This is the second installment of our mind -reading post, attempting to decipher how the listener interprets and manages to respond to the speaker’s message.
What we hope to achieve is to clarify that the whole process is much more complex than the line model may suggest. It is not a series of steps that cumulates in comprehension, but rather a set of factors that interact with each other simultaneously in forming an interpretation of the message. This is the key characteristic of the circle model.
THE CIRCLE
This should logically result in two conclusions:
- Listening is a much more demanding task than merely assembling and collating sounds, therefore not to be underestimated in terms of the challenge it presents for the listener.
- The listener is called to play a much more active role than the one traditionally implied by terming listening as a receptive skill, since the listener is the one that combines the various elements available into a coherent interpretation.
Most traditional listening tasks focus on the linguistic elements in the circle, coloured blue here, ignoring all the other resources available to the listener and therefore limiting their capabilities of correctly interpreting the speaker’s message.
Of these additional resources, one group is independent of the listener’s language level: background knowledge and knowledge of language use in discourse (for example, you expect to hear questions in a phone inquiry). These green boxes have to do with our experiences of the world around us as native listeners of our L1. This is a ready-made repository of resources waiting to be activated, contribute to comprehension and help boost the listener’s confidence and motivation.
The lone yellow box, context and co-text, refers to resources that we can make available to our learners before listening begins, drawing their attention to the physical setting where listening takes place, the relationship between the participants, what clues to listen for in the text in order to find information more easily, and so on. By allowing learners enough time to process all these additional resources before the actual listening task, we automatically reduce the information load required of the listener and make the actual listening task much less daunting.
The overall conclusion is that although the line looks much simpler and tidier than the various interlinking elements of the circle, it does not make listening any easier for our learners: on the contrary, it makes it much more demanding and demotivating by denying them some easily-accessible extra help.
We will refer back to these two models in the forthcoming posts, when discussing best practices, types of listening activities as well as the sequence of listening tasks within a lesson. For now, here’s a question for you:
Which of the elements in the circle do you feel you have not used / are not using enough in your own lessons?
Footnote: Let me be the first to acknowledge that teachers may be bound to syllabuses and coursebooks prescribing to specific methodologies and beliefs, which may make it difficult to adhere to personal teaching principles. We’ve all been there and are required to reconcile the practical with the beneficial. My questions at the end of each post do not aim at getting already overworked and underpaid teachers second-guess their efficiency in class or spend their precious little free time on creating new materials from scratch. My hope is that we can discuss our own beliefs and practices and that we can come up with practical, easily applicable and no-fuss teaching tips to improve our day-to-day teaching, and my firm belief is that what is needed most is a shift in perspective and focus – not fancy, time-consuming materials 😊
As usual, looking forward to your comments
Alexandra
teachITefl 