國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Chapter 2 Literature Review
In this literature review section, three topics related to this study will be
discussed: (1) how we learn to listen in L1 acquisition, (2) developmental problems in listening in L2 acquisition, and (3) listening for reduced sounds.
How We Learn to Listen in L1 Acquisition
How do children learn a language? They begin by listening to mom and dad talk and babble to them (Ferguson and Farwell, 1975). They keep hearing the same thing over and over and it sticks in long-term memory (Werker and Yeung, 2005). But is listening for a language a built- in skill? Is this listening comprehension innate or is it learned soon upon birth? And do babies distinguish one word from another, or is it just one homogenous mess? Christophe et al. (1994) did a study on three day old infants. The researchers wired up some pacifiers to measure the sucking rate. They then played a couple of phonemes for the babies to listen to. These phonemes were set up so that some were snippets from the middle of a word and some were the last syllable of one word and the first syllable of the next word. The sucking rates
indicated that the infants could distinguish between the two and tell which ones were between words and which ones were not. So it would seem that listening for words is built in and not something we learn after birth.
English is a unique language in that it is not inflectional or tonal like other languages. It relies on strong syllables and weak syllables for meaning. By strong syllables, it is meant that there is stress on that syllable, and by weak it is meant that there is no stress on that syllable. English thus derives its meaning from the interplay
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of strong and weak syllables. Often a strong syllable signals the beginning of a new word (Cutler and Norris, 1988). But this is not always the case. Sometimes words begin with a weak syllable. In L2 listeners, and indeed in children, too, these weak syllables are sometimes misperceived or not heard at all (Wong, Kidd, Ho and Au, 2010). This will be mentioned again in the next section.
Luce (1986) teaches that we remember every syllable ever heard. For word recognition to occur, the brain compares each phoneme to previously heard phonemes stored in memory (Juffs and Harrington, 2011). When a match occurs, comprehension is the result (Ito 2001; Norris, McQueen, Cutler and Butterfield, 1997). This is a function of something called the working memory. Working memory is different from long term and short term memory. Working memory lasts for only seconds. It is similar to remembering a telephone number long enough to dial it. It is not something we think about. It’s more of an automatic process (Carlisle, 2001; Cutler, Mitterer, Brouwer and Tuiniman, 2010; Hawkins, 2003). It is thought that people with a larger working memory have an easier time learning new languages.
Also there are words that frequently occur and words that infrequently occur.
Each word is said to be in a neighborhood. A neighborhood is defined as words that only differ in the first or last component of the syllable. The word bark is in a neighborhood with lark, dark, hark, mark, narc, park, barn, barb, bard, barf, barge and Bart. Because of the comparing with previously heard sounds in working memory, words that have few neighbors are easier to perceive and easier to remember. Those from high frequency neighborhoods take longer to perceive (Garlock, Walley and Metsala, 2001).
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This phenomenon has been studied through a process known as gating.
Milliseconds of a word will be played in increasing increments until the word is recognized. This is how researchers have come to theorize about neighborhoods of words (Walley, Michela and Wood, 1995). In addition, there is also a certain time period in which one can learn a new language without a trace of L1 interference (Werker and Tees, (2005). This is known as the critical period. This is not necessarily accurate, as sometimes, traces of L1 still creep in occasionally. There are also those who develop native-like fluency who have studied L2 past the critical period mentioned above (McDonald, 2000).
Another factor is self-confidence. Those with a higher self-esteem learn a second language more easily than those with a low self-esteem (Mills, et al. 2006).
Developmental Problems in Listening in L2 Acquisition
Sometimes in the course of development, developmental genetic anomalies happen, such as impairments in auditory processing and speech perception (Boets, et al, 2010). These difficulties together are called dyslexia. These make it more difficult for the student to pick up L1, not to mention L2. As they grow older, there seems to be a disconnect between spelling and sound (Swan and Goswami, 1997). Given the intricacies of English spelling, this is also seen in some L2 learners.
It is theorized that in dyslexic children, the syllables in long term memory, to which the working memory compares against, have incomplete phonological
representations (Elbro, 1998). This makes it harder for dyslexic children and also some L2 learners to understand connected and reduced speech such as that spoken by natives (Goswami, et al, 2010; Mok et al, 2011).
Some researchers make use of pseudo-words in their studies. This cuts out the
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possibility of the testee having heard the words before. Service and Kohonen (1995) found that students who have an easier time pronouncing English sounding pseudo-words also have an easier time learning English. Dyslexic children have a hard time pronouncing these pseudo-words.
Since there are problems learning L1, these difficulties bleed over into Learning English as a foreign language (Rontou, 2012). Oftentimes, there is an auditory deficit.
While there is no connection between dyslexia and problems with L2 learning, yet since the symptoms are similar, the methods that work on dyslexics will also work on L2 learners. More training needs to be given to teachers in mainstream classrooms to be able to help these students as well (Rontou, 2012, Lemperou, 2011).
Let us return to the idea that we remember every syllable we’ve ever heard (Luce, 1986). Phonological short term memory or working memory is key to learning new vocabulary. The way it works according to research is that the listener compares each syllable with the syllables he/she has stored in his/her brain. When there is a match, understanding occurs. Language learners with larger working memories lean foreign languages more quickly(Papagno and Vallar, 1995; Carlisle, 2001).
Furthermore in English, some syllables are accented and some are unaccented.
This is called strong syllables and weak syllables. Strong syllables are more easily heard by the Asian learner while weak syllables often go unheard (Cutler and Carter, 1987; Cutler and Norris1998).
Therefore, in L2 learners on the whole, not hearing unaccented syllables sometimes leads to mishearing what is said (Content, Dumay and Fraunfelder, 2000).
These mishearings happen in native speakers and non-native speakers alike.
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Next, let us examine the area of reduced sounds. These are contractions, elisions, linked sounds and such. Function words, i.e. conjunctions and prepositions tend to lose their stress, whereas lexical words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs retain their stress (Norris, 1993).
Many languages have reduced sounds. Ernestus and Warner looked at several European languages and how they regularly reduce sounds in native conversations (2011). This makes some difficulty for those who are just beginning their study and go out on the street.
In their study, Brown and Hilferty (1986) studied the scores of those who specifically learned to listen for reduced sounds as opposed to those who merely practiced minimal pairs. Those who got the instruction on reduced sounds performed much better on a test than those who only studied minimal pairs.
Some say that understanding reduced forms is merely a matter of having enough context (Ernestus, Baayen and Schreuder, 2002) or having a big enough vocabulary (van Zeeland, 2014). Some learners start with the sentence as a chunk and then break it down into words as needed. This is called top-down processing. Others work from the individual words into the full meaning of the passage. This is called bottom-up processing. There are proponents on both sides as to which is best (Tsui, Fullilove, 1998).
Nation and Newton(2009) seem to say that for ESL/EFL students, bottom-up is the way to go. Yeldham seems to agree (2016). Others swear by the top-down strategy (Bidabadi, 2011; Liu, 2008 ) Andriga et al (2012). did a study on success in language learning. They tested native and non-native listening comprehension. For
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natives, success in listening was all about vocabulary knowledge, while for the non-natives it was a function of knowledge and reasoning. (See also Wen, 2014)
The importance of having a wide vocabulary would seem to be supported by the top-down camp. But vocabulary alone is not enough to help our listeners (Call, 1985). In this researcher’s experience here in the Taiwanese classroom, students are not taught how to look for context, and are thus clueless without explicit instruction.
This researcher has never had students who try to figure out for themselves the meaning of a passage with unfamiliar words. Also, Dunkle (1991) suggests that teaching listening apart from speaking is counterproductive.
As has been said before, there have been studies on native listening that used gating. This is a procedure in which a word is heard, but by milliseconds instead of syllables. The listeners have to guess the words by hearing only part of the word (Walley, Michela, and Wood, 1995). This same procedure happens in L2 listening.
The L2 learner is forced to guess at the reconstructed whole by hearing only part.
Native speakers automatically reconstruct reduced forms to their original meaning. They do this without thinking (Ernestus, 2012). However, this process does not happen in the Taiwanese classroom. Research shows that teachers need to help students “tune in” to how to decode reduced sounds (Pan, 2012). Based on my own experience, this is especially true in the junior high.
It is thought that we should spend more time teaching listening strategies (Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal and Tafaghodtari, 2006). Indeed, only in the last few decades has there begun to be research on listening skills. Explicitly teaching these skills has indeed helped the L2 learner to better understand lectures and/or multimedia presentations (Vandergrift, 2007).
Many instructors have neglected to teach reduced sounds when they teach listening comprehension. But one must explicitly help the students accustom to
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hearing reduced sounds (Norris, 1993). We need to be explicit in teaching these weak forms (Field, 2003).
On another matter, EFL learners do not have access to native speakers in daily situations as if they were living in a western country. They have access to foreigners only in English class if the school has arranged for a foreign teacher. Some English textbooks have a CD or MP3 to go along with the book. But these sound tracks are not always spoken at a native rate of speech, nor are there contractions and other linked sounds. Further, when one listens to the sound track, one often can read along with the book and thus make sense of what the speaker is saying. If one does not have the text in front of one, it is more difficult to make sense of what is being said.
In their study, Wong et al. (2017) studied Hong Kong students who had studied English since elementary school first grade. Even after having studied English for more than 12 years, the students were not always able to understand the sound track from YouTube or other online materials. A strategies course in listening seemed to be very effective (Yeldham, 2016).
Based on this literature review, the studies specifically linked to listening, including Wong, et. al. (2017), Brown and Hilferty (2008), Norris (1993), and Yeldham (2016), gave me the rationale for this study. From this literature review, I believe that more studies in different classrooms would enhance our understanding of how to teach listening for reduced sounds. The studies mentioned above have all studied college or graduate level students. None of them were done in junior high school or any other pre-tertiary institution. I firmly believe that this study was warranted.
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國立 政 治 大 學