Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Richard Cauldwell: Listening comprehension: three problems and three suggestions

Suggestion 1: More work on perception It is necessary to do more perception work than we are doing at present. No

t that which requires learners to distinguish between phonemes, but work which gets students to attend to, observe, and learn from extracts of authentic, fast spontaneous speech. Perception work is best conducted after doing the usual communicative work on understanding (warm up, pre-listening, while listening). It is also best done by focusing on the same areas which the while listening activities focused on. As Helgesen suggests (1998, p. 25) if students get the correct answers to the listening comprehension questions ask them 'How do you know?'. Students, in answering this question will provide the teacher with evidence of the level of their perceptual and comprehension abilities. If they have not got the right answers to the questions, then the teacher should present them with the extract from the recording which contains the evidence for the answer, and ask them what they think is being said at this point. One way of doing this is to repeatedly play the short extract, and ask student to write down (yes, this is dictation) what they hear. Even if students have successfully 'got the right answer' in the previous tests of understanding, this activity is likely to produce evidence of mishearing. (A way of thinking about such perception work is to treat it as research into second language listenin

g: it is my experience that I learn a lot from students' constructive mishearing of what has been said.) At this point it is essential to show the students a tapescript, so that they can see the gap between what they thought they heard, and what was said. This is the point in the listening class when we have the opportunity of actually teachin

g listening (which Field, 1998 argues for): we can help the students bridge the gap between the known and the unknown, but paradoxically it is the part of a listening comprehension class that is most often omitted, or to which least time is devoted. However teachers need more help at this point than their training provides for them. And this leads me into the second suggestion. Suggestion 2: A fast speech phonology Teachers should be trained in 'observing' speech of all kinds, and particularly the authentic speech that now is a feature of many listening comprehension and general textbooks. This training does not currently take