Tài liệu Developing skills

DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS I FEBRUARY 2009 ORLANDO CARRANZA OUTLINE „ THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING „ WHAT MAKES LISTENING DIFFICULT? „ LISTENING STAGES „ PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES: BOTTOM–UP AND TOP–DOWN „ „ STRATEGIES RELATED TO BOTTOM–UP PROCESSING - Listening for specific details - Recognizing Cognates - Recognizing word order patterns STRATEGIES RELATED TO TOP–DOWN PROCESSING - Listening for the main idea - Predicting - Drawing inferences - Summarizing THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING „ Language learning depends on Listening. „ Speaking does not constitute communication by itself unless what is said is comprehended by another person. „ Listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. WHAT MAKES LISTENING DIFFICULT? „ „ „ „ CLUSTERING. Learners try to retain a long sentence or several sentences at a time or try to understand every word in an utterance. REDUNDANCY. Learners have to understand that not every sentence contains new information, and they must be aware of the signals of redundancy. REDUCED FORMS. Spoken language contains a good deal of reduced forms that pose significant difficulties for the learner. PERFORMANCE VARIABLES. Hesitations, false starts, pauses and corrections can easily interfere with comprehension in second language learners. WHAT MAKES LISTENING DIFFICULT? „ „ „ „ COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE. Language learners find difficult to deal with colloquial language like, idioms, slang, contractions and assimilations. RATE OF DELIVERY. Learners will need to be able to understand language delivered at different rates of speed. STRESS, RHYTHM AND INTONATION. Intonation patterns are very significant not just for interpreting questions or statements but also to get more subtle messages like sarcasm, insult, praise, etc. INTERACTION. This will play a large role in listening comprehension because the students have to continue a chain of listening and responding. LISTENING STAGES Because of the uncertainties that language learners experience when listening, it is usually necessary to design activities following these stages: „ „ „ THE PRE-LISTENING STAGE. Activities the teacher has to do before the students actually listen to the audio. One important objective is to contextualize the text providing learners information about the setting and the role relationships between participants. WHILE-LISTENING STAGE. The work at this stage needs to link in relevant ways to the prelistening work. The purpose is to help the learner develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language. POST-LISTENING STAGE. They allow the learners to “reflect", reinforce and use the language presented on the task. BOTTOM-UP AND TOP-DOWN PROCESSES „ „ The bottom-up mode of language processing involves the listener paying close attention to every detail of the language input. The understanding of the language is worked out from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings, etc., to a “final” message. The top-down process of listening involves the listener’s ability to bring prior information to the task of understanding the “heard” language. It is concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the interpretation of a text. EXAMPLES WHAT ARE THE PROCESSES THE PERSONS ARE USING IN EACH EXAMPLE? 1. 2. 3. 4. Joe is listening casually to people talking in a birthday party. A friend calls you to invite you to a party at her house the following Saturday. As you’ve never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You listen carefully and take notes. A person has to listen closely to a joke in order to know when to laugh. While having lunch, a friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster for him. You listen and make some comments just to express some concern or sympathy. STRATEGIES „ „ STRATEGIES RELATED TO BOTTOM – UP PROCESSING LISTENING FOR SPECIFIC DETAILS RECOGNIZING COGNATES RECOGNIZING WORD ORDER PATTERNS STRATEGIES RELATED TO TOP – DOWN PROCESSING LISTENING FOR THE MAIN IDEA PREDICTING DRAWING INFERENCES SUMMARIZING REFERENCES Morley, J. (2001). U11A Listening Skills. In Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp.74-75). Heinle & Heinle Harmer, J. (1998). How to Teach English. Longman Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by Principles: an Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Pearson Education Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford University Press Listening: Top-down and bottom-up http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles Morley, C. (2007) NCLRC The Essentials of Language Teaching(2004): Strategies for Developing Listening Skills in http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/stratlisten.htm in Orlando Carranza ICPNA ETECS