Effects of pronunciation problems on ESL
learners’ listening comprehension
Introduction
* The importance of listening comprehension
* Overview of ESL listeners
* Purposes of the article
Understanding students’ listening problems
* Learners’ listening difficulties related to
perception, parsing, and utilization
* Common problems at the perception
stage: pronunciation problems
Discussion
1. Problems related to perception
* Problem 1: Fail to recognize words they know
- know the word but attributed the wrong sense
Ex: won’t & want
I won’t go to school / I want to go to school
went to assist a passenger
a student extracts sister
- fail to recall familiar words immediately
Ex: fortnight, retrieve, procedure, mature, etc.
* Reasons:
- affect from the habit of learning words
+ recognize words by sight not by sound
+ learn words with incorrect pronunciations
+ fail to recognize phonetic variations of known
words
+ affect from listener’s L1 (word-final consonant
discrimination)
- under-achieve listening vocabulary
Problem 2: Neglect the next part of the continuous
speech when thinking about meaning
-miss the next part of the text to think about
unfamiliar words or interpret of a segment of text
- affect learners’ concentration on listening texts
* Reasons:
+ fail to process the information fast enough
+ fail to recognize familiar words in the stream of
speech.
Possible listening strategies
* Direct strategy: perception and strategy practice
- Perception practice:
+ Listen to how new vocabulary items are
pronounced
+ Follow along with transcript of recording
+ Write down content words from short
passages
* Cognitive tactics:
+ Infer missing or unfamiliar words using
contexts, co-text and prior knowledge
+ Predict general contents before listening
using contexts and prior knowledge
+ Predict unfinished utterances using contexts,
co-text and prior knowledge
+ Relate one part of the text to another
* Metacognitive tactics
+ Preview contents in different forms
+ Rehearse the pronunciation of potential
content words
+ Establish purpose of listening
+ Listen selectively according to purpose
+ Pay attention to tones and pauses
* Metacognitive tactics
+ Continue to listen for clarification in
spite of difficulty
+ Assess the importance of problematic
parts and decide whether to ignore them
or actively seek clarification
+ determine the potential value of
subsequent parts and vary intensity of
attention accordingly
* Social-affective tactics
+ Learn to relax before and during listening
+ Encourage oneself to continue listening
* Indirect strategy: metacognitive awareness
+ Set aside lesson time for discussion and
reports about listening problems and useful
strategies
+ Encourage students to ‘think aloud’ soon
after they have completed a listening task
+ Provide opportunities for individual
reflection through listening diaries
+ Extend the scope of pre-listening and postlistening tasks to include metacognitive tasks
(Goh, 2000)
Conclusion