Teaching listening in L2:
Low-level decoding processes vs. high-level cognitive strategies
Piccaluga, M., Calomme, M., Delvaux, V., Dubois d'Enghien, A., Huet, K., Harmegnies, B.
Institut de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies du Langage, Mons, Belgium
Listening in a foreign language is a highly demanding task. L2 learners typically perform
worse in listening than in reading comprehension (van Zeeland, 2013), and are acutely
aware of it (Farrel & Mallard, 2006), which may in turn affect their motivation for, and
attitude towards, listening tasks (Xu, 2011; Bloomfield et al., 2010). Successful listening
requires a broad set of subskills ranging from perception to comprehension, i.e. from
"low-level" speech signal decoding processes to "high-level" integrative mechanisms,
including inference.
For years, listening comprehension skills have been assessed rather than taught in
language classrooms (Field, 2008). Most of the effort that has eventually been devoted
to teaching listening has focused on (meta-)cognitive listening strategies, with varying
degrees of success (Berne, 2004), and very little at all with low-proficiency learners
(Renandya & Farrell, 2010). Consequently, some researchers have argued in favor of
alternative teaching methods designed at developing low-level processing of oral
language through extensive listening (Renandya, 2011) or targeted exercices based on
the "word-spotting task" (Cutler & Shanley, 2010).
In this paper, we discuss the results of two studies which, using a pre-test/post-test
design, assessed the efficiency of two learning sequences implementing contrasting
methods for teaching listening to teenage French EFL learners from Belgium. Study 1
tested a learning sequence based on both implicit (using the word-spotting task) and
explicit teaching of word boundary detection using two cues that have proven useful for
native English speakers: (i) lexical stress, and (ii) phonotactic constraints. Study 2
evaluated the success of a learning sequence focussing on listening strategies in an
integrated teaching approach.
First, the efficiency of the learning sequences were assessed by comparing performances
in pre- vs. post-tests. Second, learning processes were investigated by analyzing
performances in similar exercices included within the learning sequences. Third, the
attitudes and self-reported practices of the participants in relation with listening
comprehension were documented (before & after intervention), as well as their opinion
on the usefulness of the learning sequence (after intervention), to be confronted with
the learners' performances at each step of the procedure.
First results suggested that (i) the learning sequence focussing on "low-level" word
segmentation processes was more effective than the learning sequence based on
cognitive listening strategies; (ii) the improvement in the performances from pre-test to
post-test did not result from a particular didactic mean, but from a combination of
teaching practices and speech materials (including individual exercises and theory
building in group sessions, implicit and explicit learning, etc.); (iii) students who were
self-reportedly focused on the listening task and approached it with a positive attitude
performed better. The implications of these findings will be discussed at the conference.
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