A proficiency-oriented

approach to listening
and reading
 What is comprehension?
• An active process
• Involves various factors:
– individual’s knowledge of the linguistic
code
– a variety of cognitive skills
– individual’s knowledge of the world
• Is most successful if relevant
contextual information is present
 How do we teach
comprehension?
• Some questions to consider:
– Why should we teach listening and
reading? Do they need to be taught?
– How are reading and listening similar?
– How are they different?
– How can we use authentic texts, even at
lower levels?
– What strategies can we encourage?
 Why teach them?
• If what we want is communication, how
important are listening and reading?
– Half of the communication process...
– Adults spend at least 45% of their time
listening and 15% of their time reading.
– We teach four skills courses, so we must
actively work on all four skills.
 Why teach them?
• Aren’t they just automatic?
– In an L1, listening develops automatically,
although reading is taught.
– L1 comprehension occurs subconsciously
in adults, but in an L2 learners need to be
“reminded” of the strategies involved.
– There is usually a comprehension
advantage in L2, but that doesn’t mean
we can assume success.
 Reading and Listening
• These skills used to be considered
“passive” skills.
– Thought not to involve active production
(like speaking or writing)
• But in L2 learning, they are not really
“passive” but rather “receptive” skills.
– “Readers and listeners actively produce
understanding” (Byrnes 1985)
 Reading and Listening
• Similarities
– Receptive
– Complex processes
– Require previous knowledge/skills
– Comprehension can be constructed
through schema-based understanding
– Problem-solving activities
– Jigsaw puzzle metaphor
– Double presentation benefits learners
 Reading and Listening
• Differences
– Nature of input
• written discourse is well organized,
grammatical, logical and planned; usually for
an anonymous audience
• spoken discourse is less organized, jumping
from topic to topic; may be marked by
grammatical inaccuracies and inconsistencies;
includes fillers, false starts; assumes some
shared knowledge among interlocutors
 Reading and Listening
• Differences
– Delivery of material
• spoken language is delivered orally; moves along a
time axis; is essentially linear
• written language is visually delivered; overall duration
and organization can be established
– Accessibility of material
• listener has one and only one chance to comprehend
and can not return to missed information
• reader can look back and ahead to review and preview
 Reading and Listening
• Differences
– Text types
• Oral language
– spontaneous free speech , deliberate free
speech, oral presentation of written text,
oral presentation of fixed script
• Written language
– literary texts, specialized or technical texts,
personal correspondence, journalistic
literature, informational texts,
miscellaneous realia
 Approaches to teaching
comprehension skills
• Four recent trends (Joiner 1986, 1997)
that encourage more active teaching of
reading and listening:
– Comprehension-based approaches
• advocate silent period, comprehension is
essential
– Emphasis on receptive skills in general
– Functional-notional approaches
• emphasis on oral communication
– ACTFL proficiency guidelines
• use of authentic materials, emphasis on
communicative skill development
 Approaches to teaching
comprehension skills
• Communicative modes (Brecht &
Walton 1995):
– Interpersonal/negotiated
• receptive and productive skills closely linked
– Interpretive
• relies primarily on receptive skills
– Presentational
• relies primarily on productive skills, but
requires considerable receptive skills prior to
reaching this mode
 Teaching comprehension
• Recent interest in comprehension has
provided better materials
– authentic texts, videotapes, computer-
assisted presentation, higher quality
materials, etc.
• Teachers have the materials, but also
need ideas for structuring and
sequencing instruction. . .
 Teaching comprehension
• What is our goal?
– Successful comprehension
• “Understanding a […] text means extracting
the required information from it as efficiently
as possible” (Grellet 1981)
• Required information will depend on the
context and circumstances of the encounter
with the text, and on the goals of the
listener/reader
Teaching Listening
Comprehension
 What is
listening comprehension?
• Little L2 research
• Steps of comprehension (Richards
1983):
– determining type of interaction/event
– recalling relevant schemata
– making inferences about the goal
– determining proportional meaning of
utterances
– assigning functional meaning to message
– remembering/acting on information
 What is
listening comprehension?
• Steps of comprehension
– In addition, there are numerous
“microskills” involved in any
comprehension, and more specialized
skills required for academic
comprehension.
• We can design different activities to
focus on particular skills at different
proficiency levels.
 Choosing a text and
designing an activity
• How do we know what materials to
use?
– Present familiar or predictable content
– Make topic relevant to learner interests
– Consider extralinguistic factors
• How do we develop a task?
– Tailor task, not text, to student level
– Consider “normal” goals of that text
– Provide pre-listening activities to activate
background knowledge
 Lund’s (1990) plan
• Based on listener function (what
listener attends to) and on listener
response (how learner demonstrates
comprehension)
• Six functions
• Nine responses
 Lund’s (1990) plan
• Listener Functions
– Identification: recognizing aspects of
message (word categories, semantic
clues)
– Orientation: finding important information
(participants, tone, topic, etc.)
– Main idea comprehension
– Detail comprehension
– Full comprehension
– Replication (note that this is not
necessarily higher level, just different)
 Lund’s (1990) plan
• Listener Responses
– Doing: physical response (ie, TPR)
– Choosing: matching, ordering sequences
– Transferring (modality): drawing, filling in
– Condensing: taking notes, making outline,
writing captions
– Extending: “going beyond”, new ending
– Duplicating: evidence of replication
– Modeling: imitation of features or text
– Conversion: interacting with text
 Lund’s (1990) plan
• Growth in listening proficiency is seen
as progressing through the functions
and responses as the level of the text
changes as well.
• The taxonomy is viewed as circular,
rather than linear.
 Using authentic materials
• “Authentic”
– real unedited texts, created for natives
– edited pedagogical texts, created for
learners
• What are some advantages and
disadvantages to each type of
“authentic” material?
– Unmodified authentic discourse
– Simulated authentic discourse
– “Teacher talk”
 Incorporating authentic texts
• How to incorporate authentic material
without freaking the students out?
– Semiscripts
– Multimedia software
– Internet
 Sample formats (Listening)
• Types of listening activities:
– Listening for the gist
– Recursive listening
– Listening with visuals
– Graphic fill-ins
– Comprehension checks
• Listening/Writing Formats
– Dictation of questions in TL
– Partial dictations
– Sentence dictation (random order)
– Dictation of directions
– Dictation of description
– Full dictations
Teaching Reading
Comprehension
 What is
reading comprehension?
• More L2 research than for listening
• Involves visual and nonvisual
processes
• Types of reading comprehension:
– bottom up (text driven)
– top down (reader driven)
– interactive (combination)
• “Composing” - the act of composing a new
version of the text for an inner reader (Barnett
1989)
• “Integrative reading” - parallel processes
(Swaffar, Arens, Byrnes 1991)
 What is
reading comprehension?
• Many models, but conclusion is that
“the comprehender is an active
participant in the comprehension
process who perceives and selects
features of text and features of the
world at large for processing and for
synthesizing” (Bernhardt 1986).
 L2 reading comprehension
• We must remember that our learners
approach the text with different background
information.
• We also must keep in mind the purpose or
goal of the reading.
– Do we need to distinguish between reading for
information and reading for pleasure?
• Munby (1979) characterizes reading as
either intensive or extensive
• Grellet (1981) discusses main ways to read
a text: skimming, scanning, extensive
reading, intensive reading
 Designing reading
comprehension tasks
• We must design tasks that correspond to all
of the various purposes in reading.
• At the same time, we must be aware of the
level of the learner, and of our own goals in
assigning the reading.
• We should check comprehension not only of
content but of structure and/or organization
as well.
 Using authentic materials
• Same rationales apply as with
authentic texts for listening
comprehension activities.
• Authentic materials should be
presented in original form if possible.
• Topics should be relevant and of
interest to learners
• Include cultural information where
possible
 Types of reading tasks
• Anticipate/predict • Paraphrasing
• Pre-reading • Notetaking
• Skimming
• Gisting • Understanding idioms
• Detecting functions • Understanding discourse
• Scanning structure
• Extracting specifics • Understanding intentions
• Simple cloze • Analysis
• Filling out forms • Evaluative activities
• Comprehension checks
• Making inferences • Creative elaboration
• Scrambled stories
• Passage completion
• Identify sociolinguistic
features or discourse
 Techniques for teaching
reading
• A variety of formats can be used at any
level, just tailored.
• We should incorporate a variety of
formats, goals and activities to develop
different skills.
• Where to find sources?
– Textbooks
– Realia
– Photographs
– Web
 Techniques for teaching
reading
• Phillips (1984) proposes a five-stage
plan for reading instruction.
– 1. Preteaching/preparing
• Brainstorming; using visuals/titles etc.;
predicting/hypothesizing
– 2. Skimming/Scanning
– 3. Decoding/Intensive reading
– 4. Comprehension
– 5. Transferable/Integrating skills
 What would you say?
1. A colleague remarks that most students cannot get
anything out of authentic spoken discourse and
tend to panic when they begin to hear an authentic
text. What suggestions would you offer to help this
teacher make listening texts more
comprehensible?

2. A student expresses concern over not

understanding every word in a reading passage.
The student is frustrated because it takes so long
to read a foreign language text. How would you
encourage this student?