Helping Pre-Intermediate Students improve strategies

As educators we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the contemporary society is shifting away from printed media toward sound and that the members of such society are, therefore, in need of developing a high level of listening proficiency. So, in this article which is based on my Delta Module II background essay, I attempt to raise this awareness and facilitate listening for the learners and enable them to apply various strategies while listening.

Mehrdad Hosseinpour Ozanbulagh

“Helping Pre-Intermediate Students improve strategies of prediction, inferencing and using background knowledge in Listening for gist and for specific information” Nobember 2018

Table of Contents

Contents

Page Number

1

Introduction

2

2

Analysis

2

3

Reasons for Listening Comprehension

3

The Cinderella Skill 4

THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION: 4 TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP LISTENING

5

LISTENING FOR GIST

5

6

LISTENING FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION

5

7

Prediction

6

8

Inferencing

6

9

Issues for Learners

7

10

Over-reliance on Bottom-up processing

7

11

Lack of Systemic and Schematic knowledge

8

12

Lack of L1 Listening Strategy

8

13

Suggestions for Teaching

9

14

Bibliography

13

15

Appendices

15

1|P a g e Mehrdad Hosseinpour -- “Helping Pre-Intermediate Students improve strategies of prediction, inferencing and using background knowledge in Listening for gist and for specific information”

INTRODUCTION

As educators we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the contemporary society is shifting away from printed media toward sound and that the members of such society are, therefore, in need of developing a high level of listening proficiency. Most students want to be able to understand what people are saying to them in English, either face to face, on TV or on the radio, in theatres and cinema, or on the tape (Harmer, 2007, p:133). Learners might also participate in international seminars or conferences or listen to the news for some critical information. In all of these real life situations language users go through various processes such as Top-down and Bottom-up processing and apply various strategies including: Gist listening, listening for specific information/details, inferencing and prediction. While native language speakers make perfect use of theses sub skills and processes in their L1 without necessarily being aware of them, it is not always the case with language learners. So anything teachers can do to raise this awareness and facilitate listening for the learners and enable them to apply various strategies while listening would undoubtedly be worthwhile. ANALYSIS

REASONS FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION THE CINDERELLA SKILL

Listening comprehension is sometimes called the "Cinderella skill (Jalongo, 2010; Vandergrift, 1997) because of its tendency to be neglected in ELT. Unfortunately, listening skill is not generally given much attention in language learning programs and curriculum and even some course books and this skill is, according to Hedge (2000), frequently labelled as ‘overlooked’, ‘neglected’ or ‘taken for granted’ which is quite ironically paradoxical once you consider its


role and importance in everyday life as it provides a perfect exposure to the language and students receive a lot of input not only on grammar and vocabulary, but also on paralinguistic clues and suprasegmental features of language. INPUT GAINED FROM LIST ENING CAN HAVE A KEY ROLE IN LANGUAGE ACQUISIT ION, SO THE DEVELOPMENT O F EFFECT IVE ST RATEGIES FOR LIST ENING BECOMES ESSENT IALLY IMPORTANT FOR THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING A LANGUAGE. (OXFORD 1993; CELCE-MURCIA 1993)

THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION: TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM UP LISTEN ING

In accounting for the complex nature of listening to understand spoken language, it is hypothesized that two different modes work together in a cooperative process (CeleceMaurcia, M, 2001, p: 74): In the bottom-up part of the listening process, we use our knowledge of language and our ability to process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to us, in other words, we use information in speech itself to try to comprehend the meaning. However, top-down comprehension strategies involve knowledge that a listener brings to the text, sometimes called inside the head information, as opposed to the information that is available within the text itself. Top-down listening then infers meaning from contextual clues and from making links between the spoken message and various types of prior knowledge which listeners hold inside their heads. Prior knowledge has been termed schematic knowledge; this consists of the mental framework we hold in our memories for various topics. (Hedge, 2000) In listening comprehension, top-down and bottom-up processing, are correlated in a complex relationship and both are used to construct meaning. As Buck (2001, p: 118) explains, to arrive at an understanding of the message, listeners must understand the phonetic input, vocabulary,


and syntax (bottom-up processing), and, at the same time, use the context of situation, general knowledge, and past experiences (top-down processing). According to O'Malley et al. (1989), "In general, the effective listeners make use of both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies, while ineffective listeners become embedded in determining the meaning of individual words.”

LISTENING FOR GIST

On their first encounter with a passage in the classroom, students usually listen for gist - the main idea. Before we can develop any discussion of themes, analyze language used, examine features of pronunciation etc., the students need to have grasped the overall communicative intention of the speaker. This forms the basis and the context of all other work that we do on the text. (Wilson, 2008)

LISTENING FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION

Listening for specific information is a valuable strategy since most of the times, even in reallife situations in L1, people get help of it. In simple terms it means that specific information is to be extracted not the whole text. While listening to announcements in an airport, we filter out almost everything we hear because only one flight announcement is relevant to us: our own. If there are 200 people in the departure lounge, some are listening for London, others for Milan, others for Caracas, a selection driven by the listener’s needs rather than the speaker’s. This also requires an ability to ignore most of what we hear and focus only on what is relevant (Wilson, 2008). When listening for specific information, students can use all the language models above to extract the specific information. We can simply activate their background


knowledge (schemata) and this way help them refer to it and make guesses about what they are going to hear (top-down process) and finally rely on decoding units in language (bottomup process) to build their own meaning and understanding.

PREDICTION

Prediction, or looking ahead, is a basic strategy for using prior knowledge to understand a text. The learner generates a hypothesis about the type, purpose, or scope of a text to provide a framework for transacting with the text to confirm comprehension. Our interpretation of what we hear depends to a large extent on what we expect to hear. If what we hear does not meet our expectations, it may sometimes lead to misinterpretation. On the other hand, if we can predict accurately what we shall hear next, our listening will be much more efficient. There are very few occasions when people listen without having some idea of what they expect to hear. The skill of prediction depends largely on one’s prior knowledge of the world and of the language, how much one knows about the speaker, and how much one knows about the speaker’s intent. Thus the initial stage of the training program for developing the predictive skill should concentrate on getting the students to become aware of their own prior knowledge and to use this prior knowledge as their basis for prediction and comprehension. INFERENCING

Inferencing or making inferences means to draw conclusions about information that is not stated directly by using information that you already know or that is stated directly. Making inferences


while listening can help deepen the students’ understanding of what they hear. Listeners, very much like readers, use different strategies and techniques for listening according to the purposes. In other words, “purpose determines how people listen” (Aebersold & Field, 2002:15) and there are different purposes for different types of inferencing. First of all, listeners can practice lexical inferencing to make “informed guesses about the meaning of unknown words based on the available linguistic and non-linguistic cues in the text” (Haastrup, 1991, p. 40). As for semantic or global inferencing, one can listen to the recording to understand what is meant by the speaker ‘between-the-lines’ or to get the implied meaning. It is important to note that as Alderson states, inferencing is a sub-skill which is only gained after learning how to understand texts literally and one must first “understand the lines in order to read between them” (2000:25). Therefore, processes in different types of inferencing should be carefully analysed. ISSUES FOR LEARNERS

Students in my class are Pre-intermediate learners. They have already had some activities for listening for gist and specific information in their course book, yet they have not been introduced to listening strategies of prediction or inferencing and “ its complexity and sophistication as well as its heavy dependence on background knowledge and vocabulary, often make it a challenge” for them (McEwan, 2007: 18). Thus the problems listed below may surface while working on these strategies at pre-intermediate level.


OVER-RELIANCE ON BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING

Meaning can be lost when students pay overt attention to single words and phrases in the listening. This is an issue which I have experienced even in upper-intermediate levels when students cannot develop a skill set for understanding the meaning of the listening as a whole and guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words mainly because they rely too much on bottom-up processing, a process which I personally believe has been fostered more as a result of the education system in Turkey (My personal observation). LACK OF SYSTEMIC AND SCHEMATIC KNOWLEDGE

Considering the level of the students and the inadequate exposure they have had with the language, lack of competence in linguistic features of the language could be an obstacle for their listening comprehension. To complicate the matter, in our Delta input sessions, we listened to a recording and were asked to guess what it was about. Although we, as English teachers, had no trouble understanding the words and phrases, we still could not realize the topic. We guessed things like radio, cars, etc. while it was about windshield wipers. This experience made me realize that although we did not lack any systemic knowledge (which is even often not the case with learners), we did not grasp the meaning since “meaning does not rest solely in printed texts or spoken utterances, but we also bring certain knowledge which affects comprehension” (Anderson, 1999). Therefore, students’ lack of background knowledge (schematic knowledge) may result in misinterpretation of clues given. As I said I did not have this experience myself with my students,


yet I felt it as a learner in my own training and therefore I can safely assume that my learners will most probably have an issue with this matter.

LACK OF L1 LISTENING STRATEGY

The level of listening proficiency that a person has in L1 appears to be a factor in the development of L2/FL listening skills (Aebersold & Field, 2002). When learners lack strategic knowledge, they may find it difficult to answer questions of inferential nature. “Successful L2 listening requires the transfer of old skills, rather than the learning of new ones (Ulijn & Salager-Meyer, 1998:82). As I have noticed in my classes, students do not indulge themselves in listening to short stories or news bulletins and the learning environment does not require them to learn and apply strategies of prediction or inferencing in their everyday life. Therefore, they lack listening competence and find it difficult to get the implied meaning. Many language learners fail to realize that when they listen to something in their first language they do not actually hear every word. They also fail to appreciate that we integrate linguistic knowledge with our existing experience and knowledge of such things as topic, and culture and consequently we do not need to hear every word.

SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING

Teachers can use different strategies to help their students cope with different listening purposes. Strategies are clearly a way to ease the burden of listening and should be taught. (Brown, 2006).


Brown also delineates listening purposes in two main categories of interactional and transactional. While the former revolves around the social communication purposes such as chitchatting and small talk, the latter is used for the expression of information exchange such as instructions or news. Listening to news is an example of real life listening which is directly linked to transactional purposes and the following activities are suggested once they are synthesized with the classroom procedures according to the table below: In terms of procedural purposes, Scrivener (2011, p: 260) has outlined the following purposes:

Procedure

Purpose

Discuss the general topic

Learners start to think about the topic, raising a number of issues that will be discussed later on the recording. It may help them hear these things being discussed later

Predict the specific content

Students hypothesize specific issues that may be raised

Predict the structure

Students consider possible organizational structures. This may help them recognize the content more easily

Gist listening for overview

Learners get an overall impression of the content without worrying about small items or individual words


Learners interpret intonation, paralinguistic

Gist listening for attitude

features (sighs, etc.) More

careful

listening

meanings

for

complex By catching and interpreting smaller parts of the text, learners fine-tune their understanding.

Listening to pick out specific small language This focused work (e.g. On pronunciation) details

may raise learner awareness (e.g. Of weak forms) and thus help students to listen better in future

Activity 1: Aim: To raise students’ awareness of the role and importance of background information and context knowledge: Evaluation: To help Students realize the reason(s) of difficulty of understanding news in English (and exploit it in the later stages for strategy training)

Procedure: The students would first listen to an authentic recording of news headline (App1) and are asked to guess how many headlines were introduced but it is expected that would not be precise with the answer. Later they will be shown the news and this time as they watch the video, they would pay attention to the information in the background and get the right answer.

10 | P a g e Mehrdad Hosseinpour -- “Helping Pre-Intermediate Students improve strategies of prediction, inferencing and using background knowledge in Listening for gist and for specific information”

Activity 2: Aim: To introduce students to the sub-skill of prediction and pre-teach vocabulary: Evaluation: To raise students’ awareness of the role and importance of prediction strategy with the purpose of discovering the key vocabulary Procedure: After watching a news bulletin for headlines, students brainstorm and predict the potential vocabulary and language which might turn up in the next recording while watching the report in the silent mode (the idea of the silent mode is to help Ss predict within the area of the topic and not go off topic). Later, key vocabulary will be pre-taught in the form of a gapfilling activity (App2). Activity 3: Aim: Listening for gist and Listening for specific information Evaluation: To help Pre-intermediate students cope with their lack of systemic knowledge and stop relying too much on bottom-up processing, one of the news headlines can be viewed and practiced while emphasizing effective strategies which will motivate them more to learn as listening for every single sound and word is a problem which hinders understanding. Procedure: Students focus on one of the news headlines and teacher encourages them to listen for the gist trying to answer some questions (App3). Later, by having them answer another set of questions (App4), teacher highlights the importance of listening for specific information and inferencing (App5).


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Aebersold, J.A. & Field, M. L. (2002). From Reader to Reading Teacher: Issues and Strategies for Second Language Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alderson, J. C. (2000). Assessing Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring Second Language Reading: Issues and Strategies. Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Brown, S. (2006). Teaching Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buck, Gary. (2001). Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Celce-Murcia, M. and Hilles, S. (1993). Techniques and Resources in Teaching Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press. Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed). (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Harmer, J. (2007). How to Teach English. Essex: Pearson Longman. Haastrup, K. (1991). Lexical inferencing procedures or talking about words: Receptive procedures in foreign language learning with special reference to English. Tubingen, Germany: Gunter Narr. Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jalongo, M. (2010, March). Listening in Early Childhood: An interdisciplinary review of the literature. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International literacy Association,


Albuquerque, NM.

McEwan, E. K. (2007). 40 Ways to Support Struggling Readers in Content Classrooms, Grades 6 -12. London: Sage Publications.

O’Malley, M. and A.U. Chamot. (1989). Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oxford, R.L. (1993). Research Update on Teaching L2 Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Scrivener, Jim. (2011). Learning Teaching: a Guidebook for English Language Teachers. London: Macmillan.

Ulijn, J. M. & Salager-Meyer, F. (1998). The professional reader and the text: insights from L2 research. Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423.Volume 21, Issue 2. pp 79-95. Vandergrift, L. (1997). The Cinderella of Communication Strategies: Reception strategies in interactive listening. The Modern Language Journal, 81, 494-505. Wilson, JJ, (2008). How to Teach Listening. Essex: Pearson Longman.


APPENDICES

Appendix 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2yuwQw0Jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qibJHrXiBZQ&t=107s

Appendix 2

Look at the box and choose the appropriate word for the gaps 1-7 a) recovered d) massive

e) bury

b) victim f) cornfield

c) mud g) incalculable

After the tsunami, all the houses and buildings were covered in (1) ………….. . Before he died, he had asked everybody to (2) ………………. him in his hometown next to his wife. The (3) ….……. received head injuries and unfortunately died a week later because of his wounds. There was a long line in front of the shop and there was a (4) …………….. sign of 50% discount. After she (5) …………… her father’s body which was lost in the mudslide, she gave him a proper burial and went back to her town. The loss she suffered was (6)…..…... Shortly after, she realized that she was very rich because her father had three massive farms and one (7) …………………….


Appendix 3

Look at the photos below. 1- Match the names with the pictures 2- In what order do they appear in the video

Martin

Fiona

Cornfield

Christian Study Center


Appendix 4

Ex1) Listen again and answer the following questions. 1- Who is taking care of Fiona now? 2- How many students were in the Christian Study Center? 3- How old is Martin’s son?

Appendix 5

Ex2) Write the missing word from the listening and try to guess the meaning. Do NOT use a dictionary to answer the questions.

1- Some buildings …….., others were literally swallowed by mud 2- Over here it was even worse. A road and all the houses along it …………… by mud. 3- She is scared. She is still …………..
