This note is intended for the J’pura B.A. Part 1 students who will be sitting the exam in this December
ELT Methodology (Eng 1V) – Paper 1 – Skills teaching – Listening skill
Developing Bottom-Up Decoding Skills for Listening
In the article Planning a Listening Lesson, I argued that listening involved both top-down and bottom-up (1) processing working
simultaneously, and that we needed to focus on both when teaching listening. But given that, the lesson illustrated in the article remained decidedly top-heavy on the top-down side. Is there a place for greater focus on bottom-down processing skills?
First of all, what are bottom-up decoding skills? In the previous article I glossed bottom-up decoding as meaning moving from recognition of individual sounds to recognition of the meaning of whole utterances. Here’s a more detailed (though by no means complete) list.
· Recognising individual phonemes
· Recognising phoneme sequences which form words · Recognising word boundaries
· Recognising stressed syllables · Recognising intonation contours
· Recognising assimilation (2)
and so on. As you can see, they tend to be phonological (3), and I would argue that it is in focusing systematically on phonology during the
course that we can best teach bottom-up processing skills. In Planning a Listening Lesson I suggested that a focus can, and should, be built into the listening lesson – but it will inevitably remain non-systematic, dependent on what “comes up” in the listening texts chosen.
We also need a more systematic approach, based on our knowledge of the difficulties our learners have, which will be largely dependent on the differences between the phonological system of English and that of their first language (L1). For example, Arabic speakers will need to work on the distinction between /p/ and /b/, Finns will have difficulty with /g/ and /k/, Germans will tend to pronounce a final /d/ as /t/ or /v/ as / w/ and so on. Problems will also arise with stress and intonation – e.g. Italians will have difficulty recognising the meaning of contrastive stress. (4)
In teaching phonology, we need of course to deal with both receptive and productive aspects. Students need to reach a productive
phonological level of at least intelligibility. But I am here concerned only with receptive aspects – whether they are able to recognise these features when listening, and therefore fully understand what is being said.
Once we know what our learners problems are liable to be, we can then look at our syllabus and analyse which items which we are teaching will bring up those problems. And a phonological focus can then be built into the lessons presenting, practising and recycling those items, or in some cases planned as an independent section of the
How might you integrate a receptive phonological focus into the lesson? Here’s one example, based on a problem encountered by Italian beginner students – distinguishing between numbers such as thirteen – thirty - fourteen – forty etc. The problem occurs firstly because of difficulty distinguishing between the –teen and –ty pairs and, at beginners level is often due to a failure to recognise differing stress patterns- thirTEEN versus THIRty, differing vowel length and the final consonant in the “teens”.
However, the problem is made worse by the fact that there is also confusion between thirteen/fourteen and thirty/forty. Italians tend to hear both initial consonants as /f/ and do not distinguish between the two vowel sounds. Therefore, an Italian hearing thirteen may equally well interpret it as thirty, fourteen or forty.
While numbers are being taught we therefore need to focus on these problems. For individual sounds, one technique that can be used is minimal pairs : students are asked to distinguish between two words which differ only in the target sounds – for instance, free and three. The words are listed in two columns on the board : column A has all the words with one sound -free, Finn, Fred, fort, roof – and column B those with the others – three, thin, thread, thought, Ruth. The teacher then says one word and the students have to decide if it comes from column A or B. If you want to take the activity on to the productive level, the roles are then reversed – a student says a word and the teacher identifies it.
illustrated: think – thing – three – thin – thank – bath – thumb etc. The teacher says each word in turn, sometimes pronouncing them correctly and at other times substituting the problem sound - “fank”, for
example. The students listen and say if each word is correct or incorrect.
To go back to our number problem, the minimal pair technique can also be used to focus on the stress difference in the complete number. The –teennumbers are put in column A and the –ty numbers in column B. The teacher again reads out one of each pair and the students identify the correct column. This can later be extended to four columns, A – thirteen B - thirty C – fourteen D – forty, asking the students to make the full distinctions using stress and phonemic cues simultaneously.
Further practice can be given with the target words incorporated into sentences. The students have a worksheet with multiple choice
answers :
A : What’s the time? B : It’s ten 13 / 30 / 14 / 40
A : What’s your address ? B : It’s 13 / 30 / 14 / 40 Katugastota Road.
Or alternatively a gap :
A : How much is this CD? B : It’s ……… Rupees. A : How old are you David? B : I’m ……….
The teacher then reads out the sentences with the missing numbers (40, 13, 30, 14 respectively) and the students listen and tick or write them down.
This last activity is, to all extents and purposes a targeted dictation. Traditional dictation went out of vogue for some time after the
back (5) tended to be top-down rather than bottom-up as in the
traditional variety. However, bottom-up dictations can be useful when they are targeted to help students with one specific decoding problem – as here.
Minimal pair work and targeted dictations can be used with other phonological decoding problems – for example weak forms. Just two examples :
a) again at beginner level, students may have difficulty recognising the the difference between is and was, especially if the preceding pronoun is also weakened. Sentences like ……… in Rome for three days; ……… my best friend ; ……… very tired can be used, with the teacher saying at random he is or he was.
b) at a higher level, the same thing can be done to help students hear the weak form of have in sentences like She should have put it away. The activity uses various sentences which may be either she modal + infinitive or she modal + have done :
She should / should have put it away; It must /must have hurt a lot; She should /should have let me know; You should/ should have run home; They couldn’t /couldn’t have cut it up smaller; They can’t /can’t have shut the gate; They should/should have split the profits; It must /must have upset you.
occasional activity, if it’s used to revise some of the features which have previously been targeted individually. I generally use a short paragraph or dialogue which the students have already worked on earlier in the course and use a technique very similar to the one I described
in Planning the Listening Lesson :
Start by reading the whole text all while the students simply
listen.
Read the text phrase by phrase keeping to a natural speed,
rhythm etc. Continue reading each phrase while the students write, until you see everyone has finished. If there are clearly problems, slow the phrase down and clarify the pronunciation until they get it, and then speed up again so that they have the chance to hear the naturally pronounced phrase again.
By the end they should have an accurate version of the text
(disregarding spelling problems, which are not a primary objective here). However, if you have a very large class it may be difficult to be sure of this. In this case let them compare their version with a partner, asking them to underline anything which is different. Then reread the passage so they can check which was the correct version.
At the end, let them look back at the original text in their books
and make any final corrections, including spelling.
specific problems of his/her students are and ensure that activities are built in systematically to deal with them.
Planning A Listening Lesson
In two previous articles I looked firstly at the problems students have when listening to spoken English, and secondly at two approaches to processing the spoken word : top-down and bottom up listening. Briefly, bottom-up processing involves decoding sounds to understand words, words to understand phrases and so on, while top-down
processing means interpreting the text in the light of background knowledge – whether of the world or of the language – in order to decide meaning, but if these terms are new to you I suggest reading both previous articles before going on with this.
In the last article, I suggested that focusing exclusively on either a top-down or bottom-up approach was insufficient when teaching listening, and that listening lessons need to develop the students’ competence in both areas. Apart from anything else, listening generally involves using both approaches simultaneously, with each one compensating for the deficiencies of the other.
approaches. To illustrate it I shall use a listening text which is available on the web and which you can, if you wish, use with your own classes. The text comes from ESL Podcards (1). It is a scripted monologue talking about the life of the actor, Sean Connery and would be suitable for a class from about FCE level up. I suggest you listen to it, without looking at the transcript, before reading on. As soon as you finish, note down a) anything which was going on in your mind, relative to understanding the text, as you listened, and b) what you remember of the information given.
Listening to the text without the transcript is an essential part of planning a listening lesson. Unless the text in question is on a topic which they know more about and understand better than you, students are unlikely to be able to retain any more of the text than you are. You therefore need to identify what and how much this is. Similarly, if
something causes a comprehension problem for you, it is unrealistic to expect the students to understand it without help. If possible listen to the recording in the same room and using the same equipment as you will during the lesson – acoustics and equipment quality can seriously affect the intelligibility of any recording.
As I listened to the text, I found myself first of all focusing on particular facts which either I hadn’t known and which surprised me, or which I had known but had forgotten. These were the details that I
remembered after the first listening. Even these however were hazy. Immediately after listening I told my son that Connery had won the Mr Universe competition, convinced that that was what I had heard.
sentence. It happened again with the phrase he has been vociferous, where he has was an “acoustic blur” which I only actually decoded after hearing been vociferous. This is the type of item which you will only pick up if you listen to the recording before reading the tapescript, as once you "know" what is there, you will automatically "hear" it.
Once you’ve listened to the text and analysed it in this way, you can then listen again while you look at the transcript. This time you’re
looking for items that may not have been a problem for you, but which you know might be for the students. This might be vocabulary items or structures which they don’t know, pronunciation features or any of the features of spoken English which were discussed in the first article.
As with any lesson, the activities you actually use will be determined by your objectives. Having listened to the text I decided that my skills
objectives (2) for this text would be:
The students will :
a) use prediction of content to aid their gist understanding of the text. b) practise extracting detailed information from the text.
c) improve their ability to understand various features of pronunciation such as weak forms, elision and assimilation.
The first part of my lesson would focus would be Listening for Gist and would focus on the first aim. During the Gist Listening stage the student is encouraged to listen for overall understanding of the message of the text without necessarily retaining all the minor details, or being able to repeat back the exact words the speaker used.
Warm-Up : This stage aims to activate the students knowledge of
then divide them into groups of about three and ask them to tell each other everything they know about him. When they finish, elicit their ideas and write everything they say on the board without commenting on its accuracy. If they have contradictory ideas, both ideas go up.
Listening for Gist : Play the recording while the students listen to
find out :
a) which of the facts on the board are confirmed by the text b) which are contradicted
c) if the text gives any other information
The students may need to hear the tape more than once to complete the task - ask them after the first play if they'd like a repetition. Be careful however not to accept a 'No' answer just from the stronger students. Check with the weaker, less confident ones too and allow the listening phase to run at their pace.
Follow Up : After listening, the students discuss these questions in
At this point the students would seem to be at the same stage as I was after my initial listening to the recording. However, there is a
difference. Whilst I may not have retained all the facts in the text, and while my memory may even have distorted those which I focused on, as a native speaker I certainly heard and understood all the other information which the tape contained at the moment of listening. Understanding and retention are two different processes, and need to be treated as such in the classroom. The next part of the lesson
therefore aims to check if the students can actually understand the information given without asking them to retain it :
Listening for detailed information : the teacher gives out a
worksheet with questions such as : Connery is English; He wasn’t highly educated; Acting was his first job; He won the Mr Universe competition; His first job as an actor was in the theatre; and so on. Notice that the questions, although calling for more detailed
comprehension than in the first stage, don’t call for understanding of any words, structures or pronunciation features which I suspect the students won’t recognise – for example the word undertaker, or the pronunciation features which I earlier identified as liable to be
problematic.
Students first discuss the questions in pairs, marking off any that have already been answered and any that they think they remember the answer to. The tape is then replayed once or twice and the students confirm, change or complete their answers as they listen. The follow up is the same as for the gist stage.
understand unless the text contains clear contextual clues as to the meaning (in which case inferring meaning from context would be a useful objective for a lesson using that text). But rather about words or structures which they have met, but simply failed to decode.
The text contains a number of examples of pronunciation features of connected speech such as weak forms and assimilation. Some of these, as a native speaker, I was able to decode immediately using a purely bottom-down approach because I expected them to be pronounced that way – in the case of most native speakers this is, of course, a non-conscious expectation. Two examples of this are the pronunciation of would have beenwith the weakening of both have and been and the assimilation in had towhich changes the /d/ to a /t/ sound. For others, like the examples of and like and has been mentioned above, bottom-up decoding was insufficient even for me and I had to use a top-down approach – deciding what must have been there based on my
recognition of what came next and my knowledge of the language. Students need to be encouraged to use this top-down approach, but we can also help by ensuring that they recognise these pronunciation features so that they too are expecting them. The final part of the lesson focuses on this aim :
Listening for language : the teacher gives out a worksheet which
contains examples of the pronunciation features which s/he has predicted will cause the students problems. In addition, if any of the answers to the tasks in the first two stages are still unconfirmed (those with question marks still against them) the teacher writes that section of text on the board gapping the words which appear to be causing problems. Here is an example of the items I might gap from the final paragraph of this text :
……….independent Sri Lanka …………. ambassador ……….
country. He received a knighthood ………. Queen Elizabeth in ……….. so now we ……….. Sir D.B. Jayathilaka.
The students look at the gapped sentences and, in pairs, predict what they think will be the missing words, leaving any which they can’t think of. The teacher then replays the recording, this time pausing after each gap. The students should have the chance to hear each phrase several times – repeat it yourself two or three times keeping the same intonation, speed and pronunciation features while they correct or complete the transcript. Elicit what they think and write it on the board. If everyone has understood, go straight to the next phrase. However, if some haven’t, put up alternative versions without confirming or correcting and then repeat the phrase again a few times – this time gradually slowing down and progressively clarifying the pronunciation. Then once every student has understood, progressively speed up again adding in the reduction. Add the sentence to the board and ask students how each element is pronounced. You can also
model alternative versions with greater or lesser reductionsWrite the words in phonological script to give them a written model of the pronunciation. In this way, they are more likely to “expect” those words to be pronounced in that way the next time they encounter them, and their bottom-up processing abilities should gradually improve. (3)
What about other features of the text that might cause problems, such as unknown vocabulary and structure? There are various items in this text which I wouldn’t necessarily expect students to know - undertaker, reservations, suave, tight, tall order, tuxedo, suggested that he
audition etc. But none of them really blocks comprehension of the text and I have chosen here not to focus on them – indeed my tasks were designed so as to avoid them. Keep in mind that you can’t do
However, by the end of the lesson many students want to have
understood everything, and I would always finish by handing out the transcript and letting students listen again while they follow it. They would then have the chance to ask about the meaning of any words or expressions which they did not fully understand.
Notes
1. A note about the choice of the text. I was not, in this instance looking for authentic material – I’ll write another time about using authentic material in the classroom. My first reason for choosing this text was that it is freely available on the web and can be accessed by everyone – had I chosen a text from a coursebook, it would have been harder for those people not using that book to check what I was talking about. I also discarded anything from the web which is video-based as not everyone has a computer in the classroom – podcasts can either be listened to straight from the computer or downloaded – and which did not provide a transcript. For the purposes of this article, I would have preferred to use a dialogue than a monologue, but couldn’t find
anything which met all those criteria. If you know of anything suitable, please leave a comment with the web address.
Notice also that this text has a primarily transactional purpose – its main aim is to convey information. The features which it contains are therefore different from those which would be contained in a text which was primarily interactional in intent – ie which focused mainly on establishing or promoting the relationship between the speakers.
2. When teaching listening, which can so easily cause demotivation for students, I think it is important that the teacher also builds affective objectives into each sequence of activities. These will affect not only what is done but, even more importantly, how it is done. Discussion of this aspect would, however, make this article too long and detract from the other points. I will therefore come back and analyses this lesson again, from this point of view, in a future article Do they need to understand every word? For now, bear in mind that the rationale for how the various stages are carried out will often lie in this area.
Teaching Listening : Top Down or Bottom Up?
In a previous article, I made a distinction between teaching listening and
In recent years there have been two major approaches to explaining the listening process – rather unfortunately called the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The bottom-up approach sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first decoding (or understanding) the smallest elements of what they hear – the
sounds. /p/ is recognised as being /p/ and not /b/, /i:/ as being /i:/ and not /i/ or / e/ and so on. These sounds are then combined and the individual words are decoded – the listener recognises that s/he has heard /pi:t/ and not /pit/ /bit/ /bi:t/ /bi:d/ or some other word. The words are then combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning of /pi:t/ : as in I saw Pete yesterday or I bought some peat for the garden. To this will be added recognition of features such as intonation and so on, until we finally reach the non-linguistic context.
The top-down approach starts from the opposite end : it sees understanding as starting from the listener’s background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of working down towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively
interpret what they hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the world in general. For example, imagine I tell you :
McKenzy brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried it in the garden. I think I’m going to have to put a bell round his neck.
You will certainly understand all the words in this passage, but do you understand the meaning? Think back to what happened as you read. The first sentence
probably went quite smoothly. But there was more than just decoding of words going on. Without your even being aware of it, subconscious expectations were forming in your mind based on your knowledge of the world – McKenzy is
probably a friend, probably a man as only the surname is used, the present will be something nice etc. The existence of these presuppositions is shown by the fact that you probably did a double-take when you got to the second sentence – buried it? Eh?? And at that point you will have started to search quite consciously for the meaning.
Maybe by the end you’d worked it out. If so, then notice that it was your
of half dead birds and mice which they’ve caught, and the fact that the noise of a bell will prevent the cat from creeping up on them unheard) and you have the meaning of the passage.
However much help you did or didn’t need, you can see that in understanding the passage a lot more was going on than just passively decoding the sounds (or in this case letters, as you were reading it - but the principle is the same) then the words, then the sentences. Your mind was working actively to interpret the passage, and using a large amount of non-textual information to do so. And how easy it was will depend on how close to the forefront of your mind that
information was. If, as you read the passage, your cat was sitting on your lap, you probably tuned in immediately. If you have never owned a cat, it may have taken longer.
In recent years it has been the chief approach to listening comprehension in the EFL classroom, and has led to teachers telling students things such as You don’t need to understand every word, What would you expect him to say? or Try and identify the main ideas and guess the rest.
I’m not trying to suggest that this is not a valid approach. It is. The switch to a top-down approach was a necessary change from the exaggerated bottom-up
approach which in some cases remained current in foreign language teaching as late as the 1960s. In this approach, the learner’s listening ability was seen as being evidenced by his or her ability to take down a dictated paragraph in exactly the same form as it was read out, or to answer detailed comprehension questions on a written passage read by the teacher. With no exposure to the natural features of spoken language, and with no training in the type of listening strategies
emphasised in the top-down approach, it was little wonder that even supposedly advanced level students returned from their first trip to Britain, the States etc saying I didn’t understand a word anyone said!
recognition of the importance of top-down processing.
But have we gone too far? Students still come back from their trips saying I didn’t understand a word and still frequently hate doing listening comprehension in the classroom. However often the teacher says If you’ve been able to answer the questions then you’ve understood the text, they don’t really believe it. They know there were chunks that they were unable to decode, and feel insecure – in the worst case scenario losing confidence in the teacher or the course.
Why is this happening? I would suggest that for a while we went too far over to the other extreme, and have often forgotten that, even if they start from the top, students still need to get to the bottom. Listening lessons have tended to stop half-way. We help students apply knowledge of the world and contextual
knowledge to the text. We encourage them to focus on what they do understand rather than what they don’t by teaching them to focus on key words and infer connections. All this is valid and necessary. But what about the rest? I would argue that if we are going to help students improve their comprehension, we do need to focus on what they don’t understand. For example, if the item that blocked comprehension was a weak form we need to help them analyse the pronunciation features so that they will be more ready for it the next time. For while it is true that native speakers don’t “hear” every word either, there’s a difference. If, as a native speaker I hear a sequence of sounds something
likeumgernaseeyimlader or eelerbinsurprised, I have no trouble decoding those sentences as I’m going to see him later and He’ll have been surprised, even though I can’t be said, for example, to have heard the words to, will or have – they simply weren’t there. But as a native speaker I have a non-conscious
knowledge of both the phonological features and the grammar of the language. The first, for example, means that I expect him to be pronounced /im/, and know that if /im/ is preceeded by a vowel, the linking consonant /j/ will be inserted. So when I hear what is apparently “yim”, I have no problem decoding it as him. Decoding “er” (the schwa sound) as have is also a matter of knowing that haveis often pronounced like this in a unstressed position, but it is also helped by my knowledge of grammar : I know that if I’ve decoded will and been, then have must be in the middle, whether I hear it or not.
see? A face? Rubbish – it’s just two circles, a straight line and a curved line. Totally unconnected. But your brain puts them together and tries to make sense of them. Because it’s seen a lot of faces and knows that they have to have those elements, that’s what it sees. It’s the same with listening - the words don't have to "be there" for the competent listener to "hear" them.
The problem for our learners of course is that they don’t have native speaker competence and therefore their brains can’t “fill in the gaps” like this. Which is why, using the top-down approach, we need to help them develop other listening strategies to the full, to help them to compensate. However, by also taking a bottom-up approach, I think we can help them improve their ability to decode sounds , words and phrases
I’ll exemplify this in the next article in this series by looking at a possible structure for a listening lesson which incorporates both approaches. It starts with a top-down approach, but then moves on to activities aimed at improving students ability to decode sounds, words and phrases “bottom-up”.
Practising Listening
activities which will help to resolve them.
When we think about a “listening lesson” we are probably thinking of the second approach. What your objectives are for this type of lesson, how it should be staged and what activity types you should use, will be the topic of another article. Here, however, I’d like to look in detail at the first type of activity : practising listening.
Every time the teacher speaks in English in the classroom - whether to give instructions, to explain a grammar point, or just to chat as the class starts to arrive - the students are in effect practising listening. This opportunity for
constant exposure to the spoken language is one of the main arguments for using English rather than the L1 in the classroom - although, there may also be
arguments against it.
Teacher talk may also be built into the lesson in a more conscious attempt to provide listening practice, and the third part of the Teacher Talking Time series suggested a number of ways that this can be done. Notice however that in all these activities, the students’ task is simply to listen for the gist of the
conversation and to respond in some way. The activities may teach strategies to cope with non-comprehension, such as asking for explanation, but do not attempt to improve the students’ comprehension itself. It is the exposure in its own right which is seen as valuable.
Teacher Talk Listenings tend to be quite short, and are often broken up into even shorter chunks – as in interactive story-telling (described in TTT3) or TPR -. What about using longer stretches of recorded material for listening practice?
then repeat the section while at the same time following the text/subtitles to see if their understanding was correct . On the third listening, they pause to check any unknown words or to replay phrases which they found particularly unclear. They then listen to the same section a final time, this time without the text/subtitles, concentrating on “hearing” the words they know are there.
If they are using this technique students must realise that the text is only as an aid to hearing the words. If they understand simply because they have seen the written form, they are not practising listening at all, but reading. The written form is used to give them confidence and to help them relate the sounds they hear to the words they know must be there. They also need to realise that to be
successful, this technique has to be used frequently – the whole premise behind the “practising listening” approach is thatgradual improvement results
from constant exposure.
If there is time, this technique can of course also be used in class. It is, in any case, useful to use it once at the beginning of the course to demonstrate the technique, but it can also be used regularly:
In classes where for some reason you cannot ask students to buy extra material
In classes where you are looking for a fairly relaxed activity to provide variety of focus – perhaps as the day’s final activity in an all-day intensive course, or in a one-to one-lesson where you and the student know each other inside out and are running out of things to talk about.
In any class where listening is a prime objective – whether because of the
students’ specific communicative needs, or because it is a major weakness – and you want to dedicate extra time to the skill.
Practising listening does not, however, replace the need to teach listening, which will probably take up most of the time dedicated to listening in the classroom. In the next two articles in this series we’ll look at what a "teaching listening"
