Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is a receptive skill, as opposed to

speaking, which is productive. But this does not mean it is a passive

skill. Much to the contrary, listening comprehension is an interactive process in which

listeners interact with the text, the tasks and the context external

(situation) and internal (background knowledge) to them.

Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is

a cognitive activity in which listeners, based

on their schemata, interpret

whatever they listen.

An activity related to the acquisition of

knowledge

Schema (sing.) – Schemata (pl.):

Mental scripts or frames developed

along our lives based on our experience.

Listening Comprehension

Schema Theory

Listening comprehension used to be viewed as a process which

involved the decoding of sounds in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to larger ones.

This approach is known as bottom-up information

processing mode.

Listening Comprehension

Schema Theory

Listening comprehension now is thought of as depending as much on the reader as on the

text.

Bottom up and top-down modes of information

processing interact.

Listening Comprehension

Social Relationships

Shared Knowledge

Discourse Type

Discourse Structure

Conversational Mechanisms

Cohesion

Grammar & Lexis

Sounds & Letters

Bottom

up

Top down

Some aspects of discourse depend more on textual information, as the items at the bottom of the list below.

Others, however, can only be interpreted when the listeners’ schemata come into play. This is the case of the

elements at the top of the list.

Listening Comprehension

Tasks which typically involve top-down

processing:

Assign persons, things or places to categories

Infer cause and effect

Predict outcomes

Infer the topic

Infer missing details

Bottom

up

Top down

Tasks which typically involve

bottom-up processing:

Recognize discourse transitions

Identify familiar lexical items

Segment stream of speech into constituents

Identify information focus (stress)

Identify the function of intonation

Anderson & Lynch (1988)

There are some key factors which

interact to contribute to the

difficulty of Listening. Among

them are text function, text

features, processing load, and some of

the features of oral language.

Key Factors Main Text Function

TransactionalTypical tasks focusing on the

transactional content of a message:

Identify key information

Identify specific facts or details

Identify sequence of series of events

Carry out tasks (label, select, draw, fill in forms, etc)

The main purpose of transactional language is to communicate information

E.g.: a lecture

Key Factors Main Text Function

Typical tasks focusing on interactional information:

Identify markers of social distance

Identify moments for phatic responses

Identify illocutionary intentions

InteractionalThe main purpose of interactional

language is to establish social relationship.

E.g.: small talk

Key Factors Main Text Features:

Information organization

Topic

Amount of inferencing required and amount of reference and reduced forms

employed.Explicitness

Topic complexity and familiarity of the listener with the topic

Logical structuring of ideas

Key Factors Main Text Features:

Genre

Register

Sermons, chats, jokes etc.

Intimate, casual or formal language.

Text TypeNarratives, descriptions, explanations etc

Key Factors Awareness of the Features of Oral Language

Colloquial vocabulary

Information staging

Unnecessary repetition of informationRedundancy

Incomplete sentences

Importance of shared knowledge

It’s very nice that road up through Skipton to the Dales

Discourse markers You know, you see, anyway

Key Factors Processing Load

Length of passage

Rate of delivery How fast the speaker delivers the message

Visibility of the speaker

Other environmental clues

Acoustic environment

E.g.: visual support

E.g.: External noise, static on the phone line.

E.g.: expression, gestures, proximity

The Listening LessonPre-listening

The opening of a listening lesson containing schema

building tasks which focus on motivation and the provision of

contextual information.

The Listening Lesson

Listening

Listening for perception lessons focus on features of connected speech, such as reduced forms, stress and

rhythm or on the identification of grammatical, lexical or functional items.

For Perception

The listening lesson can be aimed at perception or at comprehension.

Perception tasks are typically bottom-up, whereas comprehension tasks integrate

bottom-up and top-down modes of perception.

The Listening Lesson

Preset Questions can give the listening activity a clear purpose

Extensive Listening – Listening to longer texts just once in order to answer general questions on context or attitude.

For Comprehension

Intensive Listening – Listening more than once to adjust to pitch, speed, voice quality, accent of the speaker. The aim is often to deal with detailed comprehension questions.

The Listening LessonPost-Listening

As a wrap-up to the Listening lesson, features of the text can

serve as a starting point for follow-up activities on

speaking, writing or language analysis (identification of lexical

segmentation, functional language, etc.).