Why don’t they listen? Part 1

Why don’t they listen? Part 1 Clairine Chan

Listening comprehension fails... (1) Guess the objects

Language comprehension fails... What’s on your mind when you were up to... 甲: 洗乾淨，浸水過夜就得㗎啦乙: 乜水啊？甲: 清水，水喉水得㗎啦乙: 係咪滾水好啲呢甲: 唔需要㗎啦，常溫水喉水乙: 咁使唔使省省佢呢？甲: 唔好省呀，省會爛㗎乙: 吓？省下佢好似乾淨啲喎甲: 唔需要㗎啦, 試一個星期先啦，唔啱可以返嚟改，唔收費用嘅。

Listening comprehension fails... (1) Guess the objects Top-down processing fails

Listening comprehension fails... (2) Guess the film title Bottom-up processing fails

Listening comprehension fails... (3) Guess the ending https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/videoplayer/vi1575984665

Introductory task Work in pairs Discuss with your partner and have one member write down a few notes: • What are your main goal(s) in teaching listening to students (except it is laid out in curriculum guide and you have to) • What are some of the challenges / difficulties you face in teaching listening? • How did you overcome these challenges / difficulties?

Introductory task Keep working with your partner: Look at the listening activities on page 2 and 3. Assess and explain which one is “better”. Why? How did you decide?

Introductory task Can the following listening exercise prepare our young learners for “real life” listening? Why/ Why not? What is the difference between this activity in textbook and real life listening? Ready?

Primary 4

Listening in classrooms Passive listening requires focused concentration and minimal verbal feedback from the listeners who sit back quietly and absorb information

Real life listening Active listening • is informal and can be colloquial • we listen for a purpose and with certain expectation • entails preconceived idea of the content, formality level etc. • speakers are visible • we are part of the conversation rather than being an onlooker • we don’t need to understand everything; we grab the gist and participate

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language Let’s add to our list of the characteristics of real life spoken language. What are some of the features of informal spoken language?

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language • Spoken and written forms are two distinct types of language • It is more useful to think of speech and writing on several continua: • from ‘unplanned’ to ‘planned’ (Ochs, 1979) • from ‘oral’ to ‘literate’ (Tannen, 1982) • from ‘interactional’ to ‘transactional’ (Brown and Yule, 1983) • from ‘involved’ to ‘detached’ (Bygate, 1998) • and so on...

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language formal speech / spoken prose vs. informal speech / spontaneous conversation

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language formal speech / spoken prose vs. informal speech / spontaneous conversation NOT A SIMPLE BINARY OPPOSITION!

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language many intermediate gradations: ranging from the extremely formal (ceremony formulae, some political speeches) the fairly formal(news-reading) the fairly informal(TV interviews) the very informal(gossip, family quarrels)

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language many intermediate gradations: the extremely formal the fairly formal the fairly informal the very informal Broadly speaking, the degree of colloquiality affects its pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. The spontaneity affects its syntax and discourse structure.

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language A: so I got on the bus - and he was there - but his wife wasn’t - and in the university we met… • Grammar Chaining, rather than subordination

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language A: so I got on the bus - and he was there - but his wife wasn’t - and in the university we met… A: (Have you) Finished? B: (I will have in) Just a minute • Grammar Chaining, rather than subordination Ellipsis (omission)

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language A: so I got on the bus - and he was there - but his wife wasn’t - and in the university we met… A: (Have you) Finished? B: (I will have in) Just a minute A: How’s the hostel? B: It’s fine, thanks. A: Did you move in over the weekend? B: Friday, actually. • Grammar Chaining, rather than subordination Ellipsis (omission) Shorter utterances / speaking turns

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language A: so I got on the bus - and he was there - but his wife wasn’t - and in the university we met… A: (Have you) Finished? B: (I will have in) Just a minute A: How’s the hostel? B: It’s fine, thanks. A: Did you move in over the weekend? B: Friday, actually. B: Well I’d never… with all those little boxes and pieces… I wouldn’t try… anyway it’s done. • Grammar Chaining, rather than subordination Ellipsis (omission) Shorter utterances / speaking turns Unfinished utterances, false starts

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 2. Vocabulary General words Fillers and hesitation markers Deixis (referring to things in context) Less explicit or vaguer language thing, thingy, stuff... well, um, like, uh… this one, here, her over there, that guy, that bloke... kind of, a bit, in a way, or something like that...

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 3. Information Looser information structure More redundancy and repetition Judy’s always in on Monday morn — seems her brother Mark has broken his leg again — football mad, he is The woman with a hat — see? with the hat? — the old woman, not the young one — on the left — well she realizes the babies are there...

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 4. Implicit reference Channell (1994) and Cutting (2000) • a group of students taking a Master’s course at Edinburgh used progressively more indirect and implicit expressions • the more we know about each other, the more knowledge we share and the less we need to refer to it directly

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 4. Implicit reference Channell (1994) • explored implicit lexis in depth: • vague additives (e.g. ‘round ten’) • vague quantifiers (e.g. ‘1500 died’) • vague placeholder (e.g. ‘thingy’) • tags (e.g. ‘or something’, ‘and things’ and ‘and so on’)

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 5. Redundancy In ordinary conversation or extempore speech-making we say more than would appear to be necessary. What are those redundant utterances? Are they really necessary? repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, meaningless additions such as ‘I mean’ or ‘you know’ They provide abundance of extra information and time to think.

Handout Task 1 Characteristics of spoken language 6. Non-verbal communication Listeners benefit from additional information accompanied in face-to-face interaction. Could you name some? LINGUISTICS CUES NON-LINGUISTICS CUES changes in pitch and volume word stress to highlight specific word facial expression body language

Learners’ perceptions of spoken language 7. Speed • Speed is certainly the source of difficulty to most EFL students. (Lynch, 2013; Rost, 2002; Graham, 2006) Example: • Mixed picture Research methods, texts and listening tasks varied. (Griffiths, 1992)

Learners’ perceptions of spoken language 8. Accent The effects of phonological features in spontaneous speech on listeners’ perceptions of accentedness, comprehensibility and phonological performances https://congress.cc.jyu.fi/eurosla26/schedule/pdf/1068.pdf Speech rate was found to have significantly strong positive correlation with comprehensibility, foreign accentedness, overall pronunciation and overall rhythm.

Learners’ perceptions of spoken language 8. Accent Children’s view? ‘Familiarity takes on broad perspective, involving not only immediate factors such as pronunciation, but also background information such as real-world expectations’ (Gass and Varonis, 1984:82)

Task 2: Challenges in Teaching Listening Do all these features mean that we, teachers, should never use pre-recorded texts such as textbook materials? Does it mean authentic recordings should always be used? What do you think? Discuss for a couple of minutes. Be prepared to share your views.

Challenges in Teaching Listening: suggestions Authentic listening activities might not be suitable for ALL learners: Authentic listening can be… to students who just listen to English in high-stake testing only. authentic material is not designed for the L2 classroom IRRELEVANT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND

Challenges in Teaching Listening: suggestions However, students need to be exposed to at least some opportunities to hear informal real-life speech to function in real-life listening situations. students need to be exposed to at least some opportunities to hear informal real-life speech to function in real-life listening situations.

Challenges in Teaching Listening: suggestions So, what can we do in practical terms? • Value of teacher talk. • Bring visitors, friends, NETs… • Bring them out

Challenges in Teaching Listening: suggestions So, what can we do in practical terms? • Value of teacher talk. • Bring visitors, friends, NETs… • Bring them out • Authentic language use (1) (English Debate)

Task 3: Teaching listening: how to? Work in pairs: Recall a recent time when you conducted a listening activity in class. What steps did you follow? Make a list on the handout “How do you teach listening”. Next to each step, briefly explain why you did it.

Teaching listening: how to? • Expectations • Provide students with some ideas about what they will be listening to. “Turn to page 15. Listen to the passage.” NO! Specific information in our instructions help. For example: “You are going to watch a video. Chester and his mother were playing a game called 10 questions. Listen / Watch carefully. Which Lego figure did Chester pick at the end? Why did he fail to pick the right one at first? ” Authentic language use (2)

Teaching listening: how to? 2. Activating schemata: an example Background of the Unit of Work: Your P.6 class is undertaking a project on Hong Kong’s Hidden Treasure: The Sha Lo Tung Valley. The project could have cross-curricular aspects with different pupil groups focusing on: the valley’s geographical location, its hills, streams and valley; its recreational value as a destination for hikers; its animal and plant life; and on beliefs, superstitions and perhaps even ghost stories!

Special features, such as the well established fung shui wood behind the deserted Hakka village of Cheung Uk, could generate environmental awareness activities. Young pupils might enjoy collecting one tree leaf each (with permission) in order to identify the trees by matching the green of their leaf to a green on a chart of multiple green hues. Or they might identify the tree by fitting the leaf into the correct slot in a wooden grid of cut-out leaf pattern shapes. (The leaf taken from the tree would, of course, be returned to the soil). The project could culminate in a class visit to Sha Lo Tung involving painting, photography and poetry.

Cluster of tasks: listening Before the pupils listen, the context of the interview can be specified and pupils can be asked to predict what the interviewer might ask / ask about. Predictions could be briefly noted on the board. These could include: · Age - How old are you? · Job - What was your job? · Years in Cheung Uk - How long did you live in Cheung UK? · Village activities - What did the villagers do in the daytime? How about the evenings?

Cluster of tasks: listening script A: Good morning, Mr Ng. I’m a reporter from RTHK. I’d like to ask you a few questions about life in the old Sha Lo Tung valley. B: Certainly. I’m very pleased to see you. A: Good. Thank you. Er… Did you live in the valley yourself? B: Yes, for about 20 years – till it was sold in 1979. I lived in Cheung Uk. A: What was your job? B: Well,… I was a teacher in a small village school nearby. I used to walk 5 miles down the hill to work every day. You know - I’m over 70 years old now. A: Really? What was life like in the village? What work did people do? B: Well,… I remember it was very quiet in the daytime. People used to work in the fields. They used to grow rice and vegetables – and most of them kept chickens. A: So life was quite hard? B: Not really. We had electricity.

Cluster of tasks: listening During the listening, the pupils are asked to check whether their predictions are accurate. They can also report the answers. They can then be asked some questions that help to develop their higher order thinking skills. • Where does the interview take place? (Inference) • Would you like / have liked to live in a village like Cheung Uk? Why / not? (Evaluation / opinion) • What should happen to the old village in future? (Synthesis / creative opinion)

Teaching listening: how to? 3. What do I know? vs. What do I want to know? Tell students the topic and enough information to imagine the situations. In pairs, students write down some questions about the information they think will be given on the recording. Students listen and see how many of the questions they can answer.

Teaching listening: how to? 4. Prepare a wider range of questions John and Mary

Why don’t they listen? Part 1