Listening
Listening
Listening
assessment
LISTENING
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.
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
‘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:
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?
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
Test Ethnographic
Experiments Pedagogic tasks
performances research
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
Conclusion