Diane Schmitt
Nottingham Trent University

Listening Lessons: A missed opportunity?
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Common focus of listening textbooks:
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Contemporary Topics
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Schema building
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Key vocabulary
Notetaking tips
Comprehension of main ideas and details
Lecture reconstruction
Expansion Activity

Comprehension Approach to Listening
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Auditory Scanning
(Field, 2008:59)

Lessons from Reading - Purpose
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Reading to search for information
Reading for quick understanding
Reading to learn
Reading to integrate information
Reading to evaluate, critique, and use information
Reading for general comprehension (for interest or entertainment)
(Grabe, 2009: 7-10)

Lessons from Reading - Purpose
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Reading to learn
Reading to integrate information
Reading to evaluate, critique, and use information

Lessons for Listening - Purpose
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Listening to learn
Listening to integrate information
Listening to evaluate, critique, and use information
Using listening to inform writing

Teaching Materials
Task - Write an essay on the topic:
“Globalization itself is not so much of a problem as an opportunity.”
Discuss

What gets taught?
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In reading to learn, the reader is expected to remember the main ideas and many supporting ideas and be able to recall this information as needed
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Attention to text structure assists in recall.
(Carrell, 1992; Jiang and Grabe, 2007)

Attention to text structure assists in recall.
 Language
 Clear paragraph structure is an important element of writing, especially in an academic context. Study the opening paragraph (p. 52) and examine how it is developed. What is the purpose of each sentence?
 It is just as important to see the relationships between paragraphs in an essay or a chapter of a book. The language activity for Chapter 1 studied linking devices. Which ones can you identify in the final section of this chapter? How is the argument developed?

What gets taught?
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Reading to integrate information requires that the reader synthesize (and learn) information from multiple texts or bring together information from a long text, such as a long and complex chapter in a textbook
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Sometimes when students perform poorly,
“the problem may not be an inability to comprehend but a lack of awareness of the real goal for that reading task.”
(Grabe, 2009: 19)

A lack of awareness of the real goal for that reading task
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No explicit links are made in the booklet of materials between the content of the reading and the content of the listening.
This is despite the fact that students and teachers are hyper-aware of the fact that they will have to write an essay using sources on the topic of globalisation.

What gets taught?
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Reading to evaluate, critique, and use information requires making decisions about which aspects of a text are most important, most persuasive, least persuasive, or most controversial. [Readers also] need to decide how to relate the text information to other information intertextually and to their prior knowledge and beliefs.
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Readers engage in different types of processing as they carry out reading for different purposes.”
(Carver, 1990, 1992a in Grabe, 2009: 12)

“Readers engage in different types of processing as they carry out reading for different purposes.”
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Students are not asked to read or listen for purposes beyond basic comprehension.

Both reading and listening texts are under exploited
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Texts convey a considerable amount of discourse information at multiple levels through their structure
Patterns of text organisation reflect the goals of their creators, the purposes of the texts and the expectations of readers/listeners
There are relatively few patterns of discourse organisation and they recur regularly in a variety of combinations.

The documentaries

New Rulers of the World
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John Pilger’s definition
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Globalisation is a new economic order
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Pilger’s claim
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Globalisation makes the rich richer and the poor poorer
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Pilger’s method of organisation
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Case study of Indonesia
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Interviews with experts
Visits to sweatshops
Interviews with Indonesians

Globalisation is Good
Norberg’s claims:
“Capitalism could make the whole world as wealthy and free as Europe is today, if only we let it.”
“Poverty is on the way out for those countries that have integrated into the global economy.”
“Far from being a threat to mankind, I am going to show that global capitalism is its saviour.”

Globalisation is Good
Norberg’s definition of globalisation:
“A free market economy based on the right to start a business and trade without restriction.”

Globalisation is Good
Norberg’s organisational structure:

Globalisation is Good – Organisational
Structure

Globalisation is Good – Organisational
Structure
Argument w/compare
+ contrast
Taiwan Vietnam Kenya

Taiwan
Process Exemplification Cause & Effect

Vietnam
Case Study
Nike
Exemplification Cause & Effect

Kenya
Description Cause & Effect Exemplification

The writing task
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Write an essay on the topic:
“Globalization itself is not so much of a problem as an opportunity.” Discuss
• A chapter dedicated to each pattern of essay organization
• A chapter on argumentation and using material from outside sources

Purpose: Turn listening into writing
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Listening to learn
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Students need to recall the information in order to be able to use it in their essays.
Listening to integrate information
 bring together information from a long text
 synthesize information from multiple texts
Listening to evaluate, critique, and use information
 make decisions about which aspects of a text are most important, most persuasive, or least persuasive
 decide how to relate the text information to other information intertextually

 Pilger is certain that globalisation is bad
 Norberg is equally certain that globalisation is good
Can they both be right?
 A more comprehensive approach to listening which takes account of text structure will help students to be able to ask the right questions of both commentators.

Success in writing can be facilitated by
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 awareness of how texts are structured.
demonstrations of how others structure their texts recognition that text structure is a key factor in communicating one’s message effectively

Creativity can be thinking differently about how we exploit our materials
Text structure is not just found in academic reading, but in all aspects of our lives