Better listeners versus more listening: rethinking the Comprehension Approach

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• Better listeners versus more listening
  rethinking the Comprehension Approach
• John Field
• Universities of Reading and Cambridge, UK

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The Comprehension Approach

• Pre-listening motivation, mental set
• Extensive listening general questions
• Pre-set task or questions
• Intensive listening
• Checking answers (? with replay?)
• Language review
• Listen with tapescript

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Teaching not testing

• Until we have some diagnostic procedures, the
  teacher of L2 listening can only continue to
  test comprehension, not to teach it. We need to
  move into a position where the teacher is able to
  recognise particular patterns of behaviour in
  listening manifested by an unsuccessful listener
  and to provide exercises for the student which
  will promote superior patterns of behaviour
  (superior strategies). (Brown, 1986 286)

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Concerns about the Comprehension Approach

• Teacher-centred isolation of learners
• The notion of right and wrong answers
• Origins in L2 reading methods consequent
  misconceptions about the nature of listening
• Heavy emphasis on meaning building at the expense
  of decoding
• Emphasis on the products of listening in the form
  of correct answers, and not the process

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A partial solution a diagnostic approach

• a. Teacher adopts a non-interventionist stance
• Who thinks the answer is A? Who thinks it is
  B? Shall we hear it again?
• b. Teacher follows up both right and wrong
  answers.
• Why do you think answer A is right? Why do
  you think answer B is right?

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A more radical solution (Field 1998)

• An approach based upon intensive small-scale
  exercises that practise the various sub-skills
  that contribute to skilled listening.
• A distinction between
• sub-skills (part of the behaviour of a skilled
  listener)
• strategies used to compensate short-term for
  problems of understanding.

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Field (2008)A process approach

• Listening is a form of expertise. We acquire it
  like other skills such as playing chess or
  driving.
• Achieving any type of expertise requires the
  novice to adjust slowly to the way in which an
  expert behaves Teachers need to understand
  expert behaviour if they are to induce it in
  novices.
• Becoming an expert of any kind requires
• Intensive practice in important processes so that
  they become more and more automatic
• Combining the processes into larger operations
• Exposure to real-life experiences, where taught
  processes have to be used appropriately and under
  the pressure of time.

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A process approach assumes

• Language instruction is not the solution
• knowledge ? recognition

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A process approach distinguishes

• Decoding matching groups of sounds in the speech
  stream to words in the listener's vocabulary
• Meaning building constructing a larger-scale
  meaning on the basis of the words that have been
  decoded.
• Both are critical to successful listening

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A process approach 3 strands

• 1. Expose
• Teachers need greater understanding of the
  nature of the input, and its problems for
  learners
• 2. Model
• Teachers need a methodology that trains better
  listeners instead of just providing practice
• 3. Enable
• Learners must be helped to crack the code of
  speech at an early stage, despite their lack of
  a) language knowledge b) experience of L2
  listening.

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1. Expose Understand the input (Brown, 1990)

• Much variation in the signal
• No consistent boundaries between words
• No physical evidence the listener needs to
  carry meaning forward in the mind.
• Time pressures
• On-line processing
• Timing is largely controlled by speaker

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Variability of speech

• Phoneme variation
• Word variation
• assimilation elision
• pressures inside the intonation group
• Speaker variation
• voice speech rate context accent

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Implications for teaching

• Examples of the same words / phrases in different
  voices and contexts
• Repetition and recycling. The importance of
  replay.
• Attention to chunks and to rhythm (esp. as a
  means of decoding function words)

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Focused practice in L2 input

• Identify aspects of the input that are likely to
  cause problems of decoding
• Practise each one intensively by means of
  small-scale micro-listening exercises
• Use simple exercise types such as transcribing
  short sentences

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Weak form decoding exercise

• Write down what you hear. samples of
  authentic or naturalistic speech
• I should have ? done.
• Just wait a ? moment.
• A box of ? cigars.
• The buses are ? late.
• Im looking for a fr? photo.
• Im looking at a ?t? key.
• Im talking to t? the meeting.
• Im talking at ?t the meeting.

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2. Model Emulate expert processing

• L1 processes provide a model for the L2
  instructor
• L1 processes provide a benchmark that enables us
  to understand better where L2 problems lie.
• Rationale long exposure has enabled L1
  listeners to adopt routines which are more
  effective and more highly automatic than those of
  L2 listeners.

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Questions about L1 processes

• How do expert listeners process syllables?
• L1 ?sp?t ?? L2 e?sp?t s??p?t
• How do expert listeners recognise words by
  association with words heard earlier?
• DOCTOR nurse
• How do expert listeners deal with unfamiliar
  words?
• How do expert listeners make use of intonation
  patterns and pauses in the input?
• How do expert listeners recognise words in
  connected speech?

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An approximate process

• Listening, even in L1, is an approximate process
• The listener decodes the input, about a syllable
  behind the speaker
• But listeners often cannot identify words
  accurately until several syllables afterwards.
• So, at both word and syntax level, a listener has
  to construct a provisional message which may have
  to be revised.

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• æ
• b
• ?
• n
• s
• ?
• k
• s
• t
• i
• n
•  

• ð
• ?
• k
• æ
• p
• t
• ?
• n
• z
• ?
• ?
• k

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The expert listener versus the novice

• ma?'tre?n ?? my train / might rain /
• (might train)
• or ? might rain gt might train gt my train
• snow ? might rain or snow
• ma?'tre?n ?? my train
• or ? my train or
• snow ? my train or snow

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How do expert listeners recognise grammar
patterns?

• The heavy fall
• clumsily
• The actor learnt the words
• had been written by Shakespeare
• The teachers taught by modern methods
• did better than their colleagues
• The rescuers discovered the plane
• had crashed
• The promise made
• was finally kept.

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Exercise types (Field Listening in Language
Classroom, Chap 12)

• a. Teacher plays a sentence from a recording of
  natural speech. Learners transcribe the words
  they understand. Teacher replays, learners add
  more words. Learners compare answers, teacher
  replays.
• b. Listen and fill in the missing words.
  Teacher gives learners a transcript, in which
  groups of words (not just single words) have been
  omitted.
• c. Write what you hear. Teacher dictates
  ambiguous sequences to the learners, adds an
  unexpected ending.
• a nice cream dress
• the way to cut it is like
  this
• some boxes have arrived
  
• I want to drive a train.
  

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Dealing with unknown words

• I found out that the thud was the
  cat
• the sound
  was the cat
• I found out that the front was
  the cat
• the thing was the
  cat the fog of the
  cat
• I found that the sun in the
  cat
• I found out the frog and
  the cat
• I found out that is
  a cat
• I found that was
  the cat
• I thought it was a
  cat
• in the front
  was the cat
• I found out where was
  the cat
• what I thought that a cat

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Unfamiliar words

• I found out that the thud was the cat.
• L2 listener in class
• Can you work out the meaning from the context?
• L2 listener in the real world
• the thought / front / sun was the cat
• L1 listener hearing a new word
• Identify as new word rather than known
• Ignore Generalise Infer meaning from context

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New word or known? Exercise types
(Field Listening in the Language Classroom,
Chap 12)

• a. Which word doesnt belong? Write it. Teacher
  dictates sets of words, where the odd one out
  is an unfamiliar word that resembles a familiar
  one.
• summer autumn string winter
• purple yellow drown - green
  orange
• cousin sister nephew ankle
  daughter
• b.Teacher plays a short authentic passage.
  Learners identify new words (e.g. count how many,
  attempt to transcribe them).

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3. Enable. Short term techniques

• We can design a long-term developmental programme
  based upon
• Familiarising the listener with L2 input
• Training the listener in L1 processes.
• But meanwhile the learner needs strategies for
  making sense of what she hears despite limited
  language knowledge
• a. to participate in L2 encounters
• b. to benefit from real-world sources
• c. to sustain motivation

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Explicit teaching of listening strategies

• Raise awareness of strategy use.
• Present the strategies one by one.
• Practise the strategies individually.
• Learners evaluate their own strategy use.

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Problems of explicit teaching

• Many standard check-lists of L2 strategies were
  constructed with speaking in mind.
• The strategy that is chosen depends heavily upon
  the problem of understanding that has occurred.
• Effective strategy use is
• appropriate
• rapid
• a choice between alternatives.

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A task-based approach to strategies (Field 2000)

• Intensive listening 1 (short section)
• Ss write down words they understand
• Ss form hypotheses linking the words
• Ss compare notes in pairs
• Intensive listening 2 (replay)
• Ss write down more words
• Ss revise guesses, discuss in pairs
• Ss present ideas to class. Teacher neutral
• Intensive listening 3 (replay)
• Ss revise guesses discuss in pairs
• Class evaluates. T assists
• Final play.

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A role for the comprehension approach

• Training in listening, like training in any form
  of expertise, requires
• Intensive micro-listening exercises that focus on
  a particular process, combined with
• Exposure of the kind the comprehension approach
  gives
• But we need to rethink the way in which we
  implement the comprehension approach in the
  classroom

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Summary A process approach to listening

• 1. diagnoses why understanding fails
• 2. identifies phonetic features of the TL which
  are likely to cause decoding problems for L2
  listening
• 3. recognises processes which characterise the
  performance of the L1 listener
• Uses this information to build a programme of
  micro-listening practice, with exercises that
  involve the transcription or interpretation of
  short pieces of input.
• Supports with larger-scale comprehension work to
  ensure that the skills that are acquired become
  integrated into overall competence.

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A long-term process programme must also allow for
strategy instruction

• Purpose to equip the learner short-term to make
  minimal sense of the input
• Strategy instruction needs to be mainly
  task-based so that strategies can be used
• a. in combination with each other
• b. in ways that take account of
• the demands of the problem - the listeners
  goals - the listeners own listening style

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References

• Brown, G. Investigating listening comprehension
  in context. Applied Linguistics 7/3
• Field, J. 1998. Skills and strategies towards a
  new methodology for listening. ELT Journal 52/2
• Field, J. 2000. Not waving but drowning ELT
  Journal 54/2
• Field, J. 2008. Listening in the Language
  Classroom. Cambridge Cambridge University Press

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• j.c.field_at_ reading.ac.uk
• Dr John Field,
• Dept of Applied Linguistics,
• University of Reading,
• Whiteknights,
• Reading RG6 6AA, UK