Listening skills: how to train the skill

Chris Morris

Bottom Up/ Top Down Processing

Top-down vs. bottom-up listeningImagine the following situations:

Over lunch, your friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster. You listen with interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express surprise or sympathy.

That evening, another friend calls to invite you to a party at her house the following Saturday. As you’ve never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You listen carefully and make notes.

1Bottom-up processing

Good foundations 1

Bottom-up processing - aspects of phonology

Redundancy repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and additions such as “I mean” or “you know.”

Upper intermediate Elementary

Redundancy

Stress, weak forms and unstressed syllables

Underline the content words in each sentence.

1 Can I have a cup of coffee and a cup of tea please?2 Would you like another one?3 Thanks for a lovely meal.4 Sorry but I can't come on Monday because I'm working late.5 I've never been to a car rally.

How are the other words pronounced?

Activity

Natural Dictation

I’m going to the shop.Do you want some chocolate?Let’s have a party!I’d better go soon.You shouldn’t have told him.What are you doing?There isn’t any coffee.What have you got?He doesn’t like it.It’s quite a long way.Why did you think you’d be able to?Can you tell him I called?

Presentation Title runs here l 00/00/007

Look at these telegram messages and expand them into what you might say if you were talking on the phone. 1 CONFIRM ARRIVAL ORDER NO. 235.2 PLEASE CONTACT RICHARD URGENT MESSAGE3 REGRET DELAY FERRY STRIKE4 ARRIVING MILAN AIRPORT TUES 0900

Activity

2Top-down processing

Good foundations 2

Top-down processing – socio-cultural and contextual knowledge

1 Which city is this?2 Who are the three people?3 Where do you think the woman is going?4 What do you think is the man’s problem?5 Is the woman sympathetic to him?6 What aspects of cultural behaviour can you observe?

Aegean Airlines advert

1 What goes wrong? (gist)Second view:2 When is the woman’s train?3 How many people are there in the restaurant?4 How many times does the waitress say ‘Ready to order?’5 How many times does the waitress come to the table?6 How much soup is there left in the bowls at the end?

Two soups

3Listening Tasks

Task difficulty

Non-verbal response: doing, choosing, answering (T/F, tick answers, multiple choice, matching), drawing

Simple verbal response: duplicating, modelling, answering (yes/no answers)

Complex verbal response: transferring (fill in a table), condensing (note-taking, summary), answering (WH- questions)

4Activities

Comprehension tasksWH-questionsGet away from this ...

and try different formats:

Multiple choice

Gap filling

Add realia for authenticity

Note-taking

This is very difficult ...

Add visuals

Add note-taking skills

To summarise

• What is the learner’s role in the listening context? What are the demands in each case?

• What kinds of input are the students exposed to? How planned or spontaneous is the discourse?

• Good foundations in skill training – bottom up (aspects of phonology) and top down processing (activating socio-cultural and context knowledge)

• The use of authentic material – control the task, not the text

• Listening tasks – how difficult are they? How authentic are they? Variations on traditional types.