided in terms
of pictures, diagrams, or other visual aids?
How complex is the grammar ad vocabulary?
What background knowledge is assumed?
LISTENING AND GENERAL
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
At the elementary level, nurture listening comprehension
and communication at the same time.
Appropriate listening materials which are calibrated to
the interests and abilities of the students are needed for
systematic growth in listening skills.
(Ross 1992)
THE ROLE OF THE LEARNER IN THE
LISTENING PROCESS
LEARNER ROLES
Listening and reading are often characterized as “passive” or
“receptive” skills.
The image conjured up by these terms is of learner-assponge, passively absorbing the language models provided
by textbooks and tapes.
Listening, that is, making sense of what we hear, is a
constructive process in which the learner is an active
participant.
In order to comprehend, listeners need to reconstruct the
original intention of the speaker by making use of both
bottom-up and top-down processing strategies, and by
drawing on what they already know to amke use of new
knowledge.
PERSONALIZING LISTENING
A challenge for the teacher is to give the student some degree of
control over the content, and to personalize content so they are able
to bring something of themselves to the task.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
A learner-centered dimension:
It is the learner who does the work, not the teacher.
Students are actively involved in structuring and restructuring their
understanding of the language and building their skills in using the
language.
Get learners involved in the process underlying their learning and in
making active contributions to the learning.
Give learners a degree of choices.
Give learners opportunities to bring their own
background knowledge and experience into the
classroom.
Encourage learners to develop a reflective attitude to
learning and to develop skills in self-monitoring and selfassessment.
AUTHENTIC DATA
In many language classrooms, learners listen to and read material
created specifically for language learning. Such material provides
security and comfort.
Nonauthentic listening texts differ in certain ways from authentic
texts.
There are few of the overlaps, hesitations, and false starts,
repetition, requests for clarification, and there is very little
negotiation of meaning.
Students will be given practice in listening to extracts from radio and
television, public broadcasting announcements, conversations and
discussions, telephone conversations, answering machine
messages, voice mail, etc.
TASK TYPES
The role of the learner:
reciprocal
vs.
nonreciprocal listening
Types of listening strategies:
- listening for gist
- listening for specific information
- making inferences
Focus on linguistic skills:
activating and extending knowledge
of phonology, gramar, and discourse.
vs.
content
RECIPROCAL VS. NONRECIPROCAL
Reciprocal listening involves dialogues in which the role of an
individual alternates between listener and speaker.
Nonreciprocal listening involves listening to monologues or
conversations, but learners do not take part in the conversation
themselves. Try to use authentic materials: store announcements,
announcements on public transportation.
Not surprisingly, the second type is the most usual type in the
listening class.
Stimulate the interactive nature of listening.
Try to involve learners in the content of the language.
Learners listen to one side of a conversation, and react to written
responses to generate a level of involvement. LISTEN IN
LISTENING STRATEGIES
Develop awareness of the process underlying their own learning so
that, eventually, they will be able to take greater and greater
responsibility for that learning.
Become more effective language learners.
Reflect upon the process underlying their own learning.
Key strategies: selective listening, listening for different purposes,
predicting, progressive structuring, inferencing, and personalizing.
Inferential comprehension tasks force the learner to process the
material more deeply. They require the learners to do more work
than tasks that only require literal comprehension.
FOCUS ON LINGUISTIC SKILLS
Tasks that focus on aspects of the linguistic system,
pronunciation, grammar, and discourse.
Tasks that focus on the processing of content.
Focus on pronunciation:
- Segmental tasks – discrete sounds
- Suprasegmental tasks – stress, rhythm, and
intonation (They signal aspects of meaning).
SOUNDS GREAT