Listening Competence a Prerequisite to Communication

7/29/2019 Listening Competence a Prerequisite to Communication

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Lzstening Competence: A Prerequzsitet o Communication1

PAMELA COHELAN BENSON AND CHRISTINE HJELT, Southern Illinois University

HOW MANY TEACHERS of English as aSecond Language actually have confi-dence in their ability to teach students who havehad no exposure to the target language? Howmany teachers who work with beginning levelstudents are entirely comfortable with the se-quence of material offered through the text theyhappen to be using? Further, how many teach-ers, in evaluating the first fifty class hours haveasked themselves if another approach mighthave given their students a firmer foundation inthe target language? In considering the answersto these questions, it may be helpful to look atseveral hypotheses concerning second languagelearning and foreign language learning ingeneral.One hypothesis to consider is that language isa verbal habit which is developed linearly, begin-ning with speaking and listening and proceedingto reading and writing, with oral production em-phasized from lesson one. In discussing the basicprocedure for a grammar lesson, Paulston andBruder (1975) stress the need for immediate oralproduction, beginning with tightly controlledmechanical drills.

The focus of the lesson is on grammar and struc-tural pattern drills;we are not concerned here withthe teaching of pronunciation, listening com-prehension, reading or writing. It may well beargued that it is impossible to learn only discreteitems in a language lesson and that a lesson ofgrammar also involves elements of pronunciationand listening comprehension. This is undoubtedlyso, and there is always incidental learning takingplace. The teacher, however, in making up hisplans, must focus on teaching one thing at a time sothat he can concentrate on reaching a predeter-mined degree of student proficiency, know what tocorrect(andjust as important, what not to correct),and aid the students with prepared explanations(23).

Another hypothesis which a prospectiveteacher of beginning level students might con-sider states that language learning is an in-tegrative process; therefore all language skillscan be introduced simultaneously, with eachskill reinforcing the others. Donaldson (1971)relates to this hypothesis when he gives an ex-planation of how the cognitive-code approach tolanguage teaching differs from the grammar-translation approach:

It should be a four-skills approach, but not in themanner of audio-lingual habit theory. The fourskills should be practiced simultaneously after thepresentationof explicit grammatical rules. Practiceof all skills-but practice based upon study andanalysis is a prime objective (132).A third hypothesis which deserves considera-tion is that language learning is an integrative

process initially requiring contextual decoding ofthe meanings of new utterances before meaning-ful and creative encoding can take place. It isthis hypothesis which we wish to focus on in ourpaper. Several studies are cited which providesupportive empirical evidence.In a paper entitled "Effects of Delay at theBeginning of Second Language Learning," thelate Valerian Postovsky challenged the assump-tion commonly associated with the audio-lingualmethod that intensive oral practice in the targetlanguage at the beginning stages of instructionwill result in faster acquisition of the language.He proposed that the production of speech is "anend result of complex and mostly covert pro-cesses which constitute linguistic competence"(Postovsky 1974:229). He reasoned that in ac-quiring the ability to decode, the language

'We wish to acknowledge with appreciation the supportand encouragement of John Oiler during the writing of thispaper.

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PAMELA COHELAN BENSON AND CHRISTINE HJELTlearner must develop recognition knowledge,while to encode he must develop retrievalknowledge. Postovsky asserted that time is betterspent, in the initial phases of a language pro-gram, on developing the student's capacity todecode. He credited Susan Ervin-Tripp (1970) asthe source of the processing model he offered inmaking his case. She states:

The evidence from natural learning suggests thatmanifest speech is largely secondary. That is, aslong as the learner orients to speech, interprets itand learns the form or arrangement that representsthe meaning, he learns speech as fast as someonespeaking(339).Postovsky considered it to be a great handicapfor students in audio-lingual programs to heareach other speaking error-ridden varieties of the

target language from the outset of instruction.While they might develop a fluency amongthemselves in their classroom varieties of thetarget language, they would no doubt experiencedifficulty understanding a native speaker in amore natural context.

To investigate the effects of delay in oral prac-tice at the beginning of language study, Postov-sky conducted an experiment in the RussianLanguage Department of the Defense LanguageInstitute in Monterey, California. An experi-mental and a control group of sixty-one subjectseach took part in the twelve-week experiment.For the first four weeks of the program the ex-perimental group delayed oral practice in Rus-sian. They were introduced to the Cyrillicalphabet and were given some pronunciationpractice in the first three days to enable them towrite their responses to the aurally presentedmaterial. The control group followed the regularprogram in Russian which emphasized intensiveoral practice. After the first three days, the con-trol group was also introduced to the Cyrillicalphabet. Each group used the same materialsand had the same number of contact hours. Atthe end of the initial four weeks, the experimen-tal and control groups were merged into theregular program and at six weeks and twelveweeks examinations were given. All four skillswere tested-listening, reading, writing, andspeaking. The mean scores of the experimentalgroup were measurably higher across all the

skills at both the sixth and the twelfth week. Themost interesting results were the higher speakingscores of the experimental group who had far lessspeaking practice yet out-performed the controlgroup on the tests (235). The speaking scoreswere broken up into part scores to determinewhere the greatest differences were. It was foundthat the two component scores which con-tributed most to the total speaking scores wereControl of Grammar and Reading Aloud.

Postovsky readily admitted that his studycould not be taken as conclusive evidence in sup-port of a particular theory of second languageacquisition; however, it does give us some data toconsider and raises some interesting questions. Isit not possible that a clearer conceptualization ofthe target language occurs when the beginningstudent is spared the imperfect language gener-ated by himself and his classmates? If the studentgives his initial concentration to material pre-sented aurally by a native speaker and if the stu-dent writes his response to that material, is it notpossible that his perception of auditory input willbe strengthened?Another study which produced data support-ing the case for positive transfer of listening com-prehension to reading, speaking, and writingskills was done by Asher (1969). Following hismethod (The Total Physical Response Method),students listen to commands in the target lan-guage and imitate the teacher as he responds tothe orders. Orders begin with simple one wordimperatives such as "stand" or "jump" and in-crease to more complex commands such as "Runto the table, put down the paper, and sit on thechair!" (5). Students, imitating the model,respond physically to the commands. Asherfound that students working under his methodachieved a high degree of "listening fluency"which transferred directly to reading, writing,and speaking. In one test, Asher demonstratedthat when students were required to do bothlistening and speaking, their comprehension ofthe target language was decreased (13).In a paper entitled "Learning LanguageThrough Commands: The Second Field Test"(1974), Asher reports on a Spanish teaching ex-periment done with twenty-seven college stu-dents who had no prior knowledge of Spanish.This group was divided in half and each section

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LISTENING COMPETENCE:A PREREQUISITE TO COMMUNICATIONmet with an instructor for three hours one even-ing per week for two semesters. The studentsfollowed Asher's method by sitting around theinstructor and responding physically to his com-mands. As each student felt able, he or shewould volunteer to respond physically (not ver-bally) without the instructor's model. Studentsprogressed from one word commands to com-mands like, "When Henry runs to the black-board and draws a funny picture of Molly, Mollywill throw her purse at Henry" (27). After tenhours of instruction they were "invited but notpressured" to change roles with the instructorand give commands for the others. Still later thestudents produced skits and worked on role-playing situations. Reading and writing were notformally dealt with. If the students requested it,the instructor might write a new vocabulary itemon the board at the end of the class but this was acasual procedure and represented only a fewminutes of class time.

After forty-five hours of instruction, of which70 percent was spent on listening comprehen-sion, 20 percent on speaking and 10 percent onreading and writing (with no homework assign-ments at all!), the experimental group was testedagainst the three control groups. One group con-sisted of high school students who had taken oneyear of Spanish; a second group consisted of col-lege students finishing their first semester ofSpanish; and a third was made up of collegestudents finishing their second semester ofSpanish. Measured against the group of highschool students with approximately 200 hours ofclass work on a test of listening and reading com-prehension, the experimental group with only 45hours of training had a mean score of 16.63,while the high school group had a mean score of14.63. On similar tests, the experimental groupalso scored significantly higher than the two col-lege control groups (28).At the end of ninety hours of instruction usingAsher's method, the experimental group tookthe Pimsleur Spanish Proficiency Tests, Form C.This test was designed for students who had com-pleted one hundred fifty hours of intensiveaudio-lingual training. The experimental groupperformed beyond the fiftieth percentile in mostskills (30).

In evaluating this study Asher notes that

perhaps his most important finding was the ex-tent to which listening comprehension trans-ferred to other skills. On the success of hismethod he writes:

When language input is organized to synchronizewith the student's body movement, the secondlanguage can be internalized in chunks rather thanword by word. The chunking phenomenon meansmore rapid assimilation of a cognitive map aboutthe linguistic code of the target language (30-31).The findings of both Asher and Postovsky

challenge the first hypothesis mentioned at thebeginning of our paper which claims that speak-ing must be the emphasis of initial language in-struction. Indeed Postovsky's work demonstratesthat an immediate emphasis on speaking hindersthe learner's capacity to process (decode) secondlanguage data. The second hypothesis whichstates that language learning is an integrativeprocess and that all language skills can thereforebe introduced simultaneously with each skillreinforcing the others, must also be questionedsince both studies presented skills sequentiallywith listening skills preceding speaking skills.

Postovsky's somewhat modest findings show animprovement in all skills when speech is delayedfour weeks in what is otherwise a fairly tradi-tional behaviorist approach to language learn-ing. The strengthening of listening skills defi-nitely seemed to benefit his students.It is Asher's findings, however, that providethe more dramatic evidence. By allowing pro-cessing prior to speech, the subjects in Asher'sexperimental group were able to develop alistening competence more quickly than withtraditional classroom methods. In this approach,Asher delays speaking only ten instructionalhours. At this point students are encouraged toassume the teacher's speaking role for thelanguage which has been conceptualized and isready for production. It is also important to notethat the Pimsleur test, which assesses the fullrange of language skills, shows unusual com-petence in reading and writing skills even thoughlittle direct instruction was given in these areas.It would seem that both of these studies sup-port the third hypothesis -namely that languagelearning is an integrative process initially requir-ing contextual decoding of the meanings of new

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PAMELA COHELAN BENSON AND CHRISTINE HJELTutterances before meaningful and creative en-coding can take place.

Support for this hypothesis can also be foundin two additional studies. Naiman (1974), in astudy of 112 first and second graders in a Cana-dian bilingual school, compared a comprehen-sion task, translating from the target language tothe native language, with a production task,elicited oral imitation in the target language. Inall five syntactic structures used in the experi-ment, performance on the comprehension taskexceeded performance on the imitation task(Swain, Dumas and Naiman 1974).

Using 96 men in the U.S. Army, Sticht (1972)found that the learning strategies necessary forreading are necessary for listening comprehen-sion. He used a test consisting of three brief prosepassages at the 6.5, 7.5, and 14.5 grade levels onthe Flesch scale. The passages were presentedalternately as listening and reading tests to 40men in the Low Mental Aptitude (LMA) groupand 56 men in the Average Mental Aptitude(AMA) group (287). The results for both groupsshowed a high interrelatedness between listeningscores and reading scores. The most striking con-trast was at the 7.5 level among the LMA sub-jects. At this level, mean reading scores were inthe 43rd percentile while mean listening scoreswere in the 52nd percentile. Although the dif-ferences at the other levels were smaller, themean listening scores were, with only one excep-tion, equal to or greater than the mean readingscores (288). This supported Sticht's hypothesisthat "developmentally, skill in learning by listen-ing precedes and actually forms the basis for theacquisition of skill in learning by reading" (286).On the basis of all the studies cited we canassert that listening comprehension is a highlyintegrative skill which demands conceptualiza-tion of the phonological, grammatical and, lexi-cal data into an internal competence or an ex-pectancy grammar (Oller 1974). This compe-tency is an essential prerequisite to oral com-munication and appears to be tightly integratedwith all language skills, both receptive and pro-ductive.

Since we are positing that listening com-prehension is an integrated skill which stemsfrom this underlying competence, we should findstatistical correlations between listening com-

prehension and tests of similarly integrated skillsin support of our hypothesis. Such correlationsare available in a study by Oiler and Hinofotis(in press).A factor analysis of the scores of 159 Iraniansubjects on the Test of English as a Foreign

Language, plus a cloze test and a dictation,revealed that the Listening Comprehension (sub-test of the TOEFL) and cloze scores were corre-lated at .69 and Listening Comprehension wascorrelated with dictation at .76. The correlationbetween the cloze and the dictation scores was.75. These three correlations were higher thanany other correlations among the TOEFL sub-tests. A factor analysis showed that 87 percent ofthe meaningful variance of this set of scores wasaccounted for by both the cloze test and theListening Comprehension test (14-15).Further evidence is cited by Stig Johansson(1973) who also found a high correlation be-tween listening comprehension and anothersimilar global test, dictation. In a test ad-ministered to 26 students at Lund University inSweden, Johansson found a correlation of .83between listening comprehension and dictation.This correlation was higher than any of the othercorrelations between the subtests (grammar,vocabulary, and dictation with noise) (108-109).Two important findings emerge from thesestudies. First, when listening precedes oral skills,the development of an appropriate expectancygrammar is enhanced. Our personal preferenceis for a cyclical learning model in which com-prehension skills precede production skills insmall learning cycles -as in the Asher approach,for instance.

We do not want to suggest that learning canonly take place through acoustic channels,because in both Postovsky's and Asher's studies,learning was enhanced by a physical response-through bodily action or writing. Studies withdeaf children also show that hearing can bebypassed altogether if other sensory receptors areinvolved. However, we suggest that deliberatelybypassing listening, or failing to give adequatepractice in listening may be an inefficent andpotentially frustrating way to teach a language.The second important finding is the reasser-tion of listening comprehension as an integrativeor global skill which, as its name implies, entails

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LISTENING COMPETENCE. A PREREQUISITE TO COMMUNICATION

comprehension or conceptualization and organi-zation of new language data. Only when this"comprehending" process is functional can thelearner begin to manipulate his new language inmeaningful and creative ways. The same processexpands the expectancy grammar in the newlanguage and thus affects development in allareas of language learning.Our concern in this paper has been with theearly stages of language learning. Most teacherswould accept the proposition that listening com-prehension is an important aspect of languagelearning not only in the beginning but in allstages of development. Since it is an importantskill, testing procedures may be weightedtowards aural proficiency. However, teachinglistening comprehension, particularly to begin-ners, is a process that is not well conceived inmost curricula. The tendency is to rely on pat-tern drills, contrived dialogues, or grammaticalpresentations in the textbook and to simplyassume that comprehension will follow. Often itdoesn't.

There are two areas of failure in these earlystages. First, when beginners are asked to usewords and structures too soon, they are forced tosay what they do not know how to process in thetarget language because the target languagevocabulary and structures are incomplete intheir developing grammatical systems. Secondly,and perhaps this is the most critical factor, thecontext provided is often insufficient, and thebeginning student cannot possibly successfullyconceptualize the utterances of the new lan-guage. In such an approach, the conceptualiza-tion of the relation between utterance and extra-linguistic context is thought of as an end result,the ultimate product of the learning cycle. Wewould consider it the prerequisite-the bestfoundation upon which the language learningprocess can be established.

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REFERENCES

Asher, James J., Jo Anne Kusudo, and Rita De La Torre."Learning a Second Language Through Commands: TheSecond Field Test." The Modern Language Journal 58(1974): 24-32.

Asher, James J. "The Total Physical Response Approach toSecond Language Learning." The Modern LanguageJournal 53 (1969): 3-17.

Donaldson, Weber D., Jr. "Code-cognition Approaches toLanguage Learning." In Robert C. Lugton, editor,Towards a Cognitive Approach to Second Language Ac-quisition. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Develop-ment, 1971.

Ervin-Tripp, Susan M. "Structure and Process in LanguageAcquisition." Georgetown University Monograph: 21stAnnual Round Table. No. 23 (1970).

Johansson, Stig. "An Evaluation of the Noise Test, a Methodfor Testing Overall Second Language Proficiency by Per-ception under Masked Noise." International Review ofApplied Linguistics. 11 (1973): 107-133.Oiler, John W., Jr. and Francis Butler Hinofotis. "TwoMutually Exclusive Hypotheses about Second LanguageAbility: Factor AnalyticStudies of a Variety of LanguageTests." In John W. Oiler, Jr. and Kyle Perkins, editors,Research in Language Testing. Rowley, Massachusetts:NewburyHouse (in press).

Oiler, John W., Jr. "Expectancy for Successive Elements: KeyIngredient to Language Use." Foreign Language Annals.7 (1974): 443-452.

Paulston, Christina Bratt and Mary Newton Bruder. FromSubstitution to Substance: A Handbook of Structural Pat-tern Drills. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House, 1975.

Postovsky, Valerian A. "Individual Differences in Acquisi-tion of Receptive and Productive Language Skills." Paperpresented at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conferencein Lexington, Kentucky, April 1976.

Postovsky, Valerian A. "Effects of Delay in Oral Practice atthe Beginning of Second Language Learning." The Mod-ern LanguageJournal 58 (1974): 229-239.Sticht, Thomas G. "Learning by Listening." In R. Freedleand S. B. Carroll, editors, Language Comprehension andthe Acquisition of Knowledge. Washington D.C.: V. H.Winston, 1972.Swain, Merrill, G. Dumas, and N. Naiman. "Alternatives to

Spontaneous Speech: Elicited Imitation and Translationas Indicators of Second Language Competence." WorkingPapers in Bilingualism, No. 3, 1974.

* * *The new MLJ Review Editor for Applied Linguistics and Methodology effective this issue, is James S.Noblitt (Department of Linguistics, Morrill Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850) who replacesKenneth Chastain (Applied Linguistics) and Lola Mackey (Language Learning). Replacing Charles Stansfield,who is in Nicaragua as Director of the Peace Corps Language Training Program there, is Ernest A. Frechette(Foreign Language Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306).A vote of thanks to Chastain (of the University of Virginia), Lola Mackey (who recently moved with her hus-band from Reno, Nevada to Phoenix, Arizona-44 West Thunderbird Road, 85023), and to CharlesStansfield (of the University of Colorado) is in order.Consolidating applied linguistics and methodology (formerly language learning) into one position seems tomake good sense.

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Listening Competence a Prerequisite to Communication