From Listening to Interpreting
Presented by:
Michael McMillion,
NAJIT 2010
www.aslmcmillion.com
 Educational Objectives
 Introduce mental text analysis skills
 Introduce Cokely and Lee processing models
 Identify and incorporate chunking skills
 Explore personal top-down, bottom-up, strategic and meta-cognitive listening strategies
 Practical application
 EQUIVALENCE
 Goal = conceptual accuracy/semantic equivalence; how do we get there?
 Cokely/Lee's models - focus on message reception
 Listening strategies are used to recognize and incorporate text analysis, categories, and, auditory and visual
patterns.
 The humor in listening…
 Lucy’s “Visit to Paris” episode
 Discuss the video:
•
what aspects of interpreting were incorporated?
•
how was the message preserved between all 5 interpretations?
•
what features of listening and language did you identify in the episode?
 How Do We Listen?
 We use our senses and simultaneously apply Listening Strategies:
•
Listening Strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall
of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.
 WHAT DOES LISTENING FOR MEANING INCLUDE?
Quiz
NAJIT 31st Annual Conference: From Listening to Interpreting, Mike McMillion
 Predicting
 Summarizing
 Drawing inferences
 Listening for the main idea
 Listening for details
 Affect or lack thereof
(mental illness factors)
 Rhythm of speaker
 Listening for pauses and
purpose in the pause
 Swearing and function
thereof
 Register
 Categories of grammatical
markers (components)
 Relationship of speakers
 Metaphor
 Language integrity
(structure, intent)
 Chunking
 Analyzing
 Coded, lexical, phrasal,
sentential, discourse
analysis
 Emotion
 Pace of speaker
 Ability to mentally outline
and paraphrase source
information
 Grammatical clues and
indicators (components)
 Ability to visualize
 ___
 Listening for gestures
 Connectors
 ___
 ___
 Definitions
 Chunking
 Processing
 Processing at the coded, lexical, phrasal, sentential and discourse levels
 Semantically equivalent
 Conceptually accurate
 Restructuring information
 Disambiguation
 Source and target languages
 Categories and patterns
•
(honorific “we”, active vs. passive, avoidance behavior by using scientific fact to represent opinion,
register, questions, inferences)
 Cognates
 Text analysis
 Meta-cognitive
 Most listeners use…
 “Top-down” strategies
NAJIT 31st Annual Conference: From Listening to Interpreting, Mike McMillion
 “Bottom-up” strategies
 “Top-Down” Strategies:
 Listening for the main idea
 Predicting
 Drawing inferences
 Summarizing
 All strategies affect conceptual accuracy and semantic equivalence
(Useful for frozen, formal and semi-formal registers)
 “Bottom-Up” Strategies:
 Listening for specific details
 Recognizing cognates
 Recognizing word-order patterns, such as question forms, register changes, passive versus active sentence
construction
 All strategies affect conceptual accuracy and semantic equivalence
(Useful for consultative and intimate registers)
 Strategic listeners also use…
 Meta-cognitive strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their listening, such as:
•
Plan by deciding which strategies will serve best in a particular situation
•
Monitor comprehension and effectiveness of selected strategy
•
Evaluate by determining whether listening comprehension goals have been met
•
Cokely’s model
 Listening Skill
Text Analysis Skill
 How do INTERPRETERS listen?
We EXTRACT meaning by doing a mental/categorical text analysis.
 Interpreters listen by…
 Identifying a purpose in the text
 Activating background knowledge of topic
 Predicting/anticipating content (not in Cokely model)
NAJIT 31st Annual Conference: From Listening to Interpreting, Mike McMillion
 Identifying language and cultural equivalences
 Attending to the input that is relevant to the identified purpose/goal, as this affects what is held in
short-term memory
 Selecting top-down or bottom-up and meta-cognitive strategies (not in Cokely model)
 Checking comprehension on source input and monitor target output (not in Cokely model)
 And at the same time, we are…
 Using the gap between the rate of speech and the rate of target production to:
 Categorize grammatical functions
 Categorize level-appropriate chunking
 Process and restructure information
 Select semantically-appropriate and conceptually accurate forms for target output
 Recognize patterns

in speech dialect, cadence, grammar usage, pauses, inflection, word choice, register, affect, etc.

Visual (videotape)

proximal-distal, NMS, inflection, modulation, pauses, pronominalization, dialect, affect
Cokley Model
NAJIT 31st Annual Conference: From Listening to Interpreting, Mike McMillion
NAJIT 31st Annual Conference: From Listening to Interpreting, Mike McMillion