Lingua-cultural approach to teaching listening Proficiency

Lecture 10

Plan:

1. Listening as a crucial skill in the formation of Intercultural communicative competence

2. What Competences are involved into listening Proficiency

3. Ways of teaching LC

4. Difficulties in TLC

5. Specific principles of LC

6. Methodological classification of LC

7. Ex-s for TLC.

1. Listening is a significant and essential area of the development of Intercultural communicative competence for “listening is the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli, it is a complex problem-solving task which sharpens thinking and creates interaction.

Listening interacts with speaking, it usually occurs in conjunction with speaking. Listening takes =90% of class time at school and it is probably the most important skill in overall communication. For many it is the most important medium through which significant cultural information is conveyed.

Listening is a communicative skill to get the meaning from what we hear. Listening to the spoken language involves

- hearing the sound

- recognizing words

- understanding different accents

- recognizing sentences

- predicting the meaning

- understanding the communicative message. Listening is a complex psychophisiological process which implies the work of many cognitive mechanisms: memory, perception, anticipation, inner speech and thinking with its operations of deduction and induction, comparison, analysis and synthesis.

2. Listening interacts with very powerful non-verbal system (gestures, mimicry, facial expression) For example, “Let’s get gather for lunch sometime” The non-verbal clues (indifferent facial expression, moving away and onto next activity) can give a very different message that must be interpreted and weighed before the action is taken. As much as 93% of information comes from non-verbal, visual clues. So, we must train our students how to listen well and how to pick up non-verbal clues at the same time. Listening is linked to all the four components of the Intercultural communicative competence: language, strategic socio-cultural and discourse competences. The scheme shows the relationship between listening proficiency and each of the elements of Intercultural communicative competence

Linguistic competence Strategic competence (using any

(grammar, vocabulary, clues for guessing, background knowledge etc)

pronunciation-pauses stress,

intonation)

Listening Proficiency

Socio-cultural Competence Discourse competence

(knowing social and cultural Integration (Knowing how discourse operates)

expectations related to the with other

appropriate use of FL) skills

Linguistic competence is a sort of “umbrella concept” that helps to catch the meaning of what we hear.

Socio-cultural Competence involves knowing what is expected socially and culturally by the FL users in this or that communicative situation. It is very important in FL listening to understand what the speaker wants to convey (facts, feelings, emotions, a sense of authority or meet hostility) Culturally aware listener must be able to “listen and understand between the lines” in order to respond properly (verbally or non-verbally)

Discourse competence. Discourse as you know deals with communication above the sentence level. It students have discourse competence they will be able to anticipate what will be said next and understand more easily what they are hearing at any moment. Discourse competence implies that the listener is cognitively involved, he is active not passive and is always seeking to know how the parts of communication relate to each other and what they mean. Moreover, it involves understanding how the target language is used in different situations.

Strategic competence is perhaps the most important of all the communicative competence elements for listening Proficiency, and because of this we shall discuss it in detail. In reference to listening Strategic competence means the ability to use all possible clues to get at the meaning of what is heard. First of all it involves using guessing strategies to compensate the missing knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, idioms trying to understand what is being heard. Guessing is most essential for listening the listener makes hypotheses, then tests them: he tries to predict what is coming next using both linguistic and non- linguistic clues. Linguistic clues include suffixes, prefixes, phrases, word order cognates, international words, titles, proper names and nicknames. For example “sweetheart” gives the learners a very different clue to the meaning in comparison with the formal “Dr Smith”

Discourse markers first, second, third,.. we will now turn to.. give us a signal of what is being presented. A rising intonation at the and of a sentence implies uncertainty or a question. Differences in American and British accents can cause difficulties in understanding if the students are not aware of them.

Non-linguistic clues include facial expressions, positive, background noise and general, background knowledge of any kind related to what is being said.

3. Spoken language is usually recognized by a combination of bottom-up processing and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing is driven by what the listener hears. Top-down processing is driven by the ideas that are ready in the listener's head. The experiments show that if the listeners have got a correct idea in their minds about the text they hear, they do not even notice the incorrectly pronounced recorded words.

All communicative skills including listening skills in FLT should be taught on integrative approach as all skills are integrated.

Listening comprehension can be controlled with the help of

- flow diagrams

- reasoning maps

- free diagram

- mind, map (It has one central concept in the middle and the surroundings
notions or details linked to the central concept);

- visual image: to draw pictures (picture dictations; to label parts of the car from the description you hear.

4 Difficulties of listening.

1. Unknown language (words and grammar).

2. Unintelligible manner of presentation (poor clarity of diction, etc).

3. Unfamiliar topic (never heard of the problem)

4. lack of own experience (have never been in the circumstance)

5. No visual clues (images, gestures, mimicry)

6. No personal opinion (have never thought about it).

7. No expectations' about the text (the information came all of a sudden).

8. Interference of the FL1 on the ph, gr, voc. level. (Examples are supplied by students).

Listening is not a straightforward match of sounds to some exact meaning. Listening is an inferential process, i.e. we make inferences (assumptions) during listening the listener reconstructs and in many cases creates the meaning of the speakers' message. Listening is a construction and reconstruction process. The process of making inferences includes estimating the sense of the words, constructing propositions (assumptions) about the text, assigning a general meaning to the text, making logical links and assuming a plausible (possible) intention of the speaker. In this sense the process of comprehension is a collaborative, process where the listener collaborates with the speaker.

5 The process of leaching LC is guided by principles (specific principles).

Principle 1. Teaching to listen is a communicative skills. It means that the learners, are taught the ability to listen in real or close-to-real situations.

Principle 2. Teaching to listen is based on authentic materials. It implies that the materials are either “authentic made” or “authentic like” for teaching purposes.

Principle 3. Teaching to listen is an integrated skill. It should be taught in integration with other skills. Usually people listen and speak, listen and write listen and read. Listening is connected with speaking, writing and reading.

Лапидус Б.А. speaks of reading priority which helps in teaching listening. (Give examples of the tasks that would meet the principles of teaching LC).

6 Listening can be taught as an active, extensive and intensive process. Active listening - listening for details. Extensive listening - listening for the gist (not details).

Methodological classification of LC given by Резнюк:

1. Proper – when teacher prepare text for students by the tape.

2. Attendant- (when all 4 types of speech activity are developed in integration)

3. Instructive-corrective- when instruction and corrections are given

4. Situational- when listening material is given in the form of situation.

Levels of LC:

1) Fragmentary level A1 – tick the correct answer

2) Fragmentary incomplete level A2 – say what the text is about

3) Analythical-synthetical level B1- answer the questions, fill the gaps, make up a plan, true or false

4) Complete comprehension B2- make up questions

5) Detailed comprehension C1- express your opinion

6) Critical understanding C2- the main idea

7 Listening exercises include:

1. training exercises (to train the mechanisms that are involved)

- on short-term memory 7 ± 2

- on anticipation

- on logical thinking

1. speech exercises

- listen and do (follow instruction, and connect)

- listen and answer the questions

- listen and transfer (tables, diagrams, graphs, notes)

1. communicative exercises

- (listen-and-infer), express your opinion.

All the exercises should be adequate to the aims set.

Listen-and-do activities imply that the language learner listen to the language and perform commands, follow instructions, draw, tick off items on the list, sequence the text, match strip cartoons (picture stories), maps, plans, family trees, pictures etc. For example: draw a house and a tree near it, etc,

Listen-and-transfer activities imply that while listening to the language material the students transfer information to tables, diagrams, graphs, drawing, notes maps etc.

Listen-and infer activities are based on such tasks as interpreting situations, words, attitudes in the discourse drawing conclusions, making assumptions and judgments, " true or false". Work on the text for LC implies 3 stages [1]:

1. Pre-listening activities

2. While-listening activities

3. Post-listening activities

Jigsaw listening is a communicative activity which consists in making up the whole text on the basis of the different pieces the individual listeners hear (See Jigsaw Reading) [2].

Literature:

1. Рогова Г.В., Рабинович Ф.М., Сахарова Т.Е. Методика обучения иностранным языкам в средней школе. М., Просвещение, 1991, гл. 5 (параграф 2).

2. Гальскова Н.Д. Современная методика обучения иностранным языкам.. М., 2000, стр 149, 155

3. Рогова Г.В., Верещагина И.Н. Методика обучения иностранным языкам в средней школе. М., Просвещение. 1988, гл. 7 (параграф 2).

4. Типовая программа по иностранным языкам для общеобразовательной школы. М, 1985.

5. Michael Rost Listining in Action Prentise Hall 1991.

Дополнительная литература

1. Geremy Harmer. The Practice of ELT. London - New-York, 1991, pp. 184-190; pp. 211-232. (книга на кафедре методики).

2. Mary Underwood. Teaching Listening. Longman, 1989.