Listening

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Language skills and

assessment
LISTENING

Tony Lynch1 and David Mendelsohn2


What is listening?
Listening involves making sense of spoken language, normally accompanied by other sounds and
visual input, with the help of our relevant prior knowledge and the context in which we are
listening.

Traditional concept Today concept

a passive process an ‘active’ process

passively register the message


decoding of the message interpretive process involves subtle interpretation

a single process, an auditory the inherent variation in listeners’ comprehension of what they
version of reading hear, and of the importance of context and non-linguistic
variables
The unique features of listening
Its usually ephemeral, one-shot nature.

The presence of a rich prosody (stress, intonation, rhythm,


loudness and more),which is absent from the written language.

The presence of characteristics of natural fast speech, such as


assimilation, making it markedly different from written
language, for example, /g∂mmt/ for government.

The frequent need to process and respond almost immediately


Modals of listening
01
Communication
02
theory Information processing

03 04
Social/contextual Situated action
These four comprehension models are complementary rather than mutually
exclusive and the different elements required for successful listening are best
explained by a combination of the comprehension models available.
01
Communication
theory model
It was developed to solve an
to make telecommunications systems engineering problem so human
more efficient participation in the process of
communication was peripheral
Informatio
02
n
processing
model
-a limited processor:the concepts of input,
processing and output
-devote more attention to one aspect of the
task and less to another
Resorting to parallel distributed processing:
-integrating information from multiple sources simultaneously
-working ‘bottom-up’ (looking for clues in linguistic input)
-‘top-down’ (activating background knowledge and exploiting context)
03 Social/
contextual
model
-Human are seen as participants in
and creators of meaning.
-Meanings are achieved in the
interactional space between us and
not just inside our individual
heads.
04 Situated action model
The evolution of language and society: a more speculative alternative to information
processing models.

It emphasize that our daily interactions are more often oriented towards future action, for
example, where to shop for fresh food or how best to treat a child with a sinus infection.
Types of listening

One-way Two-way
listening listening
‘transaction’ ‘interaction’
One-way listening: An almost exclusive
use of monologue

Lectures and school Watching a film or tv or


lessons listening to the radio

‘listening in order to learn’ :take notes on the ‘spoken’ variety: from the more
the cognitive content formal and prepared to the more informal
and spontaneous
Two-way listening: ‘listening-and-
speaking’
The listener’s involvement, or potential involvement, in a speaking
role brings costs as well as benefits:

● the costs include the requirement to respond appropriately, the


time pressure in processing what is being said, and the risk of
misinterpreting the interlocutor
● the communicative benefits include the opportunity to get
doubts cleared up straight away and problems resolved.
Four listener roles in discourse

Participant Addressee
someone who is being someone who is being
spoken to and has the same spoken to but has limited
speaking rights as rights to speak.
others present.

Auditor Overhearer
someone who is being someone who is not being
spoken to but is not spoken to and has no right
expected to respond. to speak.
Processes of listening 01 ‘lexical’: identified the item as
unfamiliar and attempted to
transcribe its sound shape
Bottom-up
Success ‘Listener as tape
02 ‘phonological’: identified the
item as unfamiliar and attempted to
ful recorder’ :one by one, transcribe its sound shape
in sequence
listenin
g 03 ‘content schemata’:networks of
knowledge on different topics
‘listening between the
lines’: going from
whole to part, and
04 ‘rhetorical schemata’:based on
our knowledge of the structure
focused on and organization of discourse
interpretation of genres
meaning
Listening skills
Richards (1983) was one of the first to categorize the sub-skills required in different listening
situations

33 Micro-skills for
18 Academic listening to
conversational listening lectures (AL)
(CL)
1. What is the relationship between conversational and academic
micro-skills?

2. What is the internal ordering of the micro-skills?

Richards’ micro-skill taxonomies were later reshaped


and developed by Rost (1990), who emphasized the importance of
identifying ‘clusters’ of listening micro-skills.
Table 13.1 show Rost’s distinction between ‘enabling skills’ (those
employed in order to perceive what the speaker is saying and to interpret
what they intend to mean) and ‘enacting skills’ (those
employed to respond appropriately to the message)
Listening strategies
Learning strategies are usually divided into meta-cognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies
– a tripartite classification developed by O’Malley et al. (1985)
Skilful listeners use these strategies in combination, varying their use according
to the needs of the specific situation

5 factors were found to be associated with success in listening in a research which was done by
Vandergrift et al. (2006)
*‘Problem-solving’ (guessing and monitoring those guesses);
*‘Planning and Elaboration’ (preparing for listening and assessing success);
*avoiding ‘Mental Translation’; ‘Person Knowledge’ (confidence or anxiety, self-perception as
a listener);
*‘Directed Attention’ (ways of concentrating on aspects of the task).
How do we gain insights intoSettings
listening?
and Methods

Settings for gathering data on listening


Settings

Test Ethnographic
Experiments Pedagogic tasks
performances research

concentrate on focus on pedagogic very large


better lifelikeness
quantifiable aspects settings scale

Bottom-up processing
beneficially effects on L2
suite well to assessing the seemed therefore to be
comprehension of content
effects of other more important than top-
redundancy, pausing, rich data for
quantitative features on down processing in
macro-level signposting analysis
L2 comprehension discriminating between
and visual support.
candidates’ listening
performance.
Methods for gathering data
Introspect on
Retrospec
Observation
listening

ion
Observation takes ●
tion
the demands of on-line recall the experience of
many forms reporting may lead comprehending some
● the researcher listeners to listen time later usually
cannot be certain differently from normal prompted by memory
of the cause of the ● the data obtained can support
listener’s doubts, or the be greatly influenced
current state of the by the listeners’ skill in
listener’s mental verbalizing mental
model. processes
● listeners’ reports may
reflect prior knowledge,
rather than their
listening
From theory to practice:
issues in teaching L2
listening

a listening lesson would involve pre-listening, listening and then


an extended post-listening session ‘in which gaps in the learners’
listening skills could be examined and redressed through short
CRÉDITOS: Esta plantilla para presentaciones es una creación de Slidesgo, e incluye iconos de
micro-listening
Flaticon, infografías exercises’
e imágenes de Freepik e ilustraciones de Storyset
Difficulty factors in listening
Building on literature surveys such as Rubin (1994), Brown (1995a) and Anderson and
Lynch (1988), Buck (2001) distilled researchers’ findings into the following list of
characteristics that affect listening:
Authenticity of text and task
● Authenticity of text: ‘not designed or recorded for non-native speakers, or for
language learning purposes’. Both Widdowson and Richards take the position that
authenticity is the ‘end’ of language teaching, but need not be the ‘means’

● Authenticity of task: make learning tasks as realistic as possible, help learners


approach fully authentic tasks gradually, rather than trying to make tasks lifelike
from the beginning.
Strategy instruction
at the root of teaching showing learners the clues to contribute significantly to
learners how to tackle a getting at meaning when gaps in learner autonomy
listening text their competence make that difficult

Mendelsohn (1994 and Thompson and Rubin (1996)


pointed out:
● If strategy instruction is to be effective, it requires thorough preparation of
teacher and students, and it needs to be provided over an extended period
with plenty of practice
● A successful listener is not simply someone that is good at compensating for
their weaknesses by skilful use of top-down strategies, but someone who
also possesses and uses form-oriented L2 listening skills effectively in
bottom-up processing.
Skills training

A certain level of linguistic proficiency is required in order to handle


listening comprehension. Some of the features that need to be
practised are:
● Discriminating between similar sounds.
● Coping with and processing ‘fast speech’.
● Processing stress and intonational differences.
● Processing the meaning of different discourse markers.
● Understanding communicative functions and the non-one-to-one
equivalence between form and function.
❏ Listening processes are complex, and listening comprehension is
difficult in a second or foreign language.
❏ Materials writers and teachers not only to endorse the importance of
a strategic approach to L2 listening instruction, but also to strike a
balance between practice-focused listening skills work and practice
in the use of strategies that will enhance their comprehension of the
target language.

Conclusion

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