Theoretical Framework

What makes listening difficult?

CLUSTERING: pick up manageable clusters of words , avoid not retainning long constituents or losing the idea paying attention to every word in a utterance.


REDUNDANCY: take advanse of reduncy in conversation to pay attention just to the sentences with new information. Be aware of insertions of “I mean “ and “you know”.


Reduced forms: As redundancy, reduced forms are very common in native conversation. Reduction can be phonological (“Djeetyeet” for “Did you eat yet “), morphological ( constractions like I’ll ), also syntactic and pragmatics.
 
Performance Variables: casual speech by native speakers contains hesitations, pauses, and corrections commonly. Also will include ungrammatical forms, some of these forms are simple slips for example “We arrived in a little town that there was no hotel anywhere”.


Coloquial language : learners who have been exposed to standard written English language sometimes find it surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial language(idioms ,slang, reduced forms and shared cultural knowledge).


Rate of Delivery: learners will nevertheless eventually need to be able to comprehend language delivered at varying rates of speed and, at times, delivered with few pauses.


Strees, rhythm and intonation: English is stress-timed language, English speech can be a terror for some learners. Also intanation patterns are very significant not just for interpreting straightforward elements such as questions, statements but for understanding more subtle messages like sarcarms, endearment, insult, solicitation ,praise,etc.


Interaction: to learn to listen is also to learn to respond and to continue a chain of listening and responding.


 
Listening exercise: http://www.esl-lab.com/rest1.htm
 
Ordering at a Restaurant




Instructions: Listen to the questions by pressing the "Play" link and then choose the best answer. See the Quiz Script here. Press the "Final Score" button at the bottom of the page to score your quiz.

1. PLAY:

A. Three people.

B. That'll be all.

C. No. We're not ready yet.



2. PLAY:

A. I'll take a large Sprite.

B. I'll have a piece of apple pie.

C. French dressing, please.


3. PLAY:

A. T-bone steak, please.

B. Medium.

C. I'd like rice with my steak.


4. PLAY:

A. I'll have the salad, please.

B. I'd like the rice.

C. Bread, please.


5. PLAY:

A. Yes. I'd like more water.

B. I didn't order this.

C. Yes. The food is great.