Speech perception in an L2

Thinking about the students' difficulty related to the listening comprehension came up the bottom up and top down concepts to my mind. Based on bottom up related to how the word is spoken and the top-down related to what is the listener expecting to listen, I believe to help our students to achieve a successful comprehension in English L2 is always to previously put them in contact to the topic will be spoken. Pre - teach new words and vocabulary related to the topic can make them more confortable and confident when listening to something. Guide them to try to get key words that will help understanding the context because usually students block their minds when listening to something they don't know the meaning, and usually this specific word won't disturb the global comprehension.

Hi again!
In my opinion it is relevant for both pronunciation and listening comprehension. As a student,I have experienced it myself. So many times when I was practicing my oral skills I noticed the importance of the phonological knowledge. It is all connected. I am working on improving it because I really need it. A fault or failure to meet a certain standard, in phonological field can affect listening comprehension.For instance,there were times when I was learning a new word and and I listened the pronunciation in a wrong way and didn’t know nothing about the correct sound.Then I started to relate that word to a wrong meaning and also my speech was in a incorrect form. According to the video listening comprehension can be successful achieved in English L2 when the sounds of a language are heard, interpreted and understood through the speech perception. After processing the initial auditory signal, speech sounds are further processed to extract acoustic cues and phonetic information. This speech information can then be used for higher-level language processes, such as word recognition Jurgen Hadke (2012).
Thank you.
Thainara Padrini

Although I believe that we shouldn’t only teach isolated words in listening comprehension, the video talks about understanding of isolated words and not contextualized speech. For that reason, throughout my comment I’m considering understanding of isolated words.

In my opinion, our teaching methods are still too dependent on written signifiers. Lower students can relate those signifiers to the signified easily, but a more advanced learners can find quite difficult to match the signifier to a clear signified.

When talking about listening comprehension in SLA, I believe that the key point to understand a word is matching the sound (signifier) to the word (signifier) and therefore understand the concept (signified).

In the video the speaker demonstrates some confusing sounds such as /p/ and /b/ or /f/ and /v/. Thinking of that, it made me remind of my first lessons in a language course and the teacher highlighted some words that a longer or shorter sound makes a different word, such as /ʃɪp/ and /ʃiːp/ and /hiːt/ and /hɪt/. Nowadays my lower students also face the same problems and become flustered because they think they won’t be able to understand all the nuances in the language.

One activity that we use in the language course in which I work is the “read along”. This activity is only used as extra activities for the weaker students. The idea is to students choose one piece of listening and, at home, they listen to the track and read aloud at the same time. The intention is that students should realize their mistakes on the spot and self-correct. I really don’t know how scientifically or efficient is that strategy, but at least students became self-aware of their mistakes and I believe it helped to reduce their errors.

Another strategy that I use is to teach first the sound and later the written word. Again, I’m not sure about the scienfic evidences and efficiency and I only use these strategies because is the instruction that my coordinator gave to me. However, the intention is to students get used to the sound before seeing its spelling and I believe it's worth the effort.

I think the difficulty of listening is part lack of practice and part the teacher's approach. I agree with Livia when she talked about "the bottom up and top down concepts", since this approaches tends to influence the perception of the students of the language. The students are used to a certain way of speaking taught in class, so when they face a different accent, different words or different ways of saying the same thing, they don't understand. I face this challenge everyday, since I speak in class in American accent and the audio tracks we use in class normally have British speakers. Also, depending on the level of the students, I tend to speak slowly or faster, and in the audio tracks the speakers always speak really fast!

I've met a British guy a few years ago, and he was saying that his hometown accent is really hard for outsiders to understand. I asked his "what do you mean?" and he said "we normally don't say the letter 't', so we speak like this: is i ho in your counry?" and I was completely lost. I had a hard time to understand what he was saying, but with time I started to pick up things here and there. Different accents is hard sometimes, and when the person speaks really fast is also a challenge.

I always say to my students to listen to music or watch movies and pay attention to the pronunciation, because is a great way to expand their awareness of the language. Giving listening exercises, movies and music in class is a great way to improve listening and speaking, since this two are intertwined. As my music professor always said, "you have to listen first, so you can do it later". Listening and repeating is a great way to self-correct and self-improve.
Not only students, but we, teachers, should always pay attention to pronunciation and always try to improve ourselves.

The issue of L2 phonology is also directly connected with the understanding that we have of the language, which is our auditory or listening reception. When we expanded the discussion on the effects of L2 phonology, we must keep in mind the idea that when linguistic problems are solved by phonological studies the ability to interact with the real L2 becomes really effective.
I had many problems with some sounds especially some consonant sounds, yet when, in the graduation these problems were repaired by the phonology lessons I had with Doctor Ricardo. I could see another level in my language, the perception of a new linguistic world opened up and I was able to understand with more dexterity the subtleties of the language and its variations, then my mental amplitude has been effectively configured. The listening comprehension can be reached in English L2 through immersion in the language and a constant exposure to the language, with these ingredients there is no student who does not learn properly.

Hello, Everyone!

Whenever a person decides to study a new language, everything related to the teaching and learning process is valid. The best method to learn something may vary from person to person. So, it is important to reinforce that you have to find out which way fits better for you. As a student, the biggest problems I had was listening comprehension because the method I was learning used a lot of “key sentences” and every time a new word showed up, I used to get confused and I was not able to understand that completely. When I noticed it could interfere on my fluency, I started training it more until I got more comfy with that. It worked out really well for me.
As a teacher, I also try to show my pupils that learning a new language depends on the student. The more a person exposes himself to the language, difficulties start disappearing. You don’t need to know all he words in a text to understand its main idea, for example.
Successful listening comprehension can only be achieved in English L2 if you make it part of your routine; listening to different people speaking on L2, through music, through ted talks… There are many options!

Renata Perez Romaniuk

Hi there!

Well, difficulty in listening comprehension is something that is part of my routine as an English teacher, especially while teaching adults. I see that they struggle with segmental features at times, but, for the most part, what is really hard for them to deal with is suprasegmental features, being connected speech the "champion" among their difficulties. The way I see it, anxiety and the need to understand everything said are key factors that hinder their understanding as they expect to listen to particular words as if they were individual units, and not as parts of a whole. What I try to do in order to help them overcome this difficulty is, like some of my classmates have already mentioned, to get them to listen to different varieties of English to show them that there's more to the English language than what they may have seen in class. This way, it is crucial to let them have access to authentic material, making them see how differently the language they're learning can be used and perceived.

As for me, I've mostly been exposed to North American English and, to a lesser degree, to British English. Depending on where the speaker is from, especially if from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or some parts of the UK, I may find it difficult to understand them at first, as I could either mistake a word for another because of the phonological production of specific sounds or even see some words as being ambiguous. Just as an example, I remember going to beach with an Australian guy I met in Rio and I have the clear memory of him saying something that sounded like "wives" when in fact he was talking about waves. I got what he said relatively fast, but because there was a context involved. To conclude, I believe the best way for me to understand spoken language as an English learner (which I'll always be) is the same strategy I use with my students: be exposed to as many different forms and dialects as possible.