The document discusses important concepts and strategies related to teaching listening skills to second language learners. It describes the difference between top-down and bottom-up listening processes, and how both are needed for effective comprehension. Top-down listening involves using context and background knowledge, while bottom-up listening focuses on decoding individual sounds and words. The document provides advice on activities to teach specific listening strategies like prediction, monitoring, and evaluation. It also discusses the importance of exposing learners to authentic listening materials like phone conversations and voicemails to improve their interpretive skills.

1. Discourse and Context in Language
Teaching
Listening
College: ISFD N° 41
Subject: Language and Written Expression IV
Teacher: Stella Maris Saubidet Oyhamburu
Members of the group:
● Figueroa, Marlene.
● Galvan, Florencia.
● Gonzalez, Carla.
● Mohorovich, Stefania.
● Rodrigues de Abreu, Jacqueline.

2. WHY IS LISTENING IMPORTANT?

3. PROCESSES
BOTTOM-UPTOP-DOWN
A top-down way of
understanding
something starts with a
general idea and adds
details later
A bottom-up way of
understanding is one in
which you think about
details before thinking
about general ideas.

4. TOP-DOWN
PROCESS
Involves
schematic
knowledge
Involves
contextual
knowledge
Schemata
Content Formal
Understanding of the specific
listening situation
Background
information of the
topic
Knowledge
about how
discourse is
organized
This is filtered through
PRAGMATIC
KNOWLEDGE

5. BOTTOM-UP
PROCESS
Involves
knowledge about
the language
system
Phonological
knowledge
Grammatical
knowledge
Lexical
knowledge
Allows the listener
to segment the
acoustic signals as
sounds that form
words.
Allows the listener to
recognize words within
phrases.
Allows for recognition
of inflections on words,
phrases or clauses.

6. BOTTOM-UP
PROCESS
It is not automatic for L2
speakers
They use...
Listening
strategies
Metacognition
Planning
Regulating
Monitoring
Management
Allow for :
-Prediction
-Monitoring of
errors
-Evaluation

7. SOME ADVICE TO TEACH LISTENING
STRATEGIES
-Use pre-listening activities to activate learners` background knowledge. (Look at the
example of slide n )
-Make clear to learners what they are going to listen to and why.
-Provide guided listening activities designed to provide a lot of practice in using a
particular strategy.
- Practice the strategy using real data with focus on context and meaning.
-Use what has been comprehended: take notes on a lecture to prepare a summary.
-Allow for self-evaluation.
According to
Mendelsohn
Related to metacognition
Related to metacognition
Related to
metacognition

8. PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES:
PREDICTING CONTENT
Depending on the context, you can often predict the kind of
words and style of language the speaker will use. Our
knowledge of the world helps us anticipate the kind of
information we are likely to hear. When we predict the topic
of a talk or a conversation, all the related vocabulary
stored in our brains is 'activated' to help us better
understand what we're listening to.
Students can predict the topic and the vocabulary
they are going to listen to by looking at visual
material.

9. -What do you think about this
headline? What is it about?
-Where do you get the information
from?
-Do you know anything about this
topic?
Comprehension and interpretation
will take place depending on:
● listener's prior knowledge
● listener's memory and attention
● his/her general problem-solving
ability

12. Top-down vs. bottom-up listening
Situation A
“Over lunch, your friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster. You listen with
interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express surprise or sympathy”
Situation B
“That evening, another friend calls to invite you to a party at her house the following Saturday. As you’ve
never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You listen carefully and make notes”

13. Situation A
The way you listened to the holiday anecdote could be characterised as top-down listening. This refers to
the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message. Background knowledge
consists of context, that is, the situation and topic, and co-text, in other words, what came before and
after. The context of chatting to a friend in a casual environment itself narrows down the range of
possible topics. Once the topic of a holiday has been established, our knowledge of the kind of things that
can happen on holiday comes into play and helps us to ‘match’ the incoming sound signal against our
expectations of what we might hear and to fill out specific details.

14. Situation B
In contrast, when listening to directions to a friend’s house, comprehension is
achieved by dividing and decoding the sound signal bit by bit. The ability to
separate the stream of speech into individual words becomes more important
here, if we are to recognise, for example, the name of a street or an instruction to
take a particular bus.
In reality successful listening depends on the ability to combine these two types of
processes. Activities which work on each strategy separately should help students
to combine top-down and bottom-up processes to become more effective
listeners in real-life situations or longer classroom listenings.

15. Mishearings

16. Microprocessing strategies
● Attending to stress and intonation and constructing a pattern, to fit
the utterance.
● Attending to stressed vowels.
● Segmenting the speech stream into words that correspond to the
stressed vowels and their adjacent consonants
● Seeking a phrase-with grammar and meaning- compatible with the
the first strategy and the words identified in the third.

18. Teaching listening from a Discourse perspective
An effective listener is able to use the situational context (co-text), to disambiguate or decide on the
best interpretation.
e.g.
(According to Eisenstein, learners that are exposed to this reduced speech forms
enhance their listening comprehension)
No. Why don´t you
call ´m?
Has Fred arrived yet?
Have they arrived yet?

19. Stress and Intonation:
In North American English
What do you? What are you?
whaddaya
Whaddaya want
for lunch?
Whaddaya gonna do this
evening?
CAN / CAN´T
I can´t deal with it!
I can deal with it!
There´s a complex
problem to be solved.!

20. Practice in detecting PROMINENCE and explaining its function in discourse (signaling new information or
contrast), should be part of instruction in listening.
e.g. This hat is FORty pounds, not fourTEEN.
Prominence can occur on different syllables in different contexts to convey different meanings.
Malvinas war was in nineteen eighty TWO, not in nineteen eighty SIX.
Intonation:
The direction of the speaker pitch at the end of an utterance can be particularly crucial.
e.g. It´s an electric cuckoo clock. Declarative sentence.
It´s an electric cuckoo clock. Interrogative

21. Top-Down and Integrated strategies.
Second language learners in English can benefit from:
★ listening to a variety of lecture openings, and to predict what the lecture will
cover.
★ listening to long segments of authentic lectures and working at getting the
gist, writing down the main points and topics.
★ Geddes and Sturtridge (1979) suggest the use of “jigsaw”listening activities,
to integrate with other skills in communicative language teaching.
Both Top-Down and Bottom-up processes interact. They are useful and
necessary for effective listening comprehension.

22. According to the students competence and interests, we can select different
activities.
➔Extract detailed information from a text
➔Grasp the gist of an extended text
➔Differentiate between fact and opinion
➔Identify the genre and register of a text
➔Recognize differences in intonation
➔Identify relationships between participants in aural interactions
➔Identify the emotional tone of an utterance

23. Bottom up strategies or Top-down strategies
● Before we start listening, we can already predict some words or phrases that
might be used because of our knowledge of lexical sets associated with the
topic.
● We listen carefully to a recording a number of times so that we can find a
word we can´t catch clearly.
● When we don´t clearly catch some of what people say, we hypothesise what
we have missed and reinstate what we think was there, based on our
knowledge of similar conversations.
● We know the typical pattern some interactions follow (e.g. when ordering a
taxi on the phone, when asking for information, etc.) and these help us to

24. Teaching Use of the Telephone

25. Voice Mail and Answering Machine
With the proliferation of voice mail system and
telephone answering machines, second language
listeners should be exposed to a variety of authentic
voice-mail messages: after each message they
should write down the essential information so they
would be able to respond appropriately.

26. Listen to the following message.

27. Nonreciprocal Telephone Listening
Today many phones messages are pre recorded and the listener can not ask
questions or slow down the interlocutor. Getting the right information depends on
being able to understand the range of options, the specific instructions, and how
to respond by performing the proper action on the Touch Tone telephone.

28. Nonreciprocal Telephone Listening

29. Telephone Use: Everyday Conversation
Second language listeners need opportunities to interpret, and sum up what
they listen to. Their listening skills can be greatly facilitated if they are exposed to
authentic telephone conversations and also taught the conversational structure
and options as well as the formulaic expressions.

30. The general conversation structure of an informal telephone
conversation in North American English is as follows:
✓ Opening segment
✓ The “How Are You” segment
✓ Topic establishment
✓ Pre Closing
✓ Closing

31. Listening to a number of phone conversations that more or
less follow this pattern prepares second language learners
not only for informal telephone conversation but will also
assist them in being more effective in face to face
conversation

33. SPEECH ACTS
A SPEECH ACT IS A FUNCTIONAL UNIT IN COMMUNICATION.
IT IS AN ACT THAT A SPEAKER PERFORMS MAKING AN UTTERANCE.
(Cohen, A.D)
For example:
● Making apologies.
● Making requests
● Expressing gratitude.

34. “APOLOGIES”
“Apologize”: To say that you are sorry
for doing something wrong or causing
a problem.

35. Five Strategies observed cross-culturally in
apologies:

36. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE
MOST USEFUL EXERCISES
AND ACTIVITIES FOR L2
LISTENERS?

37. TASKS
❖Extract TOPIC/ GIST (First listening).
❖Get DETAILS of news item (Second listening). (Who, what, when,
where)
❖Evaluate emotional impact of news items (Third listening) (This can
vary but the listener should give reasons for the choice):
● neutral report of the information.
● information makes me happy/sad.
● information worries/surprises me.

38. Teachers need to design a variety of listening tasks that resemble games and at
the same time focus on identification and recognition of spoken sequences.

39. DISCOURSE FUNCTION OF ITEMS:
★ Cue words and discourse markers that signal what the main points
and minor points are.
★ Lexical and structural cues including lexical routines and chunks that
signal a new term and/or a definition or some other notional
construct.
★ Key text segments that serve as higher order organizers.
★ Words and phrases used to open or close a topic in conversation.
★ Ways to ask a question or to interrupt the speaker.
★ Ways to ask for clarification or elaboration.

40. Conclusion
Native listeners and non natives listeners must actively use a
variety of schemata and contextual clues to accurately
interpret oral messages. Phonological signals such as stress,
pause, and intonation; lexico-grammatical signals, lexical
phrases, and word order; and higher level organizing
elements that we find in conversational structures are all
critical in signaling information to the listener.

41. Bibliography
Book: Celce-Murcia, M. & Olshtain, E. (2000): Discourse and Context in Language
Teaching. A guide for Language Teachers. Chapter 6.