phonology for listening: trinity diploma developmental record

Chris Esson Developmental Record

Trinity LTCL Diploma

Unit 2 Section 2

Developmental RecordTeaching Listening Skills

Chris Esson

International House Bristol May 2015Word Count: 3078

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Developmental Record

Teaching Listening Skills

Rationale

A question that I am often asked by students is how can I improve my listening? Eachtime I embarrassed that my answer amounts to little more than the suggestion to listenmore. In my opinion listening is the most difficult skill to teach. I can modelpronunciation and provide frames for speech, I can set reading strategies and providemodels for writing. What listening I do in the class, on the other hand, tends to follow acoursebooks tasks. Listening, according to Michael Rost, is still often considered a blackbox for which the best approach seems to be more practice (Rost, 2001:13). SimilarlyJohn Field talks of listening taking place hidden in the reaches of the learner's mind(Field, 2008:1). This hidden black box fairly accurately describes the frustration I feel withmy lack of knowledge when it has come to teaching listening. For this reason I have chosenas my developmental record to focus on teaching listening skills.

John Field in Listening in the Language Classroom (2008) critiques the comprehensionapproach to listening the traditional listening practice in which a number of questions areset to students. Field argues that comprehension questions enable us to judge but they donot enable us to remedy (2008:31) students' listening capabilities and needs. Beyond this,the listening practice which is done does not properly prepare students for the demands oflistening beyond the classroom. The comprehension approach does not teach strategieswhich will help students when listening in real-world situations. Field's criticisms chimewith my own feeling that the listening practice I do in class may be an uncritical repetitionof a methodology that does not do all it could to help my students to develop genuinelistening skills.

Richard Cauldwell makes similar criticisms of current teaching of listening, especially withregard to giving students the awareness and the strategies they need to decode authenticconnected speech. Current methodology focuses too much on testing and the practising ofunderstanding and focuses too little on teaching learners to decode the sound substance ofthe stream of speech (Cauldwell, 2013:1). By sound substance Cauldwell means the way in

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which in connected speech words are squeezed into soundshapes which differ greatly fromthe citation form, and [] vary greatly according to the way speakers say them(Cauldwell, 2013:1). Although research by Jenkins into ELF suggests that many of thefeatures of connected speech weak forms, elision, assimilation are a detriment tostudents reaching a productive level of comfortable intelligibility, to raise awareness ofthese features in order to build receptive comprehension is an important skill for students.Especially for my own students in a native English speaking environment, but also forexam students, the ability to become comfortable decoding stretches of connected speechwould boost confidence and their ability to function in situations beyond the classroom.

Field (2008), Cauldwell (2013), and Thorn (2013) all make suggestions for diagnostic andremedial activities to help students build genuine listening skills. I am interested in usingcoursebook listening texts of the same type that I currently use in new ways. Byadapting or adding to the tasks I will use the texts to develop my students listening skills.In particular I will focus on short sections of speech with the following tasks:

Gapping functional words which are squeezed and non-prominent.

Gap contractions.

Dicta-gloss where a short section of speech is repeated for students to transcribeas they hear it.

Listening with script and highlighting differences and difficult to understandphrases.

These activities will help me to diagnose what my students can and cannot decode. Inaddition to this I will use listening scripts to highlight and work on the commonphonological features of connected speech. When I diagnose a need in my students'listening I will investigate the cause of the difficulty and highlight the features of speechwhich create the problem.

The aim of this developmental record is ultimately to enable me to better support mystudents in developing genuine, autonomous listening skills. In the shorter term however,this record is also to build my own confidence in presenting listening materials and tasks tomy classes. By investigating the theory behind the development of listening skills, and byexperimenting with classroom activities I aim to support my own development. The

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activities taken from the authors mentioned above will be for my students, but also formyself in exploring the process of listening in the classroom and supporting students inextending this process to listening in the real-world.

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Classes Taught

09/02/15 10:55 IH5I set a listening task taken from a coursebook, but also ran a dicta-gloss activity on a shortsection. The short segment was an answer phone message for a doctors surgery. Myinstructions were to record first the important words that were heard, and with eachsubsequent listening add more. After playing the segment three times students worked inpairs to recreate the full text. As a class we compared what they had written with thescript. On the board I highlighted a section many students had had problems with oh, andour hours of operation are.... Students could not hear the separation of the words and putin their own guesses.

17/02/15 10:55 IH5I took a listening from a coursebook and ran the comprehension tasks. I then ran a gap fillactivity which I had created. Using the script I gapped the grammar words in selectedthird conditional sentences (the grammar focus of the lesson and the original material).This gapped listening came before we had explicitly studied the grammar in the class. Thestudents found the gaps very difficult to complete, and in many cases did not fill themcorrectly. They often did not hear negatives, and have as an auxiliary. Some studentsrecorded will in place of would. When we looked at the grammar structure we alsolooked at the phonology, especially the contractions, weak syllables and elision.

23/02/15 10:55 IH5Based on the grammar and listening exercise from the previous week (17/02 and 18/02) Icreated a short listening text. The text contained examples of past modals and the thirdconditionals. The phonological features of connected speech in relation to these grammarstructures had been a focus of our classes in the previous week. I recorded the text with acolleague, speaking at a pace approaching rapid casual speech (Roach, 2009). The task wasa gapped text, with the grammar words (modals, verbs and auxiliaries) having beenremoved. The students completed the task much more successfully that the listening on the17/02. This listening was completed as a revision exercise at the start of the lesson.

05/03/15 10:55 IH5Using a short section of a Youtube video I ran a comprehension exercise, where students

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had made predictions based on a series of questions I had set. Following this I dividedstudents into groups and told them to work together to write the script of a twenty-five-second section of the video. The groups took their smartphones to different rooms andtogether accessed the recording to listen and write what they heard. The recording was avideo presentation in which the presenter spoke very fast. The students found the listeninghard, and did not complete some sections. We compared what they had written with thescript and noticed the squeeze zones (Cauldwell, 2013). It was interesting to note that Ihad taken the script from Youtube's automated subtitles. The voice-recognition programused by Youtube made mistakes in the same areas that the students did parts of speechthat were squeezed so much that they were not fully articulated. Elements of drafting wereamong those that students struggled with, especially repetition and the phrase you know.

05/03/15 14:25 IH5My afternoon class requested that we focus on the pronunciation of rapid, causal Englishspeech especially coulda, shoulda and woulda. To these three I added gonna, andthe unreal past. The first half of the lesson was extremely difficult, as I had not consideredhow much grammar there was to cover. However, when I ran a listening including thetarget language the students did well, and they finally produced some excellent dialoguesthemselves in which they used the informal contractions. The listening text was two shortdialogues from which I gapped the grammar words. Having drilled the contracted formsthe students were aware of their changed articulation and completed the gaps. Some of thestudents used the rapid, causal pronunciation in their own performed dialogues.

30/04/15 9:00 IH6On the 29/04 I ran a dicta-gloss activity from a coursebook listening task. I played atwelve second section with elements of connected speech and asked students to write whatthey heard. All but one of the students mistook want for one in the sentence Choicesmake people want things. I highlighted the assimilation of the final consonant. Based onthis created five sentences, which I recorded five different colleagues saying at rapid, casualspeed. For each short sentence I gave a basic description of the situation and askedstudents whether they heard one or want. They completed this task excellently,although only one student noticed the trick sentence in which I had included both: That'sthe one that I want. The purpose of this activity was to reinforce the focus of the previous

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day and to encourage them in their ability to make these distinctions.

30/04/15 10:55 IH7I ran a comprehension task taken from a coursebook with the students using a piece ofauthentic radio interview. I chose a forty second section and asked students to notice thedrafting phenomena (Cauldwell, 2013:81) used repeatedly by the speaker: erm, youknow, and repetition. I asked students to raise their left, right and both handsrespectively when they heard these phenomena. Students enjoyed the sometimes franticflapping of their hands as the speaker drafted his words. They were also surprised at howmany times in such a short section the same phenomena occurred. It was an interestingdiagnostic tool as a teacher, because in some instance I was able to see stronger studentshear and respond to phenomena and watch less strong students responding occasionallynot to the listening but to their peers. The purpose of this exercise was to make studentsaware of the ways in which native speakers draft their words in spontaneous speech.

01/05/15 09:00 IH6I ran a dicta-gloss activity taken from the coursebook. I played five short sentences whichincluded conditional structures. I asked the students for feedback after each play-throughand repeated the text three times at their request. Once complete the students comparedtheir sentences against the script. Although we had studied the grammar rules, we had nothighlighted any of the phonological features of the structures. It was apparent that thestudents did not hear the contracted modal verbs will ('ll) and would ('d). Followingthis we looked at the stressed words in the phrases and the relative weak forms and fastpace of all the unstressed words. Based on another teachers experience of the same task Iincluded some context in the fifth sentence which I said was outside a club. Despite this,however, only one student heard you can't come in unless you're a member, instead of...you remember which the rest of the class decoded incorrectly. In the final part of thelesson students wrote their own examples and placed in it word stress and features ofconnected speech. They performed their sentences to the other groups.

05/05/15 09:00 IH6I completed a gap-fill listening activity with the students taken from the coursebook. Inaddition to this I asked them to notice what happened to the words around four of the five

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gaps. They noticed that in three of the four sentences their was assimilation as thesoundshapes changed in connected speech. Interestingly, they did not notice that the fourthsentence contained no features of connected speech and was in fact unnaturally stressed(probably because the speaker was being recorded for a language text book). In theauthentic interviews that followed the students raised questions about some of thespeakers. Working from the script we noticed the elisions and assimilations that occurred.

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Evaluation and Conclusions

The research that I have done has been extremely interesting not only in raising mystudents' awareness of the features of connected speech, but also in raising my ownawareness. It has, for the most part, been easy to prepare and teach these lessons. Exceptin a small number of lessons in which I created my own, I have used and adapted listeningtexts taken from coursebooks. By listening to the texts and focusing on features which Ithink are worth highlighting to my classes I have chosen sections with which I can set newtasks to check students ability to decode the speech. As recommended by Field, Cauldwelland Thorn, these sections are short, only a few seconds, but provide enough material toreally engage students.

Of primary importance to me in this research has been that students have responded verypositively to these activities. They are interested in the ways people speak English, andappreciate the focus on this in the classroom. In particular, it has been rewarding to seehow students engaged with activities which focused on those features they find mostdifficult to understand. In diagnostic exercises following listening tasks we have workedtogether with listening scripts to understand the differences between the written text andthe spoken articulation of this text. Where features are reasonably consistent, for examplefunctional words and contractions, I have highlighted and drilled these features. Studentshave occasionally expressed amazement that the sound substance can be related to thetext, especially where there is zero realisation of certain sounds. It has been my aim,however, to make students aware of this and indicate features of the speech they can use todecode these sections.

The most valuable activities have been when I ran a diagnostic listening exercise andfollowed this up with repeated practice in the features disclosed by this diagnosis. Where Ihave given students a gapped text or a dictagloss and become aware of features that theyfind difficult, I have sometimes created my own listening texts to focus attention on thesefeatures. The best of these have followed a phonological focus on sound features ofconnected speech, and students have performed better in these repeated activities than inthe earlier diagnostic activities.

Much of my focus in the series of lessons has been on connected speech and non-prominent

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syllables. I discovered early on in my practice that it was the contracted forms offunctional grammar words, for example modals and contractions, that students found mostdifficult. This is backed up by Cauldwell who argues that essential meanings are oftencommunicated in fast non-prominent syllables [...] non-prominent syllables constitute avery important part of the rhythmic flow of the substance of speech. Therefore if learnerswant to become affective listeners then they need to become familiar and comfortable withsuch stretches of spontaneous speech (2013:114). This focus on the grammatical featuresbecoming non-prominent has perhaps drawn me away from a more general focus onteaching listening skills. This may be a deficiency in my original rationale, which wouldhave benefited from being more focused. However, as I began my lesson practices I quicklyrealised that this was an area that interested me and proved a challenge to my students.

Because my lessons have focused on the phonological features of connected speech, myoriginal rationale stands as a point of departure for further professional development. Theirare areas of listening, and in particular other listening skills, which I have not addressed.Having taken suggestions from my reading on this subject, I would like to do furtherresearch in strengthening listening further beyond the phonological focus of this record.

One point to consider in relation to the lessons I have taught with this focus is that thelevel of the students has been from intermediate to advanced (CEFR B1 to C1). This hasbeen as a result of my timetable. Nevertheless, it is a point to bear in mind as I move onfrom this practice that the tasks I have set may need to be adapted again if I were teachlower level classes. In particular the use of authentic materials (on two occasions), thefocus on fast connected speech, and the original listening I have created would need someconsideration before being used with lower levels. This is not to say that the similaractivities could not be used with lower level students. Both Cauldwell and Fieldrecommend the use of authentic materials with lower level students.

Overall, the focus of this record had been teaching listening as a skill by raising awarenessof the phonological features of connected speech. The justification for this approach is tohelp students to decode the speech they will encounter outside the classroom in the real-world and in an exam setting. Ultimately, teaching in this way is about encouraging learnerautonomy. Focusing on listening involves preparing learners so that they can take full

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advantage of the sources of linguistic information that the real world provides (Field,2008:5).

Based on my research and classroom experience I have set myself three classroom goals:

1. I will consider and adapt where necessary the listening tasks which coursebooks set.It is not necessary to create new materials, and listening texts can be adapted.Following the suggestion to use short section of listening it is also easy to extractsections which exemplify certain phonological features.

2. If I have diagnosed a need in students listening I will draw attention to this arearepeatedly. My most successful lessons were those where I set listening tasks basedon feature we had previously covered. After I raised their awareness students foundthat they could better decode the same features in different texts. This reinforcedthe lessons of the original session and encouraged the students by showing themevidence of their improvement.

3. I will teach the phonological features of connected speech wherever possible. Inlessons where I have had a both a grammatical and a vocabulary focus I haveconsidered the ways in which the soundshape of words change and highlighted thisto the students. Phonology is a consistent feature of my lessons and I now considerthis for productive and receptive justifications for this.

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BibliographyCauldwell, R.(2013) Phonology for Listening. Speech in Action, Birmingham.Field, J. (2008) Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.Rost, M. (2001) Listening, in The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers ofOther Languages, eds. Ronald Carter & David Nunan. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.Roach, P. (2009) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.Thorn, S. (2013) Practical guidance on training students to cope with authentic spokenEnglish, online. Available at:http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/seminars/practical-guidance-training-students-cope-authentic-spoken-english [Accessed 12/04/15].Underhill, A. (2005) Sound Foundations: Learning and Teaching Pronunciation. MacmillanEducation, Oxford.

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phonology for listening: trinity diploma developmental record

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