The document discusses skills and strategies for proficient listening at different levels of language proficiency. It explains that reception of a language should precede production to allow internalization. Comprehension involves both top-down and bottom-up processes. Principles for classroom listening include increasing listening time, using both global and selective listening, and developing conscious listening strategies. Skills involve subprocesses like chunking input, while strategies are consciously used operations. Suggestions are provided for teachers to focus students on unstressed endings, function words, and interactive listening strategies.

1. Skills and Strategies for Proficient Listening Pat Wilcox Peterson “ Learning to speak a language is very largely a task of learning to hear it” (Nida, 1957)

2. Only after internalizing some part of the language students should try to speak. Reception should precede production because reception enables production.

3. NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF PREMATURE PRODUCTION L1 transfer errors the need to produce may interfere with the ability to comprehend the overload of task demands produces anxiety

4. UNDERSTANDING PROCESSES TOP-DOWN processes : context, topic, nature of text and nature of the world. BOTTOM-UP processes : sounds, words and phrases in order to decode speech and assign meaning.

5. PHASES in comprehension Perceptual processing - recognizing sounds, syllables and words. Parsing phase - forms meaningful units with words and sentences. Utilization phase – relates old information to new one. Then comprehension occurs.

6. Proficiency in comprehension is the ability to fill in the gaps and to create an understanding that meets one’s purpose for listening. Even in native language we do not need to hear all the information in a message.

7. PRINCIPLES FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION IN THE CLASSROOM Increase the amount of listening time in the classroom Use listening before other activities

8. 3. Include both global (main idea, topic) and selective (form, accuracy) listening 4. Activate top-level skills (call up background knowledge)

9. 5. Practise bottom-up processing (overlearning through focus on selected formal features) 6. Develop conscious listening strategies (comprehension processes)

10. SKILLS AND STRATEGIES SKILLS: subprocesses such as chunking input into syllables, recognizing words, recalling schemata and matching key words to a semantic structure.

11. SKILLS AND STRATEGIES STRATEGIES: are operations which the learner chooses to use to direct or check his or her own comprehension; so they are under the learner’s conscious control.

12. STRATEGIES Attending to longer chunks of language and relating new information to what students already know are productive strategies. These help to avoid translation

13. True beginners lack adequate bottom-up processing skills. They need to internalize important sound distinctions and categories first. Do you understand English? instead of Do you speak English? must be valued.

14. Global listening selections should be short (1-3 minutes) Speak in a simplified code Add new material gradually by recombining familiar material Give students a task to perform while listening Listening exercises can focus on structures or sounds in contrast

15. Present theme and situation of the story visually Illustrate new vocabulary, specially in a personal way Don’t slow your speech but make pauses between sentences Selective listening activities must bring contrasts and patterns into conscious awareness

16. discriminate between intonation contours in sentences discriminate between phonemes listen for morphological endings recognise syllable patterns, number of syllables, and word stress be aware of sentence fillers in informal speech select details from the text.

17. discriminate between emotional reactions get the gist or main idea of a passage recognise the topic

18. use speech features to decide if a statement is formal or informal recognize a familiar word and relate it to a category compare information in memory with incoming information compare information that you hear with your own experience

19. THE INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL STUDENT They have internalized the phonemic system Focus on: word recognition, fine differences in word order, grammatical form, registers of speaking and emotional overtones They can make predictions and explain relations between events and ideas

20. SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS Provide authentic texts with: reduced forms, fast speech features, false starts, hesitations, errors, some nonstandard dialects and a variety of different voices Focus on: unstressed endings, articles, inflections and function words Teach interactive listening strategies

21. BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Differenciate between content and function words by stress pattern Find the stressed syllable Recognise words with reduced vowels or dropped syllables Recognise words as they are linked in the speech stream Recognise pertinent details in the speech stream

22. TOP-DOWN PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Discriminate between registers of speech and tones of voice Listen to identify the speaker or the topic Find main ideas and supporting details make inferences

23. INTERACTIVE PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – INTERMEDIATE LEVEL use word stress to understand the speaker’s intention recognize missing grammar markers in colloquial speech and reconstruct the message use context and knowledge of the world to build listening expectations; listen to confirm expectations

24. THE ADVANCED LEARNER able to use their second language skills to acquire knowledge begins to fill in the gaps and can make inferences may miss jokes, slang, and cultural references reductions in normal speech are a major comprehension problem

25. SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS expose learners to reduced speech revise stress, pause, pitch, and intonation patterns

26. BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – ADVANCED LEVEL sentences stress and intonation to identify important information for note taking contractions, reduced forms, and other characteristics of spoken English that differ from the written form common performance slips must be reinterpreted or ignored organizational cues in lecture text lexical and suprasegmental markers for definitions identify specific points of information

27. TOP-DOWN PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – ADVANCED LEVEL use knowledge of the topic to predict the content of the text use the introduction to the lecture to predict its focus and direction use the lecture transcript to predict the content of the next section find the main idea of a lecture segment recognise point of view

28. INTERACTIVE PROCESSING GOALS – EXERCISE TYPES – ADVANCED LEVEL 1. Use knowledge of phrases and discourse markers to predict the content in the next segment of the lecture 2. Make inferences about the text