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Language Systems: Listening

Helping learners to improve listening skills by decoding

connected speech

Word Count 2499

Contents Page Number

Introduction 2

Analysis of Features 2

Problems for Learners 5

Suggestions for Teaching 7

Bibliography 10

Appendices 12

Appendix 1 12

Appendix 2 13

Appendix 3 14

Appendix 4 16

Appendix 5 18Jennifer Taylor of 21

Appendix 6 19

Introduction

40-50% of our communication time is spent listening (Mendelsohn, 1994) so it is an important skill

to master. Not only does a learner receive information about the world and their surroundings,

but they also enrich their own "spoken competence with new syntactic, lexical, phonological and

pragmatic information" (Field, 2009:5).

As both a teacher and learner I can relate to Brown's (1990) comment that it can be a humiliating

experience failing to listen adequately, and this discourages the unsuccessful learner from further

effort.

Whilst I agree that practising listening is necessary, I do not agree that "subskills will take care of

themselves" as Ridgeway (2000) claimed. I prefer Field's response: a listener needs to be able to

"crack the code of speech", and if they have difficulty in identifying words they have "no key at all

to unlock the text" (54/2 April 2000).

I have therefore chosen to focus on decoding connected speech. This is restricted to sound

modifications to give sufficient coverage to the topic.

2.1 Analysis

2.1.1 Top-down and bottom-up processing

Decoding connected speech is a bottom-up process, but psychological descriptions of listening

now assume that the top-down and bottom-up processes are "highly interdependent" (Field,

2009). This is in line with Stanovich's 1980 Interactive Compensatory Hypothesis i.e. a greater

emphasis is placed on other sources of information when one breaks down, which, although

originally relating to reading, is considered in more recent sources such as Wilson (2008), Field

(2009) and Vandergrift and Goh (2012) as a strategy employed by a competent listener.

Jennifer Taylor of 21

Neil Anderson, 02/24/15,

Strong start. Very clear.

Top-down processing is where we apply context and prior knowledge to interpret the message.

The topic will activate schemata, mental structures in long term memory which group and

organise existing knowledge: world, experiential, cultural or pragmatic knowledge, or an

understanding of discourse and how texts are organised (Vandergrift and Goh, 2012). We

introduce external knowledge to the listening experience e.g. an expectation of what an

advertisement is likely to contain (contact details, persuasive description etc).

Bottom-up processing deals with new incoming data, and in a listening text is in the form of a

sound stream. During processing the sound is segmented into meaningful units with which we

interpret the message. If juncture is unclear, in the sentence "We ate cakes, chocolate

and /aɪ'skri:m/" the final word would ordinarily be interpreted by the interaction of bottom-up

and top-down processing as icecream; an appropriate item within the context of a list of food,

rather than I scream.

Anderson (1995) divides this cognitive processing into three. Firstly, at the bottom-up end there is

perception, where the sound is, fundamentally, accepted as speech (as opposed to other noises).

Before the next stage (parsing), the flow of speech needs to be divided into word segments.

Parsing, as explained by Vandergrift and Goh (2012), is when phonetic representations are

matched with potential word candidates from long-term memory. This process becomes faster

with proficiency in a language.

Finally, at the top end, utilisation is the step in the process where these units are analysed for

meaning, and information outside the linguistic input is matched to make sense of the whole

utterance.

The important point to note is that working memory is finite (Call, 1985). For a native or proficient

listener, the decoding process becomes automatic and there remains space to take in new

information and ascribe meaning to text (Field, 2009).

2.1.2 Connected speech?


Our vocal apparatus operates on the principle of least effort (Brown, 1990). In rapid speech,

sounds are modified and are not representative of dictionary pronunciation. These modifications

are fairly systematic (Underhill, 1994) which means that their recognition can be taught. A skilled

listener will instantly recognise weak forms, vowel reduction, liaison, assimilation and elision. A

less proficient listener will not, and since oral data has no permanent record, it may be lost

forever.

Although I describe these features of connected speech in isolation below, they do not typically

occur in isolation. For example,

Good morning, can we order a sandwich.

contains two examples of assimilation, in good /gʊb/ and sandwich /'sæmwɪʧ/, vowel reduction

in the weak forms of can /kən/ and we /wɪ/, intrusive /j/ between we and order, and catenation, a

to sandwich.

Modifications of sounds:

(Underhill, 1994, Marks and Bowen, 2012)

• assimilation - a listener will hear the result of "cutting corners" with complex muscle

movements. Some phonemes change to be more like, or the same as, neighbouring sounds. It

occurs within words e.g. /ɪŋˈkredɪbl/ (the velar nasal /ŋ/ is substituted for /n/ because it is

easier to then move to the velar plosive /k/); and across word boundaries e.g. this shelf changes

from /sʃ/ to /ʃʃ/ (a single lengthened /ʃ/). There can be a change of voicing e.g. /v/ to /f/ in have

to, or coalescence of /t/ and /j/ to /ʧ/ in got you. Assimilation sometimes affects the preceding

sound which is why, for example, the pronunciation of simple past 'ed' endings vary.

• vowel reduction - this affects high-frequency, monosyllabic function words. Words such as me

and does will be heard in their weak forms, /mɪ/ and /dəz/, unless being explicitly emphasised.

A weak form can join with another word and reduce further, often to only one syllable

(contraction) e.g. /ɪts/; which is also reflected in writing (it's).


• liaison - when words are linked together in a continuous stream of speech, the listener will not

perceive inter word spacing:

(a) catenation - a word ending in a consonant joins to the following word beginning with a vowel -

an egg becomes /əneg/ with the first word linking smoothly to the second.

(b) intrusion and linking - /w/, /j/ and /r/ may intrude in words where there are certain

vowel/vowel combinations at word junctions. You are join together to sound like /ju:wa:(r)/.

Linking /r/ appears in RP English but not rhotic accents such as Scottish.

• elision - a sound is omitted altogether, usually /t/ or /d/ in the middle of word-final clusters

e.g. /fæks/ for facts. Schwa is also often elided e.g. /ˈʧɒk(ə)lɪt/ for chocolate.

3.0 Learner Problems and Teaching Issues

3.1 Listeners not drawing on both top-down and bottom up processing at the same time when

decoding speech

Particularly with lower-level listeners, comprehension can be hindered if there is a failure to

maximise use of both the acoustic signal (bottom-up decoding) and the available contextual

information (top-down). Tsui and Fullilore's 1998 study of 20000 listeners found that unskilled

listeners were more dependent on context, whereas skilled listeners were better able to rely on

their decoding skills. Unskilled listeners "need to compensate for gaps in understanding where

decoding has failed and for a lack of confidence in accuracy of word matches" (Field, 2009:133). I

believe that, for example, my A2 Japanese listeners who are highly risk averse hinder their

listening progress by fearing inaccuracy in their decoding, and not allowing contextual information

to assist: an over-focus on bottom-up decoding which is not yet developed enough to cope with

streams of rapid speech.

3.2 Limited availability in course books of micro-exercises which focus on connected speech

Course books have in the past tended to focus on the testing rather than the teaching of listening.

Brown (1990) claims that familiar methods which had been used for nearly a century in reading


comprehension were imported into listening comprehension. Although books do often now

contain listening strategy activities such as prediction, there remains a lack of micro listening

activities specifically aimed at helping improve connected speech decoding skills.

I base this proposition on my own experience of course books and also on materials research by

Wilson (2008:55) in Appendix 1. Cutting Edge, New Headway, Inside Out and Total English were

examined and the twenty most common listening tasks categorised. Comprehension check

questions greatly outnumbered any focus on pronunciation (numbers 5, 12, 10 and 18) and there

were, for example, no specific remedial activities relating to elision or assimilation.

3.3 Difficulty identifying word boundaries

Unlike reading where words are separated by spaces, colloquial speech is a relatively unbroken

stream of sound. "The need to locate word boundaries remains the same whatever the language;

it is just the means by which it is achieved that has to be modified" is how it is put by Field

(2009:112).

Globalisation of the marketplace has created a greater opportunity and indeed necessity to

communicate orally. There is frustration as to why listening to natural speech is so difficult for

many of my Business English learners - speed being cited as the main cause - few have been taught

about the contribution pronunciation changes make to the "citation form" of a word. Japanese

learners have a noticeably jagged language proficiency profile: I have taught many learners whose

grammar, reading and writing proficiency is at B1+ level, but who are low-A2 speakers and

listeners, I think because of a failure to study and practise listening skills and also a lack of

awareness of connected speech.

Intrusive sounds, liaison, assimilation and elision muddy the word boundaries for the listener

e.g. /gʊgəʊ(l)/ in good goal where the /d/ assimilates to /g/ and the /l/ is possibly elided.

3.4 Difficulty identifying weak forms and contractions in connected speech

Similarly, vowel reduction and contraction can reduce words to such an extent that they are

difficult to distinguish or even notice at all e.g. Do you want some more? has three weak forms,


/d(ə)/, /jə/ and /səm/. It may be difficult for an inexperienced listener to recognise or notice these

(probably familiar) words. Knowing the written form of a word does not ensure that listeners will

recognise it when spoken (Wilson, 2008).

He is gone, when contracted to He's gone, often leads the learner to "hear" He gone. Lower-level

learners' own production of speech can therefore be affected because they fail to hear the

contraction and assume there is nothing there. The sentence "loses" the verb. This common

learner error is often caused, I believe, by a listening problem (not recognising the contraction).

4.0 Suggestions For Teaching

4.1 Dictogloss (Waynryb, 1990)

Dictogloss encourages learners to "utilise both bottom-up and top-down listening strategies"

(Nunan, 1997). They firstly need to identify content words within a text, a bottom-up process

where there is a need to establish word boundaries. They then make predictions and inferences,

and compensate for words they have not heard or remembered by studying the semantic

relationships between the words that they have collectively pooled (top-down).

The procedure:

• Prepare for listening e.g. topical discussion questions.

• Play a short text. (Appendix 2) Learners write nothing.

• Teacher replays text. Learners note key words.

• Learners work in groups to reconstruct text (the sense, not word for word).

• Open class analysis of reconstructions, with a focus on difficulties caused by connected speech

(Appendix 2).

This is a collaborative activity where learners must produce comprehensible output (Swain, 1998)

and is one which my learners enjoy. They "find out what they don't know, then they find out what

they need to know" Waynryb (1990:6). All language-learning levels benefit, particularly lower

levels who need to rely on top-down processing more.


4.2 Materials

Existing course books can be exploited and followed up by post-listening remedial work using

small chunks of language from the text.

• See Appendix 3 for a listening text in New English File (Intermediate) - 2.12

• After processing for content, extract a chunk of language e.g. Petrol's cheaper in France than in

Britain

• Draw learners' attention to the catenation between cheaper and in, and than and in, and the

weak than. In combination, a number of my learners missed the comparative, and understood

that petrol was cheap in both France and Britain.

I find it particularly useful to draw learners' attention to examples where there may be

miscomprehension due to connected speech. The relevance of accurately establishing word

boundaries and noticing weak forms becomes all the more apparent. Once errors affecting

comprehension are noticed, Wilson (2003) recommends classifying them e.g. new words, couldn't

separate sounds into words etc. to prepare for future listening.

These activities can be taught in short bursts during a lesson, in perhaps a TTT format.

4.3 Word boundaries

(Marks and Bowen, 2012:105)

Catenation noticing (Appendix 4)

• Use short phrases containing catenation.

• Use words which sounds the same as the catenation (tall in not aT ALL).

• Dictate these words.

• Dictate, in a different order, the phrases.

• Have learners match them up.


This is a catenation noticing activity using homophones. The more familiar units of sound are to

listeners, the more quickly long-term memory can supply knowledge to the process, and the less

time the sounds need to remain in the phonological loop (Call, 1985).

In a similar way, activities can be found or created for highlighting elision or assimilation.

4.4 Weak forms/contractions

1. Word counting

• Dictate sentences (Appendix 5) at natural speed. Do not overarticulate.

• Learners write the sentences, individually, and then work together to fill any gaps.

• Ask how many words are in each sentence. Groups discuss and reach agreement.

• Feedback, and have learners write sentences on board - again discuss differences and possible

causes.

When learners are told that all the words are familiar to them, they often question why they are

not easily recognised. Vowel reduction will be noticed or can be highlighted. Field (2008:106)

states that there "is no substitute for exposing the learners to samples of natural speech - and it is

especially useful if they are short samples of the kind that feature in micro-listening tasks." If the

sentences are unrelated to the text, the learners will have no compensatory top-down processes

to rely upon and will be forced to focus on decoding connected speech.

2. Differentiation (Appendix 6)

(Marks and Bowen, 2012:108)

• Give 4 or 5 sentences containing words which can present in strong or weak form (underlined)

to the class.

• Learners predict and write "s" or "w" above underlined words. Seek justifications for

predictions.


• Play or dictate sentences. Learners compare their predictions with what they hear.

I use this as a post-listening activity, and lead into it by using a sample sentence from the text. For

example, I recently used You have to have good people skills. This provided a contrastive analysis

of both the strong /hæv/ (second) and weak /həf/ (first), in a lesson for Handelsschule A2+

Austrian business learners after listening to a text about job suitability.

Conclusion

Cognitives studies are beginning to attach empirical evidence to the benefits of teaching listening

strategies, both top-down and bottom-up. Vandergrift has shown (2006) that there is an

improvement in listening achievement if learners are aware of and adopt metacognitive

strategies, because they are better able to regulate the top-down and bottom-up process. I see

the benefit in adapting my future teaching to make the teaching of metacognitive strategies more

explicit.

Bibliography

Anderson, JR. 1995. Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (4th ed). Freeman

Brown, G. 1990. Listening to Spoken English. (2nd Ed) Longman

Call, ME. 1985. Auditory Short Term Memory, Listening Comprehension, and the Input Hypothesis.

TESOL Quarterly, 19, 785-782

Field, J. 2009. Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press

Field, J. 2000. Not waving but drowning - a reply to Tony Ridgeway. ELTJ 54/2 2000

Marks, J and Bowen, T. 2012. A Book of Pronunciation. Delta Publishing

Mendelsohn, DJ. 1994. Learning to Listen: A strategy-based approach for the second language

learner. Dominie Press

Ridgeway, T. 2000. Listening Strategies - I beg your pardon? ELTJ 54/2 2000

Swain, M. 1998. Focus on Form Through Conscious Reflection. In: Doughty, C and Williams, J Focus

on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition pp 64-81. Cambridge University Press

Stanovich, KE. 1980. Towards an Interactive-compensatory Model of Individual Differences in the

Development of Reading Fluency. Reading Research Quarterly 116:32-71


Tsui, A and Fillilore, J. 1998. Bottom-up or Top-down Processing as a Discriminator of L2 Listening

Performance. Applied Linguistics 19,4:432-451

Underhill, A. 1994. Sound Foundations. Macmillan

Vandergrift, L and Goh, C. 2012. Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition

in Action. Routledge

Waynryb, R. 1990. Grammar Dictation. Oxford University Press

Wilson, JJ. 2008. How to Teach Listening. Pearson

Wilson, M. 2003. Discovery Listening and Improving Perceptual Processing. ELT Journal 57,4:335-

343

Resources

Marks, J and Bowen, T. 2012. A Book of Pronunciation. Delta Publishing

Seligson, P and Oxenden, C. 1996. New English File. Oxford University Press

Underhill, A. 1994. Sound Foundations. Macmillan

Appendices

Appendix 1


(Wilson, 2009:55)

Course book survey

Appendix 2


Sample text for dictogloss (B1/+ level)

Pre- listening topical discussion questions:

How long have you been studying English?

Have you ever visited the UK?

Have you ever spoken to native English speakers?

Text recorded in advance for consistency:

I studied French for 5 years. When I arrived in France it was awful. I couldn't understand a word!

It was depressing. I thought I was prepared, but not at all. I decided to work out why my years of

school practice hadn't prepared me for real life listening. That's what we're going to talk about

today.

For connected speech discussion

....but not at all (catenation)

....and that's what we're going to talk about (weak forms, contractions, "gonna" vowel

reduction/elision, catenation)

This could lead into a micro activity on catenation or weak forms.


Appendix 3

New English File (Intermediate), page 29, activity 2


Appendix 3 (cont)

New English File, transcription


Appendix 4

Marks, J and Bowen, T (2012) The Book of Pronunciation (p105). Delta Publishing


Appendix 4 (cont)


Marks, J and Bowen, T (2012) The Book of Pronunciation (p106). Delta Publishing

NB I have chosen this resource book because it has prerecorded text relating to all the examples. There are few ready-made resources which both isolate connected speech and provide recordings for classroom use.

It would be possible, alternatively, to self-record materials.

Appendix 5

Word count activity

Sample sentences

1. Do you know him?

2. It's good you don't.

3. Have you seen him yet?

4. Is he in there?

5. What d'you want that for?

6. You can put him there.


Appendix 6


(Marks and Bowen, 2012: 108)


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