2.5.2. Listening skills.
Concerning listening skills, the current approaches to
language teaching advocate integrated skills in the classroom. That is to say
listening and speaking should not be separated from each other. Instead they
should be integrated, that is reciprocal listening should be encouraged in
order to allow learners to interact with the input and thus enhance
comprehension.
Anderson & Lynch (1991:4) provide us with a situation
where people can be faced with an unfamiliar listening environment with limited
language proficiency. In this case, the sort of difficulty they have to cope
with is predictable. Firstly, it shows that listening skills are as important
as speaking skills; we cannot communicate face-to-face unless the two types of
skill are developed in tandem. Secondly, another thing about listening is that
under many circumstances, it is a reciprocal skill. Anderson and Lynch make
this point in the following words:
We cannot practice listening in the same way as we can rehearse
speaking, or at least the part of speaking that has to do with pronunciation,
because we usually predict what we will have to listen to (1991: 4).
2.5.2.1. Interactional and transactional functions of
language
Interactional uses of language are those in which the primary
purposes for communication are social. Richards (1990:54) explains that the
emphasis is on creating harmonious interactions between participants rather
than on communicating information whereas transactional functions of language
are those in which language is being used primarily for communicating
information. They are message oriented rather than listener oriented (1990:55).
As stated by Brown and Yule cited in Richards (1990:56) examples of
transactional uses of the language range from several aspects such as news
broadcasts, lectures, etc. Briefly, Richards concludes that language in its
interactional functions is needed to interact with the teacher and peers while
accomplishing class tasks, and language in its transactional functions is
needed in order to acquire new skills, assimilate new information, and
construct new concepts. (1990:56-57).
In short, as the visual element is the focus in this study,
its importance in listening comprehension is vital. Hence, Kellerman (1990)
cited in Kilfoil and Van der Walt (1997) indicates the importance of visual
information for listening, because language learners are particularly dependent
upon visual context for spoken information, in the sense that they need all the
help they can get to make sense of the sounds coming at them (1997:150). In
fact, from the association of both visual and verbal input television materials
supply, students are able to develop effective listening strategies. These as
Miro (1998:1) recommends, enable learners to do what native speakers would do:
that is, to take a top-down approach to listening, by making inferences from
what they hear. Top-down and bottom-up processing are explained below.
2.5.2.2. Top-down and bottom-up processing
To begin with, two listening processes are central to any
theory of listening comprehension as Richards (1990:50) puts it. These distinct
kinds of processes are referred to as `bottom-up' and `top-down' processing.
Bottom-up processing concerns the use of incoming data as a source of
information about the meaning of a message (1990:50). He furthers his
discussion and argues that:
From this perspective, the process of comprehension begins
with the message received, which is analysed at successive levels of
organization- sounds, words, clauses, and sentences- until the intended meaning
is arrived at. Comprehension is thus viewed as a process of decoding.
Regarding top-down processing, this deals with the use of
background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message (1990:51).He
gives further details about how background knowledge contributes to easier
understanding of given listening material. He states that the background may
take several forms. It may be previous knowledge about the topic of discourse,
it may be situational or contextual knowledge, or it may be knowledge stored in
long-term memory in the form of `schemata' and `scripts' - plans about the
overall structure of events and the relationships between them (1990:51). The
next section deals with a content-based model to language teaching.
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