Listening Strategies 听力技巧

听力技巧

1. Listening Strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the

comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This

background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include

listening for the main idea predicting drawing inferences summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include

listening for specific details recognizing cognates recognizing word-order patterns

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.

They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation. They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies. They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one. Other Strategies:

1. anticipation

2. key-word strategy

3. selective attention

4. using contextual clues

5. grouping

6. elaboration,

7. self-monitoring

8. imaging

9. note-taking

10. repeated listening

11. recognizing redundancies

听力技巧

12. summarizing

13. reflecting

14. evaluating

15. watch for no-verbal communications

2. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Listening Practice

The fact that listening is a complex multistep procedure that involves

different types of processing implies that both top-down and bottom-up

skills should be practiced in the classroom. Although many teachers

tend to favor such top-down activities as comprehension questions,

predicting, and listing, listening practice should incorporate bottom-up

exercises for pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary that allow learners

to pay close attention to language as well.

Bottom-up processing helps students recognize lexical and pronunciation

features to understand the text. Because of their direct focus on

language forms at the word and sentence levels, bottom-up exercises

are particularly beneficial for lower level students who need to expand

their language repertoire. As they become more aware of linguistic features

of the input, the speed and accuracy of perceiving and processing

aural input will increase. To develop bottom-up processing, students

could be asked to

distinguish inpidual sounds, word boundaries, and stressed

syllables

identify thought groups

listen for intonation patterns in utterances

identify grammatical forms and functions

recognize contractions and connected speech

recognize linking words

Top-down processing relies on prior knowledge and experience to

build the meaning of a listening text using the information provided by

sounds and words. To arrive at a meaning of a text, the listener draws

on her knowledge of the context, topic, speakers, situation, and the

world, matching it to the aural input. Top-down listening skills include

listening for gist, main ideas, topic, and setting of the text

listening for specific information

sequencing the information

prediction

guessing

inferencing

3. Listening activities

In real-life listening, students will have to use a combination of the two processes, with more emphasis on top-down or bottom-up listening depending on their reasons for listening. However, the two types of listening can also be practised separately, as the skills involved are quite different.

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Top-down listening activities

Get students to predict the content of a listening activity beforehand, maybe using information about the topic or situation, pictures, or key words. This helps to develop top-down processing skills, by encouraging students to use their knowledge of the topic to help them understand the content. This is an essential skill given that, in a real-life listening situation, even advanced learners are likely to come across some unknown vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context and co-text, they should either be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or understand the general idea without getting distracted by it.

Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a series of pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and identifying

where they take place, reading information about a topic then listening to find whether or not the same points are mentioned, or inferring the relationships between the people involved.

Bottom-up listening activities

The emphasis in EFL listening materials in recent years has been on developing

top-down listening processes. There are good reasons for this given that learners need to be able to listen effectively even when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary or structures. However, if the learner understands very few words from the incoming signal, even knowledge about the context may not be sufficient for her to understand what is happening, and she can easily get lost. Of course, low-level learners may simply not have enough vocabulary or knowledge of the language yet, but most teachers will be familiar with the situation in which higher-lev …… 此处隐藏：8254字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……