TEACHING TOP-DOWN AND INTEGRATED STRATEGIES

Listening

 

◈ TEACHING LISTENING FROM A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE 

▣ TEACHING TOP-DOWN AND INTEGRATED STRATEGIES 

■ Moving on to top-down processing, we offer the example of a university-level history professor who begins his lecture with the following statement, thereby providing his listeners with a useful organizer: 

Today, we will consider three forces that helped shape the Carolingian Empire. We'll look at religion, we'll look at the prevailing social structure, and we'll consider economic factors. 



■ With these opening words, the professor has verbally established the topic or main idea for his lecture: 

Three forces helped shape the Carolingian Empire. 



■ The professor then lists the three forces on the board-each of which we now know will be discussed during the lecture: 

1. religion 
2. social structure 
3. economic factors



■ Second language learners in English-for-academic-purposes programs can be trained to process such material by listening to various lecture openings and being told to write down the topic and predict what the lecture will cover. Their written notes can then be checked, and feedback and clarification can be provided if necessary.



■ Learners can also benefit from listening to long segments extracted from authentic lectures and working at getting the gist, i.e., writing down the main points or topic(s). This global task can be complemented by subsequently relistening to the same segments and jotting down the details (the facts, dates, names, results, and so forth).



■ Learners can also listen to a lecture while looking at a partial outline where they must fill in the missing information. Such listening-related tasks are done so that the learners can eventually become more effective at using both top-down and bottom-up listening strategies.