3 Listening and the learner
A: The week after next, if possible
4.4 Listening types
An alternative line of attack proceeds in the other direction. We attempt to list the various types of listening that a real-world listener engages in (low-level monitoring, listening for detail, auditory scanning, etc.) and then go on to practise them by linking them to the types of situation in
which they occur. To take examples from Table 4.2, we might decide that one type of listening that needs practice is monitoring what is heard for pieces of information that are of interest or relevance. Learners are then asked to apply that process to the types of input that would normally require it: namely, news headlines, airport announcements, etc. Similarly, listening for details might be practised in situations where messages or instructions are being given, while listening for main points would be relevant with complete news items and with the output of lecturers and tour guides.
There is nothing very revolutionary about this idea. Indeed, current L2 listening materials quite often pay lip service to it, marking out certain passages and the tasks that accompany them as practising ‘listening for main ideas’, ‘listening for gist’, etc. However, only a limited range of
‘listening for’ categories are usually featured and the way in which the materials match utterance type to listening type is not always consistent.
So far, no system seems to have been devised of grading the types of listening in terms of the demands that they make of the learner or of organising them so that one type leads on to another.
A useful way of thinking about types of listening is suggested by Urquhart and Weir’s (1998) account of the reading skill. They regard a competent reader as one who commands a range of different reading processes and is capable of matching the appropriate process to the text provided. They suggest (p. 123) that reading types vary in two main ways. One relates to how much attention the reading requires (on a gradient from expeditious to careful); the other relates to the level of detail that the reader aims to acquire (whether it is local or global).
If we attempt to apply the same criteria to listening, the ‘expedi-tious’/‘careful’ distinction does not seem to form quite such a neat dichotomy. The listener appears to have much greater scope for varying the level of attention that she gives to the input – and even for ‘tuning out’ altogether. Table 4.3 represents a tentative proposal on my part. It follows Urquhart and Weir in distinguishing whether the listener’s focus of interest is local or global; but it recognises four levels of attention that might be brought to bear according to the nature of the task. The rele-vance of this model to a teaching programme is that instructors should ideally try to ensure that learners are given practice in as wide a range of these listening types as possible: taking due account of whether the locus of interest is local or global and of the closeness of listening demanded by the type.
Clearly, that will not always be a practical proposition, as a great deal will depend upon the level of language and the listening expertise of the learners in question. Generalising somewhat, one might suggest a gradual progression. Listening types that demand a low focus of attention or
Global Local Shallow
atten-tional focus
Skimming (listening generally) to establish discourse topic and main ideas.
‘What is it about?’
e.g. TV channel hopping, TV advertisements, eavesdropping
Phatic communion
‘What are the speaker’s intentions?’
e.g. greetings
Unfocused scanning to locate information relevant to the listener.
‘Does the speaker mention anything of interest to me?’
e.g. news headlines
Medium attentional focus
Listening for plot; listening to commentary
‘What happened next?’
e.g. film/TV drama, TV/radio interview Conversational listening
‘What is the speaker’s message?’
e.g. everyday chat Information exchange
‘How much do I need to know?’
e.g. tour guide
Focused scanning to locate one area of information needed by the listener.
‘When will the speaker mention X?’
e.g. airport announcement, weather forecast
Search listening to locate and understand information relevant to predetermined needs.
‘What is the answer to these questions?’
e.g. hotel/travel information Message listening
‘How many details do I need to retain?’
e.g. answerphone Deep
attentional focus
Close listening to establish the speaker’s main points and to trace connections between them.
‘What is important?’
e.g. lecture listening
Close listening to record in depth the speaker’s main points and supporting detail.
‘I assume that everything is relevant.’
e.g. negotiation Very deep
attentional focus
Listening to check critical facts
‘Is this consistent?’
e.g. witness evidence
Listening to vital instructions
‘I assume that everything is important.’
e.g. street directions Listening to the form of words
‘What precisely did he say?’
e.g. listening to quote somebody
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require chiefly local information are likely to prove easier for less expe-rienced L2 listeners to handle. It is only when listeners have achieved the ability to recognise the majority of the words in the input that we can expect them to extract multiple facts from a listening passage and to reg-ister the complex relationships between them. Similarly, it is only when listeners are able to divert some of their efforts from word recognition that they are able to allocate resources to building the kind of detailed representation that enables them to report on global meaning.
The principal point remains that instructors should aim to ensure that type and depth of listening are appropriate to the text that is being used.
The panel below provides some concrete examples of tasks which could be applied to the kind of recorded material that is generally available from listening courses, off-air and internet sources. It will be noted that the tasks described are rather more demanding than those associated with the comprehension approach in that the listener has to seek out information for herself rather than simply locating information which the teacher has targeted. The tasks are loosely organised by depth of listening; some have both global and local components.
Of course, one cannot be too dogmatic in insisting upon a close text–
task match. On their own, the exercises exemplified in the panel may not provide enough work for a full listening lesson – in which case, the teacher will need to supplement them with traditional CA classroom tasks based upon ‘local’ details. But a principal consideration should be the need to model the types of listener response that are likely to occur, rather than simply mining a text for general and specific information.
Sample tasks based on listening type
‘You are a radio listener interested in ecology and psychology; but not politics. You are going to switch quite quickly between five different programmes. Find one or two which might interest you.’
‘You will hear five sports commentaries. Identify the sports involved.’
‘Your partner works in Cardiff and is late home. Listen to the traffic news for the whole area and try to work out why.’
‘Listen to part of this soap opera episode. Say what has happened.
What is the “cliff-hanger”? Say what you expect to happen next. Then listen and decide if you were right or not.’
‘You are in southern Europe. What will the weather be like tomor-row?’
‘You are waiting for a train to London and hear a number of announcements. What do you find out about your train?’
‘You have gone to a tourist information office to find out about hotel accommodation in Cambridge. You are standing in a queue behind a fellow visitor who seems to be asking about hotels. What can you find out?’
‘You are hoping to be interviewed for a job. Listen to your answer-phone messages to see if the employer has answer-phoned and what the arrangements are.’
‘You will hear part of a rather chatty lecture. What is the speaker’s main point?’
‘You will hear a man and a woman discussing a contract to provide food at a party. What terms and conditions do they agree on?’
‘You are a juror in a court case. Listen to the defendant’s statement.
Do you believe it?’
‘The map shows where you went after leaving the railway station.
Listen to the instructions and work out where you went wrong.’
‘What positive and what negative words did the critic use about the film she was discussing?’