Listening
031078
Toki Maiko
There are many aspects of language skill; speaking, listening, writing and reading. Many
Japanese have more problems with listening and speaking better than writing and reading.
It is said that listening is the most difficult.
When we comprehended story that people speak, we comprehended 80% using non-verbal
communication, e.g., body language and gesture.
Speech rate. Tauroza and Allison found that the speed rates of radio and interview speech
events were within the range of 160 to 190 words per minute and the speed rate of
conversation was about 210 w.p.m and lectures were 140 w.p.m which is the normal speed of
British speakers. Griffiths also found that speech that was faster than 200 w.p.m. was
difficult for lower-intermediate learners to understand. He said that a speech rate of 127
w.p.m was good for them. On the other hand, Blau found that a speech rate from 145 w.p.m
to 185 w.p.m did not greatly affect intermediate learners and advanced learners’
comprehension.
Listening competence
1. Fundamental Knowledge (語彙・文法などの基礎学力)
Learners need a basic vocabulary including idioms and English grammar. If there are
not, to study is of no affect. We need junior high school and high school level.
2. Strategies for Perception (音声聞き取りの方略)
There are differences between English and Japanese with linguistic structure. So it
is difficult for us to recognize sounds, accent, speed, assimilation, mutation,
contraction and so on. For example, there are tent, stop, and better. Every word
uses /t/, but every /t/ is different sounds /tent/ /stap/ /betər/ . The /t/ changes because
of surrounding phonemes.
Assimilation is phonological process that changes the
feature values of segments to make them more similar, for example vowels becomes
nasal when followed by nasal consonant. Mutation occurs when a stressed vowel
becomes non-stressed vowel, for example, tooth becomes teeth or foot becomes feet
Strategies for Comprehension (内容理解の方略)
We need to understand the contents of what we hear. Japanese learners think that
we must listen to everything. But it is difficult to do that. Japanese speak Japanese
with same tone but Native-English speakers speak with strength and weakness.
We need to grasp the whole story, not memorize the details. We need to understand
specific content and identify the important parts.
3. Strategies for Task Oriented Situation
1. We cannot distinguish sound
People analyze sounds that come into their ears, they do not match phoneme units but match
a combination of sounds. When we hear something it sounds like this
Howareyoutoday? Then we have to break that into words / meaning units
2. Learners lack vocabulary and grammar ability
We are not exposed to English all the time so it is hard to remember vocabulary. We
sometimes cannot identify right word when listening. “When people hear sentences including
unfamiliar words and sentence structure, it is hard to understand that.
And we do not all
understand words and sentence structure that we remember that we glance at. So we need
to practice to listen to sentences including given word and sentence structure.
3. We cannot keep up with the speed
When we hear something, we think that the sound disappears but it is not true. We
have short-term memory. In that, we check the sentence against their knowledge and analyze
and extract meaning. That only extracted meaning keep in long-term memory, the sound is
removed. If we want to keep up with the speed, we must improve short-term memory.
E.g.
When we hear this sentence (I saw your mother crossing the street in front of the
supermarket.) for the first time, we should segment it up like this
I / saw /your / mother /crossing/ the/ street/ in/ front/ of/ the/ supermarket.
But it is difficult to do that. But if we can do like that
I saw your mother /crossing the street / in front of the supermarket. /
It is easy to remember. This is what is called ‘segmenting’ speech
4. We lack background knowledge that topic
If people can hear the sound, when the people do not have knowledge about the topic, the
person cannot understand content.