Theoretical Framework

1. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short –term memory.


2. Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English.


3. Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, into national contours, and their role in signaling information.




4. Recognize reduced forms of words.

5. Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance.

 6. Process speech at different rates of delivery.

 7. Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables.

 8. Recognize grammatical word classes nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, rules and elliptical forms.



9. Detect sentences constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents.


10. Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.



11. Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourses.


12. Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, goals.





13. Infer situations, participants, goals using real-world knowledge.

 14. From events, ideas, etc., described, predict outcomes, infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information: given information, generalization, and exemplification.



15. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.

 16. Use facial, kinesic, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings.


17. Develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, guessing the meaning of words from context, appeal for help and signaling comprehension or lack thereof.