Listening Contenidos Específicos del Inglés

EUM Fray Luis de León

1. What is listening? A historical approach (Nunan and Carter: 7-13)
 LISTENINING

“Listening is the channel in which we process

language in real time - employing pacing,
units of encoding and pausing that are
unique to spoken language.” (The Cambridge
Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages (Kindle Locations 167-168).
Kindle Edition)
How do learners of an
L2 approach listening?

• “Parallel processing model”:

• Bottom-up process: attention to
new data
• Top-down process: use of prior
knowledge
• It happens at a phonological,
grammatical, lexical and
propositional level.
 Historical background
Up to the late 19 Century:
th
• Focus on written language
(descriptive grammars,
translation, problem-solving
sentences…)
Reform Movement (late 19th
Century):
• Application of psychological
theory of child language
learning to the teaching of
foreign languages
• Listening gained a central role
1930’s and 1940’s:
• Anthropologists started to
describe the world’s oral
languages: `one learns to
understand and speak a
language primarily by hearing
and imitating native
speakers'(Bloomfield 1942)
• Applied linguists developed
the ‘oral approach’:
‘audiolingual method,
intensive oral-aural drills and
extensive use of the language
laboratory’
• Situational approach (Firth 1957; Chomsky
1957):
• meaning determined by situation, not
linguistic units
• Chomsky (1957): `natural approach' to
language learning. In a natural approach, the
learner works from an internal syllabus and
requires input data (not necessarily in a
graded order) to construct the target
language system.
• Hymes (1971): `communicative competence’,
which lead to ‘conversation analysis’ (CA),
stating that what is crucial is not so much a
better understanding of how language is
structured internally, but a better
understanding of how language is used.
 Communicative Applied linguists Since 1980, listening
Language Teaching recognised listening as has been viewed as a
(CLT) `threshold the primary channel to primary vehicle for
syllabus' of van Ek gain access to L2 `data’, language learning
(1973), listening as an the trigger for (Richards 1985;
integral part of acquisition Richards and Rodgers
communicative 1986; Rost 1990).
competence
From 1970

Late 1960s and early

1973 1980
1970s
2. Introduction to listening in SLA (Nunan and Carter: 7-13)
Listening in SLA
• `Linguistic environment' serves as the
stage for SLA. This environment
provides linguistic input in the form of
listening opportunities embedded in
social and academic situations
• To acquire the language, learners must
come to understand the language in
these situations.
• Accessibility is possible through:
• accommodations made by native
speakers
• strategies the learner enacts
• Krashen (1982) claimed that `comprehensible input' was a necessary
condition for language learning.
• further development can only be achieved by the learner `comprehending'
language that contains linguistic items (lexis, syntax, morphology) at a level
slightly above the learner's current knowledge (i + 1).
• comprehension is necessary for input to become `intake', i.e.
• made possible by speech adjustments and learner's use of shared knowledge
of the context (Larsen-Freeman and Long 1991).
 Speech processing
• Several factors are activated in speech
perception:
• phonetic quality,
• prosodic patterns
• pausing
• speed of input
• Preferred strategies involve four fundamental
properties of spoken language:
• the phonological system:
• phonotactic rules: the sound
sequences that a language allows to
make up syllables
• Tone melodies
• Stress system
Differences between L1 and L2 create difficulties.
Best solution is normal speed with extra pauses
inserted.
Listening in interactive settings
• How do L2 learners interact?
• How does control and distribution
of power work in interactions?
• Differences in languages (cross-
cultural pragmatics):
• When to talk
• how much to say
• pacing and pausing in and between
speaking turns
• intonational emphasis
• use of formulaic expressions
• and indirectness
(Tannen 1984b)
Difficulties
• phonological
• grammatical
• word recognition
• informational packaging
• conceptual representation of the
content
• elliptical utterances.
Strategies
• Bremer et al, 1996:
• identification of topic shifts
• providing backchannelling or listenership
cues
• participating in conversational routines
(providing obligatory responses)
• shifting to topic initiator role
• initiating queries and repair of
communication problems
• To employ a great deal of `interactional
work' (including using clarification
strategies) in addition to linguistic
processing
• Rost and Ross's (1991):
• `hypothesis testing' (asking about
specific information in the story)
rather than `lexical push-downs'
downs' (asking about word meanings)
and `global reprises' (asking for
general repetition).
• Kasper (1984):
• Using `think aloud' protocols found
that:
• L2 listeners tend to form an initial
interpretation of a topic (a `frame')
and then stick to it, trying to fit
incoming words and propositions into
that frame
• L1 listeners were better at recognising
when they had made a mistake about
the topic and were prepared to
initiate a new frame.
• Vandergrift (1996):
• metacognitive strategies (such
as planning and monitoring)
• cognitive strategies (such as
linguistic inferencing and
elaborating)
• socio-affective strategies (such
as questioning and self-
encouragement) at all levels
3. Introduction to teaching practice (Nunan and Carter: 7-13)
The teaching of
listening involves:
Selection of input sources (live, or recorded):
• Interesting
• In accordance with the level
• Authentic
• Varied
• Challenging

Creation of tasks:
• well-structured
• with opportunities for learners to apply prior knowledge and experience and to
monitor what they are doing

Assistance to help learners enact effective listening strategies

(metacognitive, cognitive, and social)

Integration of listening with other learning purposes (with

appropriate links to speaking, reading and writing).
Listening for meaning .vs. Listening for
language practice
• The notion of listening for meaning became a standard in teaching by the mid-
1980s:
• Morley (1984) examples of selective listening materials, using authentic
information and information-focused activities (e.g. notional-informational
listening practice, situation-functional listening practice, discrimination-
oriented practice, sound-spelling listening tending practice).
• Ur (1984) `real-life listening' in which the listener has built a sense of purpose
and expectation for listening and in which there is a necessity for a listener
response.
• Anderson and Lynch (1988) grading input types and organising tasks to
maximise learner interaction.
• Underwood (1989) describes listening activities in terms of three phases: pre-,
while- and post-listening listening activities.
• Richards (1990): guide for exercises promoting `top-down' or `bottom-up'
processing and focusing on transactional or interactional layers of discourse
• Rost (1991): our classes of `active listening': global listening to focus on meaning,
intensive listening to focus on form, selective listening to focus on specific
outcomes and interactive listening to focus on strategy development
• Nunan (1995c): recipes for exercises for listening classes, organised in four parts:
developing cognitive strategies (listening for the main idea, listening for details,
predicting), developing listening with other skills, listening to authentic material
and using technology
• Lynch (1996): types of negotiation tasks that can be used with recorded and `live'
inputs in order to require learners to focus on clarification processes. Lynch also
elaborates upon Brown's (1994) guidelines for grading listening materials.
• White (1998): principles for activities in which learners progress through
repeated listening of texts. The need to focus on `what went wrong' when
learners do not understand and the value of having instructional links between
listening and speaking.
• Rubin (1994) and Mendelsohn and Rubin (1995): discuss the importance of
strategy training in classroom teaching.
• Rost (1994): a framework for incorporating five types of listening strategies into
classroom instruction: predicting, monitoring, itoring, inferencing, clarifying and
responding.
• (Willis 1981), (Brinton et al. 1989): the use of the target language for instruction.
3. Current Practice (Harmer: 303-319)
 Extensive listening

To work we will need an

Motivation increases extensive collection of
Outside the classroom
with student’s choice recordings classified by
level, topic and genre

We should explain the Encourage them to keep

importance of extensive some sort of record:
listening and come to an portfolio, personal
agreement with the journey, website,
students listening poster
Use of audiomaterial

Advantages: Disadvantages:
Variety of situations and voices Bad acoustics in the classroom.
Portable and easy to access Same speed for all students in the classroom
 How many times do we play the recording?

More benefit from repetition

Once like in real life (Penny than from a long pre-listening Several times or as many
Ur, 1996: 108) phase (John Field, 1998a: times as they need
2000b)

3 times (my advice):

Importance of pre-listening • Listen
phase to provide background
Avoid over repetition knowledge on the topic • Take notes
(Anna Ching-Shyanga and • Compare answers
John Read, 375-379)
Who controls the
recording?
• Strategies so students don´t have to listen
at the same pace:
• Students control Stop and Start
• Work in small groups with access to
different machines
• Students work on their own (lab or
listening centre)
Life listening

Face to face with teacher or guests

Audio but also prosodic and paralinguistic clues

Types:

• Reading aloud.
• Story-telling.
• Interviews
• Conversations
Video

Advantages:

• Paralinguistic behaviour: intonation with face gestures, body language…

• Cultural input.

We should give them tasks with clear instructions to direct their learning

Viewing techniques:

• Fast forward: at high speed for the students to guess what is being said
• Silent viewing (for language/music): silently for the students to guess what is being said
• Freeze frame: at any time for students to guess what is about to happen
• Partial viewing: Cover the screen partially
Listening techniques:
• Pictureless listening
(language/music/sound effect):
• Only language, music or sound effect
to guess the scene
• Picture or speech:
• Half of the class can see the screen
and describe what is happening to
the other half
• Subtitles:
• Read subtitles only and guess what is
being said in English
Music

• Background music (Suggestopedia)

• Benefits and disadvantages?
• Activities
• How do we choose it?
• Student’s choice
• Teacher’s choice
• Agreement
 Organiser: clear instructions and aims

Teacher’s Operator: play or talk according to

students’ needs

role Feedback organiser: clear and constructive

feedback, encourage teamwork

Prompter: direct them to different

linguistic aspects
Listening sequence:

Let’s create a sequence based on the examples

from pages 310-319 (The Practice of English
Language Teaching)
Bibliography
• Anderson, A. and T. Lynch (1988) Listening (Language Teaching:
A Scheme for Teacher Education). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
• Bloomfield, L. (1942) Outline Guide for the Practical Study of
Foreign Languages. Baltimore, MD: Linguistic Society of
America.
• Bremer, K., C. Roberts, M. Vasseur, M. Simonot and P. Broeder
(1996) Achieving Understanding: Discourse in Intercultural
Encounters. London: Longman.
• Brinton, D., M.A. Snow and M.J. Wesche (1989) Content-Based
Second Language Instruction. New York: Newbury House.
• Ching-Shyanga, Anna and Read, J. (2006). The effects of
listening support on the listening performance of EFL learners,
TESOL Quarterly 40/02.
• Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Bibliography

• Field, J. (1998). Skills and strategies: towards a new

methodology for listening. ELT Journal 52/2.
• Harmer, Jeremy (2007). The Practice of English Language
Teaching. London: Pearson Longman.
• Hymes, D. (1971) On Communicative Competence.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Kasper, G. (1984) Pragmatic comprehension in learner-native
speaker discourse. Language Learning 34, 1-20.
• Krashen, S. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second
Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon
• Larsen-Freeman, D. and M.H. Long (1991) An Introduction to
Second Language Acquisition Research. London: Longman.
Bibliography

• Lynch, T. (1996) Communication in the Language Classroom.

Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Morley, J. (1984) Listening and Language Learning in ESL:
Developing Self-Study Activities for Listening Comprehension.
Orlando: HBJ
• Nunan, D. (ed.) (1995c) New Ways in Teaching Listening.
Washington, DC: TESOL
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Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bibliography

• Richards, J.C. (1985) Listening comprehension: Approach,

design, and procedure. In J.C. Richards (ed.) The Context
of Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 189-207.
• Richards, J.C. and T. Rodgers (1986) Approaches and
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Bibliography

• Rost, M. (1990) Listening in Language Learning. London:

Longman.
• Rost, M. (1991) Listening in Action. New York: Prentice
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interaction: Typology and teachability. Language
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Bibliography

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