Page 1 of 9

Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 6:16 pm
by reineke
I wanted to share this ---

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 6:56 pm
by reineke
How are words stored in memory?

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:30 pm
by Ani
reineke wrote:A decoding phase - input is ‘translated’ into the sounds of the language

A lexical search phase - in which the listener searches his brain (long-term memory) for words which match or nearly match these sounds.

A parsing phase - in which he must recognise a grammar pattern in a string of words and fit a word to the linguistic context surrounding it

A meaning-building phase - in which, having ‘broken’ the speech flow, identified the words he heard and how they fit grammatically in the sentence he finally makes sense of it

A discourse-construction phase - in which the understanding of each unit of meaning (e.g. sentence) is connected to the larger context of the narrative. In this phase, one’s background knowledge will help enhance comprehension.



The problem as I see it, with a list like this is that most of these aspects are handled in the brain exactly like in the native language. You really don't have to teach through a "lexical search phase" because that is what people do when they pay attention and try to figure something out. The "decoding phase" however, could use an enormous amount of work and teaching as phonemes, accenting and rhythms may be all new and difficult to hear. I think it might be more productive to identify the areas we can actually teach and which ones need to be acquired by "just listening". I don't have an answer but I am becoming a big fan of early, thorough, explicit instruction in phonology... And then cartoons.

I'd love to hear if there are other ideas out there on which aspects of listening can actively be taught to speed up the rate of skill acquisition. It seems so often like "listening drills" are simply quizzes, not actually skill building tasks.

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:59 pm
by DaveBee
Ani wrote:
reineke wrote:A decoding phase - input is ‘translated’ into the sounds of the language

A lexical search phase - in which the listener searches his brain (long-term memory) for words which match or nearly match these sounds.

A parsing phase - in which he must recognise a grammar pattern in a string of words and fit a word to the linguistic context surrounding it

A meaning-building phase - in which, having ‘broken’ the speech flow, identified the words he heard and how they fit grammatically in the sentence he finally makes sense of it

A discourse-construction phase - in which the understanding of each unit of meaning (e.g. sentence) is connected to the larger context of the narrative. In this phase, one’s background knowledge will help enhance comprehension.



The problem as I see it, with a list like this is that most of these aspects are handled in the brain exactly like in the native language. You really don't have to teach through a "lexical search phase" because that is what people do when they pay attention and try to figure something out. The "decoding phase" however, could use an enormous amount of work and teaching as phonemes, accenting and rhythms may be all new and difficult to hear. I think it might be more productive to identify the areas we can actually teach and which ones need to be acquired by "just listening". I don't have an answer but I am becoming a big fan of early, thorough, explicit instruction in phonology... And then cartoons.

I'd love to hear if there are other ideas out there on which aspects of listening can actively be taught to speed up the rate of skill acquisition. It seems so often like "listening drills" are simply quizzes, not actually skill building tasks.
Dictation seems to be a significant part of french children's french language education. Wouldn't that be a practical method for self-study of listening skills?

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:02 pm
by blaurebell
Ani wrote:I'd love to hear if there are other ideas out there on which aspects of listening can actively be taught to speed up the rate of skill acquisition. It seems so often like "listening drills" are simply quizzes, not actually skill building tasks.


In my experience it all just depends on vocabulary and the actual time of listening without understanding can be reduced to a bare minimum by building vocabulary with intensive reading, as long as one hast the phonology in place beforehand. With French I did Wyner's pronunciation trainer, followed by a bit of FSI French phonology and shadowing half of Assimil. Then I read 5000 pages intensively, no listening at all during that time. It took me then only 2 seasons of Buffy French dubs to get to 95% comprehension, one season with Subtitles, one without. The whole 7 seasons got me to 97-99%, it was amazingly fast.

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:08 pm
by Ani
DaveBee wrote:Dictation seems to be a significant part of french children's french language education. Wouldn't that be a practical method for self-study of listening skills?


Dictée is largely for teaching spelling/orthography, though. I'm sure it is done differently in many places, but usually the dictation is studied in advance. Given out on Monday/tested on Friday type thing. I do think it might be useful but not necessarily any more useful to listening skills than learning individual sentences, or learning words in chunks as described in that first post. Unless we are saying that good spelling leads to good listening. Which it might, idk :)

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:36 am
by reineke
---

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 5:59 am
by Voytek
reineke wrote: The ability to detect individual words in running speech is a fundamental early requirement for language acquisition.


That's why I was using the L-R method (particularly the 1st phase) in the very beginning of my study of Swedish. It really helped me to acquire that skill and it took me about 4 hours maybe to do so.

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 6:10 am
by Arnaud
Ani wrote:
DaveBee wrote:Dictation seems to be a significant part of french children's french language education. Wouldn't that be a practical method for self-study of listening skills?


Dictée is largely for teaching spelling/orthography, though. I'm sure it is done differently in many places, but usually the dictation is studied in advance. Given out on Monday/tested on Friday type thing. I do think it might be useful but not necessarily any more useful to listening skills than learning individual sentences, or learning words in chunks as described in that first post. Unless we are saying that good spelling leads to good listening. Which it might, idk :)
Yes, dictations are done only for orthography.
In my time, the dictations were not prepared in advance: it was "today, dictation: open your notebook and write...", and you wrote during 1/4 hour.

That being said, I think dictations can be useful when you learn a language that is not written as it is spoken, like russian or french: I regularly do little dictations in russian (with a book+CD for 1st to 4th classes: lot of animals and trees names at the beginning), and it usually turns out to be a deep wound for my ego 8-)

Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 6:35 am
by Voytek
May be it's a good idea to make an animated series for kids with the karaoke like subtitles to teach them that skill quite easily.