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
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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