Transcript Prior Knowledge, Comprehension and the L2 User

Prior Knowledge,
Comprehension and the L2
User
Ernesto Macaro
University of Oxford
Research evidence
The latest research shows that drinking
red wine results in a significant reduction
in cardio-vascular related diseases (Bourgogne
et. al. 2004)
Therefore everyone should drink lots of
red wine.
Research shows that high consumptions
of alcohol lead to: alcohol dependency,
cirrhosis of the liver, significantly high
levels of marriage break-downs.
Research evidence
A meta-analysis of SLA research shows that:
Focus on form and focus on forms both lead to
higher levels of language acquisition compared
to “focus on meaning” (Norris and Ortega 2000
“Effectiveness of L2 instruction”)
Therefore we should have focus on form
designed second language learning.
Focus on forms (and even consistent focus on
form) lead to: neglect of skills development; poor
vocabulary growth rates; de-motivation;
significantly high levels of marriage breakdowns.
Please listen to the following news
item
News Report: Lotticks in Hotel!
A Reading man who found lotticks and izzids in his supposedly
furbustuous Caribbean hotel was awarded £459 in damages
yesterday by a local magistrate.
Paul Batters paid £1300 to Atlantic Pacific Tours in March 2000 for
a “furbusty” holiday on the island of Martinique.
The firm’s ancaps promised a furbusty hotel, free happaps from
the airport, free use of the hotel’s gabonmang and beaches.
However, on his arrival, Mr Batters found there was no one to
meet him at the airport, the hotel room was infested with
lotticks and izzids, and the gabonmang was completely flooded
from the ninth hole onwards.
Mr Batters successfully sued Atlantic Pacific Tours, who claimed
that they had been organizing holidays on the island for 20
years and had never received any uptips.
Research evidence
A systematic review shows that: Prior
Knowledge of a topic helps listeners with
comprehension. (Macaro et al 2005)
Therefore language teachers should use texts
which the students have prior knowledge of.
Or should they?
Lecturers should provide L2 users with the text
of their lecture beforehand
Or should they?
Research Evidence
is like a second-hand car:
You really need it to get around
But you should really have a good look
under the bonnet before buying it!
Prior Knowledge (schemata)
Knowledge of the topic/area
Rhetorical knowledge: structure;
organization of the text/discourse;
Context knowledge – a lecture; an
interactive seminar
example
Types of prior knowledge we might have of
the topic:
Global
“floods”
Geographical lecture
News report
Personal account
“schema”
Specific event
Personal
Top-Down Processing:
Application of PK
Understanding
Spoken Text
perception
parsing
Bottom-up processing
Why the interest in Prior
Knowledge?
the most efficient comprehension is one
where the listener uses the least amount
of “surface information” from the text to
achieve the maximum amount of meaning
Studies testing the facilitating effect
of “familiar topic”
Generally, if listener knew topic (personal or specific
knowledge) they understood it better than if they did not
know the topic
However some caveats:
PK sometimes led to wild guessing (or overextending)
PK effect only strong in open-ended comprehension, not specific items
PK only accounted for a small % of the variance in comprehension
Markham and Latham (1987); Long (1990); Jensen & Hansen (1995)
Studies testing the facilitating effect
of stimulating prior knowledge
Topic not necessarily very familiar
global knowledge stimulated
Teacher presents students with advance
organizer activities
Mind mapping; statements or questions
Generally, comprehension was facilitated
No evidence of long-term effect on skill of
listening – on strategy use
Teichert (1996) Herron et al. (1998)
Studies: strategy use and
successful listening
often described as investigating “successful
listeners versus unsuccessful” listeners
Two hypotheses are tested here,
1. Learners of unequal listening proficiency use
different strategies.
2. some learners of equal general proficiency
might be adopting more effective listening
strategies than others.
Testing Hypothesis 1
more effective listeners use PK to infer
meaning rather than working it out from
the text itself
Less effective listeners use strategies
such as listening out for single words,
translating into L1,
Hence claims for the superiority of topdown approaches
O’Malley et al (1989); Vandergrift (1998); Chien and Wei (1998).
Studies testing hypothesis 2
No studies really testing this hypothesis
but these two come near it.
Chiang and Dunkel 1992
Tsui and Fullilove 1998
Chiang and Dunkel (1992)
the importance of two factors in learners'
ability to understanding spoken English
language texts in lectures:
1. prior knowledge, operationalized as
familiar or unfamiliar topic,
2. passage-dependent and passageindependent test items.
Chiang and Dunkel (1992)
360 students took the Comprehensive English
Language Test and on the basis of their scores
were divided into low and high listening
proficiency groups.
Students at each level were then randomly
assigned to one of the four experimental
conditions: familiar or unfamiliar topic of text;
passage-dependent or passage-independent
test items.
Subjects in each group listened to one of the
lectures recorded in one of the four conditions.
Chiang and Dunkel (1992)
Results:
Prior knowledge:
Generally subjects scored higher when they
listened to the familiar topic than the unfamiliar
topic (predicted).
There was no significant difference between
HILP and LILP in this respect.
However, the significant effect of prior
knowledge only appeared on the subjects'
performance on the text-independent items.
This suggests that it did not help them with main
ideas contained in the text nor with specific
details.
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Bottom-up or top-down processing as a discriminator of L2
listening performance. Applied Linguistics 19/4
Topic
Is bottom-up processing (focusing on
words and phrases in the text) more
important than top-down processing (using
the listener's prior knowledge and
inferencing) in discriminating the listening
performance of L2 learners.
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Background
Previous research has suggested that poor
listeners spend too much time in bottom-up
processes (local) rather than top-down (global)
However, some researchers have suggested
that what makes poor readers is their inability to
recognize words rapidly and construct an
accurate representation. Local skills have to be
mastered to take much of the guesswork out of
reading. Same for listening?
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Method
Investigated the performance of candidates in one
section of a listening paper in large-scale public
examinations in Hong Kong: “media items” – short texts
simulations of news items or adverts. (English L2)
Independent Variables:
Question type: global or local (see examples)
Schema type: (1) initial input is congruent with subsequent
input
(2) initial input is incongruent (refuted by)
with the subsequent input (see examples)
examples
Local and Global questions
A. Butterfly catching
B. Bird Watching
C. Travelling
D. Kite Flying
A. Tom Everly
B. Bobby Walker
C. Mike Harman
D. Isabella O’Grady
Matching and non-matching schema
type
A. A kitchen knife
B. An oven timer
C. A cleaning cloth
D. A special dish
A. the direction the wind was
blowing
B. the strong jets of water from the
fire hoses
C. the prompt call by residents to
the fire services
The quick action of the firemen
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Sample: 177 test items taken by 20,000
candidates. 98 matching global questions; 20
non-matching; 49 matching local questions; 10
not matching
Analysis: “mean criterion” = the mean scores in
the entire paper of the candidates who chose
those multiple choice options.
An option with a “high mean criterion” was
chosen by candidates who scored higher in the
entire paper.
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Results
Consistently showed that (correct) items of nonmatching schema type (i.e harder) yielded the higher
mean criterion scores (i.e. were chosen by the most
successful students) (predicted)
No significant differences between local and global
questions. (not predicted!)
Mean criterion scores of non-matching schema type
items among the global questions were significantly
higher than those of the matching schema type among
the global questions. (predicted)
Mean criterion scores of non-matching schema type
items among the local questions were significantly
higher than those of matching schema type among the
local questions. (not predicted!)
Tsui and Fullilove (1998)
Conclusions and implications
The biggest problem occurred with nonmatching schema: listeners unable to process
subsequent input which contradicted their initial
schema. Either: they were weak at bottom-up
processing or not combining strategies
Learners need to be taught how to use prior
knowledge to help understand but also they
need to be reliant on rapid and accurate
decoding.
Most effective listeners combine top-down
and bottom up strategies
Lectures and the L2 user
Lectures will activate prior knowledge of some
sort. Which kind?
What kind of lectures: traditional; interactive;
semi-interactive?
Individual a variable?
We need to understand why and when prior
knowledge is leading to misunderstanding of
lectures
For a review on “academic listening” see: Flowerdew (1994)
Ruhe 1996
Enhanced lecture comprehension through the provision
of an organizational graphic – a mind map similar to
advance organizers.
A sample of 103 students with mixed L1s were matched:
“graphic provided” versus “no graphic provided”; and
“vocabulary provided in lecture order” versus “vocabulary
provided in non-lecture order”.
“graphic provided” group scored higher than the control
whilst there were no significant differences between the
control and the two “vocabulary provided” conditions.
In other words, all conditions except the control would
have activated schemata but only the graphic revealed
the organizational patterns of the lecture.
Use of metaphor in lectures
(Littlemore 2001)
Metaphor: “science is witchcraft”
“science” is the topic of the metaphor
“witchcraft” is the vehicle of the metaphor
“the common ground” is what is shared by
participants in the metaphor
The common ground of metaphor is often
culturally specific
Lectures include metaphor
because:
Metaphors are evaluative (usually negative)
Metaphors label new concepts being introduced
Metaphors allow the lecturer to be deliberately
vague
Metaphors provide frameworks for ideas
Metaphors make language entertaining and
memorable
Littlemore 2001
Method
Bangladeshi students of “civil service
reform”
Researcher followed their lectures
Students asked to note down difficult
language in lectures
20 Students given 10 metaphors to
interpret and to say how they had derived
the meaning
Littlemore 2001
Findings
Although lecturers varied in their use of
metaphor it was always present somewhere
Of 180 words judged difficult, 145 were
metaphorical
Most of the participants misinterpreted at least
one of the metaphors in a way that seriously
affected their understanding of the lecturer’s
position/opinion.
Participants wrongly used both schematic
knowledge (PK & cultural background) and
contextual knowledge about their course, to
interpret the metaphor
Main findings of the review on PK
There is a positive association between
Prior Knowledge and listening
comprehension
Studies where Prior Knowledge was
deliberately stimulated by the teacher (i.e.
advanced organizer type studies) found
that students’ short term listening
comprehension performance was greater
PK review findings
Prior Knowledge can be misused if it is
not supported by later in-text information
or if the listener is not listening out for
possible contradicting information.
The way in which Prior Knowledge is used
as a comprehension strategy may vary
depending on the learners L2 language
proficiency. Lower proficiency learners
likely to misuse prior knowledge more.
(Previous research concluded it was a question
of either use or non-use)
Implications (for teachers/test-constructors)
Texts should be selected carefully by teachers to take
into account both the facilitating and potential pitfalls of
prior knowledge.
Facilitating comprehension may engender motivation.
Limiting exposure to texts where the topic is familiar to
the listener, may lead to under-developing bottom-up
processes crucial for confirming hypotheses generated.
Tests should include questions which require
understanding of information which may contradict a
listener’s general knowledge of a topic.
Implications for lecturers/teachers
of L2 users
Lecturers should exercise caution in their use of
metaphor
Raise students’ awareness of metaphor use
Perhaps provide mind-mapping activities at the
beginning of a lecture
Find out PK of students
(global/specific/personal)
Provide key words on slides to guide the
understanding.
Check understanding on schema-non-matching
information
Implications for researchers
More research on the different types of PK
How does PK interact with different lecture
types/styles
Disentangle hypothesis 1 from hypothesis 2
To identify successful listening strategies, need
to control for general proficiency and PK.
Prior Knowledge
(schemata)
L2 proficiency
Lecture comprehension
& L2 user
Mode of delivery
How much is
“given”
beforehand