LISTENING: QUESTIONS OF LEVEL FRANCISCO FUENTES NICOLAS VALENZUELA

RESEARCH INTO LISTENING

MODELING THE PROCESS Understanding is achieved through a serie of steps. Parallel distributed processing (PDP) The purpose of comprehension is not primary “archive” information

LEVELS OF PROCESSING The levels at which spoken information is available for interpretation include: 1. Phonetic 2. Phonological 3. Prosodic 4. Lexical 5. Syntactic 6. Semantic 7. Pragmatic

ACCESSING THE PROCESS Eight processing stages, ranging from the more primitive to more complex. noise - no response distraction - process overload syllable restructuring - mishearing syllable identification key word association linking with more than one keywords recognition of phraser recognition of whole utterances.

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE PROCESSING Five characteristics that affect the ease or difficulty of listening. text speaker task listener process

THE TESTING OF LISTENING, a quite difficult labour to achieve

Main difficulties for test designer and performer ● Difficulty to design “pure” tests without interference of objects, such as memory and background knowledge. ● Poor listeners of L2 that rely on contextual and topical guessing, should rely more on rapid and accurate linguistic decoding.

Coping with the process: Skills and strategies Level is important when talking about hierarchical attributes allowing successful listening: ● Lower subskills, like decoding and literal recognition of utterance. ● Higher order subskills, such as interpretation, and critical evaluation.

Coping with the process: Skills and strategies Three main groups of listening strategies: 1. Metacognitive: Planning, regulating and managing. 2. Cognitive: Facilitate comprehension, e.g. conscious use of context knowledge. 3. Social & affective: Listener requests for clarification, positive self-talk.

INFLUENCES ON LISTENING TEST PERFORMANCE ● Key variables that affect listening test scores: 1. Input: Lexical characteristics, length of text, register. 2. Task: Clarity of instructions, output required, amount of context provided. 3. Listener: memory, topic knowledge, motivation.

The teaching of listening: skills and/or strategies ● We should change the actual focus on strategies into skills.: 1. Skills of listening are competencies that natives possess and non-natives need to aquire. 2. Strategies are compensatory and its use should be avoided. 3. Teachers tend to regard strategies as substitute for skills.

Conclusions ● L2 learning ability does not advances in a straightforward way, but in a muli-dimensional way. ● Listening involves physiological and cognitive processes at different levels. (perception, recognition, interpretation). ● Even most basic spoken messages carry multiple levels of meaning. ● Relationship between overall L2 proficiency and ability to understand spoken language is far from straightforward. ● Listening research in the future probably will include more “human” concepts and less computer-like ones (e.g. Input, processing) ● Technologies will provide teachers with better equipments regarding listening performance (Higher quality videos or sounds).