What is listening and how can it be improved?

What is listening and how can it be improved?

What exactly is listening?   How does the process occur?   How can we improve our listening?

These are important questions to consider as it is estimated that 40-50% of the time we are engaged in listening of some type or other.

The first point to understand is that we listen with our brain, not our ears.   If our brain is turned off or only engaged in a limited way, then our comprehension will be similarly limited.   Good listening is active listening.

This relates to the concept of processing (the mental bit) the sounds that enter our ears (the physical bit).    We engage in two types of processing:

1.   top down processing -- using our previous knowledge of the topic the words are concerned with;   having a purpose for listening;   predicting what will be said;  here we use a lot of ‘chunking’

2.    bottom up processing -- this is very inefficient and we all do it to varying degrees -- we attend to the individual sounds and words;


Comprehension, which can range from 0% to 100%,  occurs as a combination of the two processes.     

So why on a listening test do you maybe only score 50%?

(Of course, this may be partly due to poor reading or test-taking skills, but that is besides the point of this page.)

The biggest barriers to listening comprehension are:

1.  poor vocabulary -- if we don’t know the important (and common) words, then we are 

stuck.

2.  poor pronunciation -- if we don’t know how words are supposed to sound, then we 

can’t recognize them.   Spoken correctly, they may not be as we say them and  

hence believe  they should sound like.

3.  poor accommodation strategies:

1.  words are spoken in connected strings  -- they are often slurred and said quickly whereby they blend together ( ex.  for getting vs.  forgetting; watchagonnado?)
2. we often don’t catch bits of what we hear, but we can guess or infer what we miss based on context -- like filling in a puzzle

 4. unfamiliarity with different speaking formats

5.   weak knowledge of the world and its many different domains



If you want to improve your listening, then you must attend to the weaknesses just discussed.

As you listen, you should be interpreting what you hear.   People create understanding of oral input in different ways because people are all different.   As you listen, you should be making a story and hence meaning out of the various strings of sounds/words.

Ten Strategies

Here are the top ten macro strategies to improve your listening ability.

1.   Listen to stories --  this develops the top down processing skills.

2.   Practice cloze and dictation activities -- this develops the bottom up skills

3.   Do extensive listening -- on many different topics; from many different voices; from 

varied formats    (ex.  news; interviews; lectures; songs)

4.   Immersion -- surround yourself with English -- minimize L1 oral input; 

minimize translation

5.   Improve your vocabulary -- first the top 3000 words; then the top 5000 words; 

then the top 8000 words

6.   Study the English sounds -- productive and receptive phonetics

7.   Interact in English -- have a friend with whom you must speak English; speak to 

homestay family frequently

8.   Listen and make a summary -- then check with someone else

9.   Practice listening activities with a partner

10.  Use the many different listening resources on the Internet

More Strategies

Here is a list of many micro strategies: (from Listening and good language learners; Goodith White in Lessons from Good Language Learners, ed. Carol Griffiths.  Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. 2008)


1.   Cognitive strategies:   mental activities learners use to remember and develop 

  language and enhance comprehension

• predicting what a piece of listening will be about, or what language/information will come next;
• drawing inferences when information is not stated or has been missed;
• guessing meaning of unknown words
• using intonation an pausing to segment words and phrases;
• other micro-strategies to do with processing language -- identifying stressed words, listening for markers, listening for structures, etc.;
• using schematic and contextual information (top down) together with linguistic information (bottom up) to arrive at meaning;
• visualizing the situation they are hearing about; piecing together meaning from words that have been heard.

2.  Metacognitive strategies:  these are activities learners use to organize, monitor and   
    evaluate how well they are understanding.

• focusing attention, concentrating and clearing the mind before listening;
• applying an advance organizer before listening (I think the topic is going to be … so …);
• going in with a plan (I’m going to listen for … words I know/key words);
• getting used to speed and finding ways of coping with it;
• being aware when they are losing attention and refocusing concentration;
• deciding what the main purpose of listening is;
• checking how well they have understood;
• taking notes;
• paying attention to the main points;
• identifying listening problems and planning how to improve them.

3.   Socio-affective strategies: activities in which learners interact with other people in 

order to help their comprehension and encourage themselves to continue listening.

• asking for clarification;
• checking that they have got the right idea;
• providing themselves with opportunities for listening;
• motivating themselves to listen;
• lowering anxiety about listening;
• providing a personal response to the information or ideas presented in the piece of listening;
• empathizing with the speaker and trying to understand the reason for a particular message.

Your listening ability will not improve overnight, but an organized and effective strategy implemented over many months can indeed have dramatic results.   

Online Listening Resources

Try to do some focused listening every day or two — about 15-20 minutes.   BBC Learning English is a good site for this,  or TED Talks,   or  CBC Radio here  or here.   The key is to be able to look at a transcript after to check your notes,  or use this transcript to prepare a listening cloze.Here are some useful websites to practice these skills (plus note-taking).  Explore these resources and find some tools that work for you.

BBC Learning English   (I recommend “6 minute English” within this website.)

English Central  (This is a great tool for practice listening in short spurts.

200 Listening Dictation Exercises

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab

Manythings Listening

Listening and Speaking Pages

Focus English:  Conversation 

 Video-based Listening  (Watch and listen to a variety of movie clips and answer questions)

George Strouboulopoulos Interviews (CBC)   You can listen to some of these interviews

Big Bang Theory Transcripts (If you like this show,  you can read the scripts here and learn some of the language they use;  you can even read and watch same the episode)

Script-O-Rama  (You can find the scripts for many of your favourite movies and tv programs here)

The Internet Movie Script Database

Strategic Learning

The best learners,  whatever they are learning be it music or language or science etc.,  use strategies. In education,  a  strategy is simply a  consciously (ideally)  method of  accomplishing tasks and goals. If you write appointments on a calendar so you can remember them and to plan your time,  that is a strategy.    Everyone uses strategies.   There are both effective and less effective strategies.    It has been found that the best learners use a variety of effective strategies to help them learn.    Which strategies do you use to improve your English?  Are they effective for you?

Improving your reading

How to read more efficiently

A model for effective learning (and living)

This easy acronym is at the heart of all successful activities, like learning.   It stands for:

Knowledge of the world and of yourself.

Plan for how to achieve something such as a goal.

Action taken to realize the plan.   

Monitoring the action in view of the plan.

Evaluate one’s knowledge, plan and action.

This is a kind of feedback loop in that as one evaluates,  one can change any element in KPAME.

In terms of vocabulary learning, by Knowledge of the world what is meant is knowledge about vocabulary and the world.    You need to know about vocabulary learning and English vocabulary in the context of Canada,  or where you currently live and study or work.    You need to know about word frequency.    The second aspect of Knowledge is knowing about yourself in terms of vocabulary.  What words do you know?  What words do you need to know?   How do you currently study vocabulary?  Is it effective?

Goals flow from knowledge.  Good goals are SMART.    This is another acronym meaning Specific,  Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.  

There are many different ways to achieve your goals.  These ways are called strategies.  There are good strategies and there are bad strategies.  A good strategy is effective, and effective for you.  It is important that it fits for you, for your own learning style.   It is effective if it helps you to successfully achieve your goal/s in a way you are comfortable with.

Once you have created some vocabulary learning goals and strategies to achieve these goals,  you need to create a larger Plan that fits these together and includes specific timelines and accountability factors.   

Without Action, a plan is nothing.   This is where you practice your strategies.  Sometimes this is the hardest part of learning or achieving something.    Your language coach can be of great help in pushing you on in this, and maybe providing some feedback.    

Monitoring is often these days  called metacognition.   It is watching your own thinking and behavior.   In terms of KPAME,  it is looking at the whole process to see how well it is working or not working.    A personal journal is a good tool for observing our action after the fact and reflecting on it.

During or after monitoring,  you need to evaluate your action,  your plan, and your knowledge. Look at it all with a critical eye and determine what is good and bad,  strong and weak,  effective and ineffective.   Then you go back and change anything that needs changing.

KPAME is one method of successfully managing independent learning.  If you look at successful learners and successful people,  you will see that in one way or another they are following this model.

English Language Support this week

Already it is week 8.  Hopefully mid-terms are done and you are using feedback from these and from other assignments to strengthen your academic performance going forward.    English Language Support is here to help.

Graduate Student Reading Workshop Slide Presentation and Handout

Yesterday,   English Language Support led a reading workshop for Master of Arts in Sustainable Leisure Management students.    Here is the slideshow,  summary of the reading survey results,  and the accompanying handout for students who attended or did not attend.

Reading Survey Results (x=16)

Workshop Handout

Strategic Reading for Graduate Students:

 A workshop for MASLM

October 22,  2015

Presented by Les Barclay and Bruce Cornwall

http://viulanguagesupport.blogspot.ca/

1.   Introduction

·       What do you find difficult in reading? 

·       4 themes:

1. Approaches and process – an overview of effective processes involved in critical and active reading of academic articles from both macro and micro perspectives

2. Knowledge, context and thinking when reading – what happens when you read?

3. Interacting with a text – effective annotation process and strategies

4. Collaboration and reading – how to use the power of groups to get more meaning out of a text

2.         Process: Macro and Micro

·       Different types of readings/text need to approached differently (academic  

      article/newspaper article/website

·       Big picture: Scan title, subtitles, intro, conclusion

·       Purpose: entertain or inform or persuade

·       Find thesis, and 2-3 supporting arguments

3.         Knowledge and Context 

●       SLM,   Canada,  North America

●       What is context?     Sources?    Influence?   Importance?

●       5 dimensions of context

●       Degrees of context

●       Long term strategies?

●       Short term strategies =  compensation strategies

·       know what you know and don’t know (at the start, and during reading)

·       ask questions

·       don’t translate

·       talk to others (including teacher)

·       Google stuff

·       think in terms of Canada and North America first

·       annotate

·       prioritize

·       keep the reading purpose in mind

4.   Annotations:   Know the author’s purpose, the text structure, and of course,your purpose

·        Prioritizing –find the main/key ideas in a section of writing and decide why the information is useful or not;

·        Interpreting/Inventing – a key stage where you must use your own words to express the main ideas. Inability to do this could indicate barriers in understanding, and it is here that you to need to not give up and find solutions to gain understanding;

·        Analogizing –for example, in a literature review, you need to understand each article to the point that you can connect the similarities, differences, and additional information to discuss the value of each text.

·        Bruce will demonstrate using p.66 ‘The development of the ecotrekking strategy’.

5.        Collaborative Reading:

 Benefits:

·        helps paraphrasing and summarizing as you practice putting ideas in your own words

·        makes discussing the readings in class easier as you have already practiced talking        

         about them in English

·        deepens your knowledge and understanding --  explaining to someone else forces you 

         to strengthen your vocabulary and depth of understanding;   you realize what you don't 

         understand or don't understand well enough.

·        you can fill in missing pieces with the other person

·        you  can organize the text you are reading

·        if you both/all don't understand something, then it isn't just you

 

Steps and principles of effective collaborative reading:

1.     Find someone (or a group) to discuss readings with; this person should not speak the 

         same first language as you unless it is English

2.     Have a plan for your reading discussions; what do you hope to discuss? When will you

         meet?  How often will you meet? How long will you meet for?

3.     Read before meeting and identify the parts/aspects of the reading to discuss; annotate

         (especially what you don't get)

4.     Speak English only in your discussion

5.     Your discussion should happen before the class

6.     Have a strategy for dealing with new vocabulary -- don't translate

7.     Be an active and critical reader (both alone and collaboratively); find something you 

        agree and disagree with -- first ensure you all understand and agree on the thesis

8.     Reflect and connect -- together,  reflect on the reading and connect it to your course    

         and to your lives

9.      If the text has discussion questions,  please use these

10.   Consider context -- what do you and don't you know about this topic; what is the 

        situation in your own country and culture?

11.   Consider the purpose of reading this text

12.   Make a concept map from the text

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