Rethinking the teaching of listening:
from a focus on product to a focus
on processes
Suzanne Graham and Catherine Spiers, with thanks to
Denise Santos
© University of Reading 2008
www.reading.ac.uk
Background
• Listening widely recognised as fundamental to
language learning (e.g. Vandergrift, 2007)
• Language learning for communication - during
communication, as much as 55% of the time is spent
listening (Emanuel Adams et al., 2008)
• By the time children reach age six, they have listened to
their native language for at least 17,520 hours (Asher,
1982)
• Underpins learning of vocabulary and grammar,
speaking, reading and writing
Problems?
• Yet in England seems to be neglected as a skill
• Learners find it one of the most difficult skills (Graham
2006) – and increasingly so?
• Listening is a ‘complex, active process of interpretation’
(Vandergrift, n.d.)
• Poorly developed listening strategies, even by Yr 12
(Graham, Santos, & Vanderplank, 2008 and 2011)
Question?
• What difficulties do learners experience in listening in a
foreign language?
• Language sounds like an unbroken stream of speech –
can’t spot where one word ends and another begins
• Can’t always recognise in spoken form many words that
they would probably know if they saw them written
down, or if they heard them pronounced on their own
• Can’t cope with unknown words
• Get the wrong end of the stick of what they hear, can
only identify a few words
Reasons for these difficulties?
• Teaching and materials that focus on ‘doing’ listening
activities; ‘testing’ listening, rather than ‘teaching’
listening
• So, what skills do we need to teach?
• Listen to the following and try to work out what the
nonsense words mean. What did you do to help you
understand? Furbustuous, lotticks, izzids, happaps,
gabonmang
• Need to teach sounds and how they link with spelling
and meaning, intonation patterns and ways of
overcoming comprehension difficulties
The new National Curriculum
• Overall aim for both Key Stages: ‘understand and
respond to spoken and written language from a variety
of authentic sources’
• KS2:. ‘listen attentively to spoken language and show
understanding by joining in and responding’
•
‘understand and communicate ideas […] , using their
knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures
and vocabulary’
• ‘explore the patterns and sounds of language
through songs and rhymes and link the spelling,
sound and meaning of words’
•
Key Stage 3
• ‘listen to a variety of forms of spoken language to obtain
information and respond appropriately’
• ‘transcribe words and short sentences that they hear
with increasing accuracy’
What strategies do effective listeners use?
Preparing to
check out the
evidence and
verify predictions
Getting in the right frame of mind –
concentration, calmness
Preparation strategies
Making predictions
Thinking of words and
phrases that might be
heard, plus synonyms
Making predictions
Thinking about the likely
topic and themes of the
passage
Strategies used by effective listeners
Looking at the
local and global
context
Self-questioning
Strategies to gain an overall
sense of the passage
Comparing early and
later parts of the
passage
Controlling
my background
knowledge
Bringing it all together
•Does my interpretation make sense?
Evaluating
decisions
taken
•Does my interpretation fit the context?
•Does my interpretation fit in with what I know
already?
Examples of strategies that can
be taught
Effective prediction + verification – did I
really hear what I thought I would hear?
Inferencing / identifying real key words
(using all the clues)
 Segmentation / sound distinctions
10
How could this work in practice?
• Sounds/segmentation – to recap, learners have:
• Difficulties in spotting where one word ends and
another starts
• Difficulties in recognising words they probably
know
• Possible causes:
– Learners’ knowledge of the foreign language sounds is weak
– They don’t know how words change when pronounced with
other words
– They don’t know how the written and spoken forms of a word
may differ
– They have difficulties in identifying word boundaries in speech
Possible activities:
• A song to focus on key
sounds in KS2:
Song – Bonjour, ça va?
• Task - What do you think this song is about? What French
words do you recognise?
• What could you do to help you listen more carefully?
• Listen again this time watching my actions.
• Children then perform song with a partner , using good
facial expressions.
• Now hold up words for them to read.
Possible activities – see also handout
on Blackboard!
Explicitly making them aware of key sound-spelling links,
and giving them practice in differentiating between similar
sounds:
 Select a recording containing an example of the sound
you have been practising. Ask learners to raise their
hand when they hear the sound.
 Encourage learners to ‘visualise’ the sound they are
hearing, without looking at the written form, to try to see
the sound representation (for example, in French, ‘-u’, ‘ou’) in their mind’s eye as they hear it.
Possible activities
 Use some of the ‘listen and repeat’ activities in
textbooks. After learners have listened and repeated,
do the same thing but showing them the transcript.
Then ask them to look at similar but unknown words
(containing the same sound) and to predict how they
will be pronounced. They can do this in pairs. Take
feedback from the class on what learners predicted.
 Or, give them three possible spellings of a list of words
that you read out. Get them to tick which is the correct
spelling. Ask them to explain their choice
Possible activities
Explicitly pointing out to learners how certain sounds
change in connected speech, and giving them practice in
identifying known words within a speech stream
For example:
• Model ‘lone’ pronunciation of a group of words
• Then play an audio containing those words in a larger
passage, or read it aloud; learners listen with transcripts
and try to identify any changes that occur when the
words are used in a sentence rather than on their own.
Possible activities!
Explicitly pointing out to learners clues that indicate where
word boundaries are, and giving them practice in
identifying these boundaries:
 E.g. Ask learners to listen to simple sentences (or
dialogues) and give them the audioscript with no
spaces between words, asking them to mark the
boundaries between the words. Can they identify sound
clues (slight pauses, changes in intonation) that help
them work this out?
Possible activities
• Explicitly pointing out to learners features of intonation
patterns that give clues to meaning, and giving them
practice in using intonation in this way
• Explicitly pointing out to learners how the intonation
patterns of the language they are learning differs from
their own
 E.g. Record a short passage in the language, read by
(1) a native speaker (2) an English speaker, using
English intonation patterns.
 Can they ‘trace’ the difference?
Teaching comprehension strategies
Monitoring
Removing the
scaffolding
Raising awareness; feedback
and discussion
Modelling strategies
Tick lists of strategies with the tasks/texts;
individualised feedback; teacher prompting
19
How could this work in practice?
• Awareness-raising: class given ‘nonsense’
passage to listen to on VLE – how did they work
out words?
• Next lesson starter – discussion of strategies used
and how they could be used in MFL listening
• Then apply some of these to listening activities
used – teacher reminds learners, they keep log,
evaluate effectiveness, teacher feedback
20
How could this work in practice?
• E.g. at KS2, predicting what you might hear
and other strategies:
• Example:Using the song ‘Je me présente’
from Chantez Plus Fort!
• What do you think the title means?
• What things might you be listening for?
• Listen.
• Discuss any French words they could pick
out
21
Listen again, using these pictures to help you.
1
0
Je m'appelle Mark et j'ai dix ans,
J'habite à Leeds en Angleterre,
Mon anniversaire est le cinq mai,
J'aime le rouge et le violet.
Moi, j'ai une soeur et j'ai un frère,
J'ai un lapin et un cobaye,
J'aime mon vélo,
J'aime dessiner,
Mais je n'aime pas du tout danser!
An example from KS3 - prediction and verification
Conclusion
• Work on sounds and meaning
important for laying foundations for
language learning
• Continued across KS2 and KS3
• See also Listening section and
videos on www.pdcinmfl.com