How to improve the listening competence
...nd all these elements so that we can catch the meaning of what we hear. If we do not have an idea of how words are segmented into different sounds, and how sentences are emphasized in some ways to convey meaning, then it is hard for us to understand the meaning of the message we hear. Sociolinguistic Competence It involves knowing what is expected socially and culturally according to different contexts. It is particularly important for listeners to grasp the purpose of any given oral communication. The speaker might want to convey more possible purposes: the main idea, specific facts, a feeling or emotion, a persuasive argument, a puzzle or a question, friendliness or hostility, or just a sense of humor. The listener who is good at sociolinguistic competence will seek the purpose of the speaker and adjust his or her own listening focus accordingly; or might comprehend that the purpose the speaker speak out is not the real one and will listen between the lines for the implied purpose. Understanding the sociolinguistic aspects of a language is conducive for ESL listeners to know when/if it is appropriate to make a comment or ask questions during a discourse, and how to respond well. Sociolinguistic competence involves discriminating the formal speech such as the lecture, the welcome speech to distinguished guests, etc., and the informal conversation such as the greetings among intimate friends, the conversation between family members, etc. and then listening for what would be expected in such situations. Discourse Competence ESL listeners should promote discourse competence in addition to the two competences mentioned above. Discourse is the connected language above the sentence level. In discourse the rules of cohesion and coherence apply, which helps to combine different parts of language together in a meaningful way. Even some short daily talks between family members or bosom friends, which seem random have some internal coherence and cohesion. Because of cohesion and coherence, almost all the listening passages are predictable. If ESL listeners have discourse competence, they will be able to anticipate what will be said next in the discourse and will easily comprehend what they are hearing at any given time. Discourse competence is a proactive competence because it requires the listeners to anticipate rather than just receive messages passively. The listeners will always seek to know how different parts of the target language use substitution, conjunction, repetition of words, etc to relate to each other. Strategic Competence Strategic competence is a very important aspect of communicative competence. It refers to the ability to guess the meaning of what is heard in target language from all possible clues. Strategic competence in listening involves using some guessing strategies to make up for missing knowledge when trying to catch what is heard. Appropriate and intelligent guessing is one of the most important and useful strategies for ESL learners. Listening is not only a bottom-up skill in which the meaning can be derived from the sum of the concrete sounds, words or phrases, but also a top-down processing in which the meaning is inferred from broad contextual clues and background knowledge. Therefore, listening is a complicated and interactive operation combining both bottom-up and top-down processing. It is the false notion that ESL listeners have to recognize and comprehend every single word while listening to a target language. Guessing is essential for listening. In the listening process, listeners must decode the meaning of what is being said, often by means of guessing from the context clues. They have to predict what is coming next, so that they can keep up with the conversation. Finally, they must adjust if the predictions are proved wrong. That is, they must be able to recognize the failure and then shift to a new hypothesis. The ability to employ both linguistic and nonlinguistic clues is essential for strategic competence in listening. Linguistic clues include suffixes, prefixes, word order, cognates, etc., which can help listeners guess unkown discourse. The use of discourse markers, such as gfirsth, gsecondh, gthirdh, gwe will now turn toh and gas far as it is concernedh, provide to the listeners the general organization of the discourse in target language. There are a great number of nonlinguistic clues. For instance, body language (facial expression and posture) provides clues about what is being heard. Background noise will be helpful in guessing meanings. For example, the background noise of a crowd of cheering indicates that the speaker has delivered something exciting or important. 2.4 Aspects of Listening Listening involves a number of elements. These start with perception and then followed by four areas of comprehension. All these components involve the transformation of input to intake--- a change from whirling buzz of noise into a meaningful subset that is internalized by the learners (Cohen, 1990). At the perception level, the intake is a string of significant sounds. At various levels of comprehension, the intake is meaning-carrying words, phrases, clauses, sentences, or longer discourse. 2.41 Perception The first component of listening is perception, which requires distinguishing the significant stimuli from the stream of sound or noise. The task for the beginners, first of all, to perceive: to break out the important sounds from ongoing stream of sound. It is difficult to perceive as it seems. For instance, it is hard to notice the sound difference between men and man, pen and pin. Some times the differences are so great that learners might not recognize two different pronunciations as presenting the very same word. Perception, the breaking up of sound into potentially meaningful units, is also made difficult because of the different rhythmic patterns of English as compared with the patterns of the native language of ESL students. (Ur, 1984) In English, we divide speech into tone groups, strings of connected syllables that have one heavily stressed tone (Ur, 1984). For example, in English intonation influences the meaning of a statement (by changing the pitch or key to show importance, irony, certainty, humor, etc.). A rising intonation at the end of a sentence implies uncertainty or a question--- or in some instances a lack of self-esteem. ESL learners have to learn new patterns like this, which might differ significantly from what they are used to in their own native tongue. 2.42 Four Aspects of Listening Four aspects of listening comprehension exist: 1. Isolated word recognition within the sound stream (minimal comprehension of general content) 2. Phrase or formula recognition (marginal recognition) 3. Clause or sentence recognition (minimally functional comprehension of content) 4. Extended speech comprehension (general comprehension of unedited speech) Understanding Isolated Words In this element of listening comprehension, the ESL learners catch isolated words such as gworryh, gtesth or ggoingh. By apprehending one or more such discrete words, the intelligent learner can sometime guess the general meaning of the discourse. In this instance, the conversation might be about someone worried about going to an exam, and the listener hears one or two of these words, the general content might be clear. Recognizing Phrases The learner can recognize whole phrases or routine expressions. These formulas (some of them based on rather transient slang) grease the wheels and cogs of communication. Because they are so common, listeners can easily learn to recognize and understand them and can learn how to respond appropriately. Understanding such commonplace expressions helps learners feel self-confident, aids in fluency, and keeps learners actively involved. Understanding Clauses or Sentences Clause or sentence recognition is another element in understanding speech. This involves recognizing clauses or sentences that are not purely routine or formulaic---novel expressions that the learner has probably not heard before. In this aspect of listening, the listenerfs degree of understanding is often based on willingness to guess in order to fill in the gaps in understanding. This willingness to guess depends on risk-taking ability and on general knowledge (relevant knowledge that helps the learner predict what the speaker will say or to guess what the speaker is saying. Understanding Discourse This aspect of listening relates to extended speech, or what we commonly call discourse above the sentence level. The effective listener doesnft just focus on the isolated words to guess the general meaning of a discourse, or concentrate on discrete clauses or sentences. Instead, the listener is able to move to a greater overall understanding of a lecture, a conversation, or any other oral communication. In all comprehensive areas, and particular in the field of discourse, the listener must notice the register being used: academic, journalistic, formal-social, informal-social, etc. Listeners can comprehend better when understand the purpose behind the communication---especially the purpose reflected in the register the speaker uses. 2.5 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension Pronunciation Pronunciation is the basic element of a language. The wrong and awkward pronunciation is the obstacle to listening proficiency. If the listeners do not pay attention to the correct and standard pronunciation and cultivate the bad habit of pronouncing the words as they like, they cannot recognize the correct pronunciation in the listening process, even if they have a broad vocabulary. Vocabulary As we know, a large vocabulary is undoubtedly conducive to listening comprehension. But we should notice that the gvocabularyh we refer to is often the reading vocabulary rather than listening vocabulary. But reading vocabulary is quite different from listening vocabulary. Many ESL learners possess a large vocabulary, but their listening vocabulary is smaller and even less than half of their reading vocabulary. ESL learners always have more visual contact than aural contact with vocabulary, which leads to the fact that they are likely to command reading vocabulary with the help of language context and word shape. As a result, they are not familiar with the pronunciation of the vocabulary. Grammar Grammar includes many aspects of linguistic knowledge, including morphology and syntax. Morphology refers to word structure, including the rules and principles for the use of morphemes. Syntax refers to the order of words in a sentence. Syntax allows us to combine ideas in different ways. So we can see that grammar is the cornerstone of listening comprehension and communicative competence as well. Language Speed Language speed is an important factor that influences the listening comprehension. The higher the language speed is, the more difficult the learners feel to catch the meaning of the listening discourse. Cultural Background As Scovel (1991) pointed out, language and culture are so close that they are sometimes viewed as synonyms. To us, language is one of the main symbol systems through which people interpret the meaning of the world around them. Thus, language is one of the primary components of culture. Language is one of the important elements of culture and act as the vehicle for expressing and spreading culture. Peoplefs conception of the world is expressed largely through language, although it is also expressed in many nonverbal forms such as cuisine, music, art, religion, dance, etc. So it should be highlighted that all the ESL learners attach much importance to their cultural background. In a discourse of a target language, the cultural background is inevitable, which might be viewed as an obstacle to listening comprehension for those who have little acquaintance with the culture. The purpose of the listening task The purpose of the listening task is of great importance in listening process. Different listening tasks demand different listening strategies. For example, listening for specific details (foe example, flight information at an airport) requires the listeners to pay selective attention to the details only and to filter out all that does not relate directly to the details. This is a discrimination task that essentially amounts to separating the important from the unimportant. A very different listening task with contrasting requirement is listening to opposing arguments in order to discern their credibility. The task demands a different kind of techniques, as well as simply dividing facts into significant and insignificant. Critical, analytical judgment is the ultimate goal of this type of listening. Listening for the general idea of a lecture or a TV show involves synthesizing a great deal of material into a general concept, possibly with examples or applications of that concept. Global cognitive behavior is necessary here, rather than analytic. In therapeutic or empathic listening (Coakley and Wolvin, 1986), the listeners must focus on the emotional content as well as the facts given by the speaker. The listener provides supportive nonverbal behaviors and verbal responses to enable the speaker to talk through a problem. The attempt is to be nonjudgmental as possible while providing support, although any listening, no matter how supportive or empathic, involves sifting, sorting, and judging. In appreciative listening (Coakley and Wolvin, 1986), the individual listens for enjoyment or sensory impression from the listening material. Appreciative listening includes listening to speakerfs language style, to a music or stage pronunciation and appreciating them aesthetically. Attention If the listener is not paying adequate attention, the information will not be processed (Cohen, 1990) Attention is central to the entire process of second language acquisition and, for that matter, to any form of learning. Attention is the learnerfs window to the world; it is the neuropsychological mechanism that promotes or prohibits acquisitionc. Attentionc. Neurologically and the way psychologically explain the mind shapes (or does not shape) the individualfs perception of the people and the languages that make up the surrounding environment. (Scovel, 1991: 3, 5) The importance of attention for listening is stressed by Cohen. According to his investigation, the students take in less classroom input than the teacher desires, often about 25%-85%. People remember only about 20%-30% of what was said, according to Bostrum (Breecher, 1983) If the ESL listeners want to listen proficiently, they must analyze and enrich the listening material with in-depth rather than superficial attention. Superficial attention is for the material that is very familiar to the learners, but not for the new material. Anxiety In language learning, motivation and attitudes are related to anxiety, which is defined as ea state of apprehension, a vague fearf (Scovel, 1978, 134). Such apprehension or fear can cause motivation to plummet and attitudes to drift towards the negative. In a downward spiral, low motivation can then lead to poorer performance, which then result in still greater anxiety. Some experts say that anxiety can be helpful rather than harmful. The ggoodh kind of anxiety is called facilitating anxiety, which can be useful in keeping students alert and on their toes (Scovel, 1978). The gbadh kind of anxiety is known as debilitating anxiety, because it harms learners es participation and creates avoidance of the language. Horwitz (1990) notes that what some researchers call facilitating anxiety is only helpful for very simple learning tasks, but not for more complicated learning such as language learning. By implication, there might be no such thing as facilitating anxiety for language learners. For this reason, the term anxiety only carries the negative meaning. It refers to debilitating anxiety. While a certain amount of positive tension is helpful to language learners, any degree of true anxiety is harmful in the language classroom. Listening can be anxiety provoking, for the ESL listeners who have difficulty in listening efficiently or well due to a learning disability or lack of appropriate listening strategies. Motivation and Attitudes Motivation and attitudes are of great importance in language acquisition. Gardner (1985) has shown through statistics that motivation has a strong impact on the extent of active, personal engagement in learning. A study (Oxford and Nyikos, 1989) suggests that the degree of motivation is the most powerful influence on how and when the language learners to use the strategies so as to enhance their language. High motivation and positive attitudes can spur the active engagement of the learners in the learning process. Learning Strategies Language learning strategies are some specific behaviors, steps or skills employed by students themselves to promote their language learning. Different learning strategies will lead to different results in language learning. Appropriate learning strategies will be beneficial for improvement in language proficiency and increase in self-confidence. Effective learners are likely to choose the strategies that meet the requirements of language acquisition. Chapter Three: Approaches and Methodology I began my research several months ago, during which I determined the research subject, reviewed the literature, designed the approach, collected the data, analyzed and summarized the results. The research is generally based on the theory of communicative competence graded and perfected by many different linguists. I intend to emphasize the factors influencing the listening proficiency and wish to provide learners with some suggestions on effective learning and teachers with some advice on teaching. To ensure the explicitness of the research and the validity of the data, the research I made combined qualitative and descriptive approaches. The target language I choose is English. The steps by which I carried out the research are described as follows: The subjects I choose are 100 non-English majors in our university, including both effective and less effective ESL listeners. The effective listeners are considered to include those who have relatively high scores in listening examinations in the university, while the less effective listeners are those who havenft done well in such listening examinations. I complied a comprehensive figure of all the possible factors that influence the listening process (Figure 2), which will be analyzed in detail in the next chapter. Categories Contents Verbal Factors Pronunciation Grammar Language Speed Nonverbal Factors Cultural Background The Nature or the Purpose of the Listening Task Attention Anxiety Motivation or Attitudes Learning Strategies Figure 2 All of the subjects are required to complete a questionnaire, which is designed according to the comprehensive figure. The questionnaire includes sixteen structured questions and one open question. Since some students only chose to complete part of the questions, not all the questions are answered by all of the 100 students assigned the task. However, the efficiency rate for each of the questions is above 90%, so the results for the questionnaires are regarded valid. Chapter Four: Case Studies Pronunciation Vocabulary Grammar Language speed Cultural Background Attention Anxiety Purpose of listening task Motivation and Attitude Effective listeners 15% 27% 19% 35% 85% 21% 26% 72% 35% Less effective listeners 43% 57% 25% 43% 62% 33% 46% 45% 57% Figure 3 4.1 Verbal Factors 4.11 Pronunciation 43% less effective students and 15% effective students think that poor pronunciation is an obstacle to English listening. 21% ESL learnersf pronunciation is not standard and even 6% of them have very poor pronunciation, which prevents them from listening efficiently. So we can see that pronunciation is an important factor that influences listening proficiency, especially for ESL learners. If the learners boast standard pronunciation, it is easy for them to recognize the words, phrases and sentences in a listening discourse. On the contrary, if the learners are familiar with their own pronunciation, which is far from standard, they will find it difficult to recognize words, phrases, and sentences in a listening discourse, even if they have large vocabulary. 4.12 Vocabulary 47% students finishing my questionnaire are lacking in vocabulary. 57% less effective listeners and 27% effective listeners only have less than 3000 vocabularies, which are far from satisfactory. CET-4 requires the students to have a vocabulary of about 4000-5000, which refers to reading vocabularies. In fact, the listening vocabularies of most students are less than half of their reading vocabularies because it is more frequent for them to contact the vocabularies visually than aurally. As a result, they are likely to have a command of reading vocabularies with the help of the word formation, the specific language context rather than pay attention to the pronunciation recognition of the vocabularies. In addition, many students only master one meaning of a word. Although they recognize the word in the listening discourse, they cannot convert all the words in a sentence into a meaningful unit. They still find it difficult to comprehend the listening discourse. For example, when dictating the sentence gThe crying over, I ached, I was wronged.h, many students note down groundh or gwrongh instead of gwrongedh. The reason for such mistakes is that they donft know the word gwrongh can be a verb, meaning treated unfairly. So it is very important to recognize the meaning of words in listening comprehension. 4.13 Grammar Many students try to get familiar with different aspects of grammar and learn to analyze the structures of different sentence patterns so as to comprehend the discourses well. It is the same with listening. Recognizing sentence patterns and catching information phrases are conducive to having better understanding of the speaker. If the listener doesnft have sound grammatical kowledge, it is hard for them to seize and comprehend such information that will disappears in a short moment. Take the sentence gYou should have come yesterday.h for example. If the listeners know about the mood and its role in the sentence, they will not understand the whole sentence. 62% students completing my questionnaire also agree on the point. In their opinion...