Teaching Listening

Understanding the Listening Process

Perspectives on Listening

• Listening as a skill

• Listening as a product

• Listening as a process

Is there a difference between hearing and listening?

What does it What does it involve?involve?

IMAGESIMAGES

WORDSWORDS

SOUNDSSOUNDS CONCEPTSCONCEPTS

SYNTAXSYNTAX

SCHEMASCHEMA

MESSAGEMESSAGE

MEANINGMEANING

FEELINGSFEELINGS

RESPONSERESPONSE

REMEMBERINGREMEMBERINGINTERPRETINTERPRET

VOCABULARYVOCABULARY

FOCUSFOCUS GUESSINGGUESSING

ATTENTIONATTENTION

CONTEXTCONTEXT

CHUNKSCHUNKS

ATTITUDEATTITUDE

An Activity To Understand An Activity To Understand Language ProcessingLanguage Processing

Monitoring Your Own Listening Processes

OBSERVE and REPORT

• How did you build your understanding?• What difficulties or problems did you face? • Were you able to solve these problems?

How?• What thoughts / associations came into your

mind?

• Fixation on decoding sounds - can’t recognise words

• Not chunking streams of speech - focusing on individual words -losing the idea paying attention to every word in a utterance.

• Unfamiliar accent - speech becomes unintelligible - can’t parse sounds into words

• Not drawing on schema or various sources of knowledge

• Focused attention solely on perception of aural input - neglect next part - can’t keep up with rest of input

• Parsing problem - not able to form a mental representation from words - connect what was heard earlier with later parts of input to construct a meaningful representation of what was heard

• Inefficient use of memory - concentrating too hard on problems faced with perceiving sounds - forget what is heard

• Not using knowledge of language ( eg grammar structure or familiar lexis) or background knowledge to predict or guess meaning and compare with schema

Christine Goh (2000), A cognitive perspective on language learners' listening comprehension problems(pp 8 of course pack)

What does it involve?

Cognitive ProcessesCognitive Processes

Checking Understanding• Is the model of ‘listener as tape

recorder’ an accurate depiction of the listening process?

PHONEMIC UNIT

WORDS

PHRASES

UTTERANCES

Complete TEXT

/ər / /ju/ /ˈhʌŋ.gri/

/Are/ /you/ /hungry/

YOU HUNGRY

ARE YOU / HUNGRY

ARE YOU HUNGRY?

Is meaning ONLY ENCODED

in the text?

Is the process EFFICIENT?

Checking Understanding• What would be a more accurate model

of the listening which includes both top-down and bottom-up processes?

But is this enough?

Top-down processing Top-down processing involves the activation involves the activation of schemata, to derive of schemata, to derive meaning from spoken meaning from spoken discoursediscourse

Different schemata ( sources of knowledge)

• Linguisitic knowledge:Phonology/lexical knowledge, syntax, discourse features (registers, cohesive markers etc)

• Contextual knowledge: Social Context (Situation) / Topic ( Co-text) / Participants /

• Schematic knowledge: World Knowledge / Background Knowledge

Language processing involves “parallel, interactive Language processing involves “parallel, interactive processing” (McClelland and Elman, 1986, p. 119)processing” (McClelland and Elman, 1986, p. 119)

Understanding Top-down and Bottom-up Processing

• QUIZ TIME: Go to your course website and look at Mini Quiz: Understanding Listening Processes at the bottom of the Lesson Page. Click See Assignment.

Listening as a Process

• Cognitive Perspective - how aural input is processed

• Perception / Parsing / Utilisation (p 8)

• Top-down and Bottom-up Processing

Why is an understanding of cognitive processes important?• for understanding learners' listening

difficulties - identify which phase of cognitive processing - comprehension can break down.

• help us trace the source of learner’s problems and why they occur

• guide our learners - strategies for coping with or overcoming some of their listening difficulties

Christine Goh (2000), A cognitive perspective on language learners’ listening comprehension problems, System 28, p 57)

What factors could cause difficulties in listening?

Download a copy of Handout 1 from Lesson 3 in our course website.

Read through the list of listening problems described by the students. Discuss in your groups and fill in column 2 and 3.

LEARNER DIFFICULTIES lN LISTENING

1.I have trouble catching the actual sounds.

2. I have to understand every word; if I miss something, I feel I am failing and get worried and stressed.

3. I can understand people if they talk slowly and clearly; I can't understand fast, natural native-sounding speech.

4. I need to hear things more than once in order to understand.

5. I find it difficult to 'keep up'with all the information I am getting, and cannot think ahead or predict.

6. lf the listening goes on a long time I get tired, and find it more and more difficult to concentrate.

@ Cambridge University Press 1996

Listening as a skill

• Purposeful Listening (pg 7)• Why is listening considered a complex

skill? Does it involve just understanding what words mean?

• Why is it important to consider the different purposes for listening?

Social / Interpersonal Purpose

Transactional Purpose

A beginner driver listening to instructions given by instructor.

Listening to a friend sharing her problems

Listening Comprehension Skills

• Listening for details

• Listening for gist

• Drawing inferences

• Listening selectively

• Making predictions

How to develop listening skills?

• Through teaching students listening strategies - LEARNING to LISTEN

• important that they learn to adopt listening strategies that can assist or enhance their comprehension

• Cognitive, Metacognitive and Social-Affective strategies

• Cognitive strategies - act directly on the input to make sense of it

• Metacognitive strategies - manage cognitive processes and difficulties during listening

• social strategies - involve other people in achieving understanding

• Affective strategies - manage unproductive emotions during comprehension.

Why Teach Strategies?

• AWARENESS of difficulties - to think about how their cognitive processes could be affected and WHEN comprehension could potentially break down - develop greater responsibility for own learning and in long-run greater independence and autonomy

• Help them SEE that difficulties encountered CAN BE solved or dealt with in a systematic way - develop their self-confidence, problem-solving behaviour and right attitude towards learning difficulties and problem-solving - stop blaming difficulties on task

Why Teach Strategies?

• increased metacognitive awareness about their learning processes - take a more active part in overcoming some of their listening difficulties, rather than accept all their problems as unavoidable and insurmountable (avoid LEARNED avoid LEARNED HELPLESSNESSHELPLESSNESS)

How to raise learners’ awareness about learning to

listen?• set aside lesson time for discussion and

reports about listening problems and useful strategies

• encourage students to `think aloud' soon after they have completed a listening task

• provide opportunities for individual reaction through listening diaries

• extend the scope of pre-listening and post-listening tasks to include metacognitive tasks.Christine Goh (2000), A cognitive perspective on language learners' listening comprehension problems ( pp 73)

Listening as a Product• Outcomes (p 11) - what listeners can DO • Demonstrate understanding• Verbal or non-verbal / Multimodal• Why is this important?• Listening - invisible process • Product - evidence of learning • Provide feedback for T and S - AFL - progress

made - diagnose problem areas and help T design follow-up lesson and for S to set learning goals - develp strategies to overcome problem

EL SYLLABUS 2010

Teaching Listening and Viewing

Implications for Teaching: Outcomes, Focus Areas and Aims

What should teachers strive to do?

To develop competent and critical listeners:• Model positive listening attitudes and

behaviour. (DISPOSITION)• Guide pupils in constructing meaning

from a variety of spoken, audio and visual texts, beginning with the perception and recognition of sounds and words in context. (SKILLS/STRATEGIES)

• Help pupils develop active listening and viewing skills, that is, to listen/ view for details and listen for the gist, make inferences, make predictions and listen selectively. (SKILLS/STRATEGIES)

• Scaffold and Model the learning of critical listening and viewing skills through the use of strategies and activities. (SKILLS/STRATEGIES)

• Provide opportunities for pupils to listen to and view a variety of spoken, audio and visual texts for appreciation, enjoyment and personal development (EXTENSIVE VIEWING / LISTENING)

Learning and Teaching Principles

• Effective listening must be AUTOMATIC and EFFICIENT - fast, natural speech esp interactive / reciprocal listening ( eg conversations)

• Listening to understand meaning is NOT about understanding what words and sentences mean - UNDERSTAND what SPEAKERS MEANUNDERSTAND what SPEAKERS MEAN - PRAGMATIC/SOCIAL meaning - INFERENTIAL INFERENTIAL PROCESSPROCESS

• PURPOSEPURPOSE for listening also affects the processes / sources of knowledge we use.

Learning and Teaching Principles

• Knowledge about Language ( eg what word means or whether it is noun or adjective) is important BUT knowing HOW TO USE this knowledge of language ( eg quickly access meaning of word) to develop INTERPRETATIONSINTERPRETATIONS is MORE important.

Listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear. It requires appropriate listening and viewing attitudes and behaviour and applying appropriate strategies and skills to process meaning from texts.