developing listening skills eiu training weekx

EIU Training Week

Friday, 2nd November

Developing students’ listening skills

The aim of this session is to explore ways of developing students’ listening skills, rather than just testing their comprehension (which is what we normally do). We’ll be concentrating on an area where there’s amazingly little in course, resource and methodology books or research findings – what teachers can do when comprehension breaks down, with a particular look at how we can use transcripts usefully.

Robert William McCaulEastern International University

November 1, 2012

1. Session preview

1. An anecdote

2. Listening terminology

3. What’s wrong with our listening materials and procedures?

4. Solutions

5. Using listening transcripts

6. Conclusions

7. Appendices:

- 1. Possible causes of lack of comprehension

- 2. Listening resources on the Internet

- 3. Solutions starting with student recordings

2. An anecdote

I’m going to tell a true anecdote about a listening lesson I did:

What thoughts does it provoke about teaching listening? Compare in pairs/groups.

| Robert William McCaul 2

November 1, 2012

3. Terminology.

We need to cover some listening terminology before we continue. Try the matching activity below individually, compare with a partner, and then we’ll go over the answers:

top-down schemata interactional

interactive x 2 bottom-up transactionalnon-interactive

1

__________ processing

This is one of two basic ways we decode or process what we read or hear - we use our world knowledge, visual clues or our knowledge of context to help us predict the content of the text.

2______________ spoken discourse

Spoken discourse is divided into two main types. This category is where the purpose of what we say is to get things done e.g. buying a ticket or asking for directions.

3

___________ listening

This is a listening situation where the listener is an active participant e.g. chatting with a friend, an interview

4

_____________

These are mental representations of situations and concepts that we already have from our life experience e.g. when someone mentions ‘vandalism’, we immediately conjure up images of graffiti and damaged phone boxes etc. Once ‘activated’ they give us expectations of what we are going to hear and help us make sense of it.

5______________ spoken discourse

This is the second category of spoken discourse: where the purpose of what we say is furthering social relations e.g. chatting to a friend

6_______________ listening

This is a listening situation, such as a radio or TV programme, where the listener does not participate.

7

__________ processing

This is a second basic way in which we process or decode written or spoken text. In this case we build meaning from the smallest elements up; the actual sounds/letters, syllables, words etc. within the text.

8

___________processing

In reality, we generally use both top-down and bottom-up processing at the same time, probably to compensate e.g. if we can’t decode enough of the text from the actual words (BU) (because of background noise or insufficient language in the case of learners), we may compensate by using our world knowledge (TD) to ‘fill the gaps’.

4. What’s wrong with our listening materials and procedures?


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In pairs/groups. Discuss what features of classroom listening you are not entirely happy about and make a brief list. Consider:

What students really want to be able to do in terms of listening The types of texts they often listen to in class and what they

don’t often listen to How Ts judge ‘success’ in classroom listening The ‘standard’ procedures we use and how effective these are What happens when students fail to comprehend

Your ideas:

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

________________________________________

Now compare your ideas with the list on the following page:


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What’s wrong with our listening materials and procedures?

1. Lack of listening to conversation. Students generally want to be able to understand and participate in natural conversation. They listen to very little real conversation in class. At lower levels, especially, there’s often more transactional discourse in course books (this is easier for materials’ writers), and little interactional.

2. Testing not teaching. We play the listening and check the answers. If they get it right, it’s “well done”. If not, “better luck next time”, but there won’t be any “better luck next time” as we haven’t done anything to actually develop their listening skills. Field ELTJ 52/2 April 1998 said “A conventional listening comprehension lesson simply adds yet another text to the learners’ experience: it does little or nothing to improve the effectiveness of their listening or to address their shortcomings as listeners” i.e. it practises the skill, but does not develop it. It’s a ‘comprehension’ approach – success is measured in terms of right answers. But how did students arrive at the correct answer? Did they decode a high % of the text or was it a lucky guess based on understanding just a few words? In reality, wrong answers are far more important. Our listening lessons should be ‘diagnostic’ i.e. to identify problems and redress these.

3. Unnatural discourse. Scripted course book dialogues are too ‘clean’ – they demonstrate very little of the features of real-time conversation e.g. hesitation, repair strategies, unfinished sentences, overlap etc. They do little to help our learners cope with real conversation. Few course book listening are authentic English.

4. Overemphasis on Top-down processing at the expense of bottom-up work. This has been a tendency in course books since the 70s. Top-down processing is useful, of course, especially as a coping strategy for listening texts beyond the student’s level. However, if you lack 50% systems knowledge of the text, top-down processing alone clearly won’t bridge the gap.

5. Standard listening procedures are ‘top-heavy’ – there’s too much work pre-listening work, the actual listening period is often very short, and there’s almost no post-listening work to identify where and why problems of comprehension took place and to remedy these. We need a short pre-listening stage, lots


November 1, 2012

of actual listening (particularly with more bottom-up activities), and a longer post-listening phase with identification of problems and activities to address these.

6. Lack of variety of spoken genres – course book recordings tend to be interviews, dialogues or monologues, and very little conversation.

7. Mostly non-interactive. Students can’t participate in the majority of recorded listening, and yet they want to become more proficient in conversation.

8. British-based course books tend to have little variety of accents, just mainly the standard BBC English

9. Classroom listening can be MORE difficult than in real life i.e. there are no visual clues and with no chance for students to influence the delivery (our learners can’t ask the speaker for clarification or to slow down).

10. Inappropriate tasks. We often ask our learners to understand and remember the ‘exact words’. Native speakers, however, don’t tend to do this – they give an ‘interpretive summary’ of what they’ve heard. Also, the comprehension questions etc. that we generally use don’t exist in the real world, except in exams.


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5. Solutions

We’re going to look at solutions to the previous problems within the 3 main areas of listening resources for the classroom:

1. Teacher talk2. Live listening3. Recordings

Solution 1: Teacher Talk

CELTA and similar courses have given ‘teacher talk’ a bad name. ‘TTT’ (teacher talking time) has simplistically been seen as ‘bad’ and ‘STT’ (student talking time) as ‘good’. As a result of this, many teachers don’t talk much to their students, except when setting up activities, giving feedback, explaining language etc. Where’s the input of real, everyday English from the teacher? You, the teacher, are the most important source of listening input for your students!

1. QTT (quality teacher talk) – tell your students anecdotes, react to what they say not just how they say it; talk to your students!! Distinguish between ‘transactional’ finely-tuned teacher talk for the ‘functional bits’ in class (instructions etc.) and ‘interactional’ roughly-tuned QTT which is what students want and need.

2. Language grading. This is not finding just the ‘’right level of simplicity in your speech for a particular class and sticking to it. If your students understand you 100% of the time, there’s something very wrong. Use your grading like the gears of a car – slow down and into first for instructions, speed up into 5th when you’re chatting to your students or telling a story and they don’t need to understand everything.

3. Be the example. Don’t put students straight into pairs to ask each other questions – first they ask you, then each other. Give them some natural English to listen to.

4. If a recording isn’t very natural, read it yourself, more naturally, adding hesitations, false starts etc.

5. Ss interview the teacher and record. They choose the topics, they write the questions. They transcribe the text for homework.

6. Teach them conversation strategies and train them to interrupt you when they don’t understand, so that you can re-iterate

7. Talks and presentations e.g. slide shows etcetera

Solution 2: Live listening


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Live listening is generally ‘live’ unscripted native speaker talk in front of the class. It can be the teacher alone, guest speakers, or two or more teachers together. It has the great advantage of being authentic spoken discourse, with all its imperfect performance features, with helpful gestures and body language (paralinguistic features), and the opportunity to interact with the speaker e.g. to ask questions, or ask for repetition or clarification. You can make this into a wonderful resource by recording it as it happens. A second listening could be of the recording. Transcripts can be made and used, too, as we’ll see.

1. Live listening with another teacher – join two classes together. Tape it as you do it. Send it to Ss as an audio file and they transcribe it for homework. Use the dialogue for language input. Then the students perform and/or record a dialogue on the same theme.

2. Play it back and let students control the stop-play buttons and ask questions when they don’t understand.

3. Guest speakers (friends and family) are great for a new face and voice and some cultural input. Students can choose the topic and write the questions. Either they or the teacher can interview the guest. Record it! This can be a lovely bridge between the class and the real world.

4. I’ve experimented with my own version of CLL (Community Language Learning), involving translation or reformulation. Agree on a topic and the class writes the questions. Interview a student in front of the class: ask a question in English and the student answers in Spanish. Record this. Then listen to it again and record a natural English version of what the student said. Continue with further questions. Replay the recording, letting students stop it where they have difficulties. Input new language by transcribing sections, explaining, drilling etc. Finally, send the students the audio file and they record their own versions at home, after the new input. Comparing old and new versions is great for motivation.


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Solution 3: Recordings

We need to realise that the typical scripted and ‘cleaned up’ course book listening we use are just one of many types of recordings available. They have their place, for the variety of accents, topics and cultural issues they bring into class. They also form part of an integrated syllabus. Also, the new generation of course books will bring IWB versions of texts with transcripts and multiple on-screen options. However, course books are always at least one year out-of-date when they are published and there are almost no controversial issues (they are PG-rated, as one writer put it!). Students need a much more varied diet of recordings. Nowadays, there’s a huge range of alternatives, many with transcripts also available – TV, radio, internet, podcasts, DVDs, videos, audio-books, songs, and so on.

1. TV, radio, internet audio and video files and DVDs are often more current and topical

2. DVDs have subtitles that can be used in many ways. They also have pause, rewind, no sound and lots of other facilities

3. These media are authentic and a great source of natural language

4. TV, DVDs and videos have visuals which aid comprehension enormously and are highly motivating

5. Songs have lyrics, repeated elements such as a chorus, and rhyme which aids prediction of lexis. There are also free Karaoke sites on the internet

6. Students can subscribe to a huge variety of podcasts which are then downloaded automatically to their PC or i-phone

7. Audio books can be downloaded (illegally!) from the internet8. ‘Narrow’ listening (Krashen, Thornbury). The listening in a

course book are each on a different topic, so topic-related lexis is not repeated. Encourage students to listen to multiple recordings on the same theme instead


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6. Task.

You will watch a short video extract from www.videojug.com called ‘How to be the perfect boyfriend’. You have a copy of the transcript on the next page.

In pairs/groups:

1. Read pp.11-13 “Using transcripts”

2. Select/adapt 1 transcript activity from each section to use as post-listening activities

3. IF TIME, compare you sequence with another group


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Using transcripts

Transcripts for course book recordings tend, unfortunately, to be hidden in the teacher’s book or at the back of the course book (in very small print). I say ‘unfortunately’ because the transcripts hold the key to finding out what students didn’t understand. There is also some division of opinion between teachers – some believe using the transcript is reading, not listening, or even cheating. More commonly, teachers don’t know what to do with them.Personally, the main way I believe transcripts can help develop listening skills is very simple: get your students to listen as much as possible outside class to video or audio extracts with transcripts. This helps them gradually to match the written and spoken word. This means finding out about resources on the internet etc. (see final list) and showing students how to use them. Demonstrate in class for students to then use them at home, BUT integrate this into your teaching e.g. they all choose and watch a www.videojug.com video at home and tell each other about it in the next class. It also means buying a digital recorder, or using your mobile or digital camera to make your own video and audio files e.g. with colleagues or friends and family. It also involves teaching language which will help bottom-up processing in future listening.

Here are three general purposes for using transcripts and lots of ideas, all of which, directly or indirectly, can develop listening skills:

a. For further bottom-up listening practiceb. To identify where problems of comprehension occurred

and redress thesec. For language work

Using transcripts for further bottom-up listening practice:

students listen with the full transcript*. They can alternate between listening and reading the transcript until finally they do it simultaneously. This helps them match the written and spoken word. They can do this at home

deconstruct the text – listen to extracts of the recording alongside the transcript

students listen to extracts and compare to phonemic transcript

Make changes in the transcript for students to listen and correct (similar sounding words or phrases)


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give two alternative versions of each segment of the transcript. Ss listen and decide which the correct one is.

the standard gap-fill but concentrating on difficult parts e.g. connected speech or words they know but didn’t recognise in the stream of speech

students mark weak forms on the transcript, then listen and check

Ss transcribe extracts of DVDs and then compare to the subtitles in class or at home

Students subscribe to podcasts and try to transcribe. T checks (good for one-to-one)

encourage Ss to listen to songs with lyrics at home Set bottom-up listening homework. Download or make your

own digital video/audio files and send them to your students as MP3 files to transcribe (all Ss or they take turns, or each do a different part). In the next class they can compare transcriptions with each other and then with the original transcript. Finally, listen again with the full transcript

Dictate difficult extracts from the transcripts and Ss script these. T can repeat gradually more slowly and more segmented, then return to the ‘natural version. Follow this with drilling of useful chunks. Listen again

the full scripts of some films and TV programmes are available on the internet

* This is not cheating!! Sheerin 1987 Listening Comprehension: teaching or testing? “Indeed, if one is thinking in terms of teaching listening comprehension, then giving the learners the opportunity of listening while following a transcript should be seen as an indispensable part of the process whereby the relationship between the written language and spoken language, with all its inevitable phonological simplifications, can be perceived and gradually assimilated”

Using transcripts to identify where problems of comprehension occurred and redress these:

Students individually highlight what they didn’t understand in the transcript (highlighter pen) and teacher helps with the most common problems

get students to transcribe what they actually here for extracts of the listening, putting gaps for words they don’t know

Annotate the transcript or the bits students couldn’t catch for the relevant phonological features e.g. connected speech


November 1, 2012

students summarise what they heard, then compare it to the transcript

Teach students to recognise common features of connected speech in fast discourse, as these come up time and time again. Give students phonemic transcriptions of common fragments and chunks of connected speech. Dictation works well for this.

Using transcripts for language work

Use extracts of the tape to focus on segmenting connected speech e.g. wochagonadootamora – students predict what this is, listen and check with transcript.

Record a more natural version of a course book text or a conversation with a friend and write a transcript. Help Ss to compare with the course book transcript. This is great for teaching any conversation strategies (circumlocution, fillers, ways of opening and closing conversations), and particularly for what good listeners do in conversation. This will develop their skills for interactive listening

gap-fill the transcript, but gap collocations and lexical phrases

stop the recording, predict next words and ideas, then check with the transcript

“storyboard” (Wida software) ‘hides’ the transcript until students write the words they heard and re-construct the text

encourage students to deduce the meaning of lexis in context

Ss reconstruct the listening text after listening several times and then ‘notice the gap’ with the original or do a dictogloss

use transcripts of natural conversations to focus on a particular area of discourse markers e.g. those that change topic (by the way) or come back to a topic (anyway)

Conclusions:

Don’t just focus on the product (getting the answers right); focus on the process (learning to listen) i.e. for diagnostic purposes, not just testing

Encourage lots of out-of-class listening


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Listenings with transcripts, subtitles, captions, and lyrics is invaluable

alternate between listening and reading, before finally listening and reading simultaneously

Record natural English – colleagues, friends and family. Use your mobile or digital camera, or buy a digital recorder

QTT!!! Dictation is great for both identifying listening problems and

for developing students’ recognition skills Notice the gap – reconstruction of listening texts e.g.

dictogloss, and reformulation of S texts and comparison with the native-speaker version

Provide visual clues during a listening Teach word recognition skills (non-citation forms, connected

speech) Less top-heavy listening – less pre-listening, more actual

listening and more post-listening analysis and remedial work less top-down, more bottom-up Listening homework! More interactional less transactional discourse More interactive, less non-interactive Choose listenings which are interesting. We always realise

that reading texts should be motivating, but we think less about this with listening. Ss will listen more attentively if it’s interesting and relevant to them, and more still if they have some sort of stake in the listening

Don’t be afraid of using authentic text – it can sometimes actually be easier as it contains much more redundancy and repetition; they are less dense, which gives the listener more time to process

Link listening with speaking skills for conversation – teach backchannelling and other conversation strategies


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Final food for thought:

If the typical classroom listening we do at present are purely testing and not helping students to listen better, then are they a waste of class time?

Should this type of listening be for homework or self-study, with transcripts, so students can listen as many times as they like and gradually match the written and spoken word? If so, what listening should we do in class?


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Appendix 1

Possible causes of lack of comprehension / miscomprehension

1. Connected speech. Particularly when words blend together (coalescent assimilation - would you, did you, wanna, gonna), or sounds being lost (elision), or gained to join our words (liaison). The real problem though is when various of these features combine so that the ‘sounds’ students hear have little in common with the ‘written’ version and they fail to segment them e.g. Whatchagonnadotomorra? Connected speech is hugely difficult for our learners. Also, common chunks of language are produced as one sound-meaning unit and are often the most ‘distorted’ and therefore the hardest to understand ifyanowodaimean

2. Prosodic features. Stress and intonation can convey subtle messages above and beyond the actual words and may confuse

3. Lack of knowledge of discourse features: the overall structure of the spoken genre and what to expect, formulaic markers (Have you heard the one about…), discourse markers e.g. anyway (to shift back to previous topic), and reference (e.g. pronouns and demonstratives referring back in the text). Learners miss the signposts which might guide them through a text and its meaning

4. Students lack the cultural knowledge or appropriate schemata. This can include names, places, acronyms (UAE)

5. Lack of knowledge of conversation strategies e.g. inability to use repair strategies in interactional discourse (they don’t know how to ask for clarification or repetition), or not understanding phrases signalling a change of topic etc.

6. Lexis. Not only words and lexical phrases learners don’t know, but also words they DO know but can’t identify in connected speech. Ss know words in ‘citation’ form i.e. how the word is pronounced in isolation, but don’t recognise it in a stream of speech. One research project showed that 75% of lower intermediate students did not recognise very common words in connected speech.

7. Grammar and syntax

8. Being unable to discern the mood of the speaker e.g. irony

9. Unfamiliar accents, background noise or poor recordings.


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Appendix 2

Useful website addresses for listening:

This list is mainly from Wilson, JJ 2008 How to Teach Listening p183. I haven’t been able to check all the sites. The ones I definitely know have transcripts are marked*

News/current affairs-based

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/ Learners can listen to news with or without the text*http://learningenglish.voanews.com/ *www.listen-and-write.com www.cnn.comhttp://literacynet.org/cnnsf/archives.html www.cbsnews.comwww.euronews.netwww.britfm.com

General interest

*www.videojug.com Many excellent videos are made by the site itself and have a transcript which can be on screen or printed. Some videos are from www.youtube.com or sent in by the public. Great for both native speakers and foreign learners for advice, education and entertainment. The videojug videos are British English and the others are a mixture. Great recipes, too!!*www.ted.com A wonderful site with a huge collection of videos.

SongsThere are lots of sites for lyrics e.g. www.lyrics.com There are lots of videos on www.youtube.com of songs with lyrics. Free Karaoke sites are also good as they have the lyrics up on screen at the right moment. *www.lyricstraining.com

Filmshttp://www.script-o-rama.com/table.shtml Great selection of new and old film scripts.

Podcastshttp://a4esl.org/podcasts/

ELT/ESL-based


http://www.script-o-rama.com/table.shtml

http://www.lyricstraining.com/

http://www.ted.com/

http://literacynet.org/cnnsf/archives.html

http://www.listen-and-write.com/

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/

November 1, 2012

http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/flare/EnglishStudySite.html Great list of useful sites

www.esl-lab.com Free. Has easy, medium and difficult levels (very useful grading). Includes pre-, while- and post-listening exercises. Rather obviously scripted material but a very good selection. American English.*www.EnglishListening.com A pay site but has a guest area with around 30 free recordings. Authentic and fast. Comes with questions, answers and transcripts. American English.www.cdlponline.org Free and very extensive range suitable for working adults, though the news stories tend to be read at very slow speeds. *www.listen-and-write.com A dictation site with authentic listening. Students transcribe the text as they hear (either full text, gaps, or first letter). The text appears as they get it correct or there’s an option to see it. A wide range of levels, though even the lowest levels are quite difficult. Range of accents.www.esl.about.com/homework/esl/cs/listeningresource/index.html . Good selection, though mainly quizzes. Scripted. Variety of accents. *www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish Put ‘Watch and Listen’ in the search space and you can find lots of extracts, some with video and some just audio. Free, authentic (though quite UK-centric) and regularly updated. Includes scripts and definitions of key vocabulary.*www.breakingnewsenglish.com is mainly for written news, but also has more and more listening available. http://mgsonline.blogs.com/mgspodcast/

http://vu.flare.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/english/listening/index-e.html

Exam listening practice

There are lots of sites with free listening practice tests for the Cambridge Exam Suite (KET, PET, FCE, CAE, CPE), TOEFL, IELTS and other exams. Some have transcripts and some not. Just Google e.g. IELTS Listening practice.

On the official Cambridge site below you can try a full practice exam for each level, including listening with or without the transcript. If you want further practice materials, you need to buy these online.

http://www.CambridgeESOL.org/resources/online-practice-tests/

For teachers to make recordings/podcasts:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net


http://vu.flare.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/english/listening/index-e.html

http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/flare/EnglishStudySite.html

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www.podomatic.com


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Appendix 3

Solutions based on student talk

Here we are clearly not starting with a perfect text, linguistically speaking, but we are starting with what the student wants to say. The basic technique we can use here is ‘reformulation’ i.e. the native speaker ‘tidies up’ the student-generated text. The final reformulated versions can be used as class listening and the motivation is very high as students are listening to their own work and that of their classmates. It’s important for both the teacher and the students to accept ‘the best they can do’, and not perfection.

students make their own audios/videos and the teacher(s) reformulate and re-record. Compare the two versions. Ss then correct their own

Students can record monologues at home digitally and send them to you by e-mail. You can reformulate them and record and send them back

Students write dialogues, then perform and record them. The teacher can reformulate them orally and record, or in written form and the student can re-record a better version

It’s also a good idea to record students periodically and be given a copy so they can note their progress


developing listening skills eiu training weekx

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