International House World Organisation

IHCAM
International House Certificate in Advanced Methodology

Module 12: Language as Text

Pre-reading task:

Before you read the notes, consider your answers to these three questions.
You may like to make notes as your answers will be discussed during the
session. Once you have answered them, read the notes which follow.

1. How many different kinds of ‘text’ can you think of? Make a list,
including examples of spoken texts as well as written texts.
2. Think of at least four ‘texts’ which you have read or listened to recently.
What problems might learners at different levels of English encounter
when reading or listening to the same texts?
3. When did you last use a text for teaching purposes? What was your
teaching aim, and to what extent did you achieve your aim?

12.1 What is a text?

A text is a continuous piece of spoken or written language. It is the result of
discourse, which in turn can be defined as the process of communicating by
means of either spoken or written language. By this definition, there is no
minimum or maximum length for a text. Consider the following example of written
‘language in use’:

Dear Mark

I’m sorry to have taken so long to get back to you. I went away to Malaysia a
month ago and came back to 650 messages (non-Spam). I’ve still got 556! It
feels like the pile will never shrink. Anyway, enough of excuses. I’m happy to
attach my presentation.

All the best

Michael

As texts go, this is a relatively short example. Despite being brief, however, it has
several characteristics which together qualify it as a text:

1. It has a clear communicative function – to comply with a request whilst

simultaneously apologising for the tardiness of the response.
2. It has a recognisable genre – an e-mail.
3. It is self-contained – although it is clearly part of a chain of e-mails, it is itself a
complete text with a beginning, a main body, and an end.
4. It makes sense – it consists of words and sentences which link together
logically and appropriately.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes

(written by Mark Lloyd)
From a language teaching and learning perspective, if a block of language does
not have these four characteristics, it cannot be described as a ‘text’, and for the
purposes of this session it will be assumed that any block of language described
as a ‘text’ does indeed have these key characteristics.

12.2 Written text v spoken text

Although written and spoken texts share the four characteristics listed above,
they typically differ from each other in three respects:

1. Spontaneity
With the exception of monologues delivered as speeches, most spoken texts are
the result of spontaneous discourse which involves at least two people and takes
place in real time and without detailed preparation. Consequently, spoken texts
are characterised by ‘performance’ features which make up for the lack of
preparation time. Speakers, in other words, have to ‘think on their feet’, and to
buy thinking time they might employ a range of devices or techniques, such as:
• Fillers.
• Repetition.
• False starts.
• Chunks.
• Small units of meaning.

2. Interactivity
Most spoken discourse involves more than one person so that a spoken text
tends to include contributions from more than one participant. Written texts are
not, on the whole, ‘collaborative’ in the same way. The interactive nature of
spoken discourse manifests itself in the following characteristics of spoken texts:
• Turn-taking (including the use of intonation to indicate whether a ‘turn’ has
finished).
• Interruptions.
• Signalling agreement or disagreement.
• Signposting (including the use of prominence to draw attention to key
information).
• Co-operation and collaboration.

Of course, letters or e-mails exchanged between two correspondents over a

period of time would typically follow on from each other in the sense that each
letter would refer to some extent to the contents of the previous letter, but it
would be odd to claim that the entire chain of letters or e-mails together made up
a single text. On the contrary, each piece of correspondence would usually be
considered a text in its own right in so far as it is a self-contained ‘communicative
act’. However, it is worth noting that certain ‘new’ genres of writing, such as text
messages or chat room postings are serving to blur the ‘interactivity’ distinction
between spoken and written discourse.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 2

(written by Mark Lloyd)
3. Interpersonality
As a result of the interactive nature of most spoken discourse, spoken texts tend
to be characterised by evidence of participants attempting to foster and maintain
a positive group dynamic. Examples of this evidence include:
• Reflecting (reformulating what the speaker said to check understanding of
the message and to reassure the speaker that they are being listened to).
• Hedging (as a way to indicate disagreement in a non-confrontational
manner).
• Use of vague language (to avoid coming across as too opinionated).
• Speakers completing or repeating the utterances of others.
• Use of exaggerated or evaluative language (to indicate shared attitudes
and avoid misunderstandings).

12.3 How do we understand texts?

In order to understand a text, listeners or readers are required to perform two
separate but related activities.

Firstly, comprehension of a text requires the application of knowledge. In

particular, it results from two different types of knowledge working together
simultaneously:

1. Linguistic knowledge – this includes knowing the meaning, spelling and

pronunciation of words and the accepted ‘rules’ of grammar, and is applied
through bottom-up processing of the language the reader or listener
encounters in the text.

2. Contextual knowledge – this could have a linguistic element to it, in the form
of an awareness of different text types and styles, or it could be cultural or
situational in the form of background knowledge of a topic. This knowledge is
what the reader or listener brings with them to the text, and is applied through
top-down processing.

Secondly, comprehension of a text requires interaction between the listener or

reader and the text. This interaction is in the form of the activation of mental
processes such as perception, recognition and inferencing, some of which are
bottom-up processes, and some of which are top-down. Lack of comprehension,
then, is the result of the failure of one or more of these processes. A listener, for
instance, might not hear a word clearly enough to perceive it, or alternatively may
hear it but be unable to recognise it because they have never come across it
before, in which case they may need to infer the meaning of the word by using
the context to help them.

Bottom-up processing starts with basic language units like words (or even parts
of words) and then moves on to more complex structures in order to build-up
comprehension of meaning. It involves concentrating on grammatical structures,
vocabulary and syntax rather than looking at the global meaning of texts. Top-

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(written by Mark Lloyd)
down processing involves looking at the text as a whole and applying our prior
knowledge of both non-linguistic factors (context and the world in general) and
linguistic factors (such as genre, style and format) – so-called ‘background
knowledge’ – in order to determine the gist of the writer or speaker’s meaning.
Comprehension of a text is generally seen as requiring both bottom-up and top-
down processing, with both processes influencing and depending on each other.
Successful interaction with a text, then, tends to require constant switching
between top-down and bottom-up processing, with one approach taking over
whenever the other results in an insufficiently deep level of comprehension.

12.4 The role of background knowledge

As the previous section makes clear, background knowledge is of great
importance in determining the ease with which a reader or listener can
comprehend a text, and it forms the basis of top-down processing. The technical
term for background knowledge is schema (plural schemata). Schemata can act
as a ‘short-cut’ to comprehension. For example, the sentence head The next train
to arrive on platform 3… is much easier to understand if we are familiar with train
travel and the language used by train announcers – our ‘train schema’ enables
us to associate the words train and platform, to recognise that trains stop at
platforms, that platforms have numbers, and that what follows will tell us more
about the train in question (for example, its destination). Without this schema we
would have to rely entirely on bottom-up processing, which would be far more
time-consuming (and would perhaps cause us to miss our train!). The importance
of schemata in comprehension also derives from the fact that without the ability
to relate the information we find in a text to our knowledge of the world, this
information is of little use to us. In other words, schemata not only help us fully
understand a text, they also enable us to learn from the text and apply what we
have learned to our own lives.

When relying on background knowledge to aid top-down processing of a text,

second-language learners are faced with two possible problems:
1. They do not have the necessary schema.
2. They have the schema, but are unable to access it because they have failed
to recognise the link between it and the text.

The first problem can only be solved by acquisition of the schema, which may be
achieved by learning more about the culture of the target language or specifically
about the topic, concept or genre concerned. Perhaps the best way for learners
to acquire schemata is for them to be immersed in the culture of the target
language by living in the country where the language is spoken. However, a
teacher can also play a role by teaching learners about the ‘target culture’ as well
as the target language – indeed it can be argued that the two concepts are
essentially inseparable anyway. Content-based teaching also has a role here –
children taught in bilingual schools tend to acquire the L2 receptive skills more
quickly not only because they receive more linguistic input but also because they
have the opportunity to build up a bigger range of L2 schemata.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 4

(written by Mark Lloyd)
The second problem is more obviously solvable by a teacher in a classroom.
There are two ways in which a teacher can help learners to use schemata to aid
their comprehension of a text:
1. By activating learners’ knowledge of the topic of the text – this is most easily
done by asking questions about the topic of the text or by asking learners to
brainstorm information about the topic (note that if the schemata of the group
are pooled at this point, learners are effectively acquiring new schemata from
each other) and perhaps constructing a spidergram or mind-map.
2. By encouraging learners to recognise and make use of contextual clues – this
might involve using pictures, titles / subtitles, headlines or (in the case of
reading texts) layout as clues to help learners predict the content of the text.

With their schemata thus activated, learners should be able to apply top-down
processing techniques more easily when they are reading or listening to the text,
which in turn will enable them to compensate for any breakdown in bottom-up
processing which may occur. In fact, the activation of schemata can also aid
bottom-up processing as well, as it might prepare learners to recognise and
‘decode’ individual grammatical or lexical features of a text more quickly when
they are encountered. The extent to which this is true depends on whether the
context or layout of the text obviously identify it as belonging to a specific genre
or text-type, and on how familiar the learners are with the genre in question.

12.5 The role of genre awareness

It will be clear from the previous section that learning about different genres of
written and spoken text – what types of genre there are and what features are
typical of them – can help learners, both by adding to their bank of schemata
(knowledge of the genre of a text being a key aspect of a learner’s schemata)
and by helping them to activate their existing schemata (by helping them to
recognise generic clues in and around the text).

Interpreting generic features involves making use of both macro and micro-level
clues. Macro clues are contained within the overall organisation of the text (its
format, length and layout) and provide particular help to top-down processing,
whilst micro clues are to be found in the specific grammatical and lexical features
of the text (the grammar structures and vocabulary in the text, for instance) and
perhaps aid bottom-up processing more. Teachers, then, should be careful to
consider genre whenever they introduce their learners to a text by pointing out or
eliciting what genre the text belongs to and looking for opportunities to highlight
specific generic features of the text in order to aid comprehension of the text and
add to learners’ bank of schemata to aid comprehension of similar texts they may
encounter in the future.

12.6 Implications for learners

It follows from the above sections that in order to become better readers and
listeners in English, learners need to acquire both linguistic and contextual
knowledge and need to learn how to interact with texts in such a way that they
are able to perceive, recognise and infer sufficient information to enable them to

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 5

(written by Mark Lloyd)
process the meaning contained in the texts. The extent to which the meaning of
a text needs to be processed depends, of course, on what information the learner
hopes to take from the text (that is, the reason for reading or listening), which in
turn depends in large part on the text type. Listening to a radio play, for instance,
will typically require greater processing of meaning than listening for the result of
a particular football match during a sports bulletin. The text type and the nature of
the information sought by the learner therefore determine both which of linguistic
or contextual knowledge is more useful and which mental processes need to be
activated. From a practical perspective, in order to process the meaning of a text
learners have to apply both sub-skills and strategies.

12.7 Reading and listening sub-skills

The identification of sub-skills (sometimes called micro-skills) has resulted from
the tendency for ELT to divide the use of English into four skills, those labelled
productive (speaking and writing) and those labelled receptive (reading and
listening). Each of these four skills is then sub-divided into a wide range of
isolated sub-skills.

The sub-skills of reading include:

• Understanding words.
• Identifying the grammatical function of words.
• Identifying the topic of the text and recognising topic changes.
• Identifying text-type and the writer’s purpose.
• Identifying key information and gist.
• Inferring the writer’s attitude.
• Understanding text organisation and following the development of the text.

The sub-skills of listening include:

• Perceiving and distinguishing between different sounds.
• Dividing speech into recognisable words or phrases.
• Distinguishing between given and new information.
• Using discourse markers and context clues to predict what will come next.
• Guessing the meaning of words and expressions.
• Inferring the speaker’s attitude.
• Identifying key information and gist.
• Identifying turn-taking signals.

Applying these sub-skills will typically require constant switching between top-
down and bottom-up processing. For instance, identifying text-type and topic and
inferring attitude will tend to require a top-down approach, based on what we
already know about text organisation, the writer / speaker and the ‘real world’.
This knowledge enables us to make predictions about the likely meaning of the
text. If we have cause to question the accuracy of our predictions, or if a lack of
real-world knowledge restricts our top-down processing, we may be forced to
switch our attention to checking the meaning of individual words in a written text

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 6

(written by Mark Lloyd)
or attempting to distinguish between different sounds in a stream of speech,
both of which are examples of bottom-up processing.

12.8 Reading and listening strategies

In teaching terms, sub-skills and strategies are often confused. The clearest way
to distinguish between the two terms, perhaps, is to see sub-skills as facilitatory
and strategies as compensatory. Reading and listening strategies, then, may be
defined as techniques for overcoming problems when reading and listening.
These techniques may be applied before, during or after the act of reading or
listening.

Examples of reading strategies are:

• Using non-linguistic information (pictures, format, etc.) to predict the
content of the text.
• Activating background knowledge of the topic before reading the text.
• Guessing the meaning of unknown words from context.
• Looking up unknown words in a dictionary.
• Ignoring unknown words altogether.

Examples of listening strategies are:

• Using non-linguistic information (situation, context, etc.) to predict what will
be heard.
• Filtering out distracting background noise.
• Activating background knowledge of the topic before starting to listen.
• Using non-linguistic visual clues (body language, gestures, etc.) to help
infer meaning.
• Seeking clarification or asking for repetition.
• Indicating lack of comprehension.
• Ignoring what is not understood.

12.9 Dealing with the receptive skills

Classroom reading and listening activities typically either focus on the reading /
listening skills themselves or focus on the language contained in the reading /
listening texts with a view to presenting new language structures or vocabulary.
In fact, there is no reason why the same text cannot be used for both these
purposes.

Focusing on the skills themselves can in turn have either a testing focus or a
teaching focus. A testing focus usually involves asking learners to read or listen
to a text and then work through a series of activities consisting of comprehension
questions designed to test how well they have understood the text. In this way,
the learners’ existing reading or listening skills are assessed. A teaching focus
aims to develop learners’ receptive skills in order to make them better readers or
better listeners. There are two broad approaches to the development of receptive
skills:

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 7

(written by Mark Lloyd)
1. A holistic approach – this involves adopting an integrated approach to
language skills and is based on the view that language skills are best
acquired in authentic situations through meaningful communication and social
interaction. Put simply, listening is best learned by listening, and reading by
reading.

2. A segmental approach – this involves attending to isolated sub-skills and

strategies and particularly raising learners’ awareness of the issues involved,
identifying specific weaknesses and enabling learners to overcome or
compensate for these weaknesses, and improving overall competence
through focused controlled practice.

12.10 A holistic approach to teaching the receptive skills

Whole language learning developed as an approach to L1 reading and writing
but has since been applied to a limited extent to the development of all four
language skills in second language learning. Reading, writing, listening and
speaking should, it is claimed, develop together, and learning is seen as a
learner-centred process which results from meaningful social interaction. The role
of the teacher is to facilitate the learning process from the position of ‘consultant’
as learners encounter problems. Task-Based Learning, Community Language
Learning and Process Writing all include nods in the direction of whole language
learning, although at present the overall influence of the holistic approach on
second language learning remains marginal.

12.11 A segmental approach to teaching the receptive skills

Reading and listening sub-skills and strategies may be familiar to learners as
techniques they use when reading or listening in their own language. However,
such techniques are not automatically transferred from L1 to English, either
because they have become automated in L1 (and therefore are applied
unknowingly) or because they require a level of confidence which the learner
does not yet possess when reading or listening to English.

In addition, there are inevitably situations when the distinction between sub-skills
and strategies becomes blurred. In order to infer the attitude of a speaker, for
instance, listeners will tend to use a combination of linguistic, non-linguistic and
contextual clues, requiring the application of a range of facilitatory sub-skills and
compensatory strategies simultaneously. Similarly, before being able to use the
compensatory strategy of activating background knowledge of the topic, readers
may have to possess sufficiently developed facilitatory sub-skills to be able to
decode enough text to identify the topic in the first place.

Whether a particular technique is facilitatory (i.e. a sub-skill) or compensatory

(i.e. a strategy) is almost beside the point, however. From a practical teaching
perspective, it is perhaps more important that teachers, when adopting a
segmental approach to the teaching of receptive skills:
• Use reading or listening texts which are appropriate in terms of level (ideally
just above the learners’ current level in the relevant skill – a text which is too

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 8

(written by Mark Lloyd)
 easy will serve no developmental purpose, whilst one which is too far
beyond the learners’ current reading or listening ability will be too difficult for
them to process).
• Are able to identify the possible causes of their learners’ difficulties and able
to devise or assign activities and tasks which, if carried out as intended,
enable learners to overcome these difficulties.

12.12 Developing bottom-up processing

The following activity types can be used to develop learners’ bottom-up
processing skills:
• Underlining (in reading texts) or noting down (in listening texts) topic-
related words.
• Identifying pronouns and their referents.
• Identifying linking words and predicting what will come next after each
one.
• Parsing texts.
• Predicting what words come next in the text.
• Identifying unknown words and using the co-text to formulate guesses as
to the meaning of these words.
• Matching headings to sections of the text.
• Finding evidence in a text to justify one’s earlier predictions or inferences.

Possible activities for developing bottom-up processing skills specifically for

reading include:
• Putting the text, or parts of the text, in order by looking for linguistic clues
in the text.
• Scanning through a text in a limited time to find specific linguistic
information (for example, underlining all the verbs).
• Learning spelling ‘rules’.
• Prohibiting the use of dictionaries (to force learners to either guess the
meaning of unknown words or ignore them altogether).

Possible activities for developing bottom-up processing skills specifically for

listening include:
• Discriminating between similar utterances.
• Identifying extra words or missing words in a transcript.
• Dictation / Dictagloss.
• Predicting what comes next using intonation clues.
• Learning phonemic symbols and distinguishing between phonemes.

12.13 Developing top-down processing

The following activity types can be used to develop learners’ top-down
processing skills:
• Using pictures or titles / headlines to predict what the text will be about or
predicting words or phrases which might appear in the text.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 9

(written by Mark Lloyd)
 • Brainstorming information about the topic of the text and using this to
predict information content.
• Brainstorming information about the speaker or writer and using this to
predict the opinions contained in the text.
• Discriminating between different text types.
• Identifying unknown words and using the context to formulate guesses as
to the meaning of these words.
• Replacing certain words in the text with ‘nonsense’ words.

Possible activities for developing top-down processing skills specifically for

reading include:
• Skimming the text in a limited time to establish its broad message based
on key linguistic or informational content.
• Predicting content from the layout.
• Blanking out parts of the text, or giving learners only part of the text and
asking them to infer the content of the missing part (e.g. through ‘jigsaw
reading’ activities).

Possible activities for developing top-down processing skills specifically for

listening include:
• Speaking deliberately quietly, or turning the volume down on the audio
player, so that not all the message is available for bottom-up processing
and learners have to resort to top-down processing instead.
• Obscuring the message by adding background noise.
• Allowing learners to listen to only part of the message and infer the
content of the missing part (e.g. through ‘jigsaw listening’ activities).

It is worth noting that a segmental approach to developing receptive skills may be

either skills-based or text-based. In a skills-based lesson one particular sub-skill
is focused on with several different texts being used for this purpose, other
aspects of the texts which do not affect the overall aim of the lesson being
ignored. In a text-based lesson, only one text would be used in the lesson and
the aim would be for the learners to ‘unpack’ it, using all the sub-skills they have
to understand as much of it as possible. A typical procedure followed by a
teacher, using any reading or listening text (including video and ‘live listenings’)
would be as follows:

1. Give some minimum information about the context (e.g. about the genre of
the text) – to activate schemata and therefore help with top-down processing
– and pre-teach key vocabulary if necessary – to help with bottom-up
processing.
2. Set an extensive task which requires learners to understand the gist of what
they read or hear. This may be a simple matching exercise or a series of
undemanding True / False statements.
3. Allow learners to read or listen to the text for the first time and then to consult
each other on the answers to the extensive task.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 10

(written by Mark Lloyd)
4. Set a more intensive task which requires learners to understand more
detailed information in the text or to infer the attitudes of the writer or speaker.
5. Allow learners to read or listen to the text a second time and again consult
each other on the answers to the task before checking the answers
communally and exploring the cause of problems. This will involve focusing
on the relevant sections of the text (and replaying the relevant sections of a
listening text).
6. The text could then be used as the basis of further language work involving
extracting vocabulary or structures from the text (using a transcript, if
possible, in the case of a listening text).

The skills-based and text-based approaches are complementary and both types
of lesson are valid ways of teaching receptive skills.

Pre-session task

Imagine you have a new student who will be having individual lessons with you
over a period of a few weeks. The student has indicated to you that they find
understanding written and spoken English particularly difficult.

Having carried out a thorough needs analysis you have managed to identify one
written and one spoken text-type which the student typically encounters in their
daily life. With these two text-types in mind (they can be any text-types of your
choice), decide how you would go about developing the student’s receptive skills.
Consider genre features, schemata, sub-skills and strategies.

Reading list

An A-Z Of ELT, Scott Thornbury, Macmillan.

Beyond The Sentence, Scott Thornbury, Macmillan.

Teaching Reading Skills, Christine Nuttall, Macmillan.

Listening, Goodith White, OUP.

Developing Reading Skills, Françoise Grellet, CUP.

Reading And Reading Skills, Robert Buckmaster (in Modern English Teacher,
April 2005).

What Makes Reading In A Second Language Difficult?, Paul Harvey (in Modern
English Teacher, January 2006).

Listening Skills, Paul Bress (in Modern English Teacher, January 2006).

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 11

(written by Mark Lloyd)
The following web-sites offer interesting further reading relating to the teaching
of receptive skills:

http://www.abax.co.jp/listen/index.html - a critique of the way listening is taught in

Japan, with a useful checklist of sub-skills and strategies.

http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/alyousef/article.pdf - a detailed analysis of

the teaching of reading skills to second-language learners.

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/app_ling/buptdown.htm - an overview of top-down and

bottom-up processing.

IH CAM Module 12 – Language as Text – Course Participants’ Notes 12

(written by Mark Lloyd)