Shaun Sweeney: Listening to Learn or Learning to Listen

EIM-AFC III Multingual Teachers' Day

 

Shaun Sweeney: Listening to Learn or Learning to Listen

 

Shaun started his session by pointing out that there are two key concepts in listening, often expressed as the following (learner) questions:

- What did he say?
- What does that mean? 

(As an aside, this reminds me of the first two phrases I ever learnt in Catalan, both questions: Qué ha dit? – What did she say? and Qué hem de fer? – What do we have to do? simply because I heard them over and over in class!)

Shaun linked the (initial) questions to these ideas:

- ‘How does today’s teaching make tomorrow’s text easier?’ (Paul Nation)
- ‘Are we learning to listen in English? Or listening in order to learn English? (Sheila Thorn)

We often use listening (and reading) texts as a model to present new language such as structures or lexis (listening to learn) rather than to develop our learners’ listening skill (learning to listen). Activities focussed on helping learners to get better at listening are often neglected, and the texts that learners are exposed to in class are tidied up and modified to make sure that they are accessible. Richard Cauldwell refers to this as a ‘careful speech model’, carefully and clearly enunciated by actors in a studio.

Consequently, learners struggle to cope with the messiness of ‘real’ listening, with its false starts, errors, repetitions, omissions and cultural references. We (teachers) are guilty of telling our students not to worry if they don’t understand every word, or that they only need to focus on the stressed / content words. This actually promotes a false view and leads to miscomprehension, as learners need to be able to decode the unstressed word in the ‘stream of speech’ (Cauldwell).

Decoding is the ability to segment connected speech: identifying where one word stops and another begins (and then mapping that onto known words in our mental lexicon). As L1 or expert listeners in the language, we use contextual clues to fill the gaps when words are not clear, or the sound quality is poor. According to John Field, expert and novice listeners use context in quite different ways – expert listeners use it to enrich their understanding of the message, whereas novice listeners use it to compensate for gaps.

To illustrate this, Shaun showed us an extract of an interview with Sheila Thorn (she of the second quote above), in which she explained an anecdote. As an initial listening task, Shaun asked us to listen and discuss whether we’d had any similar experiences to the one Sheila was talking about. You can watch the clip here.
We then contrasted what Sheila actually said (text 2 in the slide below) with how this might be adapted for use in a coursebook (text 1), as a vehicle to present (in this case) narrative tenses.

 

'Tidied up' text for coursebook v reality

 

There are three things that may prevent you from understanding the ‘real’ version:

- Grammar
- Vocabulary
- Phonology

In this case, the text is not difficult and contains relatively accessible, frequent lexis, so any problems in comprehension will be caused by the phonology.

 

Examples of difficult 'chunks'

Shaun pointed out that we should be focussing on the high-frequency words, clusters and formulaic chunks of language, which often disappear in the jumble of speech. He used the example of just. Whenever it appears, pause the listening and ask students to identify the word. Shaun usually does this after the following word/words, e.g. with the expression ‘I just turned round’ , he would pause after ‘round’. The teaching of phonological features is not just about production, but also to help our learners understand. Another key feature to focus on is adverbs. Cauldwell suggests that these are very often candidates for radical phonological reduction, and so can take on a wide variety of ‘sound shapes’.

Practical suggestions

‘1. Botanic walk’ (Cauldwell, 2013)
 

In class, we can set up three zones: 

- ‘Greenhouse’: words are like the plants in the greenhouse, ordered separately, in individual pots.
- ‘Garden’: words here ‘politely shake hands’; they are relatively neat and follow certain rules that can be learnt, e.g. catenation.
- ‘Jungle’: words in the jungle are like the reality of fast, messy speech.

 

Examples of how Language sounds in the Greenhouse / Garden / Jungle

 

Learners can choose if they want to hear a word or phrase in the greenhouse, garden or jungle. The three transcriptions of the phrase ‘Do you know what I mean?’ in the slide above illustrate how this would sound in the different areas.

2. Hancock and McDonald website

Prounciation specialists, Hancock & McDonald have a website which provides a selection of freely downloadable pron-focussed materials and activities for different levels (see slide below).
There are also links to their award-winning published materials, such as PronPack, Pronunciation Games and English Pronunciation in Use.

 

Example activity from Hancock & McDonald

3. Playphrase 

www.playphrase.me a bank of TV and movie clips featuring the same phrases or chunks, e.g. ‘a little bit’ ‘kind of’. With a Chrome extension, you can download the videos.

www.playphrase.me

 

The more high frequency these clusters are, the more likely they are to be squashed or omitted. Play a number of examples and ask learners to identify the repeated phrase or do a ‘fill-the-gap’ activity (see below).

Example of fill-the-gap using clips on 'playphrase'

 

4. Coursebook: Authentic listenings

More and more popular coursebooks feature sections of authentic listenings. Shaun used an example from Speak Out Pre-Intermediate. Ask learners to listen to all the recordings and identify the theme (in this case = technology). Listen again and learners rate speakers according to the level of difficulty. Zoom in on the most difficult speakers and pause to help learners segment the words.

Exploiting coursebook material

Finally, Shaun proposed a possible procedure for dealing with listening in class:


· Play first time with a very general understanding task (e.g. gist). This can be as simple as ‘What are they talking about?’
· Allow students to pair check – monitor to gauge how much they understood. Give answer to initial task.
· Set questions for slightly more detailed understanding task (e.g. specific info)
· Play the recording again.
· Allow students to pair check. Monitor to gauge how successful they were in the detailed understanding task.
· Do not confirm answers when students don’t agree – go back to that section of the recording and replay.
· Allow students to pair check again.
· Replay/read from transcript as necessary until students have understood. Possibly have them write down the exact words at sections which are difficult to perceive. 5/6 words max. at a time – maybe build this up on the board (unless you’ve prepared a handout with gaps).
· Ask if there are any other sections you wish to replay.
· Give them the transcript. If time, let students listen and read the transcript at the same time.

How to approach listening in class

 

References

Cauldwell, R. (2013). Phonology for Listening. Birmingham Speech Action.

Cauldwell, R. (2010). Grasping the nettle: the importance of perception work in listening comprehension. University of Birmingham http://www.academia.edu/568613/Grasping_the_nettle_The_importance_of_perception_work_in_listening_comprehension accessed 19/1/19.

Field, J. (2003). Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in L2 listening ELTJ, 57 (4), 325 – 334.

Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge. CUP:

Hunt, R. & Pickles, M. (2014). Teaching not testing, ETP, 94, 4-7.

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