Methodology in Language Learning: 'What do you want?'

 

One way of giving students practice in identifying word-division correctly is to ask them how many words there would be in the written form of a given utterance. For example, you say something like 'wotcha won?', they recognize this as the spoken version of 'What do you want?'

 

Students can be asked to mark on a written text where they think the stressed or unstressed words are. It may be useful for them to try to do this at first without hearing the spoken text, and then check their conjectures against the latter afterwards. In short utterances it is fairly easy to mark stresses; what is more difficult, but no less important, is to indicate unstress.

 

Here is an example:

Basic sentence:

ü I'm terribly tired; I think I'll go and have a rest.

Stress:

ü I'm terribly tired; I think I'll go and have a rest.

Unstress: (I'm) ter ( ribly) tired; (I) think (I'll) go (and have a) rest.

 

We are using longer sequences of sounds, with less carefully defined pronunciation, and students would find it tedious and difficult to reproduce them in writing in this way. At this stage, therefore, we revert to the normal 'dictation', using conventional orthography. This means that we have no way of ascertaining whether students have perceived the sounds exactly as we said them; but it does mean that we can judge if they have understood and interpreted them correctly. The dictation is thus the written equivalent of the type of oral repetition defined above as 'translation into an "ideal" form'.

 

If we are concentrating on giving students practice in perceiving accurately, and therefore understanding, discrete utterances, then probably the quickest and neatest way of checking they have in fact understood is by asking for a native-language translation, either orally or in writing.

 

Most listening comprehension recordings, however, are either in very formal style (in which case they do not illustrate many of the phenomena we want to practice), or, if approximating to authentic everyday speech, they are often too fast, and too continuous and overlapping to be conveniently dissected into suitable short 'chunks'.

 

The teacher can either use the recording, or read aloud the transcriptions herself. However, if she does the latter, she must be careful to pronounce the sounds in a naturally 'slovenly' fashion! The temptation when reading aloud is to say the words as they are written.

 

 

The accompanying text is written out in prose style with only token approximation to the spontaneous spoken mode I recommend in general. This does not mean that the text is meant to be read out in the classroom as it stands, though it can be; it is presented in this way simply to facilitate reading- exact transcriptions of spontaneous speech tend to be rather irritating and tedious to read. If the teacher wishes to try these exercises out herself, she should, in most cases, re-improvise her own text.

 

Improvising from skeleton notes is very easy to do, but there are one or two points over which the teacher must take care if the improvisation is to succeed. First, she must make quite sure in advance that the notes or illustrations are easily comprehensible to her, so that she will not suddenly have to stop to puzzle out what is meant. Second, she must be aware that improvising informal discourse from notes does not just mean embedding the content in full sentences, giving a sentence to each item of information.

 

The text, and its presentation, must be particularly geared to attracting and holding students' ·attention: it should not be difficult; its content should be pleasing and interesting; and if possible it should be delivered 'live' and accompanied by graphic or written materials that provide a visual focus and give help in understanding. Whether, after all this, students are actually listening or not can be fairly well judged by a glance at their faces. Optionally, the teacher can also throw in occasional native-language clarifications (for the weaker students) or questions (to 'jog' the more apathetic ones).

 

Exercise :

 

The first two exercise-types discussed here involve the use of written or memorized texts and therefore do not provide optimal conditions for aural practice. However, they are useful as an easy preliminary to activities where the learner does have to concentrate on his listening skills, such as hearing descriptions of visuals or teacher ad-libbing, or listening to songs.

 

 

Listening to a text and reading it at the same time is something that is frequently done in the foreign language classroom.  This is certainly a valid technique for presenting new material and aiding reading; and it does get students used to how the language sounds and to the correspondence between orthography and pronunciation. But beyond this, such activity has only limited value for training in listening comprehension. It does not help to develop learners' reliance on their ear, since the written form is there to give the answer in cases of doubt. Also, it does happen occasionally that the written word actually interferes with accurate aural perception.

 

Most of the exercises in this book are based on material that the student is hearing for the first time. The reasons for this are fairly obvious: we rarely in real life know exactly what we are going to hear (though we usually have some general expectations); listening to a familiar text does not demand such intensive exercising of the perception or comprehension skills, since the student knows more or less what it is all about without listening carefully; and lastly, the teacher has no way of assessing quite how good the student's listening comprehension was if he (the student) knew the content and meaning beforehand.

 

When the student hears something he is simultaneously reading, he may not need to use listening comprehension skills very much - he can always fall back on the written text. When listening to material he knows by heart on the other hand, he does at least have to rely on his ear; yet once he has perceived the sounds, understanding is much easier than grasping totally new material, and the listener is more relaxed.

 

To summarize, a simple, large, clear drawing can be used, put up on the board or projected using an overhead projector; or a number of small pictures can be distributed among students. In either case, all the students have to do is follow the spoken description according to its graphic representation, looking at the various components of the latter as they are mentioned. In spite of the fact that they do not actually seem to do anything much, I have found that students usually concentrate very well in an exercise of this sort. If the teacher wishes to make quite sure her students are following properly she can ask them to point at the relevant parts of the illustration as they listen.

 

Bibliography:

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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