Active Listening

Michael Rost, J. J. Wilson, J.J. Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317860327
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Listening is now regarded by researchers and practitioners as a highly active skill involving prediction, inference, reflection, constructive recall, and often direct interaction with speakers. In this new theoretical and practical guide, Michael Rost and JJ Wilson demonstrate how active listening can be developed through guided instruction. With so many new technologies and platforms for communication, there are more opportunities than ever before for learners to access listening input, but this abundance leads to new challenges:

• how to choose the right input
• how to best use listening and viewing input inside and outside the classroom
• how to create an appropriate syllabus using available resources

Active Listening explores these questions in clear, accessible prose, basing its findings on a theoretical framework that condenses the most important listening research of the last two decades. Showing how to put theory into practice, the book includes fifty innovative activities, and links each one to relevant research principles. Sample audio recordings are also provided for selected activities, available online at the series website www.pearsoned.co.uk/rostwilson.

As a bridge between theory and practice, Active Listening will encourage second language teachers, applied linguists, language curriculum coordinators, researchers, and materials designers to become more active practitioners themselves, by more fully utilising research in the field of second language listening.

Part I

From Research to Implications

Theoretical framework

Teachers, instructional designers and language researchers have become increasingly interested in listening. The cumulative research on listening and the growing array of listening materials available to language learners have provided us with an expanding wealth of resources, delivered in innovative technologies. At the same time, this current abundance has created a need for a fresh form of guidance. More than ever, practitioners are in need of clear principles to guide interpretation of research and to inform selection and use of appropriate resources.

We have found that one robust concept, active listening, can guide practitioners in identifying key principles in listening research and applying these principles in a methodical way. By active listening we are extending the connotation of ‘being animated when you listen’. We are referring to a broader range of cognitive and emotional activity that could be described as ‘engaged processing’.

The purpose of this introductory section is to bring together relevant research that has contributed to our understanding of this core concept of active listening and to draw key implications for practice. We will organise the range of listening research and implications into five interactive frameworks, each with an overriding focus:

Affective Frame – focus on enhancing the listener’s personal motivation and involvement.

Top Down Frame – focus on deepening the understanding of ideas and making stronger interpretations.

Bottom Up Frame – focus on perceiving sounds, recognising words and syntactic structures more accurately.

Interactive Frame – focus on building cooperation, collaboration and interdependence during the listening process.

Autonomous Frame – focus on developing effective listening and learning strategies.

Each framework provides a unique perspective on the listening process as well as insights into how listening is learned and can be taught. By understanding the complementary character of these different perspectives, we can appreciate that listening development requires integration of multiple frameworks.

The five frames

Affective Frame

Some students sit silently in the classroom and feel overwhelmed and even oppressed by the listening activities the teacher presents. Because of the anxiety they feel, they tune out, have little or no engagement, perform poorly – and then feel even worse! Other students feel activated whenever there is a listening activity, welcoming the engagement and the challenge. They have no trouble tuning in, doing their best, and they usually make progress in listening with seemingly minimal effort.

These two types of students represent the poles of affective involvement in listening. What makes someone want to listen? What makes someone else avoid listening? Research in the Affective Frame addresses this issue and other issues related to motivation and personal engagement. Research in this framework situates the listener as the focal point of communication, an individual with affective needs and reactions, with a motivation for listening.

Key research findings

1. The impact of motivation

Motivation is one of the key factors influencing the rate and success of second language (L2) learning and the level of engagement a learner is willing to undertake. Strong motivation can even compensate for weaknesses in language aptitude and for a scarcity of learning opportunities. We all know stories of amazing learners, like Mawi Asgedom, the Ethiopian refugee turned motivational speaker, who overcame daunting life circumstances and found a way to acquire a second language at the highest level, against all odds. Motivation is a cognitive force that allows the learner to maintain attention and focus. (Asgedom refers to his own motivation as a kind of ‘mental karate’ that provides him with a means to cut through distractions.) As a kind of fuel in the learning engine, motivation has been shown to amplify intensity of effort, intellectual curiosity and self-confidence (Aragao, 2011). Increases in motivation have also been shown to defuse anxiety and aversion to risk-taking, two factors that tend to impede language acquisition (Gardner et al., 1997).

2. The importance of the instructor

We have all had teachers in various subjects who have helped us ‘come out of our shells’ through the force of their personality, their passion for their subject, or the way they invited us to approach learning. The influence can be short-term, assisting the learner to perform better in a specific task, or long-term, leading the learner to make strategic changes to their learning style (Williams and Burden, 1999). Classroom studies have shown that learning outcomes can indeed be influenced by several ‘pedagogic agents’, factors that are under the control of the instructor (Ko, 2010). One set of factors is course-specific – decisions about the syllabus, teaching materials, teaching methods, learning tasks (Ahmed, 2009). Another set of factors is teacher-specific performance – ways of showing enthusiasm for learning, ways of giving feedback, ways of building relationships with students, ways of structuring learning activities that enhance group cohesion and group support (Imai, 2010).

3. The value of goal orientation

Tasks pitched at the right level – not too difficult and not too easy – often lead to active engagement. Appropriately challenging tasks are likely to activate optimal levels of both emotion and cognition (Swain, 2010). Success with appropriate challenges also fuels ‘internal competition’ and expectations of further success, and helps learners to understand goal orientations and actively participate in goal-setting (Guilloteaux, 2007; Guilloteaux and Dörnyei, 2008). When learners understand and participate in content selection and learning goals, they will exert additional attention, effort and persistence towards achieving the goals (Williams, Burden and Lanvers, 2002.) This cyclic relationship of motivation and effort has come to be known as the active learner hypothesis (Oxford, 2010). Goal-oriented learners in any field, not only language learning, tend to experience an absorption that psychologists call ‘flow’, a deeply focused immersion in learning that contributes to a higher level of performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).

4. The effect of learner awareness

Only truly motivated learners will be willing to face the long-term challenges involved in becoming a competent L2 speaker and listener – challenges that require a strong sense of resilience. Researchers have found that an entry point into exploring and developing a success-oriented attitude is the notion of self-awareness and bicultural identity. As learners aspire towards a positive bicultural identity, their motivation becomes a powerful force for sustaining effort in and enthusiasm for language learning (Dörnyei and Hadfield, 2013; Lamb, 2004). Many language educators advocate exploring issues of identity and social persona as the students become active users of the L2 (Norton, 2010; Morgan and Clarke, 2011). As a student develops this positive identity, he or she is much more amenable to considering new strategies – conscious ways of improving one’s ability in the L2 (O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 2010). Meta-cognition – ways of thinking about how to learn more productively and experimenting with deliberately using new strategies – can then become a vital part of the listening instruction (Vandergrift and Goh, 2012; Rost, 2011).

5. The power of learning styles

Author Barbara Prashnig has argued that people of all ages can learn virtually anything if allowed to do it through their own unique styles, their own personal strengths (Prashnig, 1998; 2006). Many L2 researchers and language educators have embraced this notion, especially given the diversity of students who undertake L2 learning. Howard Gardner’s seminal work in the early 1990s established that individuals possess different kinds of intelligence and, therefore, learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways (Gardner, 1991). Several distinct learning styles have been identified: linguistic (verbal), logical-mathematic, auditory (musical), kinaesthetic (tactile), visual (spatial), interpersonal (social) and intrapersonal. (Two others – naturalistic and existential/preferential – are sometimes included.) Gardner’s model is a much more accessible reformulation of earlier models of cognitive learning styles, such as the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory (Myers, 1980) and the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 2006; 1985). In Gardner’s framework, each style involves a fundamentally different type of interaction with input (Jones et al., 2009). For listening instruction, it has been proposed that engaging in multiple processing styles and consciously departing from an emphasis solely on the ‘traditional’ learning styles (verbal and mathematical) may have a stimulating effect on students, particularly those who have never experienced success with language learning (Lightbown and Spada, 1999). For example, numerous educators contend that kinaesthetic learning can be transformative for many students, assisting them in engaging their emotions in the learning process; kinaesthetic learning is seen as including learning through humour and laughter (which evokes positive chemical changes in the brain), drama and creative movement (Martin, 2007; Taylor, 2001; Bell, 2009).

Implications

1. Stimulating the learner’s motivation is essential in promoting active listening. Active listening is triggered by affect: how the listener feels about the listening encounter, his or her level of confidence or anxiety about making an effort to listen.

2. The instructor’s expertise and personal and professional qualities are vital for creating enthusiasm for learning. Selecting engaging tasks will promote active listening: designing motivating learning tasks, generating enthusiasm towards learning, building positive relationships with students, rewarding active listening attitudes and behaviours, nurturing group support among students.

3. Offering learners choices in goal-setting and presenting appropriate challenges are likely to increase the level of motivation (additional attention, effort and persistence) required to become a proficient listener.

4. Developing learner awareness concerning the nature of language learning, and including explicit listening strategy training, is likely to improve learners’ participation and increase their overall motivation for learning.

5. Providing learners with opportunities to experiment with and integrate different processing styles is likely to lead to greater motivation, more affective involvement, and better learning results.

Top Down Frame

Many students get bogged down when they are listening for an extended period, and quickly become confused and lose the train of ideas in a conversation, extended monologue or lecture. Even though they are motivated and trying hard, they have trouble grasping the main ideas and recall only muddled fragments of what they heard. Other students, even with minimal proficiency, seem to be able to latch onto the main ideas, get the point quickly, and find some personal relevance in what they have heard.

These two types of learners represent different ends of the spectrum in terms of top down processing ability. What is it that allows some listeners to tune into and recall the overall structure of what they heard, while others tend to get lost and recall only scattered words and phrases? Research in the Top Down Frame addresses this type of disparity among learners. This framework places ideas at the centre of communication, and views the listener as a problem-senser and problem-solver, obtaining cues about ideas that a speaker presents. Using interpretation of these cues, the listener then actively constructs meaning.

Key research findings

1. The role of attention in comprehension

Comprehension is a complex process that involves an interaction of attention, short-term memory formation and long-term memory retrieval, all of which will be subject to individual differences. It is well-established that when two people listen to an identical source (such as a news story) even in their first language (L1), they may vary widely in what they attend to (Perfetti and Lesgold, 1977), how efficiently they employ short-term memory (Wen and Skehan, 2011), what is relevant to their comprehension goals (Lovett et al., 1999) and how accurately and completely they recall information (Miyake and Shah, 1999). One key processing difference, for example, is that some people naturally tend to pay attention to (and therefore encode in memory) the overall conceptual structure of a text as they listen, while others focus on main themes and major ideas, and still others focus on individual facts or interesting details (Hicks et al., 2005). Because attention is the trigger for learning, and attention span is a predictor of learning successes, aiding students in developing attention span is seen as a vital aspect of instruction (Robinson, 2012; Juffs and Harrington, 2011).

2. The employment of background knowledge in comprehension

Background knowledge is perhaps the most significant concept relating to listening comprehension. All listeners vary in their background knowledge of a topic and invoke differing images for all of the lexical concepts they encounter in a text (Gernsbacher and Kaschak, 2003; Rost, 1990; 2006). Individual differences in accessing background knowledge (what is already known prior to listening) and encoding (what happens cognitively at the time of comprehension) are important in predicting the relative success of learners in acquiring a second language (Bransford, 2003; Johnson et al., 2012). In order for understanding to take place, a listener must find common ground with the speaker of the text. Technically, this refers to sharing similar activation spaces in memory, a kind of mutual cognitive model (Haynes et al., 2005; Levinson, 1996). Without this shared background knowledge, there cannot be adequate understanding (Binder et al., 2009; Bowe and Martin, 2007; Poldrack et al., 2009). When communicating in their L1, speakers and listeners depend on activation of similar cognitive models of specific concepts, which are called prototypes (Rosch et al., 2004). For example, shared prototypes of what we understand by ‘a silly idea’, ‘a troubled childhood’, or ‘a creepy boss’ may allow a speaker and listener of English as an L1 to communicate efficiently and empathically. However, when L2 listeners cannot rely on common prototypes or shared background knowledge with L1 speakers, they will struggle. L2 users need to construct new neural pathways to be effective lis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Author acknowledgments
• Publisher's acknowledgements
• Part I From Research to Implications
• Part II From Implications to Application
• Part III From Application to Implementation
• Part IV From Implementation to Research
• Glossary
• Appendix 1: Active listening strategies
• Appendix 2: Audio files to accompany activities
• References