Better Listening Outcomes

Understanding the way the world learns English

Better Listening outcomesor

Recognising that you may already do a lot to help listening which you take for granted!

Hugh DellarHeinle Cengage / The University of Wesminster


• What’s the difference between listening and hearing?

• What do you do to improve students’ ability to hear?

• What do you do to improve listening skills?

A quick warmer


Students do listen! The problem is:• They can’t hear words because they don’t

know them. • They can’t hear words because they can’t

distinguish sounds.• They can hear the words, but they can’t

group words appropriately.• They can hear the words (and even

expressions) but can’t process meaning fast enough.

You’re not listening!


Listening activities include:• Listening to public announcements• Listening to media• Listening as a member of a live audience• Listening to overheard conversations, etc.In each case, the user may be listening for:• Gist• Specific information• Detailed understanding• Implications

(from CEF, p65, CUP)

‘Doing’ a listening . . .


Getting students to predict content:

• from pictures

• from the situation

• based on what they know already

Any others?

Top-down processing


For complex social and psychological reasons, learners are less sure they have grasped the topic being spoken of, the opinion being expressed about it, and the reasons for the speaker wanting to talk about it. They are less sure of the relevance of their own experience in helping them to arrive at an interpretation. On top of all that they are less sure of the forms of the language … for all these reasons learners are less able to bring to bear top down processing in forming an interpretation and hence are more reliant on bottom up processing.

Brown quoted in Jenkins, 2001 OUP

The spanner in the works!


1. Is everyone having a starter?

2. The seared salmon on a bed of fennel sounds nice.

3. We should’ve left the car at home.

4. Yesterday the cat talked in the sea..

5. Do lator has sonned dun ofer by canobac.


Listening activities include:• Listen to public announcements• Listening to media• Listening as a member of a live audience• Listening to overheard conversations, etc.In each case, the user may be listening for:• Gist• Specific information• Detailed understanding• Implications

Hearing, memory and listening


• Listening is also part of speaking and interaction.

• Range of automaticity, related to the frequency / typicality of the exchange (greetings, buying/selling conversations about jobs, etc.) Also chunks.

• May allow to fill in gaps we don’t hear, but more importantly help process meaning quicker.

Listening and listenership


• Know nearly all - if not all - of the words they’re listening to.

• Process words in chunks• Hear the words when they listen to them• Understand words / chunks they hear

automatically as a result of repeated over-learning

Good listeners . . .


• We need to teach more of the language they are likely to hear / use and that includes using listening activities as an opportunity to teach language.

• Teach language in context all the time! And help students recognise / hear words in chunks.

• Help with problem sounds (working back from the chunk)

• Make sure words/chunks, exchanges, conversations get recycled

Some principles


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Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley

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Better Listening Outcomes

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