1

Group 4:
Nguyn Ngc Thy
Nguyn Th Ha Mi
Doa`n Th Kim Oanh
L Th Hng Trm
Hong Th Bch Vit
(2012A)

Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Introduction
The Listening Process: Relevant Background
and Research
Teaching Listening from a Discourse
Perspective
Teaching Use of the Telephone
Listening to Speech Activities
Pedagogical Strategies and Priorities
Conclusion

1- Introduction
Listening is the most frequently used
language skill in everyday life.
Models of the listening process:
(Anderson and Lynch, 1988)

Top-down listening
processes

Bottom-up listening
processes
3

1.1 Top-down level:

+ Schemata knowledge (prior knowledge)
(1) content schemata = background
information on the topic.
(2) formal schemata = knowledge about how
discourse is
organized with respect to different genres,
different topics, or
+
an understanding of the
different
purposes,
including
relevant
specific
listening
situation
at hand
sociocultural knowledge.
(= listeners assess who the participants are, what
the setting is, what the topic and purposes are).
+ Contextual knowledge:
4

Top-down processing

Content
schemata

Formal
schemata

Pragmatics

Interpretation of Spoken
Discourse (Input)
5

Figure 6.1 Speech Reception

Assessment
of context/
speakers
intention

1.2 Bottom-up level: knowledge of the

language system (i.e. phonology, grammar,
vocabulary)
Metacogniti
on

Interpretation of Spoken
Discourse (Input)

Language
knowledg
e

Learning
strategies

Bottom-up processing
6

Figure 6.1 Speech Reception

Listening Strategies
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.
6.
7

Raise learner awareness of the power and value of

using strategies
Use pre-listening activities to activate learners
background knowledge
Make clear to learners what they are going to listen
and why
Provide guided listening activities designed to
provide a lot of practice in using a particular strategy
(e.g., listening for names or dates) using simplified
data initially, if needed.
Practice the strategy using real data with focus on
content and meaning
Use what has been comprehended: take notes on
a lecture to prepare a summary, fill in a form to
gather data, and so forth.

Metacognition is also a type of strategy that

learners can use to enhance L2 listening.
Metacognition involves the planning, regulating,
monitoring, and management of listening and
thus is related to several of the listening
strategies listed, in particular 1, 2, 3 and 7.
Metacognition strategies give
learners an overview of the
listening process.
They allow for prediction, for
monitoring of errors or
breakdowns, and for evaluation.
(Vandergrift, 1997)

2 - The Listening Process

L2 learners make errors due to lack of lexical,
grammatical, and cultural knowledge as much as
to difficulties with the L2 sound system (Harada,
1998)
E.g. uh
heard as a
hmm heard as him
Both top-down and bottom-up listening skills
should be integrated and explicitly pedagogically
to improve L2 listening comprehension.

What factors are relevant to the L2

listeners success?
Listener-internal factors:
His/her language learning experience
His/her prior knowledge (topic, content
schemata)
His/her memory and attention
His/her general problem-solving ability
Situation-specific factors external to the
listener:
the quality of the acoustic signal and the
amount of background noise
room temperature, distractions
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3 - Teaching Listening from a Discourse Perspective

Teaching bottom-up strategies

Teaching top-down and integrated
strategies

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3.1 Teaching bottom-up strategies

Use the situational context and/or the preceding
and following discourse to disambiguate or to
decide on the best interpretation.
A: I dunno what classes to take. Whaddaya
think I should take?
B: It all depends. Whaddaya gonna do after you
finish school?
=>The first occurrence of the reduced form
corresponds to what do you in the environment
of the verb think.
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Listener comprehended the opening

statement (the topic) and its relationship to
the list > understand and take notes on the
lecture that the listener missed the opening
information about the overall topic and
predict what lecture will cover.

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3.2 Teaching top-down and integrated

strategies
Today were going to consider three forces
that helped to shape the Carolingian Empire.
Well look at religion, well look at the
prevailing social structure, and well consider
economic factors.
=> With these opening words three forces that
helped to shape the Carolingian Empire =
introduce the topic and the main focus
=> Then lists the three forces: religion, social
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structure, economic factors

Learners benefit from listening to long

segments extracted from authentic lectures
and working at getting the gist, i.e., writing
down the main point of the topic.
=> complemented by subsequently
relistening to the same segment and jotting
down the details (the facts, dates, names,
results )

15

Integrated:
Gedded and Sturtridge (1979) suggest the
use of jigsaw listening activities,
where several small groups of learners
each listen to a different part of a larger
piece of discourse and write down the
important points.

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4 - Teaching Use of the Telephone

4.1 Voicemail and Answering Machines
L2 listeners should be exposed to a variety of
authentic voice-mail message.
They
should write down the essential
information so that they would be able to
respond appropriately to the message had the
call been intended for them.

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4.2 Nonreciprocal Telephone Listening

It depends on being able to understand the
range of options, the specific instructions &
how to respond by performing the proper
action on the Touch-Tone telephone.
Often such messages are
so complicated that even
native speakers must dial
the telephone number two
or
more
times
to
understand all the desired
information.
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1.3 Telephone Use: Everyday Conversation

L2 learners lack opportunities to listen to,
interpret, and sum up what they hear in a series
of authentic recorded phone conversation
are inexperience in dealing with live interactive
telephone conversation in the target language.
Listening skills
Conversation structures
Special conventions associated with
telephone conversation

19

For example:
Opening segment
(phone rings)
Answerer : Hello?
Caller : Hi, can I speak with ?
Answerer : - This is S/Hes not here. Can I take
a message?
- Wait a minute. Ill call him/ her.
Or the telephoning after the phone rings may be as
follow
Answerer : Hello?
20
Caller : Hi, this is

5 - Listening to Speech Activities

The entire area of social functions or speech

activities can be challenging in L2 listening.
E.g. a speech act like an apology

21

General strategies minimally necessary for an

apology
1. Explicit expression
: Excuse me./ Im sorry./ I
apologize.
2. Admission of responsibility: Its my fault./ I didnt
mean to do it.

Situation-specific strategies; optional ways to

elaborate an apology
3. An excuse/ explanation : The bus was late.
4. An offer to make amends : Ill buy you another
vase.
5.22A promise of non-recurrence: It wont happen

Situation 1: If someone forgets a meeting with

his/her boss
(1) Im really very sorry.
(2) I completely forgot about the meeting.
(3) The alarm on my watch didnt go off.
(from Olshtain and Cohen, 1991:156)

Situation 2: If a student knock over a cup of coffee

(1) Sorry, Joe.
(2) I didnt mean to knock your coffee over.
(4) Ill buy you another one. Want cream and
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sugar?

Hawkins (1985): L2 students can improve

significantly in their ability to process and produce
speech acts like apologies and complaints when
they:
are familiar with the speech act set
have been exposed and have analyzed many
authentic instances of the target speech
act occurring in different contexts.

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6 - Pedagogical Strategies and

Priorities

Teachers should record short segments from

radio and TV news broadcasts
T plays several times in class for their students:
1st listening extract topic
2nd listening get details of news item
(who/ what/ when/ where?)
3rd listening evaluate emotional impact of
news items
(happy/ sad)

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 To develop learners listening strategies, teachers

need to design a variety of listening tasks that

resemble games and at the same time focus on
identification
and
recognition
of
spoken
Key words
sequences:

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7 - Conclusion

Listening comprehension is indeed the primary

skill
in
developing
oral
communicative
competence.
L2 learners must actively use a variety of
schemata and contextual clues to accurately
Phonologica
LexicoHigher-level
interpret
oral messages.
l signals

- stress
- pause
- intonation

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grammatical
signals

- discourse
markers
- lexical phrases
- word order

organizing
elements

- adjacent pairs

Reference

Celce-Murcia. M & Olshtain. E. (2000). Discourse

and Context in Language Teaching. CUP.

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Thanks for your listening !

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