Listening


 * CHAPTER 4 **
 * LISTENING: QUESTIONS OF LEVEL **
 * Tony Lynch **

Listening: The Question of Level There is a common concern in past decade’s researchers’ work on listening comprehension which is about recognizing and understanding of the concept “level”. The recognition of the concept “level” was the common issue of the most researchers’ work in the past decades. Most of the researchers’ concern is how to define “level” in Listening comprehension .In Recent studies the researchers started to focus on the questions such as “what is the difference between skilled and unskilled listener behavior? . The process of comprehension is very complicated, even if we listen to a speaker in our native language and we are in reasonable acoustic conditions


 * RESEARCH INTO LISTENING **


 * Modeling the Process **

Information processing which is based on Anderson’s three-stage comprehension model (Perception-Parsing – Utilization) is a very important paradigm in listening comprehension. Listeners can deal with the task by some form of PDP (parallel distributed processing). PDP models of language processes is similar to the work of brain cells, it synthesize the information from multiple sources. Barsalou (1999) one of the critics of this model, states that the purpose of the comprehension is not the same as that of the computers, which is to “archive” information, but to make the individuals ready for real-world actions.

Phonetic, phonological, prosodic, lexical, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic- these are the levels at which the spoken information is interpreted.
 * Levels of processing **

The author describes and analyses on the lowest and the highest levels. At the phonetic level speakers should concentrate on certain signals given by interlocutors, which will give some clue about the topic and the overall procedure of the conversation. This is the highest level of interpretation of the spoken language which in its own right gives ground to the understanding of the listener’s experience of their culture in helping them to cope with another culture. After conducting a study with immigrant workers, Bremer et al. (1996) came to the conclusion that high level factors influence understandings and misunderstandings, revealing some linguistic complications, social and cultural distinctions. Influences on listening Test Performance There are key variables which have great influence on the listening test scores. Some of those are associated with the input, to the task, and to the listener. These issues haven’t been investigated much until the last few years. But during the last few years they have been investigates by several scholars. For example, Wu changed the approach of the studies of test method on candidate’s performance from psychometric into mentalistic. And his research results showed that failure in linguistic processing may allow learners make inappropriate decisions with their activated schematic knowledge and also that competence in linguistic processing restricts nonlinguistic activation. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Another investigation was done by Tsui and Fullilove who wanted to find out whether the difference between successful and unsuccessful L2 listening performance can be assigned to failure in either top-down or bottom-up processing. And they found out that Bottom-up processing seemed to be more important in discriminating the listening performance. It can be inferenced from this that less skilled L2 learners are weak at the bottom level, they should rely more on accurate linguistic decoding.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Accessing ** **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">the ** **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Process **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Researchers who investigate issues connected with listening skills have no access to the mental activities of the students. In 1997 Ross introduced a hypothesis that while learning the second language students go through different processing strategies: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">1. Noise <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">2. Distraction <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">3. Syllable restructuring <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">4. Syllable identification <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">5. Key word association <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">6. Linking with more than one key words <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">7. Recognition of phrases <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">8. Recognition of whole utterances. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to Ross, key word association is the most common level among weak listeners. More profecient listeners have an ability to hear key words, keep them in minds and find supporting details for understand the whole message.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Factors That Influence Processing **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to Rubin (1994) there are five factors influencing processing. They are as follows: //text, speaker, task, listener, and process//. But the listener's relevant topical knowledge may also have its influence on processing. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to Lynch (n.d.) listening ability can be viewed as a hierarchy having lower and higher level subskills; so processing includes moving from //decoding// up to //interpretation// and //critical evaluation//. But listening skills are also divided into three types connected with //perception, interpretation,// and //enacting// (Rost, 1990:152-153). <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lynch (n.d.) states that learner's listening strategies can be devided into three groups: //metacognitive// (e.g. planning, managing), //cognitive// (such as conscious use of context and schemata), //social and effective// (e.g. requests for clarification).


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">THE TEACHING OF LISTENING: SKILLS AND/OR STRATEGIES **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to Brown (1977), in teaching listening we should design a unit of a course which takes into account the so-called “linguistic proficiency” which is the ability to cope with word boundaries, weak forms, elision, etc., and all the other units will put stress on advancing strategy and “metastrategic awareness”. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Field (1998, 2000) argument about the aforementioned points is: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">1. The skills of listening are competencies that native speakers have already acquired and L2 learners still need to acquire. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">2. Strategies are compensatory <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">3. Teachers must help students improve their bottom-up and top-down strategies.

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