LEARNING MODULE SURIGAO STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Learning Module
In
ELEC 1
Remedial Instruction

Prepared by:

NEILL O. FIGURON
DEAN MARK A. OGAOB
CAS Faculty

Adapted by:

SEPTERIANO B. SENOC JR., MAEd

Guest Lecturer

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MODULE 4

REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH

TOPICS: REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN LISTENING

1.1. Factors Affecting Students’ Listening Comprehension

1.2. Internal Factors
1.3. External Factors
1.4. How to improve Students’ Listening Comprehension

TIME FRAME: 6 hrs.

INTRODUCTION:
Listening is one of the most important skills that learners should develop. It is in listening
that they will learn new information, knowledge, and concepts. Since, according to experts
this is the most neglected one, it is but fitting that this skill should be given a higher degree
of attention. However, certain learners struggle in listening because of the different affecting
factors. They manifest learning difficulties that impede their potential to become good and
effective listeners. Thus, this module introduces teachers-would-be to the ways and
processes of how reading difficulties should be handled.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES: In this lesson, the students will lead to:

1. Identify factors affecting students’ listening comprehension;

2. Apply principles and activities which may help correct learning difficulties; and
3. Craft a detailed lesson plan that addresses a listening difficulty.

PRE-ASSESSMENT: Explain briefly. As future teachers, how important is listening

comprehension skill to you and to your future students in the teaching and learning
process?
Answer: Listening is one of the four macro-skills alongside speaking, writing, and
reading, which is necessary in knowledge acquisition and sharing. One cannot be
able to acquire and share knowledge if he or she only has a little or inadequate
listening comprehension. With that being said, it calls for an attention for me as a
future teacher the greater importance and emphasis of having comprehension skill
because the teaching and learning process between me and the learners will
relatively depend on it. Therefore, it is indeed important, just as how important
reading, speaking, and writing skills are in the teaching and learning process.

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Learning Activities

A. FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION

1. Internal factors
These refer to the learners’ characteristics, language proficiency, memory,
age, gender, background knowledge as well as aptitude, motivation and
physiological factors.

2. External factors
These are mainly related to the type of language input and tasks and
context in which listening occurs.

B. INTERNAL FACTORS

1. Problems with language proficiency. This covers problems in phonetics and

phonology
 phonemic discrimination
 phonetic varieties
 problems in grammar
 Lexicological problems.
2. Poor background knowledge.
3. Lack of motivation to listen.
4. Psychological factors.
5. Other internal factors (age, attention span, memory span, reaction and
sensibility.

C. EXTERNAL FACTORS

1. Speed of delivery and different accents of the speakers

2. The content and task of listening materials
3. Context. This refers to the spatial-temporal location of the utterance and the
particular time and particular place at which the speaker makes an utterance
and the particular time and place at which the listener hears or reads the
utterance.
4. Co-text. This is another major factor in influencing the interpretation of
meaning. It refers to a particular utterance occurs Co-text constrains the way in
which we interpret the response. Here we can infer that the person is not going
to a picnic by judging from the co-text.

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a. Are you coming going to Baguio with us?

b. I have a paper to finish by Monday

D. HOW TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL

1. Teach pronunciation, stress, and intonation of the critical sounds of English.

2. Practice sound discrimination, liaisons, and incomplete plosives
3. Recognize stressed and unstressed words
4. Enrich vocabulary
5. Teach grammar
6. Practice inferring information not directly stated
7. Teach note-talking skills

CATEGORIES OF LISTENING

In 'real-life' listening, our students will have to use a combination of the two

processes, with more emphasis on 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' listening
depending on their reasons for listening.

No matter what subject area or age you teach, you want your students to
know how to listen. Some scholars think of listening in two different
categories: top down and bottom up listening.

Top down listening happens when we use background knowledge to make

sense of what we are listening to. We already know a fair amount about
the topic, and the story or information we are getting fits into a previously
established schema. These strategies include:

 Listening for main idea

 Predicting
 Drawing inferences
 Summarizing

Bottom up listening, on the other hand, happens when we understand

language sound by sound or word by word, with less use of background
knowledge. These strategies include:

 Listening for specific details

 Recognizing cognates
 Recognizing word-order patterns

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Most of the time, your students will combine some bottom up and top
down listening to make sense of what they hear and perceive in the world
around them. Sometimes, however, it can be helpful to offer them
strategies suited to the specific type of listening you are working on. The
more cognizant students are about each type of listening and the
strategies it embeds, the better equipped they will be to do good listening
work.

Top-down approach

Do you ever get your students to predict the content of a listening activity
beforehand, maybe using information about the topic or situation, pictures, or key
words? If so, you are already helping them to develop their top-down processing
skills, by encouraging them to use their knowledge of the topic to help them
understand the content. This is an essential skill given that, in a real-life listening
situation, even advanced learners are likely to come across some unknown
vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context and co-text, they should either be
able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or understand the general idea
without getting distracted by it.

Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a series of

pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and identifying
where they take place, reading information about a topic then listening to find
whether or not the same points are mentioned, or inferring the relationships between
the people involved.

Bottom-up approach

The emphasis in EFL listening materials in recent years has been on developing top-
down listening processes. There are good reasons for this given that learners need
to be able to listen effectively even when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary or
structures. However, if the learner understands very few words from the incoming
signal, even knowledge about the context may not be sufficient for her to understand
what is happening, and she can easily get lost. Of course, low-level learners may
simply not have enough vocabulary or knowledge of the language yet, but most
teachers will be familiar with the situation in which higher-level students fail to
recognise known words in the stream of fast connected speech. Bottom-up listening
activities can help learners to understand enough linguistic elements of what they
hear to then be able to use their top-down skills to fill in the gaps.

The following procedure for developing bottom-up listening skills draws on

dictogloss, and is designed to help learners recognise the divisions between words,
an important bottom-up listening skill. The teacher reads out a number of sentences,
and asks learners to write down how many words there would be in the written form.
While the task might sound easy, for learners the weak forms in normal connected
speech can make it problematic, so it is very important for the teacher to say the
sentences in a very natural way, rather than dictating them word-by-word.

Some suitable sentences are:

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I’m going to the shop.

Do you want some chocolate?
Let’s have a party!
I’d better go soon.
You shouldn’t have told him.
What are you doing?
There isn’t any coffee.
What have you got?
He doesn’t like it.
It’s quite a long way.
Why did you think you’d be able to?
Can you tell him I called?

Learners can be asked to compare their answers in pairs, before listening again to
check. While listening a third time, they could write what they hear, before
reconstructing the complete sentences in pairs or groups. By comparing their version
with the correct sentences, learners will become more aware of the sounds of normal
spoken English, and how this is different from the written or carefully spoken form.
This will help them to develop the skill of recognizing known words and identifying
word divisions in fast connected speech.

REVIEW OF CONCEPTS

 Internal and external factors are the two affecting factor which hinder students
listening comprehension skill.
 Internal factors refer to all psychological and physiological elements within you
which affect your listening comprehension.
 External factors refer to all those environmental elements such as noise, delivery,
context and co-text.
 Teaching phonemics and phonology as well as other listening comprehension
strategies is an important thing to do in order to improve students’ listening
comprehension.
 Top down listening happens when we use background knowledge to make sense
of what we are listening to. We already know a fair amount about the topic, and
the story or information we are getting fits into a previously established schema.
 Bottom up listening, happens when we understand language sound by
sound or word by word, with less use of background knowledge.

COMPREHENSION
CHECK

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A. In your own understanding, explain the following factors affecting listening

comprehension of the students.

it refers to affecting factors that take place only or are present on a

person's own self. These are a sort of problems, complications and
problems such as poor background knowledge, level of language
proficiency, inadequate motivation, and any other in terms of
psychological and physiological aspect.
INTERNAL

it refers to affecting factors that take place only or are present in

the context and/or content where listening process happens.
These factors include the physical disturbances or noise, particular
time and place, speech deliver, co-text, and the likes.

EXTERNAL

SELF-EVALUATION: Differentiate the following listening strategies in your own

perspective.

It entails utilizing your knowledge and the circumstance as much

as you can. You can understand what you hear based on your
understanding of circumstances, contexts, texts, conversations,
phrases, and sentences.

TOP DOWN
LISTENING

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It emphasizes how language works from the inside out, combining

words and sounds to create meaning.

BOTTOM
UP
LISTENING

POST-TEST. Make a detailed lesson plan that caters the following situation:

In your class of 25 students, some have listening difficulties and there are few that
doesn’t like listening. Your task is to apply the principles, strategies, and activities
that you find fit for the given scenario.

Reminders:
Use yellow paper
Answers should be handwritten

References:

Villamin, A., 2005, Remedial Reading: A Handbook for Teachers and Students,
Pheonix Publishing House

https://www.scholastic.com/parents/school-success/school-help/learning-
challenges/reading-problems.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x

https://study.com/academy/lesson/top-down-bottom-up-listening-strategies-in-the-
classroom.html

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/listening-top-down-bottom

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