Transcript Cross-cultural Issues Workshop Presentation for the

Some Aspects of
Teaching Listening and Speaking
Workshop Presentation for the Hsinchu County
Education Development and Information Institute
March 14, 2012
Johanna Katchen (柯安娜)
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Tsing Hua University
http://mx.nthu.edu.tw/~katchen/
[email protected]
Why Do People Listen?

List some purposes for listening or
listening situations.
Listening Situations and Purposes
to engage in social rituals
 to exchange information
 to exert control
 to share feelings
 to enjoy yourself

Where can we find materials?
Other CDs for EFL listening
 Audio podcasts/radio programs from the
internet, e.g., National Public Radio
www.npr.org from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/archive
 DVD clips
 Videos form YouTube and other sources

Classroom Equipment
CD player
 DVD player (?)
 Computer and projector

Criteria for the Selection of
Recorded Material
From Underwood,
Chapter 8
Language
Not too easy
 Comprehensible
input
 Give them a little
challenge

Length
Early stages—two minutes maximum
 Easier to pay attention longer if it is
interesting or there is a specific task
 Short passages (under 30 seconds) may
be difficult to tune in to (more prelistening or played more times)
 If it feels long, segment it

Content
Keep it simple in
organization
 Should be appropriate
for age level
 Need a wide range of
material

The Use of Visual Support Material
Can help in understanding a topic not
related to everyday lives
 Can focus attention on the topic
 One large picture or one copy for each
student?

The Style of Delivery
At early stages, nothing too unusual
 One person, natural speed slow and
deliberate, pleasant tone, varied pitch
 If using two voices, should be easy to
distinguish
 Not very strong regional accents

The Speed of Delivery
Normal speed, not slowed
down
 Slowed speech loses natural
rhythm and intonation
 Can lengthen the pauses
between groups of words—
but keep them natural!

Spontaneity
Will include false starts, hesitations, etc.—
students need to get used to dealing with
these
 Will have redundant parts—necessary
even in L1

The Quality of Production
Commercial products usually okay
 Can students in all parts of the room hear
well?
 Is the CD player working well?
 Is there too much outside noise?

Appropriate background noises on the
recording are okay as long as they are not
confusing or distracting and may make the
situation more realistic
 Shouldn’t have clicks and different
volumes of a poorly-produced CD
 A selection with a bit of music, good
sound effect, or a friendly presenter can
make listening more pleasant

Potential Problems in Listening
Lack of control over the speed at which
speakers speak
 Not being able to get things repeated
 The listener’s limited vocabulary
 The listener’s lack of familiarity with the
characteristics of spoken language-reduced forms, etc.

Failure to recognize the signals (of
change of topic, giving an example--may
be paralinguistic or nonverbal
 Problems of interpretation: understand
the words but not the intended meaning
 Inability to concentrate: may try to hear
and understand every word, may have
outside interference
 Established learning habits: inability to
accept ambiguity

How can we help our students
become better listeners?
What Pre-listening Activities Do
Help focus the students’ minds on the
topic
 Narrow down things that students may
expect to hear
 Activate relevant prior knowledge
 Activate already known language (words
and structures) which they are likely to
hear

Activities should be as realistic as possible
 Should be the kinds of things listeners do
in real situations
 Although it is still a classroom (not “reallife”), we can give information about when,
where, by whom and to whom the words
were spoken

Ideas for Pre-listening Activities
DO NOT go through the tapescript bit by
bit explaining the difficult words to the
students. You can do that AFTER
listening.
 Avoid long lists of vocabulary words.
 Looking at pictures before listening—it’s a
way to remind students of words and
structures previously studied but perhaps
forgotten

Reading a text before listening
Can help with listening
 Those who learn primarily from reading
may still have trouble with the listening
task because they cannot connect the
sounds they hear with the words they
have seen printed on the page. This is
especially true for our students here in
Taiwan.

Other Pre-listening Activities
Reading through questions to be
answered while listening
 Labelling a picture
 Completing part of a chart
 Predicting/speculating—useful with
advanced students and adults

Previewing key language (don’t kill them
with too much)
 Informal teacher talk and class discussion—
don’t give away too much, don’t go off too
much on a side issue. Motivate the
students to feel that what they will listen to
is really interesting, exciting, or amazing.

Ideas for While-listening Activities
Marking/checking items in pictures
 Which picture matches what I heard?
 Storyline picture sets (early stages, may
stop listening once they decide)
 Putting pictures in order (better if not
predictable before listening—in prelistening can speculate different stories,
then listen to find out which

Completing pictures
 Picture drawing
 Carrying out actions
 Making models/arranging items in
patterns
 Following a route
 Completing grids
 Completing forms and charts
 Labelling

Using lists
 True-false
 Multiple choice
 Text completion (gap filling)
 Spotting mistakes
 Predicting
 Seeking specific items of information

Feedback
Immediate feedback is best
 Students want to know whether they have
succeeded and why or why not
 Value of looking at causes of errors or
confusion is most relevant immediately
 Can check with pair or group work, which
can lead into a post listening activity

How does speaking differ from
writing?
What are some characteristics of
written language?
More formal
 Purposes more specific
 More strongly rule-governed
 More precise vocabulary and language
 Complete sentences
 Should be cohesion among parts
 More complex syntax

More densely packed with information
 Reader can go back and check the
information
 Specific styles and genres
 More permanent (recorded in writing)
 Doesn’t change rapidly

We learn to write well by exposure to
good models
 Must be specifically taught; it’s hard to
“acquire” writing in L1; easier in L2
 Improves by more reading (and more
practice)

What are some characteristics of
spoken language?
Less formal
Purposes often mixed
Often violates learned grammar rules
Much vague language
Incomplete sentences
Cohesion moves with the speakers and
their assumptions about what the other
already knows
 Simple syntactic structures






Listener may miss a lot or
forget
 Lots of repetition, short bits
of information at a time
 Many varieties
 Seldom recorded,
incompletely remembered
 Changes day to day

Learn a lot by listening first in L1; L2?
 Acquired, not so explicitly learned
 Improves with practice (also with more
listening)

What is written language used for?
Primarily transmission of information
“transactional”
 Some social functions—wedding invitations,
thank you letters, etc.
 Some persuasive purposes—editorials, job
applications, etc.
 Pleasure—reading a novel
 Ritual functions may overlap with some
other functions

What is spoken language used for?
Primarily social—greetings, small talk
“interactional”
 Sometimes transactional—getting
information
 Sometimes persuasive
 Rituals—weddings, department meetings, etc.
 Pleasure—a comedy show, a play

 Transactional
language is message
oriented.
 Interactional language is listener
oriented.
 In spoken language, the gist is often
more important than the detail.
Characteristics of the spoken
language
Speaking and writing are considered to
be active skills
 Listening and reading are considered to
be passive skills
 What do we do when we read?
 What do we do when we listen?
 Therefore, listening and reading are not
really so passive

What types of spoken
communication are there?
Two or more people engaged in face-toface, free conversation
 Same as above but structured, such as an
interview
 Speaker(s) and audience—formal speech,
classroom, etc.
 Television, films (speaker(s) and audience in
different location)

What are the elements of
communicative events?
Participants
 Channels
 Codes
 Settings
 Forms of messages, genres
 Attitudes and contents
 Events

How many participants are there?
Senders (Speakers)
 Receivers (Listeners)
 Addressors (the person expressing the
ideas, not necessarily the speaker)
 Addressees (the intended recipient of the
message, not necessarily the listener)
 Interpreters, Spokespersons, etc.

What kinds of channels are there?
Speaking
 Singing
 Chanting
 Drumming, playing instruments
 Face and body motion as visually
perceived, e.g., dance
 All of these can be done alone or with
others

What kinds of codes might be
shared by the participants?
Linguistic
 Paralinguistic
 Kinesic
 Musical
 Interpretative
 Interactional
 Other

What are some settings?

Where certain kinds of communication
may be encouraged or discouraged, such
as a classroom, riding on a bus, in a
temple, at a wedding ceremony, etc.
Some different forms of messages and
genres
Sales pitches
 Love poems
 Political speeches
 Lying
 Persuading
 Telling a joke
 Etc.

Attitudes and contents
Sarcastic, ironic, serious, funny, etc.
 Contents can vary greatly

What are some characteristics of an
individual’s speech?
Pronunciation/accent
 Stress and intonation
 Paralinguistic elements of pitch, volume,
tone of voice
 Nonverbal behaviour such as gestures,
facial expression, eye movements, posture,
etc.

What are some characteristics of
conversation?
Turn-taking, with overlapping, interruption,
latching
 Giving feedback
 Hesitations (um) and pause fillers (you
know)
 False starts and self-corrections

Incomplete and run-on “sentences”,
speaking rather in clauses
 Getting off the topic
 Speakers do not have equal lengths of
turns
 Especially when there are more than two
participants, people may not speak
directly to each other or answer each
other’s questions

Are conversations interesting?
To whom?
From p. 33 of Brown and Yule:
“…most naturally occurring conversations
are extremely boring unless you happen
to be an active engaged participant in
one.”
 “It is quite rare that it is actually
interesting to overhear a conversation
unless it is about oneself or gossip.”
“Conversations are for the people who
are participating in them to achieve their
purposes in—being friendly, hospitable,
comforting, or whatever.”
 “They usually concern local, transitory
matters and deal with purely personal
concerns.”

Competence vs. Performance

How do we judge performance given the
limitations of any performance situation?
E.g. time constraints, situation, speaking
while processing at the same time
How can we teach speaking
skills?
How do we usually teach speaking
skills?
Choral repetition
 Repetition in a language lab
 “Conversation” in a CALL lab
 Pair work and group work
 Individual conversations with the teacher
 Out-of class assignments (ESL)

What should we teach?
What can we (realistically) teach?
For interactional speech?
 For transactional speech?
 What sorts of situations will our
students find themselves in in future?
 Which sort of speech will they need?

Can teach elements of a notional
syllabus
Phrases for apologizing, thanking, etc. seem
not to build on one another; one just learns
useful phrases
 Can learn some “listener” skills, like “That’s
great, Really? Uh-hm”
 Can learn processing time fillers, like “Well,
I think, um”
 BUT still need content for longer turns

What linguistic support can we give
to beginners?
Basic content words (p. 30): do, be, get,
come, go, can, know; person, thing, place;
good, bad, easy, hard, big, small; basic
numbers; pronouns; prepositions
 Diectics: this, that, here, there, the red one,
the one in the front
 How many students stop speaking if they
can’t access the exact word?

Criteria for Evaluating Dialogues
The language should be relevant
 The language should be appropriate and
typical of spoken language. This includes
level of formality, including appropriate
vocabulary and degree of reduced forms
for register.


The situations should be realistic and
relevant, involving real people in a real
world using language for a purpose.
Children/adolescents may prefer
adventure, whereas adults may prefer
survival situations (travel, shopping, etc.).
Fantasy can be appropriate—children
have talking animals and invent monsters;
adults think of “what if” situations.
The structural or functional items should
be limited (one to two items, with
repetition, but not unnaturally repeated)
 The lexical items should be limited (not
too many new terms)
 The dialogue should not be too long (8 –
10 exchanges is typical)
 The dialogue should be interesting, some
excitement or human interest that can be
dramatised


From Brown and Yule (p. 39)
“One of the communicative skills which is
a necessary component of normal social
life is the ability to extract the relevant
salient facts’ from a mass of detail, and to
communicate an event in terms of the
structure imposed on it by the speaker.”
This is more a cognitive task than a
linguistic task. Not everyone can do this
even in L1.