listening lsa1 background essay

ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Helping pre-intermediate learners comprehend listening texts using top down processing.

WORDCOUNT: 2499

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 20/10/2014

CANDIDATE NAME: BENJAMIN WERNER EICHHORN

CENTRE NUMBER: OO001

Benjamin Werner EichhornHelping pre-intermediate learners comprehend listening media using top down

processing.

Contents

1 Introduction 3

2 Analysis 3

2.1 How do we listen 3

2.2 Drawing from background knowledge 3

2.3 Sub skills used in a top-down approach 4

2.4 Using additional sub-skills for listening 4

3 Issues 4

3.1 Learners listening for complete understanding in a gist task 4

3.2 Learners are unable to connect any of their own background information to the topic of the dialogue. 5

3.3 Students rely too much on making predictions and assumptions 6

3.4 Students unable to follow dialogue after activating background knowledge due to accents of speakers in the dialogue 6

3.5 Teachers only introduce a listening component without activating schema due to focus on exam preparation 7

Suggestions for teaching 5

3.11 Encourage students to use other parts of the extract to gain understanding 5

3.21 Pre teach students cultural aspects 5

3.31 Students reflect on listening comprehension mistakes 6

3.41 Allow learners to “tune in” to a recording 7

3.51 Ensure students always activate background knowledge 7


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Chris Ożόg, 10/22/14,

Clearly laid out

4. Bibiography 8

5. Appendices 9-14 1 Introduction

As both a language learner and teacher, I know that listening is essential aspect of learning a language. Students can, when taught effective processes, begin to develop the skills required to listen independently outside of the classroom. It has historically, however, been regarded as the least important aspect of learning a language, with it’s ‘superior skill’ speaking often gaining more attention. (Wilson 17:2009)

What is often overlooked, is how to present this media in a way in which students can effectively listen and process the information. Students can sometimes “switch off” when being presented with a text due to being overloaded with information (Wilson:2009:14) To prevent this, listeners need to use top-down processing to gain an initial understanding. This essentially involves learners first understanding the general idea of the dialogue before listening in more detail for specific words or phonological features. This process is the opposite of bottom-up processing, whereby learners initially listen for phonemes and syllables and then gradually work up to develop the whole picture of the dialogue. From my own experience prioritizing “bottom-up” is generally not as effective as native speakers and learners will instinctively first identify the context, and then be able to comprehend more specific details.

2 Analysis

-2.1 How do we listen

There are 4 main sub-skills used for listening:

Listening for gist: When we listen for an overall idea of the meaning of a text i.e the context, the people speaking and the purpose.

Listening for specific information: When listeners only need to understand specific part of the information in the dialogue, such as listening for information about a particular flight status and thus listen selectively.

Listening in detail: Listening for specific reasons why someone believes something. Listening for details about an issue or belief.

Inferential listening: Discovering the overall feeling or opinions the speakers convey. These might not always be explicitly stated.

(Wilson, 2009:10)

Before developing these sub-skills though, it is important listeners are prepared to listen to the text. We do this by connecting our background knowledge with the context in the dialogue.

2.2 Drawing from background knowledge


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This is some useful analysis. Careful not to over reference – ensure your own voice is in the analysis of examples.


These definitions are light and in the case of detail not full enough to be fully accurate. And how do these relate to TDP? You’ve got to link them. Talking about classroom procedures – preparing people to listen – isn’t a valid link.


Is there any particular reason you have different fonts? You justify your choice of focus and reference background reading, well done. The brief definitions of TDP and BUP are generally accurate though not completely so and you very briefly mention your own experience (more should be made of this).

Top-down processing works by getting students to initially activate schemata i.e referring to background knowledge from their own lives or previous lessons. Schematic knowledge in learners is often considered as important as linguistic knowledge in aiding communication and comprehension (Widdowson 1983 cited from Cooke 1997)

Schema can be divided into two main types: content and formal schema (Carrell, 1983). Content schema relates to the knowledge the learner has about a topic in connection with their own experiences and perceptions. Formal schema refer to “knowledge about how discourse is organized with respect to different genres, different topics, or different purposes (e.g., transactional versus interactional), including relevant sociocultural knowledge” (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain,102:2000) An example of this is how we assume a lecture is organized. We would expect to hear an introduction and overview, some sections with a summary at the end of each one as well as a round up on what was covered. (Hedge 233:2000)

2.3 Sub skills used in a top down approach

The top-down approach enables learners to use “prior knowledge to infer meaning” (Hedge 234:2000). It helps learners to avoid mistakes in mishearing certain words that may sound similar such as “walk” and “work”. If a learner is aware that they are listening to a text about discovering and hiking in the lake district, then they are less likely to expect the word “work” to be mentioned.

This previous knowledge from schema also allows listeners to predict what they might hear. They can formal schemata to predict some common follow up questions or the sequence of a dialogue in a particular situation. They can also infer details of content, i.e what might be occurring, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in the recording, by making assumptions based on their experiences or knowledge in similar situations. (Richards 9:2008)

2.4 Using additional sub skills for listening

The top-down approach “facilitates the assimilation of new information into the information already stored” (Xie 68:2005) This means that once the listener’s schemata have been activated, any new information heard is easier to process. In Appendix 1 we can see how the background knowledge supports deeper comprehension of the text.

However, sometimes bottom-up listening is more appropriate. Listeners can use an interactive model, (Richards 10:2008 and Field 132-133:2008) where both top-down and bottom-up activities are used at the same time for different skills to facilitate understanding. An example might be when there is not enough background knowledge, or when a specific lexical item or structure needs to be highlighted (Richards 4:2008) Bottom up processing is necessary when the exact meaning of a sentence or word is required by the listener. Nevertheless, I still believe that the top-down approach is the initial processing listeners do and a bottom-up approach is used as the secondary process. An example might be when we listen to a song first, we get an overall feeling about the meaning, i.e top-down. Analysing the individual words, sounds, and elements of the song is generally what people do after listening a few


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That’s not fully sustainable. It’s perfectly feasible to listen to a song and listen for the lyrics.


But the processes happen simultaneously all the time – we don’t choose one or the other. They are simply ways our brains decode text or seek to do so. They are interactive and complement each other.


It would be much better to put this diagram in the analysis section and then to comment on it to add your voice to the analysis and fully demonstrate understanding.


There need to be examples to support this.


Good point.


This should really be at the start of the analysis where you should lay out a full working definition of what TDP is, with examples.

times, i.e bottom-up. Bottom-up listening also requires higher concentration to decipher language so it should only be used selectively by listeners and is generally easier after listening with a top-down focus first or when employed selectively.

3 Issues and Suggestions

3.1 Learners listening for complete understanding in a gist task.

Learners often try to listen and understand everything being said and pay too much attention to the elements of the text they don’t understand. Listeners then focus too much on trying to decipher individual elements and lose understanding of the overall text. They may not be using sub-skills mentioned in 2.3. In my experience of listening to foreign languages, once you start to focus on a sentence that was misunderstood, you are no longer listening to the subsequent dialogue.

3.11 Suggestion: Encourage students to use other parts of the extract to gain understanding

Aims: To encourage students to use prior knowledge and their general understanding to complete a gist listening activity.

Procedure: Introduce dialogue or video with some background discussion or a short text. Get students to sequence events and make predictions for a video. Play first without sound and students peer check but don’t give answers. Play again with sound and check and give answers. Repeat extract with students answering more detailed questions.

Value: Students are forced to use other things to understand and predict events and connect relevant aspects of L1 interaction to their future understanding of L2 discourse. This also helps learners improve the sub skill listening for gist by considering all information they can comprehend. See appendix 2

Follow up: An alternative activity could be done in an audio only extract where learners focus on the tones or only hear broken sections of the dialogue and have to make predictions about the other parts.

3.2 Learners are unable to connect any of their own background information to the topic of the dialogue.

It is occasionally the case that learners can make no connection with their background with a topic or issue raised in a class. This means learners do not benefit from activating schemata stage in a top down process (see 2.4) and struggle to complete subsequent stages of prediction as there is nothing for them to source ideas from. This can occur when a topic has little cultural connection with the learners. An example I have experience has come in Vietnam when trying to get students to listen to a story about an adventure sports holiday. This is an uncommon type of holiday as Vietnamese tend to go on holiday to relax and socialize rather than do sports and take risks outside of their comfort zone.

3.21 Suggestion: Pre teach students cultural aspects

Aim: To enable students to better understand a certain topic which is unfamiliar to their culture or environment, before they do a listening task on the topic.


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This suggestion is fine, but again the value section needs more precision. As a guide, you haven’t mentioned TDP once in all of suggestion 3.21, and you need to relate it back to that.


This is a valid issue with an isolated learning context (Vietnamese learners). You need to say more about how this affects their overall listening comprehension.


Good to see you including published sources but say you’ve adapted it in the suggestion; otherwise, it seems unconnected.


??


This essay makes very clear use of subheadings and numbering, well done. The suggestions are also make good use of an appropriate layout. The value needs to be more precise and you should refer back to TDP to do this, saying how this activity helps learners improve their listening through more explicit awareness of top-down strategies.


This is the germ of a valid issue, but you do not relate it to TFP or identify any specific learning context.

Procedure: Introduce the topic with realia photos or a video with no dialogue (e.g a sport like kayaking or parkour) Students discuss what is happening in the media and elicit any relevant vocabulary. Present meaning form and pronunciation of any vocabulary necessary to understand the concept and the subsequent topic but pre teach a maximum of 5 words. After follow with a more specific background introduction i.e the place, the speakers etc. before playing the extract.

Value: This gives students a better ability to comprehend a wider range of topics in L2. Students will also then have background knowledge relating to this subject to draw from as explained in 2.2 for both reading and listening. From my experience it is always important for a teacher to act as both a teacher of language and as a cultural bridge between the learners cultural background and their own.

Follow up: Wilson states “If the script seems completely alien to the students, it may lend itself to a discussion of cultural differences” (Wilson 72:2009) Thus, an ideal activity would be for students to discuss and compare the attitudes or beliefs of people in their own culture regarding the topic in comparison with those in an English speaking country.

3.3 Students rely too much on making predictions and assumptions

One criticism of the top-down approach is that students make too many assumptions when listening and fail to comprehend the actual message in the dialogue (Wilson 15:2009). There are in fact some tests such as the IELTS listening test and FCE that specifically test a student’s comprehension by including so-called “distractors” to see if they are trying to make guesses simply by creating a picture themselves after hearing certain key words. These words might in fact be in a sentence relating to the speaker’s past or be later changed or given as a negative statement. E.g. “I used to go swimming every day but now I prefer just to ride my bike” with the question what does the person do to keep fit. This issue often affects pre-intermediate learners of the language as they are often only partially understand the dialogue and make assumptions based on words they know.

3.31 Suggestion Students reflect on listening comprehension mistakes

Aim: To make students aware of any mistakes they have made by assuming content when using top-down processing.

Procedure: Learners discuss the topic of the listening text with schema activating exercises. Context is set for the listening before listening for detail. Learners complete and teacher gets students to review certain parts of the extract with the transcript. Teacher plays key areas of the recording again to highlight the issue. Students consider why they might have chosen the wrong answer and why what speakers say. See Appendix 3

Value: From my experience as an IELTS teacher, this is a common mistake with learners. As I said in 2.4, bottom up is sometimes needed for precise meaning after top-down listening. Learners can sometimes rely too much on what they expect to hear and make assumptions based on the partial understanding that they have. Here a “bottom-up” reflective activity gives students awareness of this issue. It also allows students also begin to know when it is necessary to listen for more detail and gets them to analyse the sentence structures and specific meaning.


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You’ve said that already in the issue. This section is better, however, in that you do show how the bottom-up stage can aid reflection and hence awareness of the over-reliance of TDP. Just say it more explicitly.


? Also, say you’ve adapted the published exercise in some way to show you know the rationale for doing so.


Not a lower-level exam. Stay in your scope.


This is a valid issue and includes exams as a learning context.

Follow up: The teacher can in a future lesson give a similar listening activity with distractors and remind students of the techniques they may need to use at certain points during the activity

3.4 Students unable to follow dialogue after activating background knowledge due to accents of speakers in the dialogue

Though top-down processing can provide content-related preparation for listening, it has less effect in preparing students with different accents of English. This especially effects pre-intermediate learners who are likely to have only listened to a restricted range of accents beforehand. Such accents may be easily understood by native speakers but in some cases may be difficult for non native speakers even when it comes to allophones, i.e various ways of pronouncing a phoneme. Vietnamese speakers for example, have difficulty when hearing variations of vowel sounds as this kind of change often affects meaning in Vietnamese.

3.41 Allow learners to “tune in” to a recording

Aim: To help students adjust to the speakers, voices and context.

Procedure: Students hear the start of the text and are given 1 or 2 questions relating to the context of the conversation. Students answer the questions and then the recording is repeated with more complicated questions for the students to complete. See Appendix 4

Value: Students have the opportunity to go through the so-called process of ‘normalisation” where they can adjust to the characteristics of the delivery of speech of the text (Wilson 2009). This can be considered as a gist task, though is different from many as it only requires students to listen to a short part of the recording. Additionally, because only a part of the recording is played, students have further opportunity (after having previously activated schema) to predict what will happen further into the dialogue before it is played. (see 2.3)Follow up: More challenging questions can then be introduced and a follow-up recording can also be added for extended listening as shown in appendix 4.

3.5 Teachers and books only introduce a listening component without activating schema due to focus on exam preparationSometimes teachers may simply select a listening activity for students to do without any top-down listening activities to activate background knowledge. Teachers often focus more finding answers to questions in IELTS preparation classes. Books teach students what to do while listening and get students to prepare for the individual questions, e.g. “Look and see if you know any synonyms of the words in the questions”. However, the overall picture of the extract is not considered and the learner is not able to review their background knowledge. This can lead to students


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This has some validity as a teaching issue, but you don’t back it up with reference to your own experience or reading.


Page number? Wilson talks about tune in as about familiarizing students with the speakers’ voices, but this wouldn’t involve comprehension questions.


Wrong word


This issue is too general to be fully valid as you don’t relate it to TDP. Accents could affect any aspect of listening.

simply listening using bottom-up skills in which they listen for individual words. It is likely they will then be overloaded with information, especially when listening to IELTS section 2 and 4 extracts.

3.51 Suggestion: Ensure students always activate background knowledge

Teachers should be encouraged to consider background knowledge of the extract first even in cases when the strategy for answering the questions is the lesson focus as explained in 2.4 and in Appendix 1. When students have considered the context and made predictions based on the questions they are always better prepared to analyse the specific questions and consider synonyms. This will prevent students from being overwhelmed and tuning out of the text. Teachers can be provided with information shown in appendix 5. In subsequent lessons, this learner preparation process can be emphasised less as learners begin to automatically do it.

Bibliography

Carrell, P.L. (1983). “Some issues in Studying the Role of Schemata, or Background Knowledge, in Second language Comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, Vol.1, pp.81-92

Celce-Murcia, M., & Olshtain, E. (2000). Disourse and Context in Language Teaching: A Guide for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guy Cooke 1997 Key Concepts in ELT: Schemas

J. Field 2008 Listening in the language classroom

Hedge T. 2000 Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom

Richards. Teaching Listening Speaking 2008

Ruth Gairns, Stuart Redman 2005 “How to teach listening” Natural English Intermediate Book

Scrivener J, Learning Teaching 2005

Widdowson H.G 1983 Learning Purpose and language use. Oxford. Oxford University press


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Good list, but you need publishing information for each one.


The guideline procedure is useful in this instance.

JJ Wilson 2008 How to teach listening

XIE, X. (2005). The influence of schema theory on foreign language reading comprehension. The English Teacher, Vol 34, pp. 65-75

Student textbooks

Cambridge IELTS 8, Cambridge books for Cambridge exams

IELTS Foundation Study Skills Rachel Roberts, Joanne Gakonga, Andrew Preshous

Natural English Student Book 2005 Ruth Gairns, Stuart Redman

Speakout Pre Intermediate Antonia Claire, JJ Wilson


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Appendix 1


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Put this in the analysis and discuss it.


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Pg. 179 Scrivener J, Learning Teaching 2005

Appendix 2


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From the Teacher’s book2A Ss read the questions. Check/teach pretends, go out(with). Play the DVD.Teaching tipTel l Ss to focus on answering the question, and not worryabout language they don't understand. They'll watch theDVD again in Ex 3.

Extract from pg. 14 Speakout Pre Intermediate Antonia Claire, JJ Wilson

Appendix 3


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From pg. 7 - 8 IELTS Foundation Study Skills Rachel Roberts, Joanne Gakonga, Andrew Preshous

Appendix 4


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Extract from: pg. 20 - 21 Natural English Student Book 2005 Ruth Gairns, Stuart Redman


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Appendix 5

REMEMBER when preparing students for and IELTS listening section:

Always make sure that students consider the background information about the situation and think about what might occur.

This means teachers should follow this staging process:

1. Get students to look at the title of the extract and consider the topic and possible vocabulary. As shown below:


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(pg. 39 Cambridge IELTS 8, Cambridge books for Cambridge exams)


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2. Students should listen to the start of the extract when it states: “You will hear a student called Shona giving a presentation on her research report”Students should consider what people say in a research report, how a presentation is organized, what a student might say about studying about this. These questions will help the students to predict and infer any details from their prior knowledge. This all happens before students look at the questions themselves.

ONLY THEN should you look at the questions and consider strategies that students can use to answer the different questions and the individual key words in each questions.


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Documents

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students cultural aspects