Why Second Language Listening is so Difficult to Teach and What to Do about it

Christina Cole TESL Ottawa May 5 2018

Copyright Christina Cole 2017 . This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Outline • 10 Reasons L2 listening so difficult • Teaching how to listen vs. testing listening

comprehension • Process-oriented vs product-oriented approach • Importance of Vocabulary • Teaching HOW to listen: Bottom-up & Top-

down processing • Cognitive and Metacognitive strategies • Integrating Listening and Speaking • Using transcripts & visual support • Additional strategies to support listening • Final thoughts

Ten Reasons Second Language Listening is

so Difficult

1. Speech is fast and transient. 2. Speech is made up of a stream of sounds not words. 3. Divergence between what words look like in writing and what they sound like in speech 4. Unfamiliar pronunciation of familiar words 5. Can’t predict content

6. Guessing from context is overrated. 7. Vocabulary often unfamiliar 8. Unfamiliar grammatical structures 9. Redundancy 10. Listening puts a burden on memory & attention.

Top 5 problems in listening due to word recognition and attention failure

1. Failed to recognize words they knew (in written form)

2.Got stuck thinking about a word and lost rest of input

3.Couldn’t break stream of language into proper chunks

4.Missed beginning of text 5.Concentrated too hard or lost

concentration (Goh, 2000)

• TEACHING listening comprehension should not be TESTING listening comprehension

• Whether learners get the answer right OR wrong, this gives them NO insight into HOW

to listen nor does it help them learn how to listen better.

• Learners need opportunities to learn the

process of listening : HOW to listen

Problems with the Comprehension Approach

Alternatives to comprehension questions:

listening response tasks

Alternative Listening Responses

• Doing : responding in actions, building something

• Choosing: from alternatives, ordering

pictures etc.. • Transferring: drawing a picture, filling in

a map or chart • Extending: providing an ending

• Condensing: making outlines, taking notes • Duplicating: taking dictation, translating • Modelling: speaking after hearing a model • Speaking: conversing, answering questions,

discussing

Alternative Listening Responses

Process-oriented Listening vs Product-oriented Listening How are they different?

• Bottom-up listening • Metacognitive approach • Listening as Acquisition

Three Kinds of Information to Decode Speech

Context

Language Information

Acoustic Information

Liss, T & Reed, M. (2013)

1. Now I was up in San Francisco ______ __________ago

2. doing _______ book signing

3. Uhm. __________ ______ this guy buying _____ book,

4. and he's _____ _______30s.

5. And I said, "What ____ ________ do?"

6. And ____ ________, "I'm a fireman."

Use language knowledge to fill in these blanks.

1. Now I was up in San Francisco a while ago

2. doing a book signing

3. Uhm. There was this guy buying a book,

4. and he's in his 30s.

5. And I said, "What do you do?"

6. And he said , "I'm a fireman."

Listening is different than Reading:

• Lack of permanence • Speed of input: no spaces or pauses

between words • Connected speech includes reductions,

deletions, assimilations, linking, and blending of sounds

• Gestures, body language, back channel

cues help to transmit meaning

• Speech uses less standard grammar and more colloquial language/slang

• Less fluent, full of redundancies, fillers, false starts, digressions, self-corrections

• Speech units shorter, more pronouns,

vaguer language, more conjunctions • Organization not as linear

Speech is different than Writing:

How to teach listening: Bottom Up and Top Down

How to teach Listening: Bottom Up

• Key vocabulary: including colloquial

language, idioms, collocations, variations on parts of speech

• Phonological aspects : sounds, words, phrases,

sentence level • Intonation and stress • Textual schemata • Grammatical structures

• Most reported problem in listening

comprehension- weak vocabulary knowledge • Vocabulary size (.7) and depth (.65)

significantly correlated with scores on standardized listening comprehension tests

• 5000-7000 word families =95%-96% of conversational listening (Nation, 2006)

• Unrealistic to teach word once and expect

retention – automatic use acquired through frequent encounters (12) & varied contexts

Importance of Vocabulary for Listening

How to Teach Vocabulary • Pre-teach vocabulary • Aural realization (pronunciation) • Focus on words important to task at

hand • Focus on context & varied context • Use frequency-based word lists • Multiple exposure and recycling: recall

words next day

• Multiple word forms • Idioms and phrases (cloze) • Common collocations • Elicit associated words: web circle • Play “odd one out”

How to Teach Vocabulary

Collocations

Classic example

Obvious example

Striking example

Immediate action

Drastic action

Urgent action

New word checklist 1. What part of speech is it?_______________________

For nouns: Count noun □ Non-count noun □ Singular count noun: a/an/the Plural Count Noun: add ‘s’

For verbs: Transitive: ? □ Intransitive ? □ 2. How do you pronounce it? How many syllables are there in the word? ______ Which syllable gets the primary stress? _____ New word/stress pattern: ______________________/_____ 3. How do you use it in a sentence? _________________________________ 4. Alternate forms: ______________ Reed, M., Michaud, C. (2005).

Sound Concepts: an integrated pronunciation course. N.Y: McGraw-Hill, p. 154

Phonological aspects: how to understand discrete sounds and words • Discriminate individual sounds (e.g. minimal

pairs) a. Is he leaving? b. Is he living? • Recognize deletions, reduction of weak forms,

contractions • Recognize stressed syllables/words and notice

what happens to unstressed ones & to reduced forms

• Recognize stress patterns and know what stress means

Native English speakers recognize words based on “pattern of strong and weak syllables. They relied heavily and consistently on the speaker’s syllable stress pattern: Both the number of syllables and the position of strong and weak syllables. ” (Zielinski, 2008)

You asked for this. And they give you this. What happened? • You asked for a cheMISTry book

instead of a CHEMistry book.

Deletion

“Loss of unstressed medial vowel …following a strongly stressed syllable” Family, vegetable, every, chocolate, interesting, history Loss of /h/ or /th/ in unstressed pronouns/possessive adjective when they are not first word in the sentence He, her, him, his, hers, them “Izibizi?”

Reduction of weak forms Function words: prepositions, articles, conjunctions, helping verbs, pronouns, possessive adjectives “ difficult to hear in many languages because they are short, unstressed, and contain weak vowels.” (Field, 2008) What was said: She’s from... What was heard: He’s from… What was said: I can’t make it Heard: I can make it What was said: It’s illegal Heard: It’s legal

What was said: He looked it up

What was heard: He looked up.

How to segment sound stream using suprasegmentals into recognizable words & phrases

• Linking: C to V; V to V; C to C • Assimilation: “a sound takes on the

characteristics of a neighboring sound “ (Celce-Murcia,2010)

• Formulaic chunks: wanna, gonna, hafta… • Recognize intonation patterns (statements, yes/no

questions, wh-questions) • Stress and intonation • Thought groups

Linking Consonant to Vowel

Example: stop it Sto pit I need it I nee dit Of a song O vasong Read a book Rea dabook

Linking Vowel to Vowel When one word ends with a vowel sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound, we link the words with a sort of Y or W sound. It depends on the shape of our mouth at the end of the first word.

When the first word ends in an a, e, i vowel sound [ eɪ / i: / aɪ ], our lips are wide. Then we insert a Y sound at the beginning of the next word:

Lips wide

We write First

word ends

with

We say

Pay all /eɪ/ payyall

The end /i:/ theyend

Lie on /aɪ/ lieyon

They all buy at

the arcade.

Theyyall buyyat

theyarcade.

Lips Round

When the first word ends in an ow, uw,a uw vowel sound [ əʊ / u: //aʊ/], our lips are round. Then we insert a W sound at the beginning of the next word:

We write First word ends

with

We say

Go out /əʊ/ gowout

Too often /u:/ toowoften

how is /aʊ/ howwis

You all go out too

often.

youwall gowout

toowoften

Linking consonant to consonant (blending) Example: best time bestime Good day gooday Sit down sidown Some more somore Consonant blends: Kissme, oncesmore, lastrain, it’slove

Assimilation Endings -ed ending: /t/, /d/, /id/ -s ending: /z/, /s/, /iz/ Flap: When /t/ is between two vowels or after an /r/ and before a vowel, it sounds like a quick /d/ Water wader put it on pudidon Forget about it Forgedaboudit

Palatalization: With T or D /t/ + /jə/ = [ʧə] “cha” Get you Got you “Getcha” “Gotcha” /d/ + /jə/ = [ʤə] “ja” Did you ? “Didja” ? Don’t you? Would you? Doncha? Wouldja?

Did you eat yet? Didya eat yet? Didja eat yet?

Ja eat yet?

Jeetyet?

Stress pattern In English “the length of an utterance depends not on the number of syllables but rather on the number of stresses.” (Celce-Murcia, 2010) Mice eat cheese The mice eat the cheese The mice have eaten the cheese The mice will have eaten the cheese

Textual schemata • Chunks of language/Fixed phrases • Macro-markers, discourse markers,

micro-markers • Grammatical forms • Typical and atypical sentence patterns • Idioms

Fixed phrases and their Stress patterns For the LIFE of me Of ALL things The VAST maJORity AcCORDing to REsearch Deep DOWN Let’s aGREE to disaGREE Of its own acCORD HERE’s the thing

Macro-markers Signal phrases used to organize the direction of the discourse: • Marking a topic: “What I want to

focus on today….” • Introducing new terms and

concepts: “Let’s turn to the next factor…”

• Explaining terminology and concepts: “When we refer to this, we mean…”

• Summarizing:” So what I’ve been trying to get across is….”

Micro-markers Ok Then Well All right So Now Right Because Fine

Discourse Markers First By the way Finally As I was saying However Actually Similarly Anyway As a result Here’s the thing In conclusion At the end of the day

Grammatical structures

• Teach grammatical structures found in audio/video

• Draw attention to lexical bundles/chunks of

language/ collocations/useful phrases • Have learners raise hands when they hear

target grammatical structure • Construct dialogues from one sentence

examples • Brainstorm phrases associated with topic

Atypical sentence patterns Never have I heard anything like this. Little did Michael suspect that his employee was stealing from him. Under no circumstances should you go out. No sooner had he locked the door than the phone began to ring.

Activities for Practicing Bottom-up Processes in Listening

We have ignored activities that “require accurate recognition and recall of

words, syntax and expression” such as “ dictation, cloze exercises, and

identifying differences between a spoken and written text”.

(Richards, 2005)

• Transcriptions and dictations • Chunking (meaningful chunks and

thought groups) • Phonemic contrasts (minimal

pairs) • Matching sounds or stresses • Cloze activities : use phrases not

just individual words • Dictate reduced forms: students

write full forms • Physical reinforcement: tap out

stresses or rise/fall of intonation

oO forSAKE neGATE ofFEND oOo aBOLish chaRISma dyNAMics Ooo PRImary VISceral INtrovert oOoo eCONomy deMOcracy , soCIety , ooOo stimuLAtion reveLAtion

Matching Stress Patterns

Sentence Dictation

• Useful for teaching bottom-up processes • Listen to dictation once with pauses • Listen again with pauses at meaningful

chunks • Listen to check their dictation against

transcript • Teacher reads reduced forms and learners

write full forms.

How to teach Listening: Top-Down • Pre-listening: Prepare learners by activating

schema (background knowledge) and predicting content

• Provide a focus: identify purpose for listening • Preview any questions – allow learners to

listen for more limited range of information • Brainstorm vocabulary associated with topic

Cognitive Strategies Make students aware of purpose for listening Be systematic about micro-skills: Listen for main ideas Listen for details Make inferences

Successful listeners: • Focus • Self-monitor • Predict • Verify & adapt interpretation • Problem-solve to adjust listening • Evaluate their comprehension Poor listeners: listen word by word; reluctant to change incorrect interpretation

Metacognitive Strategies

Integrating Listening and Speaking

Listening as acquisition

• Pronunciation practice is vital to listening success. (Brown & Smith, 2007)

• Listening is not always uni-directional but often reciprocal (two-way).

• Spoken activities help learners acquire

language they hear.

Theoretical and Research Rationale for Integrating Listening and Speaking

Speaking tasks that support listening • Teacher Support • General speaking tasks • Jigsaw • Communicative dictation • Dictogloss • Collaborative Dialogue and

Reconstruction

• Provide pre-task planning time (to think about how they will perform task) & opportunity for repetition

• Provide pre-speaking support : stems of sentences,

phrases learners may need to successfully complete task • Task repetition/cycles: Change partners so task remains

truly communicative; same language recycled e.g. poster carousel

• Learners must have a goal/target: not just “Discuss” • Task essentialness: learners must use structure teacher

wants them to e.g. Wh-questions or subject-verb inversion

Teacher Support

• Create oral sentences with new vocabulary • Use new grammar structures (e.g. correct verb

tenses, different types of question formation) • Use new vocabulary/grammar in a discussion • Paraphrase/summarize • Organize ideas for a discussion • Express opinions; Argue a point of view • Respond to and refute an argument

General Speaking Tasks

• Two-way Information gap or jigsaw • Jigsaw Listening: Students hear different

parts of audio file

• Each participant holds some information • Participants must have same or

convergent goals • Only one possible outcome to task

Jigsaw

Communicative Dictation

• Find difference between spoken and written texts.

• Individually listeners correct the differences. • Then work together in pairs or groups • Or listen to two versions of same text and work

to construct logical version of events

• Listen to a passage read at normal speed, take

notes and use these notes to work with a partner to reconstruct the passage as well as they can.

• Combines listening, writing and discussions that

potentially lead to language-related episodes and collaborative dialogue, and thus promotes “noticing” (Schmidt, 1990)

• Less emphasis on precise repetition of teacher’s words as in a dictation. Maintain original meaning of text.

Dictogloss

Collaborative Dialogue & Reconstruction

• Discuss and resolve gaps in learners’ knowledge • Discovery listening phase: students compare

their texts with original and classify any difficulties according to categories (Wilson, 2003)

• Resulted in higher scores than individual

reconstruction • After dictogloss, students attempted more

complex vocabulary and syntactic structures • Encourages learner autonomy, cooperative

learning and critical thinking

Using Transcripts and Visual Support

Ways to Use Transcripts • Highlight sounds or phonological aspects in script • Listen for stressed words & mark them • Predict the stressed words & check while listening • Highlight grammatical forms in script • Match speed and intonation of audio as learners

read the script • Predict where the pauses are; put slashes between

thought groups • Cloze activity- fill in gaps of phrases/chunks

Using Visual Support

• Multimodality- use of captions/subtitles • Instant feedback: keeps learners on track • Paralinguistic aspects of comprehension :

kinesics (body language and gesture), proxemics (physical distance and touch), prosody (stress, intonation, rhythm)

• Watch out: sometimes visuals do not

match audio

Additional Strategies to Support Listening

• Teachers should use Think alouds to model comprehension strategies, generating schemata, making connections, guesses & verifying

• Listen to learners’ think alouds: difficulties offer

insight into listening processes; feedback during listening

• Stop audio and see how learners are responding

Think Alouds

Final thoughts

• Listening is hard work: learners must listen actively

• Focus on process of listening vs end product • Vandergrift (2006) : larger role for vocabulary in

listening development specifically (50% of listening success)

• Pronunciation knowledge is vital for listening

comprehension

• Motivation: learners found it difficult to understand texts if they weren’t interested in the topic

• Demonstrate through modelling & think alouds: pausing an effective tool for increasing comprehension

• Balance complexity of text with level

of response required • Listening & speaking go hand-in-hand

References Brown, Steven (2011). Listening myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Field J. ( 2009). Listening in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Flowerdew, J. and Miller L. (2005).Second language listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University press Mendelsohn D. and Rubin, J. Eds. (1995 ). A guide for the teaching of second language listening. San Diego: Dominie Press Newton, I.S.P. and Nation. J. ( 2008). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. N.Y.: Routledge Ur, P. (1984). Teaching listening comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Vandergrift, L and C.M. Goh ( 2012). Teaching and learning in second language listening: metacognition in action. N.Y.: Routledge

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Thank You

Q & A christina.cole@utoronto.ca