By: Pat Wilcox Peterson

(Reported by: Dinah Jill Galleros)

A DEVELOPMENTAL VIEW OF LISTENING

SKILLS

GLOBAL listening

GLOBAL vs. SELECTIVELISTENING

SELECTIVE listening

Getting the main point of

what we are listening to.

Waiting for a

specific item

Listening

BOTTOM-UP vs. TOP-DOWN vs.

INTERACTIVE

BOTTOM-UP vs. TOP-DOWN vs. INTERACTIVElistening

Bottom-up

• Text-based

The listener relies on the language in the message

Meaningful

Information

Grammar

Sounds

WordsPhrases

Body Langua

ge

BOTTOM-UP vs. TOP-DOWN vs. INTERACTIVElistening

Meaningful

Information

Grammar

Sounds

WordsPhrases

Body Langua

ge

Prediction

Prior knowled

ge

Context

Experience

Top-down:

•Listener-based

•The use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message

Top-Down listeningOver lunch, your

friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster. You listen with interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express surprise or sympathy.

That evening, another friend calls 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.

Sample situations…Bottom-up listening

BOTTOM-UP vs. TOP-DOWN vs. INTERACTIVElistening

Interactive:

Combination of the two previous models

Using of both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages.

Meaningful

Information

Grammar

Sounds

WordsPhrases

Body Langua

ge

Prediction

Prior knowled

ge

Context

Experience

Processing Goals and Exercise Types

LEVELS OF ESL LEARNERS

Also known as the novice stageUndeveloped linguistic categoriesDevelopment of positive attitudes towards is

criticalCan be found in EFL classes for immigrants

to English-speaking countries

The Beginning-Level Student…

Discriminate between intonation contours in sentences

Discriminate between phonemesListen for morphological endingsRecognize syllable patterns, number of

syllables and word phrasesBe aware of sentence fillers in informal

speechSelect details from the text

BOTTOM-UPProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Discriminate between emotional reactions

Get the gist or main idea of the passage

Recognize the topic

TOP-DOWNProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Use speech features to decide if a statement is formal or informal

Recognize a familiar word and relate it to a category

Compare information in memory with incoming information

Compare information that you hear with your own experience

INTERACTIVEProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Listening: to increase their vocabulary Can retain longer phrases and sentencesAre ready to practice more discourse level

skills

The Intermediate-Level Student…

Differentiate between content and function words by stress pattern

Find the stress syllableRecognize words with reduced vowels or

dropped syllablesRecognize words as they are linked in the

speech streamRecognize pertinent details in the speech

stream

BOTTOM-UPProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Discriminate between registers of speech and tones of voice

Listen to identify the speaker of a topicFind main ideas or supporting detailsMake inferences

TOP-DOWNProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Use word stress to understand the speaker’s intent

Recognize missing grammar markers in colloquial speech and reconstruct the message

Use context and knowledge of the world to build listening expectations; listen to confirm expectations

INTERACTIVEProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Listening: to learn about the content of other language areas

Can listen to materials with longer contentsVast vocabularyMore skilled in reading than in listening

The Advance-Level Student…

Use features of sentence stress and intonation to identify important intonation for note-taking

Recognize contractions, reduced forms, and other characteristics of spoken English that differ from the written form

Become aware of common performance slips that must be reinterpreted or ignored

Become aware of organizational cues in lecture testBecome aware of lexical and suprasegmental markers

for definitions Identify specific forms of information

BOTTOM-UPProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Use knowledge of the topic to predict the content of the text

Use introduction to the lecture to predict its focus and direction

Use the lecture transcript to predict the content of the next section

Find the main idea of the lecture segmentRecognize point of view

TOP-DOWNProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

Use knowledge of phrases and discourse markers to predict the content in the next segment of lecture

Make inferences about the text

INTERACTIVEProcessing Goals and Exercise Types

References: Vandergrift, L. (2002). Listening: theory and practice in modern

foreign language competence. Center for Languages, Linguistics & Area Studies. Retrieved from http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/stratlisten.htm http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/listening-top-down-bott

om http://www.helsinki.fi/kksc/alms/listen.html