CC BY
28Использование процессов взаимодействия в декодировании выступлений TED Talks для обучения студентов с высоким уровнем владения английского языка навыкам аудирования
Липина Анна Алексеевна,
кандидат филологических наук, доцент, ФГБОУ ВО «Российская академия народного хозяйства и государственной службы при Президенте Российской Федерации»
E-mail: anna_lipina2011@mail.ru
Восприятие на слух всегда считалось одним из самых важных навыков для развития, независимо от уровня языка студентов. Особенно этот навык жизненно важен для учащихся с более высоким уровнем владения английским языком, потому что в их область интересов входит просматривание и прослушивание множественных источников информации. В этом отношении выступления TED отвечают потребностям учащихся, доказывая, что слушание является средством, с помощью которого они получают новые знания, понимания мира, открывают для себя новые идеалы и ценности. Кроме того, студенты чувствуют себя воодушевленными, когда они могут понять все идеи выступлений, которые заслуживают освещения и распространения, как указано в лозунге всех международных конференций TEDx.
Ключевые слова: «сверху вниз» подход, «снизу вверх» подход, навыки аудирования, процессы взаимодействия, связанная речь.
Listening skill has always been considered as one of the most essential skills for development no matter what language level your students have. Especially this skill is vital for higher level learners because they are prone to listening extensively (for pleasure). In this respect, TED Talks respond to learners' needs proving the fact that listening is "the medium through which people gain a large proportion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of values" [7, c. 3]. Moreover, students feel uplifted when they can comprehend all possible ideas which are worth spreading as it is stated in the slogan of all TEDx conferences happening around the globe. Having worked with higher-level students for several years, it has been requested multiple times to help students in improving their overall comprehension level. In my view, the greatest problems that influence the comprehension level are connected with the following areas: "hearing sounds, understanding intonation and stress, coping with redundancy and noise, predicting, understanding colloquial vocabulary, understanding different accents" [14, c. 11-20], speed of delivery [13], identifying correctly discourse markers, etc. Thus, all this allows us to conclude that this topic is definitely worth analyzing.
Analysis
Interaction processes
Throughout the time various scholars proposed multiple definitions of listening depending on the focus of their attention. The best way to describe all processes while listening is to look at bottom-up and top-down processing [1], [5], [10], [11]. In Brown's view [2] top-down processing can be described as the process of "using our prior knowledge and experiences; we know certain things about certain topics and situations and use that information to understand" [2, c. 2]. That is to say, in order to get the meaning, learners use their background knowledge or schemata. At the same time, bottom-up processing relies on "the information we have about sounds, word meanings, and discourse markers like first, then and after that to assemble our understanding of what we read or hear one step at a time" [2, c. 2]. During bottom-up processing, learners get a message from sounds putting them in words thus interpreting what they are listening to. It is highly essential to point out that each listener may use ether the first decoding process or the second one depending on the listening purpose.
o d
u
Proficient Listener
Discourse markers
Discourse markers play an essential role in both bottom-up and top-down processing [4], [7]. Macro-markers show transitions in the listening passage activating listeners' expectations and predictions about what the speech will be about (top-down processing) [12, c.123] or it helps when a speaker changes a topic, or wants to add an example, or returns to some of the ideas mentioned earlier in case the attention was lost or a listener was distracted. For example, when a native speaker hears the following "So the takeaway from all of this is..." he may understand that probably that would be the last information he is going to hear or when a listener hears "The key point is." this is a verbal clue for him that this is an important idea which should be remembered. Knowing the functions of discourse markers can tremendously improve the comprehension level.
Organization script
A script is "a sequence of activities associated with a stereotypical situation" [12]. With the help of this knowledge a native speaker is ready for a listening passage framework. For example, a presentation is comprised of an introduction, presentation outline, key ideas, conclusion. Thus, when a native speaker listens to a presentation, he knows that if he is distracted somewhere in the middle of the presentation, he can easily get the general idea in the end of the talk because the speaker is going to present this in his summary.
Inference
Inference is a part of a top-down processing which can be described as a thinking skill when a listener makes deductions of what has been said without having obvious proofs in the listening passage [15, c. 84]. A listener can infer only in case this person has already been in this situation and knows what typically happens and he draws parallels between the situation you are in and his experience (schemata). For example, when a native speaker listens to a presentation and he doesn't hear some of the word he is going to rely on other verbal clues (key stressed words) which will help him to infer the meaning of what has been said.
Connected speech
Connected speech represents bottom-up processing of information. According to Thornbury S., connected speech is represented by unisolated speech sounds in the speech stream [12, c. 46-47] having the effect on each other. A native speaker always listens to a rapid speech. Relying on his linguistic knowledge and communication experience developed since childhood, he knows that some words get connected, modifying the sounds of each other or, some of the sounds may simply disappear, or the words get connected by adding a new sound between, etc. For example: "That was a good concert."
In this sentence the last sound /d/ of the word good assimilates to the next sound /g/ of the next word "concert".
"See you next day"
Here one can see how the last sound /t/ disappears when saying together with the next word. "I saw it happen."
In this example two vowel sounds meet and to simplify the process of pronouncing it a phoneme /r/ is added.
Learner Problems and Teaching Solutions
Issue 1. Unfamiliar vocabulary
While teaching higher-level students irrespective of their nationality, unfamiliar vocabulary has always been recognized as one of the major factors which hinders listening comprehension [3]. The reason for it lies in the authentic nature of presentations like TED Talks. As this genre can cover all types of topics, a listener may have problems with understanding colloquial expressions, idioms, phrasal verbs, professional jargon vocabulary, etc. The following issue may lead to utter misunderstanding of the listening passage or partial loss of the essential parts of the TED Talk lecture/ presentation.
Suggestion 1
Aim: Pre-teach single lexical items and multiword units causing problems in understanding a lecture/ presentation. (Appendix 1) Procedure:
- Find one of the TED Talks which you like most
- If there is a script/subtitles of a TED Talk, read it through and think which words, chunks or collocations may cause breakdown in understanding. If it is a video, watch it to catch those problematic vocabulary units and write them out for your students.
- Give students a list of sentences with the vocabulary units causing problems in understanding
- In pairs students contextually try to guess the meanings of the words
- After students match the words with their definitions.
- Lastly, a teacher and students check their answers in an open-class feedback.
Evaluation:
In the bottom-up model of processing, learners benefit from the opportunity to investigate unfamiliar vocabulary. Learners think, discuss and process new knowledge making deductions about the information they are going to listen to. Additionally, working with unknown vocabulary decreases stress and removes fears of listening.
Issue 2. Accents
It is a well-known fact that English apart from being a national language of certain countries it is a lingua franca [9]. Hence there are a lot of types of 'Englishes' [15, c. 29] or other types of English accents, for example North American, Australian, Indian, French etc.
Teaching English in Russia has certain complications in this respect. Firstly, Russia is a vast country with a specific geographical location. It implies that the number of foreigners speaking English is low and English learners do not have enough opportunities to experience communication with native/non-native speakers. Secondly, most of the materials are recorded with a southern English standard accent or RP (received pronunciation). All these cause comprehension problems not only in face-to-face communication but also when listening to lectures/presentations online (TED Talks).
Suggestion 2
Aim: To increase the comprehension level of a non-native accent (Appendix 2) Procedure:
- find a TED Talk with a speaker who has a strong non-native accent
- explain to learners that non-native speakers in comparison with native speakers use different stress patterns in words and sentences
- play the recording (one sentence from a TED Talk with a non-native accent and the same sentence with a British one) so that learners could compare the difference between two accents and discuss (3a)
- play the recording again and ask learners to listen carefully to the pronunciation of the underlined word (3a)
- ask learners about the difference in the pronunciation (e.g. stressed syllable) (3a) (noticing)
- play another recording of one sentence recorded similarly by a non-native speaker and a native one, ask students to underline stressed words in two variants, discuss why it is so (3b)
- later give students a passage from the same TED Talk and ask them to fill in the gaps with missing words (3c)
- play the recording again
- discuss the importance of understanding non-native speakers
Evaluation:
The ability to comprehend accents requires much of noticing and drawing parallels between a native speaker and a non-native one. Noticing process requires great attention and effort to understand how consonants/vowels, sentence stress and intonation are organized in a non-native speech. In this way learners can improve the comprehension level.
Issue 3. Connected speech
Another issue was observed while teaching higher-level Russian students deals with understanding a connected speech. The reason for this issue lies in the language difference. When Russian speakers talk, they do not connect words together. Moreover, Russian language is syllable-stressed (syllables have the same length), whereas English is stress-timed (syllables can be longer or shorter), what brings extra complications in the understanding process.
Suggestion 3
Aim: to increase learners' awareness how connected speech is formed to improve further listening comprehension skills Procedure:
- Students listen to the first 5 sentences of the TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson under the topic 'Do Schools Kill Creativity'
- Students try to notice difficult parts which cause misunderstanding.
- Students listen to the sentences again and write out stressed words
- Teacher writes out the stressed words on the whiteboard and asks to reconstruct the sentences by listening to the recording again.
- students learn about connected speech peculiarities by listening to the most challenging parts of sentences.
Evaluation:
By working on the elements of connected speech higher-level students can help in better understanding of spoken English in TED Talks. We should actively encourage them to listen to more talks of the same kind, because each presenter has his/her own peculiarities the way he/she talks.
Issue 4. Intonation
Intonation has a great influence on the meaning of what a person is saying, his attitude to the subject of narration [9, c. 86]. To be exact, meaning is communicated through the fall and rise in the voice (tone). Being Russian and teaching in a higher-level monolingual group of Russians it has always been controversial to my them to understand some intonational patterns and what meanings they convey. The problem occurs due to the fact that some Russian intonational patterns differ from the English ones. As a result of it could cause misinterpretation of some information delivered in a presentation (a TED Talk).
Suggestion 4
Aim: to clarify the meanings of rising and falling tone in tag questions occurring in presentations (TED Talks) (Appendix 3) Procedure:
- Students are asked to listen to the beginning of the TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson under the topic 'Do Schools Kill Creativity'
- students try to notice how many times tag questions appeared in the introduction of the presentation
- SS listen to the sentences in isolation and discuss the difference between the rising and falling tones
- SS listen to the recording again and talk about the meaning in the context
Evaluation:
Many learners try to transfer their mother tongue knowledge to L2 while listening to public talks. Thus, the more intonational patterns are introduced to the learners the better listening comprehension will be.
C3
o
CO "O
1=1 A
—I
o
C3 t; o m o
OT
3
u o
CO
Литература
1. Берн, J. E. 2004. Стратегии понимания на слух: обзор литературы.
2. Браун, С. 2006. Обучение аудированию. США: Cambridge University Press.
3. Чанг, A., Рид, Дж. 2006. Влияние поддержки на результат аудирования у учащихся EFL. TESOL ЕЖЕКВАРТАЛЬНО, 40.
4. Поле, J. 2004. Понимание проблем слушателей: слишком много снизу вверх или слишком много сверху вниз? В системе. Том 32, 3.
5. Флоувердью, Дж., Миллер, Л. 2005. Аудирование в английском языке: теория и практика.
6. Журнал ежегодных исследований по иностранным языкам, 37.
7. Гоу, К. К. М. 2002. Изучение тактики понимания при прослушивании и типы взаимодействия. В системе. Том 30.
8. Гуо, Н., Виллс, Р. 2006. Исследование факторов, влияющих на понимание английского языка. Журнал AER. Получено из http://www.aare. edu.au/05pap/guo05088.pdf
9. Келли Г. 2000. Обучение произношению. Лонгмен
10. Мендельсон, Д. Дж. 1994. Учусь слушать. США: Домини Пресс.
11. Рост, М. 2002. Обучение и исследование аудирования. Великобритания: Пирсон Образование.
12. Торнбери С. 2006. A-Z ELT. Макмиллан
13. Андервуд, М. 1989. Обучение восприятию на слух. Лонгман.
14. Ур, П. 2007. Обучение пониманию во время аудирования. Кембридж: CUP.
15. Уилсон Джей Джей, 2008. Как обучать аудированию. Пирсон Лонгман
HELPING HIGHER-LEVEL LEARNERS OF ENGLISH TO USE INTERACTION PROCESSES TO DECODE TED TALKS
Lipina A.A.
Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
Listening skill has always been considered as one of the most essential skills for development no matter what language level your students have. Especially this skill is vital for higher level learners because they are prone to listening extensively (for pleasure). In this respect, TED Talks respond to learners' needs proving the fact that listening is the medium through which people gain a large proportion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of values. Moreover, students feel uplifted when they can comprehend all possible ideas which are worth spreading as it is stated in the slogan of all TEDx conferences happening around the globe.
Keywords: top-down approach, bottom-up approach, listening skills, interaction processes, connected speech.
References
1. Berne, J. E. 2004. Listening comprehension strategies: A review of the literature.
2. Brown, S. 2006. Teaching listening. USA: Cambridge University Press.
3. Chang, A. C-S. & Read, J. 2006. The effects of listening support on the listening performance of EFL learners. TESOL QUARTERLY, 40.
4. Field, J. 2004. An Insight into Listeners' Problems: too much bottom-up or too much top- down? In System. Vol. 32, 3.
5. Flowerdew, J. & Miller, L. 2005. Second language listening: Theory and practice.
6. Foreign Language Annals, 37.
7. Goh, C. C. M. 2002. Exploring Listening Comprehension Tactics and their Interaction Patterns. In System. Vol. 30.
8. Guo, N. & Wills, R. 2006. An investigation of factors influencing English listening comprehension and possible measures for improvement. AER Journal. Retrieved from http://www.aare.edu. au/05pap/guo05088.pdf
9. Kelly G. 2000: 86 How to teach pronunciation. Longman
10. Mendelson, D. J. 1994. Learning to listen. USA: Dominie Press.
11. Rost, M. 2002. Teaching and researching listening. Great Britain: Pearson Education.
12. Thornbury S. 2006. An A-Z of ELT. MacMillan
13. Underwood, M. 1989. Teaching listening. New York: Longman.
14. Ur, P. 2007. Teaching listening comprehension. Cambridge: CUP.
15. Wilson JJ., 2008. How to teach listening. Pearson Longman
о с
u
