Re-examining Listening Comprehension, JoAnn Miller Macmillan Publishers

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/dating/datingrd1.htm

Re-examining Listening Comprehension, JoAnn Miller

New American Inside Out,

Elementary, Unit 10, p. 68

Example of a multi-

skill activity:

Reading

Checked with

Listening

Followed up with

Writing and Speaking

3

Re-examining Listening Comprehension, JoAnn Miller

New American Inside Out,

PreIntermediate, Unit 11

4

Re-examining Listening Comprehension, JoAnn Miller

What to look for in a recording… ESL/EFL sites and authentic recordings

Clear presentation

Correct level

Different dialects

Native / Non-native speakers

Different age groups (children, “older people”

Where to find recordings… Textbooks

Record from radio

Record your own

Use live from Internet

Download from Internet and play as mp3

Now what do I do with my recordings?

Essential Features

Listening is..

--an interpretive process

--an active process

--often interactive

--based on spoken English (purpose, syntax, organization,

speed, less formal, paralinguistic features)

Students must be able to… process the linguistic forms

decipher the intention of the speaker

cope with listening in an interaction

understand the whole message

comprehend the message without understanding every work

recognize different genres

Aspects of Listening Comprehension Listening Discrimination

Schemata building

Top-down or Bottom-up

Listening strategies

Critical Thinking

Multi-skilled activities

Listening discrimination Discriminate sounds and intonation patterns

Minimal Pairs: ship / sheep (/I/~/iy/)

Ex.: That ship is big. / That sheep is big.

Schemata Building “Past experiences lead to the creation of mental

frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences”

A student’s schemata has to be activated so that he/she can understand the conversation

Bottom-up Processing

“…listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the …phonemes…to complete texts.”

“…meaning itself is the last step in the process.”

Includes:

listening to identify familiar lexical items

segmenting the stream of speech into constituents, for

example, in order to recognize that 'abookofmine'

consists of four words

using graphic clues to identify the information focus of

the word

using grammatical cues to organize the input into

constituents

Top-down Processing

“…listening actively…reconstructs…the original meaning of

the speaker using incoming sounds as clues.”

“In the reconstruction process, the listener uses prior

knowledge about the context and situation…” (schemata)

Includes:

Recognizing genre, situation, background

Inferring relationships, topic of the discourse, sequence

Adding missing details

Anticipating outcomes

Listening Strategies: Justification Strategies can be taught

Academic language learning is more effective with learning strategies

Mentally active learners are better learners

Learning strategies transfer to new tasks

Strategies facilitate “information management”.

Strategy training teaches learners how to learn.

Strategies 1 Setting (where and when)

Interpersonal relationships (who)

Mood, atmosphere, tone (how)

Topic (what)

Strategies 2: Guessing Strategies Predicting: Use schemata to guess what will happen.

Inferencing: Build on what students hear to guess what will happen or what is really happening.

5

Critical Thinking Critical thinking is the examination and test of

propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not.

The critical faculty is a product of education and training. It is a mental habit and power. It is a prime condition of human welfare that men and women should be trained in it. It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances.

One can regard critical thinking as involving two aspects:

a set of cognitive skills the ability and intellectual commitment to use those

skills to guide behavior.

Critical thinking does not include just:

the acquisition and retention of information

or the possession of a skill-set which one does not use

regularly

nor does critical thinking merely exercise skills without

consideration of the results.

Listening Activity Organization Pre-listening: Builds schemata

Listening: Strategy Building

Post-listening: Critical thinking

Multi-skill Activities Listen to a story and then retell it (gossip) (listening /

speaking)

Listen to a radio show and then write an email to a friend about the ideas (listening / writing)

Talk to a friend about a TV program, watch it and then call your friend and comment on it (listening / speaking)

Read an article in a magazine and then listen to a radio program about the same topic (reading / listening)

Bibliography

Mendlesohn, D. J. Learning to listen. Dominie Press, Inc. 1994.

Nunan, D, Second Language Teaching & Learning, Newbury House, 1999.

Sumner, W. G., Sociologist, cited in Wikipedia (June 2006)

Websites

Live from the Internet: ESL Sites with and without Exercises

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab, http://www.esl-lab.com

News in Slow English, http://www.newsinslowenglish.com/

ELL - English Listening Lounge, http://www.englishlistening.com

VOA News - Voice of America Special English - News Radio for English Learners, http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish

Downloadable ESL sites (podcasts)

English Listening Room, http://www.manythings.org/el

RepeatAfterUs.com, http://www.repeatafterus.com

Breaking News English: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

BBC Learning English downloads

Non-ESL Live Sites

Mit on i-tunes: http://web.mit.edu/itunesu/

BBC Podcasts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

American Rhetoric: Top 100 speeches: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

Science Today, http://www.ucop.edu/sciencetoday

How to record original materials

Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder, http://audacity.sourceforge.net

podOmatic Podcast Portal: Create, Find, Share Podcasts, http://www.podomatic.com

Handout available at: http://www.efltasks.net--Presentations

Links at http://delicious.com/jabbusch