TE Assessment-and-Teaching-of-Grammar.pptx

LESSON

1. Skills and Strategies for Proficient Listening

2. 20XX Pitch Deck 2 In "Skills and Strategies for Proficient Listening," Peterson offers a developmental view of second language listeners at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. She describes the comprehension processes of proficient listeners as being both top-down and bottom-up in nature, and offers exercises for building listening skills and strategies at all proficiency levels. -PAT WILCOX PETERSON

3. 20XX Pitch Deck 3 INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

4. 20XX Pitch Deck 4 TEACHERS WHO WANT TO PROVIDE THE MOST EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE FOR THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENTS SHOULD CONSIDER THIS: ​ ​ ​ No other type of language input is as easy to process as spoken language, received through listening. At the beginning stages of language study, before students have learned to read well, it is by listening that they can have the most direct connection to meaning in the new language. Through listening, learners can build an awareness of the inter-workings of language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills.​

5. 20XX Pitch Deck 5 TEACHERS WHO WANT TO PROVIDE THE MOST EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE FOR THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENTS SHOULD CONSIDER THIS: ​ ​ ​ At the intermediate level, when students are refining their understanding of the grammatical systems of their second or foreign language, listening can be used to stimulate awareness of detail and to promote accuracy. At advanced levels, when students are able readers and written language has become a viable source of input, listening should still occupy a central place in their language use. A regular program of listening can extend learners' vocabulary and use of idioms and build their appreciation for cultural nuances. Moreover, successful academic study in English requires a mastery of the listening demands in formal lectures as well as in the interactive exchanges which are common to seminar settings and conversational lecture styles.​

6. 20XX Pitch Deck 6 TEACHERS WHO WANT TO PROVIDE THE MOST EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE FOR THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENTS SHOULD CONSIDER THIS: ​ ​ ​ There is such a wide range of listening tasks for different purposes and for all proficiency levels that teachers can find listening activities to promote learning at every stage. This chapter will present a brief developmental view of listening skills: how people learn to listen and how listening promotes learning. Sample exercises will be given to facilitate listening at beginning, intermediate, and advanced stages of language development.

7. 20XX Pitch Deck 7 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION The following ideas about the listening process had their beginnings more than forty years ago and have recently gained wide acceptance in the field.

8. 20XX Pitch Deck 8 Listening Is the Primary Channel for Language Input and Acquisition Proponent of comprehension approaches recognize the primacy of listening in the processes of comprehension, retention of information in memory, and acquisition of second language competence. Nida (1957) describes the language learning experience of people in Africa, where multilingualism without formal instruction is a common phenomenon. People simply go to a place to live and work, they listen without attempting to speak, and quite soon they find that they can "hear" the language. Only after internalizing some part of the language do they try to speak. Nida concludes, "Learning to speak a language is very largely a task of learning to hear it."

9. 20XX Pitch Deck 9 Listening Is the Primary Channel for Language Input and Acquisition ​ This emphasis on the primacy of listening contrasts dramatically with audiolingual practices of the 1960s and 1970s, which promoted early intensive oral practice. In an essay entitled "Why not start speaking later?" Postovsky (1977) called for an extended period of listening with delayed oral production. Asher's (1969) Total Physical Response approach featured a long preproduction phase in which students listened, followed commands, and demonstrated their comprehension through non-verbal actions. The Natural Approach (Krashen and Terrell 1983) also set a pre-speech period for listening only, to be followed by an early production phase in which students gave answers in single words or short phrases. The pre-speech period could last for a few hours in the case of adult students, or for up to six months with children. 

10. 20XX Pitch Deck 10 Listening Is the Primary Channel for Language Input and Acquisition ​ According to Nord (1981), reception should precede production because reception enables production. While it is possible to learn to understand without speaking, it is not possible to learn to speak without understanding. Premature production has several negative effects: Lacking L2 competence, students are forced back on Ll production habits and may make many L1 transfer errors. The need to produce utterances may interfere with the ability to comprehend the language completely, and thus interfere with learning and memory. The overload of task demands on the learner produces anxiety, which further inhibits learning.

11. 20XX Pitch Deck 11 Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation When good listeners involve themselves with any type of spoken discourse, a number of processes work on various levels simultaneously to produce an understanding of the incoming speech. The higher level processes (top-down) are driven by listeners' expectations and understandings of the context, the topic, the nature of text, and the nature of the world. The lower level processes (bottom-up) are triggered by the sounds, words, and phrases which the listener hears as he or she attempts to decode speech and assign meaning.

12. 20XX Pitch Deck 12 Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation The acoustic signal itself carries few cues to the meanings that are encoded within it; the listener must use his or her knowledge of the language to recognize meaningful sound units, to determine syllable boundaries, and to identify words. This phase of comprehension is known as perceptual processing (Anderson 1985). Next the listener works with the words and phrases he or she has decoded to form meaningful units, which are stored in short-term memory. This is the parsing phase. Finally, the listener searches long-term memory for ideas that relate to the new information; when a match is made between old and new information, comprehension occurs. This is the utilization stage.

13. 20XX Pitch Deck 13 Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation With higher levels of language proficiency, the listener works more efficiently and is able to maintain activity on all levels simultaneously. At beginning proficiency levels, perceptual (bottom-up) operations require great amounts of conscious attention, so that little capacity remains for higher level operations. Later, after lower level skills have been rehearsed many times, they can be performed automatically, and the learner's attention can be freed up for top-down operations (McLaughlin, Rossman, and McLeod 1903).

14. 20XX Pitch Deck 14 Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation In proficient listeners, top down and bottom-up processes interact, so that lack of information at one level can be compensated for by checking against information at the other level. For example, advanced listeners may use their knowledge of lexis and topic to interpret the confusing sounds in the speech stream and to aid in word recognition. On the other hand, they may also use their basic decoding skills to check the progress of the argument and to determine whether the discourse is going in the direction they had predicted. Listening in their native language, people never hear all the information in a message, and they do not need to; proficiency in comprehension is the ability to fill in the gaps and to create an understanding that meets one's purpose for listening.

15. 20XX Pitch Deck 15 Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation Rost (1990) credits the contributions of second language reading research for pointing to the importance of the student's prior knowledge in making sense of incoming linguistic data. This general comprehension model has been extended to listening as well. There are many terms for the meaning structures in the mind; they have been called frames (Minsky 1975), scripts (Schank 1975), and schemata (Rumelhart 1980). We will use Rumelhart's terminology. He defines a schema as "a data structure for representing generic concepts stored in memory". Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) suggest that background information in the reader's mind is of two kinds: content schemata and formal schemata. Content schemata include cultural knowledge, topic familiarity, and previous experience with a field. Formal schemata have to do with people's knowledge of discourse forms: text types, rhetorical conventions, and the structural organization of prose. Both content and formal schemata can aid the reader (and the listener) in comprehending text (Floyd and Carrell 1987).

16. 20XX Pitch Deck 16 Models of the Comprehension Process; One view of listening comprehension describes comprehension of a speaker's message as the internal reproduction of that message in the listener's mind, so that successful listening reproduces the meaning much as the speaker intended (Clark and Clark 1977). This is the information processing view of listening. A second view (Rost 1990) places more emphasis on the goals and internal meaning structures of the listener; in this view, the listener does not receive meaning, but rather constructs meaning. The constructed message differs somewhat from the intended message and is influenced oy context, purpose for listening, and the listener's own prior knowledge. Both views acknowledge the complexity of the listening process and the importance of both top down and bottom-up operations.

17. 20XX Pitch Deck 17 Models of the Comprehension Process; Nagle and Sanders (1986) offer a model of comprehension that incorporates the distinction between controlled and automatic processing as well as the active role of the listener in attention and monitoring. They propose an executive decision maker that decides how to deal with input, and a feedback loop that allows the listener to monitor ongoing comprehension. Their model is specifically intended to describe comprehension in a second language. They make the point that while comprehension is not exactly the same thing as learning, successful comprehension makes material available for learning.

18. 20XX Pitch Deck 18 Models of the Comprehension Process; Nagle and Sanders (1986) offer a model of comprehension that incorporates the distinction between controlled and automatic processing as well as the active role of the listener in attention and monitoring. They propose an executive decision maker that decides how to deal with input, and a feedback loop that allows the listener to monitor ongoing comprehension. Their model is specifically intended to describe comprehension in a second language. They make the point that while comprehension is not exactly the same thing as learning, successful comprehension makes material available for learning.

19. 20XX Pitch Deck 19 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom The above findings suggest a set of principles for teaching listening in the second language classroom.

20. 20XX Pitch Deck 20 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Increase the amount of listening time in the second language class.  Make listening the primary channel for learning new material in the classroom. Input must be interesting, comprehen-sible , supported by extralinguistic materials, and keyed to the language lesson.

21. 20XX Pitch Deck 21 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Use listening before other activities. At beginning and low-intermediate levels, have students listen to material before they are required to speak, read, or write about it.

22. 20XX Pitch Deck 22 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Include both global and selective listening. Global listening encourages students to get the gist, main idea, topic, situation, or setting. Selective listening points student attention to details of form and encourages accuracy.

23. 20XX Pitch Deck 23 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Activate top level skills. Give advance organizers, script activators, or discussions which call up students' background knowledge. Do this before students listen. Encourage top-down processing at every proficiency level.

24. 20XX Pitch Deck 24 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Work towards automaticity in processing. Include exercises which build both recognition and retention of the material. Use familiar material in novel combinations. Encourage overlearning through focus on selected formal features. Practice bottom-up processing at every proficiency level.

25. 20XX Pitch Deck 25 Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom Develop conscious listening strategies. Raise students' awareness of text features and of their own comprehension processes. Encourage them to notice how their processing operations interact with the text. Promote flexibility in the many strategies they can use to understand the language. Practice interactive listening, so that they can use their bottom-up and their top down processes to check one against the other.

26. 20XX Pitch Deck 26 Skills And Strategies Before proceeding with a developmental description of listening proficiency, it is helpful to differentiate between the following terms: listening process, listening skill, and listening strategy. The models in the preceding section present a view of some simultaneous, interactive operations which are hypothesized to constitute the successful comprehension process. These operations are made up of various sub-processes: chunking input into syllables, recognizing words, recalling relevant schemata, and matching key words to the semantic structure of the text. These subprocesses are the skills of the competent listener. If these skills are practiced enough, they become automatic and are activated much more quickly. When things are going well, the listener is not conscious of using skills at all. At the point when the comprehension process breaks down for some reason, the listener becomes aware of the need for repair and seeks an appropriate strategy for comprehension.

27. 20XX Pitch Deck 27 Skills And Strategies A major difference between skills and strategies is that strategies are under the learner's conscious control; they are operations which the learner chooses to use to direct or check his or her own comprehension. Chamot explains:     Wh's desirable for basic cognitive skills to become automated, the same is not true for strategies, which need to be controlled consciously if learners are to maintain awareness of different learning conditions and select the strategies most appropriate for specific tasks.

28. 20XX Pitch Deck 28 Skills And Strategies Competent listeners tend to monitor their comprehension rather steadily and, when neces-sary , to select appropriate strategies for the task at hand. Field (1998) points out the compensatory nature of strategies in that they make up for a lack of linguistic skill or topic knowledge. As the listener's ability improves, strategies may be used less frequently (or may develop into unconscious skills).

29. 20XX Pitch Deck 29 Skills And Strategies Students may not immediately see the benefits of strategy use or they may feel that strategy instruction takes time away from the practice of language skills. According to MacIntyre and Noels (1996), teachers can motivate students by showing them how and when to use strategies. Teachers must also show students how effective strategy use can be through successful experiences. Mendelsohn (1995) calls for strategy instruction to be delivered gradually, over an extended period of time, and in a manner appropriate to the learners' proficiency level. Strategy training does not replace language practice, but rather is interspersed with practice throughout a course.

30. 20XX Pitch Deck 30 Skills And Strategies In fact, untutored students use strategies anyway, but they do not always choose wisely. egies anyway, but they do not always choose wisely.

31. 20XX Pitch Deck 31 Skills And Strategies Eastman (1991) points out that students sometimes use ineffective strategies such as on-line translation. Translation of single words may be the only strategy that beginning listeners think to use, but it restricts listeners to the surface features of the language and uses up all of their available processing capacity. The urge to translate is so natural at lower proficiency levels that students must be explicitly encouraged to avoid it. Teachers can help their students to practice more productive strategies such as attending to longer chunks of language and relating new information to what they already know.

32. 20XX Pitch Deck 32 Types Of Strategies Taxonomies of learning strategies have been proposed for second language use in general (Oxford 1990). Strategies specific to listening comprehension are based on these general lists and include the categories of metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective strategies.

33. 20XX Pitch Deck 33 Types Of Strategies Metacognitive strategies involve planning, monitoring, and evaluating comprehension. Cognitive strategies are used to manipulate information. Examples of cognitive strategies are rehearsal, organization, summarization, and elaboration. Socioaffective strategies have been less studied but are thought to be particularly important when the listening is two way and meaning can be negotiated between speaker and listener, as in conversations. Examples of socioaffective strategies are cooperative learning, questioning for clarification, and managing one's emotions in the learning situation. A complete list of strategies would be quite lengthy, since it would have to describe all the possible actions that a learner could take in the face of widely different texts and tasks.

34. 20XX Pitch Deck 34 Types Of Strategies Strategy use varies with proficiency, and so the relationship between strategy use and proficiency level is an important one. More advanced learners use a greater number of strategies than beginners do, and they also use them with more flexibility, choosing strategies to fit a specific sit- uation . O'Malley, Chamot , and Kupper (1989) found that effective learners select strategies appropriate to the processing phase. In the perceptual phase, they use focused, selective attention; in parsing, they prefer top-down strategies; and in the utilization phase, they draw on personal experience and world knowledge. Several studies have found that advanced learners are able to process larger chunks of information and to draw on linguistic and world knowledge simultaneously in building meaning (Rost and Ross 1991; Vandergrift 1998).

35. 20XX Pitch Deck 35 Types Of Strategies Strategy use varies with proficiency, and so the relationship between strategy use and proficiency level is an important one. More advanced learners use a greater number of strategies than beginners do, and they also use them with more flexibility, choosing strategies to fit a specific sit- uation . O'Malley, Chamot , and Kupper (1989) found that effective learners select strategies appropriate to the processing phase. In the perceptual phase, they use focused, selective attention; in parsing, they prefer top-down strategies; and in the utilization phase, they draw on personal experience and world knowledge. Several studies have found that advanced learners are able to process larger chunks of information and to draw on linguistic and world knowledge simultaneously in building meaning (Rost and Ross 1991; Vandergrift 1998).

36. 20XX Pitch Deck 36 Types Of Strategies In contrast, beginning and low-intermediate listeners rely too much on information at one level, either at the top or at the bottom, and fail to check one level against the other. They may come to the listening experience with a fixed idea of what they will hear, and be unwilling to change their idea as the text comes in. They are less able to revise their schemata when faced with contradictory information and either ignore the contradiction or shift their conceptual frameworks too frequently. Alternately, such learners may be bound to surface features of the data, making all their inferences at the local level and lacking any overall schema for understanding (Vandergrift 1998).