Listening Comprehension: Some Notions and Strategies
The idea that the meaning of a message is not fully contained in its
words or manner of presentation, but rather evolves from these in the relationship
between the message's emitter and receiver, is not an uncommon one. The
Louisiana Foreign Language Content Standards
http://www.lcet.doe.state.la.us/doe/standards/Sections/Standards/list.asp?Standard=3
recognize this reality in a focus statement for its "Communication Strand",
where, in the 3rd paragraph, the foundational theory for the "modes of
communication" is the notion that "meaning lies within the listener, viewer,
or reader, and that within dialogue (whether oral or written) meaning is
constantly being negotiated." The statement continues "This concept of negotiating
meaning is especially important when dealing with persons of another culture
or who speak another language."
We all know that negotiating from a position of weakness is the fool's
strategy. Our strength in deriving relevant meaning in our own native
language brings into play a multitude of learned behaviors and skills, often
performed unconsciously: our general and field-specific knowledge, a battery
of similar experiences, semantic parsing, querying, our notions of non-verbal
language, our previous exposure to and recognition of discrete components
in the specific communication act, our daring, our patience and tolerance
for information gaps and inference, creating effacing and replacing horizons
of expectation, to name a few in this devilishly complex node of communication
assistants.
Unfortunately, we are not equipped with a fully portable version of these,
and we walk into our second-language learning experience with a nearly blank
slate. We grope in relative darkness for a long time before we realize
that our ears are little more that assembly-line workers in the manufacture
of sense, that words are too often empty vessels, that morphology cannot
measure meaning, and that grammar is groundless by itself. In addition,
our frustration at not being able to grasp most of the meaning often brings
a sense of intellectual resignation.
Our textbooks and other canned curriculum materials often give us a
false impression of the content-to-meaning relationship in messages, by
presenting an abundance of scripts which are not only created solely for
student consumption, but which are written either to present structures
or to serve out totally reliable answers to relatively unauthentic and decontextualized
questions. Even the realia is chosen to provide precise answers to discrete
item queries. Because it is often clipped and reset (edited sometimes)
on the textbook page with little regard to the context in which target language
speakers use it, it does not do nearly enough to bring our students into
the target culture.
While I do not discount the value of materials produced by educational
publishers in providing students with listening activities for which they
can accomplish 100% of the goals, and in calling students attention to the
context of targeted structures, I like to think that the ultimate goal of
every student is to walk away from an authentic speech encounter with some
notion of its meaning. It is not language acquisition research, but rather
common sense that dictates the need for early practice at this. Using authentic
materials in the semi-controled environment of multi-media, where learners
can sometimes play it again, provides them with the chance to evolve their
own succession of horizons of expectations and to fashion their own communication
assistants.
With patience, repeated exposure to authentic speech, successful students
begin to use what they do have to shape and transform what their ears pick
up. These aids may include some rudimentary grammar observations, cognates,
vocabulary recognition, guessing and hypothesizing from guesses, etc. A
number of them are outlined in articles about strategies in listening comprehension,
listed in this site's bibliography
.
One of the things we can do as teachers or highly motivated learners
is to sequence activities for expanding comprehension, and perhaps to bring
into play a variety of subdomains in which our several intelligences can
operate. A good foundational article for this is the one by Randall Lund
in the bibliography: "A Taxonomy for Teaching Second Language Listening."
My suggestions do not conform to any paradigm suggested by Lund's matrix,
but they do take into account a number of opportunities offered by the world
wide web. They focus mainly on news broadcasts. News may not be of interest
to all students, but there are some important reasons why I have chosen
it.
News is an almost unavoidable consumer product, which has taken on many
different formats in order to win public attention. It seems to be in plentiful
supply on the net, downloadable and often in the slim format provided by
RealAudio.
The ability to read from a French-language newspaper is part of the
basic information gathering skills expected of all foreign-language professionals,
as well as of students at a certain point in their studies (for example,
and to a limited extent, fourth-semester college students). This skill is
strongly implicit in the National Standards document (Communication 1.3,
in a "Sample Progress Indicator" for Grade 12). Because of the many different
things reported, newspaper reading is a way to begin enlarging the topical
variety necessary to upward movement on the Oral Proficiency Scale. It is
also gives students an extended and significant encounter with a vocabulary
particularly rich in cognates, and is itself a major resource for the study
of contemporary culture. Finally, it is authentic, containing everyday language
as well as a credible notional variety. The same can be said of opportunities
provided by newscasts. I have suggested below activities are sequentially
arranged to help learners progress in the recognition-comprehension continuum.
There is no compelling reason for doing all the activities.
I would begin by saying that learners need to think through the kind of
information contained in English-language newscasts they have heard (categories
of news, order of category presentation).
Provided the French newscast has been downloaded that day, learners can
go to English-language WWW news sites like CNN or Rueters to read the day's
report. There will be enough similarities in the international news to
make the CNN or Reuters reports valuable precontact experiences.
News from Reuters Online
CNN
Perhaps students could even listen to an appropriately short newscast
in English, either on the radio or the WWW. This will do two things: 1)
It will help to shape up their idea of how news is formatted, framed and
presented (order of, kinds of news, etc.), and 2) These initial English-language
experiences will provide some of the specific content material for the learner's
horizon of expectations before encountering the French audio document. Learners
could engage in guessing which news items might show up in a French broadcast,
ranking a pool of likely candidates according to the degree of probability.
One activity would be to make a master list of key words in English (words
repeated often, words germane to the topic, etc.). Another activity might
be look up the French equivalents of a small number of key words to see if
they will show up in French broadcasts. Still another might be to observe
how each candidate story is treated, and what its relative place of importance
in the English-language newscast or report is, and ask themselves how this
might play out in a French-language broadcast.
Next, learners might find a
French-language newspaper
on the www, scanning it as quickly as possible to determine if relevant
topics are treated. Here is a page with pointers on how to read a French-language
newspaper:
LEARNING TO READ A FRENCH NEWSPAPER
During a reading, learners should be active, looking for the same key-word
vocabulary they had seen in their English source, and noting cognates.
They might also make a list of vocabulary they have no idea about. They
should be thinking about what stories appear in both the English and French
sources, and and comparing them for content and approach if possible. A
final task might be to draw up a list of words they would expect to hear
in radio or television coverage, and guess at what kind of on-sight video
footage they would see on a television news broadcast.
When they first listen to the French-language news broadcast, learners
should not attempt to take in all the details at one time. With software
like RealAudio, it is possible (in the case of an archiveable download)
to stop the delivery to contemplate a particular news story. If it is streamed
RealAudio, the student can stop it at a certain point and play it again.
It may also be possible to make a temporary alalog or digital recording.
Learners might first identify the subjects of the news stories and count
them. If they are in a group, they might compare their findings. Next
they might determine whether the topics treated correspond to their anticipations
formed while experiencing the English-language news, or the French-language
print news. A similar activity might occur with vocabulary. Learners see
if words encountered during a reading of French print news occur in the
broadcast, or they might search for the French equivalents of key words
listed during their encounter with English-language news.
Moving up a level, learners might ask themselves if the radio presentation
of each topic is more detailed or shorter than what they encountered in
either the English-language source or the French-language print source,
asking which details are missing and are missing from the radio version
or which, in the radio broadcast, are supplemental. Learners might attempt
to identify or replicate topic or summary sentences for each story, or they
might write their own short summary in French. They might attempt a title
for each. Knowledgeable teachers might make a transcription from which
several cloze-procedure dictations could be made, depending on their chosen
focus. Finally, learners can attempt information gap exercises where there
are parallel (English & French) treatments of news topics, writing in
English information that was missing in the English-language stories or
interpreting into French material which was absent from the French-language
story
Just a note about variety, there are other speech samples which can
be examined on the radio and television link page
: vocal music, several kinds of news magazines (RFI), and an ever-expanding
set of other topics.
TennesseeBob Peckham
Director, the Globegate Project
University of Tennessee-Martin
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