Effects of pronunciation problems on ESL Effects of pronunciation problems on ESL

learners’ listening comprehensionlearners’ listening comprehension

Introduction

* The importance of listening comprehension

* Overview of ESL listeners

* Purposes of the article

* Learners’ listening difficulties related to perception, parsing, and utilization

* Common problems at the perception stage: pronunciation problems

Understanding students’ listening problemsUnderstanding students’ listening problems

1. Problems related to perception

* Problem 1: Fail to recognize words they know

- know the word but attributed the wrong sense

Ex: won’t & want

I won’t go to school / I want to go to school

went to assist a passenger a student extracts sister

- fail to recall familiar words immediately

Ex: fortnight, retrieve, procedure, mature, etc.

Discussion

* Reasons: - affect from the habit of learning words + recognize words by sight not by sound + learn words with incorrect pronunciations + fail to recognize phonetic variations of known

words + affect from listener’s L1 (word-final consonant

discrimination)- under-achieve listening vocabulary

Problem 2: Neglect the next part of the continuous speech when thinking about meaning

-miss the next part of the text to think about unfamiliar words or interpret of a segment of text

- affect learners’ concentration on listening texts

* Reasons:

+ fail to process the information fast enough

+ fail to recognize familiar words in the stream of speech.

* Direct strategy: perception and strategy practice

- Perception practice:

+ Listen to how new vocabulary items are pronounced

+ Follow along with transcript of recording

+ Write down content words from short passages

Possible listening strategies

* Cognitive tactics:

+ Infer missing or unfamiliar words using contexts, co-text and prior knowledge

+ Predict general contents before listening using contexts and prior knowledge

+ Predict unfinished utterances using contexts, co-text and prior knowledge

+ Relate one part of the text to another

* Metacognitive tactics

+ Preview contents in different forms

+ Rehearse the pronunciation of potential content words

+ Establish purpose of listening

+ Listen selectively according to purpose

+ Pay attention to tones and pauses

* Metacognitive tactics

+ Continue to listen for clarification in spite of difficulty

+ Assess the importance of problematic parts and decide whether to ignore them or actively seek clarification

+ determine the potential value of subsequent parts and vary intensity of attention accordingly

* Social-affective tactics

+ Learn to relax before and during listening

+ Encourage oneself to continue listening

* Indirect strategy: metacognitive awareness

+ Set aside lesson time for discussion and reports about listening problems and useful strategies

+ Encourage students to ‘think aloud’ soon after they have completed a listening task

+ Provide opportunities for individual reflection through listening diaries

+ Extend the scope of pre-listening and post-listening tasks to include metacognitive tasks

(Goh, 2000)

Conclusion Conclusion