Synopsis
This paper discusses the role of lower level, decoding processes in L2 listening comprehension, discusses the importance of developing fluency and automaticity in decoding, and offers practical classroom tips to help lower proficiency learners become more skilful in listening.
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INTRODUCTION
Realizing that she could not understand very much of what was happening in her listening class, Myung-Hee (a pseudonym) raised her hand and said to her teacher, in halting English, “Teacher, the tape is too fast and I can’t catch the words.” The teacher jokingly answered, “Myung-Hee, the tape is not too fast; you just need to listen faster.” Everyone laughed, except for Myung-Hee who felt really embarrassed.
Myung-Hee is probably not alone. Many L2 learners, especially those with lower proficiency levels in the language, find that of all the skills areas of English i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening seems to be the most difficult for them (Renandya & Farrell, 2011; Thorn, 2009). This is not really surprising because when L2 students are asked to listen to a tape, they have no opportunities to interact with speakers and thus no opportunities to pick up on any nonlinguistic cues (e.g., facial expressions and gestures) that proficient listeners use. Thus, not only does their sense of listening difficulty range from not being able to catch the sounds or the words but also to missing the gist or important details of the spoken text.
WHAT MAKES LISTENING HARD FOR LOWER PROFICIENCY LEARNERS?
One of the reasons why L2 listeners are unable to catch the words has to do with word recognition problems. What seems to proficient L2 listeners as low level processing problems can in fact lead to comprehension breakdown. John Field (2009), a noted researcher on L2 listening, remarked that “a disturbingly large number of larger-scale problems of understanding actually have their origins in small-scale errors of word recognition” (p.14). What this means is that comprehension breakdown is often caused by L2 listeners’ inability to process the spoken words efficiently. Field (2009) provides a lot of examples of words or phrases which are often incorrectly decoded by L2 learners; words such as burst may be heard as birth, invent as prevent, and the church where she was buried as the church where she was married.
What is interesting is that learners may already be familiar with words that they hear and can recognize them when they see them in print, but they may not be able to recognize these words in speech. This can be a frustrating experience, as recounted by one of the participants in Wang’s (2010: 91-92) study:
Sometimes I hear a word that sounds very familiar in a sentence, but I cannot realize its meaning. I am very annoyed by this…when I check against the transcript, I often wonder how come I cannot recognize such a simple word.
To many L2 listeners, the spoken language is like “a wave of sounds without borderlines” (Hulstijn, 2003: 413). Words tend to blend with the surrounding words, thus making it difficult to clearly perceive the boundary between words. For example, the first part of the sentence ‘Waterways Holidays accepts no liability’ may be perceived by learners as ‘What a waste holidays’, thus resulting in inaccurate comprehension. Unknown vocabulary is also an obstacle to comprehension.
Typical L2 listening materials for classroom use usually contain unfamiliar vocabulary. Although the number of unknown words may vary, some may contain as high as 15 -20% (or higher) unknown vocabulary. Vocabulary researchers suggest that in general the number of unknown words should be kept as low as possible. Most experts would put the figure at 5%, or even lower so that learners can experience a higher degree of comprehension, which experts believe facilitates language learning.
The story doesn’t end here, however. There are other features of speech that can cause comprehension problems for lower proficiency L2 learners. In reading, we can pause, reread parts of the text that we do not understand, and skip some of the words or sentences or even a whole paragraph. In speaking, we can rephrase, restate or repeat our utterances, or use gestures until our listener understands us.
However, this is not the case with listening. We have little control over what the speaker is saying and the speed at which the speaker conveys his or her message. Unlike written words on paper, speech is transient. Once it’s said, it’s gone. It has to be processed in real time. Of course we can ask our conversation partner to repeat what has just been said, but we don’t want to do this too often!
Speech is also fast. What is normal speech to proficient listeners is often perceived to be fast by L2 listeners. This is important information because research has suggested that speech rate is related to comprehension success. Thompson (1995: 39), for example, pointed out that “… excessive speed (faster than 200 wpm) impairs comprehension of lower-intermediate ESL learners …” Citing available research evidence, she suggests that lower proficiency learners appear to be able to enjoy a high degree of comprehension when the speed is around 120 wpm.
Other L2 listening writers (e.g., Buck, 1995) contend that there is a strong correlation between speech rate and comprehension. An increase in speech rate tends to result in a decrease in comprehension, and when speech rate reaches a critical level, comprehension becomes all but impossible. What we need to be aware of is that for many L2 learners, the critical level (the level of speech rate above which comprehension becomes impossible) is normally much lower than that for the more advanced L2 learners.
We therefore need to ensure that materials for lower proficiency learners are delivered more slowly than those for more advanced learners. Here’re some examples of what lower proficiency L2 learners from China have to say about speed (Renandya, Wang & Zhang, in prep):
… if the speaker speaks in normal speed or a little faster, very fast … then some may fail to follow and recognize the meaning of the listening materials. So this is a very important condition affecting our listening comprehension (Longguo).
… sometimes, the speed is too fast for me. When the speaker speaks too fast, I often feel confused (Zhenqu)
WHAT DO L2 LISTENING EXPERTS SAY?
The listening problems discussed above are often referred to as lower level listening problems. These problems relate to L2 listeners’ lack of skills in decoding the linguistic elements of spoken language (i.e., sounds, words, phrases and sentences). While experts generally agree that lower level problems can affect comprehension, they tend to focus their attention on higher-level listening problems (e.g., lack of inference skills, non-utilization of background knowledge, lack of comprehension monitoring skills), believing that higher level comprehension processes play a bigger role in listening comprehension among L2 learners.
Not surprisingly then, L2 researchers tend to share a preference for a more top-down approach to the teaching of L2 listening and focus their research efforts on understanding the role of top-down processing on listening comprehension (Wang, 2010). One prominent research area that reflects a top-down perspective of L2 listening is strategy instruction. The rationale for this line of research goes something like this: since good listeners typically use higher level type of comprehension strategies and poor listeners use lower level decoding strategies, teaching poor listeners the strategies used by good listeners will make the former better listeners.
This seems like a logical thing to do. However, it has proved difficult to support this line of thinking through empirical research (see Renandya, 2012 for an extended discussion on this issue). Positive results in favour of listening strategy training has been few and far in between. Of the few studies that produced positive results, the effect size has been typically small, thus making it difficult to endorse a full scale implementation of listening strategy training in the classroom (Wang, 2010).
It might be too early to dismiss listening strategy training with its focus on top-down processing skills as being completely ineffective. More research is needed to better understand the true effects of strategy instructions on language development.
One could however speculate that the training of higher level processing skills might prove more useful after learners have built up sufficient linguistic skills that allow them to decode text fluently. If research in L2 reading can be used as a guide (Clarke, 1980), L2 listeners will need to reach a certain threshold of proficiency before they can benefit from strategy instruction. This threshold level probably lies in the intermediate range, but its exact level and nature is not yet known. Understanding the nature of this threshold can be an important area of research as the findings can inform both theory and practice.
From a theoretical perspective, this line of research could provide answers to important questions such as these:
- What types of listening strategies are most useful for L2 learners who are below, at, or above this threshold level of proficiency?
- What are the impacts of listening strategy instruction on L2 learners who are below, at, or above this threshold level of proficiency?
- What is the precise nature of the relationship between strategy use and proficiency? Is the relationship causal or correlational?
From a practical perspective, this line of research can provide clearer implementation guidelines to classroom teachers. If it is true, for example, that a threshold of proficiency is required before any listening strategies can be beneficially taught, then teaching listening strategies to learners who have not reached this level seems like a waste of instructional time and resources.
Based on my current understanding of the literature on L2 listening and also my own experience working with classroom teachers, I tend to agree with Hulstijn (2003) and others (e.g., Ridgway, 2000) who maintain that L2 researchers, and to some extent language instructors, have paid too much attention to the development of higher level, top-down processing skills at the expense of developing lower level, bottom-up processing skills. Indeed, it is not wrong to teach top-down skills, but as Hulstijn (2003) points out, developing top-down skills are:
… only half of what instructors need to do. The other, and perhaps more important half of any successful language program should consist of tasks in which learners can automatize their bottom-up processing of linguistic information. The more learners are able to process text without effort at the lower levels of word recognition and sentence parsing, the more attention capacity is available for the processing of information at the higher levels of meaning and content. (p. 424)
WHAT DO EXPERIENCED TEACHERS SAY?
We often turn to applied linguistics researchers for information about what might or might not work in the classroom. This is a worthwhile thing to do and we should continue to do this.
However, it is also important to remember that teachers can also be an excellent source of information about what works or what doesn’t work in the classroom. So it is not a bad idea to turn to classroom teachers and seek their views on pedagogical issues. Indeed, experienced teachers have accumulated a wealth of pedagogical knowledge that can be tapped on to provide us with information about effective and ineffective teaching approaches.
In the case of L2 listening, what do experienced teachers say about L2 listening problems that their lower proficiency learners face? Interestingly, they hold similar opinions to those expressed by L2 listening researchers. Both classroom teachers and researchers seem to agree that lower proficiency learners face listening problems discussed above.
However, unlike many L2 researchers (e.g., Mendelsohn, 2008) who recommend teaching top-down inferencing skills to solve L2 listeners’ decoding problems (e.g., word recognition), experienced teachers seem to favour giving L2 listeners decoding practice to deal with decoding problems.
Renandya, Wang & Zhang (in prep) for example found that EFL teachers from China believe that extensive practice is key to dealing with a lot of lower level, decoding problems. Here are two excerpts from the interview.
… more practice, more listening, repeated listening—I think this is the most effective way. You know, a language, especially a foreign language, can only be acquired through repeated practice. (Ms. Gu)
when we listen to something, if we only listen once, we might fail to catch the meaning. But if the person repeats the information, in the first time, I can catch one point. When listening again, I can catch another point. So by listening to the same spoken message, I will be able to piece together the information after several listening. (Ms. Yang)
These teachers also recommend a bottom-up practice strategy that is normally frowned upon by strict followers of communicative language teaching (CLT) approaches. One such strategy is reading-while-listening, in which learners listen to a tape with the transcript in front of them.
CLT proponents consider this activity inauthentic, and therefore unsuitable for classroom use, as it does not reflect what people normally do in the real world.
But what these experts do not realize is that authentic tasks may just be close to impossible to replicate in the classroom, especially when we are working with lower proficiency learners of English. Here is what a couple of experienced EFL teachers from the same study referred to above say about the use of listening transcripts:
When students listen to the passage for the first time, it might be quite difficult for them. Then I would suggest to my students that they should listen and read the transcript at the same time. They then can put the transcript aside and try to figure out the words on their own. The portion that they are able to catch will gradually increase until they can follow every word and write it down. (Ms. Chen)
I think this can help deepen students’ comprehension of the material. Students can also learn some useful expressions from the transcript. Besides, by referring to the transcript, I can also point out to students some techniques for them to do better at exams. For instance, I will highlight the sentences involving the superlative forms of adjectives, transitional words etc. where questions are usually asked. (Ms. Wu)
The opinions of these teachers seem to receive support from L2 researchers who investigate language learning from a skill acquisition theory (e.g., DeKeyser, 2007). The acquisition of skills, including language, requires a tremendous amount of practice. Repeated practice enables learners to move from the slow and controlled processing of language elements to the faster, and automatic processing of these elements.
Our lower proficiency learners of English are still at the slower end of the language processing continuum. They can recognize the words in speech when these words are said in slower speed, but not in normal speed yet. Their bottom-up processing skill is still at a level that is not efficient enough to process normal speech. This skill, according to DeKeyser (2007), will have to be automatized through repeated practice so that its use becomes “fully spontaneous, effortless, fast, and errorless (p. 3).”
One way of helping lower proficiency learners develop automaticity in bottom up processing is through repeated listening. The teacher can design a listening lesson that is organized around tasks and activities that allow multiple listening, either listening to the same passage repeatedly or listening to a set of similar passages a number of times. Following Hulstijn (2003, p.421), the teacher can ask the students to (1) listen to the tape or CD material; (2) think and reflect on their understanding of the recording; (3) replay the recording as often as necessary; (4) read the transcript of the recording to check their understanding; (5) realize what they should have understood and finally (6) listen to the recording again as often as possible without looking at the transcript.
TIPS FOR TEACHING LISTENING
The ideas presented in this section are intended to support and nurture the students’ motivation to listen extensively. Since the journey to developing fluency and automaticity in listening is long, arduous and requires hundreds of hours, the listening activities that we ask our students to engage in should be highly interesting and enjoyable. The fun factor is of utmost importance here. One of the reasons professional athletes are willing to spend hundred of hours of gruelling practice is because they enjoy and have fun doing it. Wayne Douglas Gretzky, a retired top ice-hockey player, has this to say: “The only way a kid is going to practice is if it is total fun for him … and it was for me.” (Mindes, 2009).
Choosing listening material
It is of utmost importance that the material for extensive listening activities is pitched at the right level. With lower proficiency learners, the right level here refers to material at or slightly below their current proficiency. To use an SLA jargon, the students should be listening to material at an i or i -1 level (‘i’ refers to students’ current level). The principle that we need to remember is that it is better that they listen to easier texts than more challenging ones. For students who have minimal exposure to meaningful language and who lack confidence in their listening, we may even use material at an i -2 level.
Once the students have built up sufficient listening fluency, they can move on and work with the more challenging material. The key here is that the students can listen and comprehend the material on their own, ideally without any external help from the teacher. Ridgway (2000:184) argues convincingly that our students “need to practice listening comprehension, not listening incomprehension” (emphasis added), as is often the case in many listening lessons. The use of easier material will ensure that our students receive large amounts of practice in listening comprehension.
The following questions can be used a guide for teachers when choosing listening materials (adapted from Nation & Newton, 2009; Waring, 2008; Ivone & Renandya, 2019):
- Is the material personally meaningful for the students?
- Does the material contain interesting information that attracts the learners’ attention?
- Can the students comprehend over 95-98% of the language in the material?
- Can the students understand 90% or more of the content (the story or information)?
- Can the students listen and view the material without having to stop and replay the audio or video material?
A positive answer to all these questions means that the students have picked the right material. A negative answer to these questions means that the material is probably too hard (beyond their level), thus resulting in low or poor comprehension. Or the material is not appealing, which means that the students will not enjoy the content and soon become bored.
In addition, Nation & Newton (2009) suggest that the material should contain language features (words, phrases, collocations) that can engage the students’ attention and contain rich language that can facilitate their language acquisition process.
Classroom activities
There are many things we can do to give our students more listening practice in the classroom. Dictation, for example, can be an enjoyable listening activity where, instead of focusing on the writing element, the teacher can productively engage the students in listening to the same material several times, thus giving them the needed word recognition or lexical segmentation practice.
The students can first listen to the material read at normal speed and record their level of comprehension in percentage form (e.g., 60%, 70%). They then listen again to the material read at slower than normal speed and record their comprehension (e.g., 80%). This continues until the majority of the students reach 98% – 100% comprehension, by which time the material must have been heard 5 or 6 times. A variation of this activity is for the students to do a paired dictation activity, where the students take turns reading the materials instead of the teacher.
Listen and Draw activity can be a lot of fun to do and provides a lot of listening practice in the listening classroom. However the listening material should be such that the chance of the students getting the drawing right the first time round is minimised. A good listening material for this activity should encourage the students to listen attentively several times without them feeling bored.
Independent listening practice
To increase the amount of meaningful listening practice, the teacher can motivate the students to engage in narrow listening or viewing of audio and video materials outside the classroom (Ivone & Renandya, 2019). Narrow listening or viewing refers to listening or viewing materials of the same or similar genre. The key language learning benefit of narrow listening is that the students get to encounter similar language (words, idiomatic expressions, grammatical structures and other text features) repeatedly.
Popular TV series are examples of materials for narrow viewing. Anecdotal evidence suggests that language learners who regularly watch popular sitcoms (e.g., Friends, Monk), often with the English subtitles turned on to facilitate comprehension, seem to develop a higher level of listening skills than those who do not. This seems to be the case with Moroccan youths. Dressman, Lee, & Sabaoui (2016) found that “Many, and in particular those who are the most skilled in speaking and listening, estimate that they have learned 70% to 85% of their English by going online or watching satellite TV” (p. 71).
CONCLUSION
I believe that one of the reasons our lower proficiency learners have difficulty with lower level processing is because they have not had sufficient listening practice. They are still are the lower end of the speech processing continuum, which often results in their not being able to recognize words that they already know, or their not being able to recognize these words fast enough to enable them to engage in a higher level of comprehension and inference making. I have suggested in this paper that learners need to automatize their lower level, bottom-up processing skills through extensive listening practice which teachers can facilitate in the classroom or through self-selected narrow listening/viewing activities that the students can engage in outside the classroom.
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