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/builta reply to Tony RidgwayJohn FieldStrategic approaches tosecond languageskills acquisition offer an easytarget giventhe inconclusive natureo f much of theresearchin thisarea,acertain amount of terminological confusion, and the haphazard taxo-nomiesthathave beenproposed.Butitisunfairtoblame themessageforthepackage in which itcomes andTony Ridgwayis hasty in dism issingtheconceptofstrategyinstructionasreadilyashedoes.He isalsoproneto overlook the ideas ofthose among them, myself) who adopt a morepragm atic task-driven approach to the issue . And, while I e ndorse thepoints thathe makesaboutthe natureofthe listeningskill theconclusionsthat I draw inrespecto ftheL2 listenerarevery different from his.In this article, I question some of the assumptions which underlieRidgway s thinking attem pt som e definitions, respond to the m ainarguments that Ridgway puts forward, and examine the alternativewhich he proposes.

Some Underlying Ridgway s paper are three large assumptions. In drawingquestionable attention to their shortcomings, I trace a rationale for the veryassumptions approaches which Ridgway rejects.

Sntroduction

Assumption V.more equalsbetter When I wrote (1998) that more reading does not necessarily m eanbetter reading , I assumed that nowadays the proposition wasuncontroversial. It is indisputable that many readers and listeners doindeed improve with practice: increased exposure to the target languageleads to vocabulary developm ent and heightened language awareness aswell as providing grea ter experience in applying the skills. Bu t, as everyteacher can testify, there are some weak readers and many more weaklisteners who simply do not improve. Their failure to puzzle outmeanings at an early stage results in a loss of confidence. W hen a teacher(following the kind of graded approach advocated by Ridgway)confronts them with texts of ever-increasing complexity, these learnerssimply withdraw their co-operation. They give up.I recognize the value of extensive reading schemes; but, in proposingthem as a solution to the problems of L2 readers, Ridgway isconfounding two different issues. He wants readers to have accessibleand interesting texts because such texts give rise to what could betermed content motivation: the wish to read mo re. But he ignores adifferent kind of m otivationlet s call it process motivation whichreflects faith in one s ability to apply a skill competently, or at least

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Assumption 2:skills andstrategiesare transferredautomatically fromL1

competently enough to meet the demands of a particular task. If areader lacks this faith, then every new text, however interesting, willpose a threat rather than a pleasure.What we needand what a skills approach aims to provideis aprincipled way of tackling reade rs processing problem s at local and attext level, so that reading becomes easier and thus more enjoyable. Bytackling theprocessof reading (particularly, by diagnosing what is goingwrong with it) we enable readers to achieve precisely the greaterautomaticity that Ridgway argues for.1The issue of process is even more important for second-languagelisteners than for second-language readers. At the very least, an L2reader can tackle a text like a jigsaw puzzle, seeking pieces that fittogether. A listener who has difficulties in identifying words inconnected speech has no key at all to unlock the text, no matter howstimulating its con tent. O ffering this listener m ore listening passages willsimply add to their sense of failure. Hence the case for a remedialapproach (Field 1998) where we determine which sub-skills are givingrise to problems of understanding, then devise micro-exercises topractise them.Ridgway does not make clear whether this transfer of skills takes placeat the outset of learning a new language or only once a basic foundationof lexis and syntax has been laid. A thresho ld theory of second-language reading (Alderson 1984) holds that learners need to achieve acertain level of linguistic knowledge before they are able to employ thekind of natural reading process which is available to them in their nativelanguage. I have some reservations about the hypothesis, but let usassume that it can be extended to listening. The question remains: howdo learners manage to communicate during the longish period beforethey reach the knowledge threshold? They must have to adopt adifferent, more strategic, type of listening from that which they use intheir first language. Thus, even on this strong transfer hypothesis, theremust be a period during which learners have need of strategies andmight benefit from strategy training.It could be argued, of course, that no specific strategy training is neededbecause the appropriate compensatory strategies are already availablein LI. When two native-speakers talk in a noisy street or bar, theysupply by guesswork the parts of their conversation that are inaudible.Could this technique not be transferred automatically to a second-language context?The premise fails to take account of individual learning styles. Second-language listeners appear to fall into two distinct groups. The first arerisk-takers who are prepared to form hypotheses as to meaning evenwhere they have recognized little of the signal. The second are risk-avoiders who demand a large amount of hard bottom -up evidencebefore forming conclusions as to overall meaning. Neither group reactsin the way they would to first-language problems deriving from a noisyNot waving but drowning : a reply to Tony Ridgway 8

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Assum ption 3:simplerlanguageleads inevitably togreaterunderstanding

Some greyareas

environment. Risk-takers tend to cling obdurately to the hypothesesthey have formed instead of checking them carefully against what comesnext. Risk-avoiders feel inhibited by their inadequate recognition skillsand are reluctant to m ake inferences. O ne of the purposes of the kind ofstrategy training I advocate is to encourage risk-avoiders to take morerisks and to encourage risk-takers to proceed more cautiously.It might seem obvious that by simplifying a listening text one enhancesunderstanding. But this need not be the case. Firstly, what is gained bysyntactic simplification at sen tence level (for example, the subs titutionofsimple for complex sentences) is often lost in terms of coherence andcohesion at text level. Simplification can also result in much greaterdensity of informationparticularly as scripted texts often omit thekinds of rephrasing and repetition which abound in authentic ones.Weak coherence/cohesion and closely-packed information are proble-matic enough for the second-language reader. They pose even greaterproblems for the listener, given that (as Ridgway points out) listeningtakes place under pressure of time and without the opportunity ofchecking back.Secondly, the simplification assumption confuses knowledge of a wordor grammatical structure with the ability to recognize it. A recent pieceof research (Field unpublished) showed a large percentage of learners atIntermediate level failing to recognize known and frequent words whenthey occurred in connected speech. Ridgway admits the recognitionproblem, quoting findings for first-language listeners, but does not drawany implications for his own arguments. He mistakes the true natu re ofsecond-language listening if he believes that it can take place without aconsiderable amount of what he terms listening incomprehension .Even with graded texts, there will be sections that are not understood;second-language listeners at most levels depend upon compensatorystrategies to fill in blanks.Ridgway has a point when he refers to inconsistencies in the strategiesliteraturethough it is worth stressing that differences of interpretationand terminology do not invalidate a theory. There has been somedisagreement as to what a strategy is, while catch-all lists such asOxford s (1990) have stretched the notion of strategy about as far as itcan go . There has been discussion of the extent to which a strategy has tobe conscious (Faerch etal.1983: 35-6, Cohen 1998: 10-11). Many whohave w ritten on com munication strategies focus exclusively on strategiesof production (especially spoken production) and fail to extend theirremarks to include receptive strategies. Some writers use the terms skilland strategy very loosely or interchangeably without defining them .Others conflate communication and learning strategies without recog-nizing that they are different in form and purpose. Ironically, Ridgway sown piece falls into the last two traps.Here are some attempts to clear up areas of confusion.

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Strategy defined. Cohen defines strategies in terms of action taken toenhancethelearning oruse ofa second orforeign language, through thestorage, retention, recall and application of information about thatlanguage (1998:4).This seems a good,if general, pointof departure,and rather better thantheWenden definition quoted byRidgway, whichrelatesto learning strategies rather than tostrategies as awhole.Strategytypes. No te that C ohen specifies two classesofstrategy: learningstrategies and strategies of use i.e. communication strategies). Thistypologywasrecognized earlyon byFaerch andKasper (1983:2):

learning strategies contributeto the development of [interlanguage]systems, whereas communication strategies are used by a speakerwhen faced with some difficulty due to his communicative endsoutrunninghiscommunicative means.The classification is useful because it distinguishes two differentmotivations on the part of the learner and two different interactionsbetween working and long-term memory. Communication strategiesrepresent a response to an immediate problem, whereas learningstrategies relateto theneed tostore andretrieve linguistic informationlong-term. Granted, the use of a communication strategy may at timeslead to learning, but this will by no means always be the case. 2Aslearning strategies assist the acquisition of form, so communicationstrategiesareassociated withthedevelopmentoffluency.It is thelatterwhich providethebasis for aprincipled approach tostrategy instructionin the language skills in general and listening in particular. WhenRidgway mocks fringe learning strategies such as going to thecinema ,he rather missesthetarget.Skillsandstrategies. We should make a clear distinction between theterms skill and strategy , which Ridgway uses interchangeably. Ihavesuggested (1998) that in listening we employ skill orsubskill )torefertoone of a set of aptitudes which the first-language listener possessesand which the second-language listener aims to acquire.We can thenreservethe term (communication) strategy for those techniques whichL2 listeners employinorder tocompensate for their less than completeknowledge of the syntax and vocabulary of the target language. 3Obviously the reareoccasions where thetwo overlap;but thedistinctionisauseful onebecause of the implications formethodology. Ridgway sdiscussion should surely have distinguished between:1 a skills-based approach to listening, consisting of either teaching thesubskills of listening as part of a structured programme of micro-listening exercisesordetermining how andwhy understanding breaksdown, then providing remedial practicein the subskills involved.2 a strategic approach, based upon the recognition that much second-language listening is dependent upon the learner s ability tocompensate forgaps in understanding.

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ffiidgway s Ridgway expresses a num ber of reservations abou t skills- and strategy-arguments based approaches . Some of his points, I fully accept:the major differences between the listening and reading processesthe interactive nature of much listeningthe doubtful value of teaching certain strategies individually

though I would draw very different conclusions to his. Other remarks(especially on authenticity and the role of working memory) should notgo unchallenged.Authenticityhas beenover-valued'Ridgway rather misses the point when he dismisses the use of authenticmaterials as a fad.4There are two reasons for choosing such materials inlistening. The first is that they are usuallyunscripted nd thus embodythe rhythms and pause patterns of natural speech, as well as providingexamples of conversational features such as hesitations, repetitions, andfalse starts. The argument here is that learners need to be exposed to thetrue rhythms of the target language rather than encountering onlyartificial variants produced by actors reading aloud from a script in astudio. The second virtue of authentic materials is that they areungraded. This means that learners gain practice in dealing with the kindof situation that occurs in real life, where they cannot expect torecognize all that is said, and need to compensate by inferring meaning.Problems of decoding preventlearnersfrom applying strategiesRidgway offers an unorthodox account of working memory, suggestingthat low-level learners have to focus so much attention upon decodingthat they have insufficient memory capacity left to engage in listeningstrategies. This is inconsistent with interactive-compensatory theory(Stanovich 1980), which Ridgway himself mentions and which manycommentators have applied to second language reading. The theoryenvisages a trade-off between the amount of information we obtain( bottom -up ) through the words of a text and the extent to which wehave to draw ( top-down ) upon contextual evidence. When decoding isdifficult (because a text is partly illegible or because a reader has word-recognition p roblems), the reader compensates by relying upon contextin a way that can assuredly be described as strategic . There is nosuggestion here that decoding problems prevent strategy use. Far fromit: strategy use replacesdecoding. 5The interactive-compensatory hypothesis is even more pertinent tolistening than to reading because of the greater likelihood of gaps inwhat is understood. The cause may be limited knowledge of L2 orlimited listening skills, or both; but the outcome is that the listener reliesheavily upon strategic techniques to supply missing pieces of text.Ridgway himself recognizes the phenom enon ( word comprehensionmust be far m ore depen dent on co-text and context in listening than inreading ). The major difference betw een us seems to lie in his reluctanceto use the term strategy for this trade-off process.

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The subskills approach to reading cannot be extended to listeningbecause the listening processis verydifferent'Ridgway draws attention to the on-line nature of listening and the extentto which listeners are dependent upon an abstract mental model of thetext rather than hard evidence on the page. But there is no reason whythese characteristics should make a skills approach to listeninguntenab le: it simply dem ands a different set of subskills to those whichfeature in reading, and different exercise types based primarily upondictation. Here, a comment of mine may have been misinterpreted. Inmaking a case (1998) for a skills approach to listening, I suggested thatthe subskills of listening parallel those of readingnot tha t they are thesame. My point w as that similar levels of processing apply. For example,the decoding of word-shapes in reading is paralleled in listening by the(very different) subskill of word segmentation.Incidentally, although Ridgway makes much of the differences betweenthe two skills, he is prone to assume that certain concepts from reading(extensive exposure, decoding, autom atization, the effects of simplifyingtexts) can be extended without qualification to listening. One also notesthat the comments and findings which he cites in support of hisarguments are mainly drawn from reading. Surely some dangerousassumptions are being made here of exactly the kind that Ridgwayrightly warns against.Real-life listeningis often interactiveRidgway makes an important point here; but it is difficult to see whyinteractive listening situations are incompatible with a strategy-basedapproach to teaching the skill. Indeed, Rost s list of listening strategies(1990: 197) was formulated precisely with such situations in mind.Compensatory strategies can be applied to a five-second utterance justas much as to a three-minute text.Ridgway argues that, in an interactive context, a listener could simplyappeal for help. It is not always as easy as thatespecially in aconversation involving m ore than two peop le. And Ridgway s formula( I beg your p ard on ) is itself type of communication strategya repairtechnique to be used when understanding breaks down. Repairstrategies should certainly be included in a strategy programme. Aswell as formulae (Sorry? What was that? I didn t quitecatch that.), onemight teach repair techniques ( repea t up to the point w here under-standing broke down ), stalling tactics (Really?), and ways of giving uppolitely on the message.We cannotagree on a definitivelist of subskills and strategiesAgain, Ridgway has a point. In teaching reading, the processes which weterm subskills are very miscellaneous, as were the listening subskillsidentified by Richards (1983). We should beware of treating these skillslists like a product syllabus (Rost 1990: 151) and working through theitems regardless of their relative importance. One way of focusing ouraims more clearly is to reclassify subskills into techniques such asskimming and scanning, discourse skills (co-reference, markers) andNot waving bu t drowning : a reply to Tony Ridgway 191

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typesof reading (reading for gist, plot, detail, etc.). Another, more task-driven, solution (Urquhart and Weir 1998) is to categorize each text interms of the depth of reading or listening it demands; and to introduceappropriate subskills as required. A third possibility, already mentioned,is to interpret breakdowns of understanding in terms of the failure ofparticular subskills, then provide intensive practice in the subskillsconcerned.So far as strategies are concerned, the situation has not been helped bythe tendency of some commentators (even O Malley and C hamot 1990)to connate communication and learning strategies. Particularly unfortu-nate is Oxford s categorization (1990) of compensation strategies as asub-type of learning strategy. O xford s list includes a num ber ofstrategies which are extremely peripheral ( using laugh ter ), pa rt ofany learning process ( paying atten tion ) or nebulously touchy-feely( listening to your body , making positive statements ). Here Ridgway sscepticism is understandable.Strategy trainingm ay not produce resultsTo support this assertion, Ridgway quotes research by Robb and Susser(1989) who found that greater progress was achieved by learnersfollowing an extensive reading programme than by those subjected tosubskills teaching. The study is an odd choice, since the researchersadmit that their findings may not be conclusive: they mention theunsatisfactory nature of the subskills material that was used, anddifferences in time spent reading. They also specifically suggest (p. 245)that the greater success of the extensive materials may indicate that theirsubjects were at a stage of linguistic developmentwhere strategies playeda more important role than subskills.Nevertheless, Ridgway here touches upon what is perhaps the mostcrucial issue in the discussion: can strategies (specifically, receptivecommunication strategies) be taught? Some commentators (Chamot 1995,Mendelsohn 1994) believe that they can and they have argued for anapproach to listening based upon a type of strategy training developed atthe University of Georgetown, where strategies are practised one by oneand explicitly (i.e. with the aims of the exercise explained in detail tolearners). However, the re is insufficient evidence as yet that this approachsucceeds. Rubin (1994: 213-15) and Chamot (1995:18-24) m ention twelvepieces of research which involved explicit training in compensatorylistening strategies; of these, only two produced unambiguous findingsindicating an improvement in performance. The problem lies partly in thedifficulty of establishing through tests that listening skills have improved.But, more importantly, even where learners have become better at usingthe target strategy, it seems that they may not be capable of employing itappropriately in relation to a particular listening text or of combining itsuccessfully with other strategies that they have encountered. This raisesserious doubts about the approach.However, it does not imply that the whole idea of strategy training isinvalid. A compensatory strategy represents a response, sometimes

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individual, to an immediate problem of communication, and theconclusion I draw is that it is best practised by m odelling the problem.[On the other hand, I continue to maintain that subskills, which formpart of the general process of listening, can profitably be practisedsingly.] An alternative to working through a check-list of strategies is toguide learners in their handling of a particular text. One very generalprocedure might be:1 Learners listen to part of the text and write down the words theyunderstand. In pairs, learners use the words to form hypotheses as tooverall meaning.2 Learne rs listen again, write down m ore w ords, check their hypotheses.3 Learne rs share their hypotheses with the class as a whole.4 The class listens again and discusses whose hypothesis appears to bethe most accurate.This kind of training models strategy use in relation to actual problemsof understanding. It demonstrates to learners the true nature of second-language listeningmaking it plain that incomplete understanding is thenorm, and not a sign of inadequacy. It also allows for individualvariation: risk-avoiders are required to make guesses, risk-takers tocheck their guesses more carefully.

idgway s What alternative does Ridgway propose to skills- and strategy-basedsolution instruction? He argues for what he terms a tex t-based approach . Thiswould seem to involve grading listening and reading materials accordingto level of difficultyand presumably scripting the materials to ensurethat difficulty level is consistent. One cannot escape the feeling that wehave been here before.Few prac titioners w ould deny a role for scripted and simplified materialsat lower levels of English. It might then appear an obvious step to gradea class s materials so that they progress from easy to difficult . Un til,that is, one confronts the issue of what makes one text harder tounderstand than another. The task is problematic enough with readingwhere we can no longer pretend that the key lies in lexis and syntaxalone. It is even more so with a listening text, where factors contributingto difficulty include num ber of speakers, speech rate , accent, and sourceof recording.6My point is not that we should abandon the use of simplified materials,but simply that it is impossible to de termine text difficulty at any but thegrossest level. If we adopt an approach based upon the supposition thatwe can fine-tune text difficulty so as to provide learners with graduallyincreasing challenges, then our teaching will very quickly run into thesands of the many variables involved.There is a widely-recognized alternative, of course, which is to grade thedifficulty of the task that is set rather than that of the text. Anderson andLynch s sensitive discussion of difficulty in listening (1988: 80-96)Notwaving butdrowning':a reply to Tony Ridgway 193

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onclusion

explores this possibility, though it accepts that the grading of tasks canitselfprovea complex matter. Task-grading certainly provides an answerto Ridgway s resistance to the use of authentic materials at lower levels.Is it a more practical proposition to shape a task to reflect what learnersare capable of, or to edit a text to eliminate all potential problems ofunderstanding?A supplementary proposal made by Ridgway is that we should developprogrammes for listening similar to extensive reading schemes. Thenotion of extensive listening has had an airing recently, but it is going toneed careful thought. How is one to deal with the many learners who(whatever their knowledge of grammar or vocabulary) experiencedifficulty in recognizing words in connected speech? One answer is tosupply them with tapescripts; but this has the unfortunate consequenceof creating a divided attention situation (Norman and Bobrow 1975). Iflimited working memory capacity forces a learner to choose betweenreading and listening, the result will probably be a strong attention biastowards the former, since it affords checkable information in a tangibleform. No harm in thisbut it means that the listening experience willconstitute little more than cued word recognition.One might perhaps choose more demanding material in the form ofvideotapes with LI subtitles. Another option is to hold back theextensive programme until learners have been adequately prepared forindependent listening by means of instruction in compensatorystrategies and in skills such as lexical segmentation. On this analysis,extensive listening is not, as Ridgway implies, an alternative to strategytraining; it is a natural development of it.The weakness of Ridgway s position is that it focuses upon the p roductof listening and ignores the process. Only ifwemanage to tap in to howour learners are listening will we be able to assist them to listen moreeffectively. It was precisely because of the limitations of a product-basedapproach and because of our inability to assess text difficulty that weturned to skills- and strategy-based instruction. They may have theirfaultsRidgway hints at two major areas of concern in the teachabilityof strategies and the danger that teachers will work through check-listsof skills without regard to learner needs. But they are the best and mostlearner-centred option we have. Let us improve the lifebelts rather thanrelegate our swimmers to the paddling pool.Received September 1999

NotesIncidentally, a skills approach also aims to equipthe read er with techniques for handling a range oftypes of reading (see Urquhart et al. 1998),whereas many reading schemes focus solely onreading for pleasure and hence on medium-dep th readingneither as deep as reading asafety instruction nor as shallow as reading a TVschedule.

Faerch and Kasper recognize that a communica-tion strategy may sometimes become incorporatedinto a lea rner s interlanguage. Indeed , it may evenbecome automatized to the point where (if thesyntax or vocabulary involved is only partiallyaccurate) it could be regarded as evidence offossilizationI recognize that my distinction between skills andstrategies differs from that made by other com-194 John Field

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mentators, McDonough (1995) represents strate-gies as conscious techniques and skills as auto-matized versions of them which develop later inthe learning process. This formulation appears tofit productive strategies rather better than recep-tive ones. It does not seem to allow for thosecompensatory strategies in listening which becom eless relevant as language knowledge and listeningcompetence increase.

4 I define authentic materials as those which are notspecially designed or modified for the languagelearner . They cover a range of formalityfrominterviews to informal conversations in pubs.Some (news reports) might be scripted; mostwould not.5 Ridgway s allusion to working mem ory capacityrelates to a second and very different use ofcontext, which is to enrich meaning. Skilledreaders (in ELT terms, more advanced ones)decode words with a high degree of automaticity;this releases memory capacity, enabling them tomake greater use of context when constructinghigher-level meaning. Stanovich explicitly distin-guishes this use of top-down information byskilled readers from the compensatory use madeof context by less-skilled readers.6 For this particular skill, dependent as it is uponconstructing mental representations and storing

them in long-term mem ory, I suggest that the mostimportant considerations might well be textlength, the density and complexity of the ideas,and text transpa rency , i.e. the clarity with whichideas are expressed, and the degree of repetitionand rephrasing.ReferencesAlderson, J. C. 1984. Reading in a foreignlanguage: a reading problem or a languageproblem? in J. C. Alderson and A. Urquhart(eds.).Reading in a Foreign Language. London:

Longman.Anderson, A. and T. Lynch. 1988. Listening.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Chamot, A. U. 1995. Learning strategies andlistening com prehen sion in D . J. Mendelsohnand J. Rubin (eds.).A Guidefor the TeachingofSecond Language Listening. San Diego:Dominie Press.Cohen, A.1998. Strategiesin Learning and UsingaSecond Language. Harlow: Longman.

Faerch, C. and G. Kasper. 1983. Plans andstrategies in foreign language communicationin C. Faerch and G. Kasper (eds.).Strategies inlnterlanguage Comm unication. Harlow: Long-man.Field, J.1998. Skills and strategies: toward s a newme thodology for listening . ELT Journal 52/2.Mendelsohn, D. J. 1994. Learning to Listen. SanDiego: Dominie Press.McDonough, S. H. 1995. Strategy and Skill inLearning aForeign Language. London: Arnold.Norman, D . A. and D . G. Bobrow.1975. On data-limited an d resource-limited p roces ses . Cogni-tive Psychology 7.O Malley, J. M. and A. U. Chamot. 1990.Learning Strategies in Second Language Acqui-sition.Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press.Oxford, R. 1990. La nguag e Learning Strategies.Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.Richards, J. 1983: Listening comprehension:approach, design, proc edu re . TESOL Quar-terly 17: 219-39.Robb, T. N. an d B. Susser. 1989. Extensivereading skills vs skills building in an EFLcontext .R eading in a Foreign Language 5/2.Rost, M. 1990. Listening in Language Learning.Harlow: Longman.Rubin, J. 1994: A review of second languagelistening comprehension research . ModernLanguage Journal,78/2: 199-221.Stanovich, K. E. 1980. Toward an interactive-com pensa tory m odel of individual differences inthe deve lopm ent of reading fluency . ReadingResearch Quarterly,16: 32-71.Urquhart, S. and C. Weir. 1998. Reading in aSecond Language: Process, Product and P rac-tice.Harlow: Longman.The authorJohn Field teaches on the MA course in AppliedLinguistics and ELT at Kings College London, andis completing a PhD on listening at the University ofCambridge. He has been a materials writer andteacher trainer with experience in Europe, theMiddle East, the Far East and Africa. He haswritten secondary school coursebooks for SaudiArabia and Hong Kong; he is the author of abeginners series on BBC English by Radio; and heworked for two years in Mainland China, designingdistance-learning materials for TV.Email:

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