Transformative Teachers
Webinar 11 - Listening from gist to detail
Summary notes
Thank you for participating in the Trinity College London teacher support webinar series. We are delighted to have over 1000 teachers from 70 countries participate in the series.
In this webinar, Anna Bennet, from the Trinity Italian academic team, is interviewed by University Recognition Manager, Jonathan Frank. Anna and Jonathan discuss listening from gist to detail, with some practical classroom suggestions. During the interview, they talk about how developing listening skills can vary depending on the CEFR level targeted - and they also discuss how best to use films to help learners of English.
If you were unable to attend the webinar, you can watch is again via the following link:
Webinar 11 video - Listening from gist to detail
Summary of questions and responses
Interview: Anna Bennet and Jonathan Frank
Is Robin saying we shouldn’t use films with our learners?
Watching movies may not be the best way to develop independent listening strategies. It's good for being able to get the ‘gist’ of a listening, but because there is so much visual information and an ongoing narrative, learners call upon a range of strategies to gain understanding. But this does not really train learners so much on detailed listening. Of course, it’s good practice, but we need to focus on other strategies to help our students develop better independent listening skills.
What are the challenges we face when we listen?
- Listening is a dynamic process and not a passive state. Learners need to work hard at becoming efficient listeners – it’s not something that happens as an overnight process.
- We listen twice as much as we speak, we listen 4 times as much as we read and we listen 5 times more then we write. So we can see how the importance of listening should not be underestimated.
- For second language or foreign language learners, listening is the skill that makes the heaviest processing demands because learners must store information in the short-term memory at the same time as they are working to understand the information.
- There are a range of processes going on simultaneously: the decoding of phonological information, so that the listener can engage with individual words; then there is the parsing, grouping words into bigrams or collocations, so that a sentence level interpretation can be decerned (See John Field 2005). And then there is the decoding of the wider discourse, within the context of the listening, bringing together a range of sentences in the short term memory.
- The difficulty is that all of this happens in real-time and the text or speaker does not stop to give thinking time to the listener - so if one word, or collocation, etc is misunderstood - often the listener is ‘thrown’ off course.
What do we mean by top-down or bottom-up?
- When you listen to a text the objective is to ascertain an understanding of what that text (or speaker) is attempting to communicate. The ‘interpretation’ of the text comes from two places, from the language that the text is constructed from and from the background knowledge that the listener has at their disposal, sometimes referred to as schemata.
- Top-down processing involves calling upon schemata, all my background knowledge and expereice, linguistic resource and memory. Bottom-up processing involves interpretation of the actual content of the text.
- We know that different types of listening text, and different degrees of listening ability call upon a mix of top-down and bottom-up processes; by teaching listening strategies explicitly we can enable learners to consciously adopt an approach to a text to help improve their listening.
What is the relationship between schemata and understanding gist?
- We refer to activating schemata, often this is done before a listening activity, by introducing a topic so learners can bring to mind the relevant information in preparation to deal with the text. Imagine I told you that we were going to listen to an interview with a pop star, and then I play a financial news report, it would be very difficult to process as you would have activated the wrong schemata. In fact, this is an interesting class activity, introducing a text in the wrong way, as it raises awareness of how important the right schemata is.
- Whilst listening, even without an introduction, the listener engages and activates a wide range of processes; memories, linguistic resource, emotions etc as they gather what the text is about. The conscious global understanding of a text, made as the listener activates schemata, gives their understanding of the gist of the text, of the overall meaning. A learner will usually listen to a text and assign a gist meaning, and in turn further activate schemata to help with detailed understanding, possibly upon second listening.
- This is why gist questions are so important, as once the correct gist is established, and the correct schemata has been activated, this in turn helps the learner further 'tune in' to ascertain detailed meaning.
What does Robin say about note-taking in the video
- Robin discusses the issues around listening at B2 and C1 level. He points out that listening is often challenging for learners and underlines the importance of making leraners aware of the purpose of their listening. Learners need to know why they are listening to a particular text so that they know how they have to listen.
- He also makes the key point that learners should adapt the way they take notes based on the type of text they are about to hear. For example, if learners hear a prompt that includes advantages and disadvantages of something, or ideas for and against something, then it is logical that their notes would be in two columns. Where as in other cases a mind map may be more appropriate.
How can we improve learners’ global listening?
- Firstly, it’s important for learners to remember that it isn’t necessary to understand everything! Many words are not essential - you can get the message without getting all the words.
- Most texts include a lot of redundancy (See Ur 2008), where content is repeated, re-cast or rephrased, and listeners have the chance to review what they have heard as it is presented for the second or even third time within the same text.
- Often what is important is emphasised or stressed, so we need to get out learners to concentrate on that. We also need to encourage our students to try to predict or guess the words that they are unsure of.
- In the case of preparing students for ISE II or ISE II, students are given an overview of what the talk is about, in other words, a brief idea of the context of the listening text and therefore they can already think about what they expect to hear.
- Also we need to make sure that our learners are aware of the clues in the language which can help them to predict what is coming. For example, signals such as “There’s one point I’d like to make ….”, or something along the lines of “I’m afraid that ….” Signals that something negative will follow. Also the use of connectors such as “though …”, " on the one hand ….”, sequencers such as “Firstly …”, “Next ….” and so on.
Robin mentioned expository texts, could you elaborate on what he means by this?
- Within the educational domain, texts are used to convey information and are therefore not the type of text we would identify with free communication. In that sense, they are rather artificial, as they are loaded with more content than you would find in a conversational or interactive context.
- This means, learners need to be prepared to cope with the load on their processing memory to be able to process the high level of detail – this is why note-taking strategies are so key to success, as they lessen the cognitive load.
- Many strategies can be used in the classroom to identify the key information in such a text, notably stress (tonic words with a higher pitch), pauses, fronting and so on.
What is the biggest difference between B2 and C1 listening?
- I think the biggest difference is inference. Inference is a very important skill at higher levels and it is one that is often left out at lower levels as it is considered a higher level of comprehension. It is that skills of “listening between the lines”
Inference is neither magic nor pure imagination - It ‘s hearing meaning that is there, even when the words aren’t!
What are the best places to find good listening texts?
- Texts need to be appropriate for level, but this is more about the task that is applied to a text.
- Where possible, authentic texts are preferable as they engage a wider range of authentic listening strategies on behalf of the listener, however, additional support is often needed.
- Use exam board provided materials for level (see Trinity web-site).
- Use expository texts if you are preparing for an independent listening task – film and video are good for gist and for more interactive listening activities.
- Other sources include: bbc, TED, British Council, etc…
Suggested activities:
Connected Speech
Exposing students to different recordings and providing them with activities that focus on the way sounds change in natural speech, is a good way of improving students’ ability to understand connected speech. I find that even at higher levels student often thing that the speed of delivery is too fast at times and maybe if they are unaware of how connected speech sounds, they are unable to hear and recognise even words that they know and therefore are not always able to grasp the general meaning of the text.
Activity 1 – Raising awareness for Gist Listening
One activity that I particularly like is an awareness-raising one since students are quite often fully aware of their listening problems, they may not associate their difficulties with the strategies they use. Alternatively, learners may know their strategy use is ineffective but lack knowledge about more effective strategies and how to apply them. This activity builds confidence in listening for gist as well as highlighting:
- Teachers compile several short extracts of different listening genres in an unfamiliar language that they know none of their students speak. Genres may include a radio commercial, sports commentary or news report.
- Students listen to each excerpt, identifying the genre and justifying their interpretation. The students’ decisions are discussed as a class. Students are normally amazed at how much they are able to determine, merely from tone of voice and speed of delivery.
- Similar extracts can then be played using excerpts in the second or target language. This type of activity generates an awareness of listening strategies and the confidence to try new strategies.
Activity 2 – Dictogloss
The big picture can be just as important as the details. When students listen for just the gist, they begin to realise that a general understanding is often enough. Listening for gist enables students to gather broad information, and then use it to discuss, debate, and support opinions.
- The teacher explains the purpose of the activity: to listen for general comprehension. There are no comprehension questions, and students shouldn't take notes.
- Students listen to the teacher read the text, or they listen to a recording. If the text is read, then it’s important that the reading speed is just slightly above the ability of the class, otherwise the activity will be far too easy.
- Students get into pairs. Both students provide a one or two sentence summary of what they heard in the previous step. The summary ensures that everyone more or less has the broadest comprehension.
- Students continue in the same pairs. They now provide a recap of the information from Step Two. Students should focus on the big picture, although some details may be added.
5.The teacher reads the piece aloud once more. Students listen without taking notes.
6.Students get into pairs again and confirm, correct and add to the information provided in Step Four.
- The teacher distributes the transcript. Students have a few minutes to go over the piece silently, after which they once more confirm, correct, and add to the information previously discussed.
Activity 3 – Sequencing
In this type of activity students listen to a text and number a list of events or details in the order they are referred to.
Activity 4 – Correcting
Students listen to a text and correct a written version of the transcript that contains incorrect pieces of information.
Activity 5 – Blotting out chunks
As I mentioned earlier there are often clues in the language which can help learners to predict what is coming in the text. To bring learners attention to these chunks of language and to the important role that signposting plays in our ability to follow the discourse, we can provide our students with a copy of the transcript but with these chunks blotted out and get learners to listen for this specific language.
Activity 6 - Familiarising learners with Prosodic feature - helping identify what detail matters in a text?
- Tell group they are going to hear part of a news article from the radio. Brainstorm what listening sub-skills they will require to comprehend the content. Align these suggestions to the sub-skills listed for both interactive and independent listening.
- Pre-listening tasks: Show group an introduction to the news article – either on HO or screen if available. Ask pairs to summarise what they think will be in the article. Lead on to discussion of why it’s necessary to have a predictive task as part of a listening activity. Explain bottom-up and top-down processing and the role of activating schemata to improve listening ability.
- Tell group they are only going to listen to the first sentence of the radio programme. The first time the group only listen to the sentence – then they need to write down the sentence exactly as they hear it. (NB – if equipment is not available this can be done as a dictation).
- Repeat the sentence as many times as the group require – this could be 20 times – explain the difference between teaching listening and testing listening.
- Ask one of the groups to come and write their sentence on the flip chart. Then ask all groups to compare this with their sentence to see if they are the same or different.
- Show group the original text – this can be on HO or on screen if possible.
- Highlight any differences – these will probably fall within the non-key or grammatical words
- Ask group to identify tone units and tonics – explain what these are if necessary. Highlight how syllables in non-keywords usually adopt a schwa.
- Tell the group they are going to read the sentence with the presenter. Drill each tone unit with the group, highlighting the way the voice changes with tonics and non-key words. Play the sentence several times and ask group to read and listen at the same time. Explain how this gives exemplars of intonation units.
- Review which listening sub-skills are being employed in this activity and state that any listening text can be used.
Activity 7 – Inferring
Students listen to short extracts and “listen between the lines” to identify what was intended by an utterance even though the speaker didn’t directly say what was intended. I’ll use a very simple example to get the idea across. Imagine a conversation a mother and her son. The son says “I’m going out to play tennis.” And the mother replies “it’s cold outside, isn’t it?”. To understand this brief exchange listeners must infer, and then possibly conclude , that since since it is cold outside, the mother’s intention is that the son should not go out. If we were to use this type of listening, then as teachers we’d ask our students something like “what does the mother mean?” This is a very simple example, but it introduces students to the fact that even though everything that is said is perfectly understandable there is a meaning to the discourse that exceeds the understanding of each of the utterances or parts of it.
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We very much look forward to welcoming you to the 12th webinar on Wednesday 1 August at 13:00 UK time, when Trinity's Alex Thorp, Lead Academic, Language (Europe), will be interviewing Tom Garside, Academic Consultant. They will be discussing the process of writing, - exploring how we can teach strategies to help learners improve their writing skills.
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