Interchange author Jack C. Richards begins to explore teaching listening.
In this series of posts about teaching listening, I’m going to consider the subject from two different perspectives:
(1) listening as comprehension
(2) listening as acquisition
Listening as Comprehension
Listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening. Indeed, in most methodology manuals listening and listening comprehension are synonymous. This view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse. We will examine this view of listening in some detail before considering a complementary view of listening – listening as acquisition. This latter view of listening considers how listening can provide input that triggers the further development of second-language proficiency.
Characteristics of spoken discourse
To understand the nature of listening processes, we need to consider some of the characteristics of spoken discourse and the special problems they pose for listeners. Spoken discourse has very different characteristics from written discourse, and these differences can add a number of dimensions to our understanding of how we process speech. For example, spoken discourse is usually instantaneous. The listener must process it “online” and there is often no chance to listen to it again.
Often, spoken discourse strikes the second-language listener as being very fast, although speech rates vary considerably. Radio monologs may contain 160 words per minute, while conversation can consist of up to 220 words per minute. The impression of faster or slower speech generally results from the amount of intraclausal pausing that speakers make use of. Unlike written discourse, spoken discourse is usually unplanned and often reflects the processes of construction such as hesitations, reduced forms, fillers, and repeats.
Spoken discourse has also been described as having a linear structure, compared to a hierarchical structure for written discourse. Whereas the unit of organization of written discourse is the sentence, spoken language is usually delivered one clause at a time, and longer utterances in conversation generally consist of several coordinated clauses. Most of the clauses used are simple conjuncts or adjuncts. Also, spoken texts are often context-dependent and personal, assuming shared background knowledge. Lastly, spoken texts may be spoken with many different accents, from standard or non-standard, regional, non-native, and so on.
Understanding spoken discourse: bottom-up and top-down processing
Two different kinds of processes are involved in understanding spoken discourse. These are often referred to as bottom-up and top-down processing.
Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up processing refers to using the incoming input as the basis for understanding the message. Comprehension begins with the received data that is analyzed as successive levels of organization – sounds, words, clauses, sentences, texts – until meaning is derived. Comprehension is viewed as a process of decoding.
The listener’s lexical and grammatical competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing. The input is scanned for familiar words, and grammatical knowledge is used to work out the relationship between elements of sentences. Clark and Clark (1977:49) summarize this view of listening in the following way:
1. [Listeners] take in raw speech and hold a phonological representation of it in working memory.
2. They immediately attempt to organize the phonological representation into constituents, identifying their content and function.
3. They identify each constituent and then construct underlying propositions, building continually onto a hierarchical representation of propositions.
4. Once they have identified the propositions for a constituent, they retain them in working memory and at some point purge memory of the phonological representation. In doing this, they forget the exact wording and retain the meaning.
We can illustrate this with an example. Imagine I said the following to you: “The guy I sat next to on the bus this morning on theway to work was telling me he runs a Thai restaurant in Chinatown. Apparently, it’s very popular at the moment.”
To understand this utterance using bottom-up processing, we have to mentally break it down into its components. This is referred to as “chunking.” Here are the chunks that guide us to the underlying core meaning of the utterances:
- the guy
- I sat next to on the bus
- this morning
- was telling me
- he runs a Thai restaurant in Chinatown
- apparently it’s very popular
- at the moment
The chunks help us identify the underlying propositions the utterances express, namely:
- I was on the bus.
- There was a guy next to me.
- We talked.
- He said he runs a Thai restaurant.
- It’s in Chinatown.
- It’s very popular now.
It is these units of meaning that we remember, and not the form in which we initially heard them. Our knowledge of grammar helps us find the appropriate chunks, and the speaker also assists us in this process through intonation and pausing.
Read other posts in this series at the links below.
Teaching Listening and Speaking – From Theory to Practice: an introduction
Teaching listening #1 – Listening as comprehension
Teaching listening #2 – Bottom-up processing
Teaching listening #3 – Top-down processing
Teaching listening #4 – Teaching top-down processing
Teaching listening #6 – Listening as Acquisition
Teaching listening #7 – Implications