3. Imagine…
• A student is listening to a recording in class.
• The speaker says: “I won’t go to London.”
• A student interprets this as: “I want to go to London”.
What is the source of this error?
4. “[This student] is making a small mistake based on
phoneme discrimination. But this mistake may
impact upon the interpretation of what comes next,
and…the text as a whole.” (325)
“We should view the principal aim of a full-length listening
session as diagnostic. It should provide us with
insights into where understanding has broken down –
insights which we can then follow up with small-scale
remedial exercises which aim to prevent errors of
interpretation (especially low-level [i.e. word
recognition]) from occurring again.” (326)
(Field, John, 2003. ‘Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in L2
listening’. ELT Journal, Vol. 57/4. Emphasis added.)
5. A need for an approach to teaching
listening which:
• engages and challenges all students;
• motivates students to listen multiple times;
• gets students interested in transcript analysis;
• and provides insight into the problems
students have understanding spoken English.
6. Discovery Listening
• “‘Discovery listening’ is a conscious reaction against
the dominant approach in recent years in both EFL
theory and in practice.” (335)
• “Many published textbooks have tended to rely on
practising comprehension (or simply testing it)…
rather than teaching something that might improve
students’ performance.” (335)
• “…in general, as long as the level of the text is
appropriate, [Discovery Listening] seems to satisfy a
basic human instinct towards problem solving…”
(341)
(Wilson, Magnus, 2003. ‘Discovery listening – improving perceptual processing’. ELT
Journal, Vol. 57/4.)
7. Ok, fine but can you just tell us
what ‘Discovery Listening’ is?
8. What did the students think of
the recording?
• “It was quite easy to understand except for some words – ‘aunt’ or
‘then’ even though these are not much difficult words. The topic was
interesting and the interview way – son to his mother – as well.”
• “This recording is better than the usual ones with actors. Here was a
real conversation between 2 native-speakers. And so we get use to
the usual speed of which people are speaking.”
• “The recording in general was not so difficult to understand but as
soon as we had to pay attention to the details it got more difficult. I
think the mother was easier to understand than the son because
she spoke more clearly.”
• “The conversation was interesting because it was a rather personal
topic. For me it was a good exercise because it was real and not
simplified for students.”
9. What did the students dislike
about the activity?
• “When I try to fill the gaps, I’m thinking to make correct sentence.
But sometimes they are using imperfect sentence. Then, I’m
confused a little bit.”
• “Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand when they ‘swallow’
some words but otherwise it was a good exercise.”
• “Could start to be boring when the recording is too long.”
• “I didn’t like the fact that we had to wright all the text script because
it’s a bit long. I think that when there is some blanks in text it’s
better.”
10. What did the students like about
the activity?
• “A positive aspect is that you really pay attention to this particular
conversation and the words in detail! I like the activity, I could see
where I had difficulties in understanding and where it wasn’t a
problem.”
• “You really focus on the listening and not on the questions you have
to answer.”
• “This exercise was good because it trained our listening capacities,
and it’s really good to work in groups, because you can have
opposite opinion of what you hear and discuss it.”
• “Team play was helpful as well. If I did it alone, I couldn’t have
understood well or needed a lot of time.”
11. This is the last slide
Thanks for coming and enjoy the
rest of the PD Fest!
12. Kelly Edwards asks her mother, Judy Allen, this question:
“Describe a memory when you felt independent and empowered.”
(1:08)
(from storycorps.org)
13. Intermediate level difficulties
is going friendly organise
Judy: I think the most empowered I’ve ever felt in
my life was when my philandering husband told
me he was going to work and I suddenly realised
he had gone to be with his girlfriend. I went to
where she was staying and found his car parked
in front of her house, got a great big rock about
as big as a bowling ball from somebody’s garden
and heaved it through the back window of his
car.
car park ????? boring view lock
14. Higher Int/Advanced level difficulties
car park I ever felt he caught
Judy: I think the most empowered I’ve ever felt in my life was when my
philandering husband told me he was going to work and I suddenly
realised he had gone to be with his girlfriend. I went to where she
was staying and found his car parked in front of her house, got a
great big rock about as big as a bowling ball from somebody’s
garden and heaved it through the back window of his car. That was
wonderful. It felt great. And then I started divorce proceedings…
Years later, he ca he sent me a message somehow and told me that
he still had some stuff of mine, books and things that, if I was ever
travelling in Alaska, I should stop by and pick them up. And I was
doing a business trip to Alaska so I went up there, made an
appointment, went to see him in his office, and he handed me a very
heavy box and said, “There’s a lot of heavy stuff, books and stuff, in
there.” And so I dragged it and shlepped it through airports all the
way home, god it was heavy, and I got home and opened it and i
nothing in it but that rock which he had saved all those years.
????? sort of like hand
15. Intermediate class
Students’
Problem area Transcript
interpretation
rock lock
philandering friendly
Individual phonemes
bowling boring
be with view
work and I suddenly organised
Connected speech
about as big as a ????
Auxiliary verbs was going is going
Word endings car parked car park
16. Higher intermediate/Advanced class
Students’
Problem area Transcript
interpretation
said there’s a lot of sort of like
Connected speech
about as big as a ????
Auxiliary verbs I’ve ever felt I ever felt
car parked car park
Word endings
he handed he hand
False starts he ca he sent he cut/he caught
