Reflection task 1
Most people find this extract impossible to understand, even though they feel they understand what the individual words mean.

The extract comes from an academic textbook: it is clearly meant to be read, not listened to. It contains long sentences with subordinate clauses, so a lot of information is communicated in a short period of time. When we listen to such language, we have difficulties keeping in memory the early ideas while processing the later ones. At least with a written text, you can check back and reread a sentence to make sure you've retained all the necessary information.

But even reading the extract, you will probably have problems making sense of it.

Are you any the wiser?

Part of the problem comes from the vocabulary: processing, contexts, things, pattern of abilities, approach, capacity, factor and role, all refer to abstract ideas rather than anything concrete and easily identifiable, such as cat or tree.

But probably the most significant problem is the lack of context: you probably have no idea why or how the two statements might be significant. You don't know what consequently refers back to, nor do you know the reference of it. So it's hard to see what the extract is about. This in turn stops you assigning any content to the abstract words. This task has tried to make one thing clear: understanding is not simply about registering words like a tape recorder. It is about making sense ... and we can only do that by trying to find a context for the words we hear.

Reflection task 2
You probably had the following rank order:
Least comprehension C - E - B/F - D Most comprehension

C's response suggests that he was unable to identify key words in what was said. This is the problem referred to as segmentation. For example, where does his word 'venshunulprosh' come from? Say 'conventional approach' fast and you'll find yourself saying something rather similar... In continuous speech, speech sounds are not always articulated clearly, particularly unstressed syllables. If you are unfamiliar with the language you're listening to, it can be difficult to know where one word ends and another one starts. Segmentation of continuous speech is the first step on the ladder to comprehension. It can still be a problem for intermediate level learners. E's thoughts suggest that she has identified some of the words spoken, but she is having problems putting them together to form a meaningful idea or proposition. The proposition she arrives at is not in fact the one expressed by A. Among other problems, she seems to interpret the noun 'extension' as a verb, misinterpret the grammatical role of 'once' (adverb 'one time only' instead of subordinating conjunction 'after' ...); she reduces 'pattern of abilities' to a single 'pattern ability' and misconstrues what is said into a series of step-by-step instructions, perhaps misled by her interpretation of 'once'.

B may also have had problems arriving at meaningful propositions: rather like F, she may have understood the words but not the meaning. To make sense of A's utterance, the listener needs to have a strong background in cognitive theory applied to second language acquisition and testing! B's response suggests that she had no such context. She even resented the communication, which she experienced as a lecture - inappropriate on holiday! When we don't have the background knowledge in order to fit words together into meaningful propositions, then we have problems retaining the individual words in memory. Furthermore, if someone is saying something irrelevant to us, then we lose the motivation to make some sense of it.

F's response also suggests that he has not fully understood, although he has managed to pick up on a general gist point, the comparison between two approaches. Unlike B, he seems ready to pretend to A that he has understood. Communication breakdowns threaten social relationships, so F chooses to maintain the relationship rather than challenge it by lack of comprehension.

D demonstrates successful communication based on comprehension. She is able to identify the speaker's key point accurately and then asks a question to extend the discussion. Unlike B and F, she is taking part in speaker A's 'game'.

Now, check your definition of comprehension against those presented in Section 5.1.3.

Reflection task 3
3a
enengklericenaramstedamalsdebleeft

3b
You are waiting to buy tickets at a railway station in Holland. This is what the person in front of you says at the ticket counter.

3c
If you know any Dutch, then you should have had no problem understanding the utterance! The utterance was: 'Een enkele reis naar Amsterdam alstublieft.' Now that you know what the words are, you can probably match them to the English words: 'A - single - journey - to - Amsterdam - if-you-please.' So what might have helped you in segmenting the stream of foreign sound?

a) Intonation
You may have had particular problems segmenting the first two words and the last three, which run together in continuous pronunciation.

Quite subtle features of intonation mark beginnings and ends of phrases, so these may have helped you, possibly in a way you were hardly aware of. You may have had a sense of the rhythm of the phrase:

de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-de-DUM.
en-NENG-kle-RICE-nar-AM-ste-DAM-alsde-BLEEF

In the case of Dutch, this rhythm or stress marks out syllables. Although the patterns of intonantion differ from language to language, languages typically use intonational stress to help listeners segment the elements of the utterance. However, in processing second language sound, we tend to use the framework established for our first language, and this can often lead us to 'hear' wrongly.

b) Existing knowledge
From your general knowledge, you may have been able to identify the word 'Amsterdam' in the middle of the phrase. This may have allowed you to guess at the meaning of the phrase and perhaps get a little further with segmentation.

If you know any German, you might have been able to identify the word 'reis', similar to the German 'Reise' (journey). Knowing 'reis' and 'Amsterdam' may have enabled you to guess at the speaker's intention in uttering this phrase, eg requesting information about travel.This interpretation would then have been confirmed, and made more focused, when you were given knowledge of the context.

c) Contextual information
Even if you hadn't been able to segment much of the utterance, the information about its context probably allowed you to make a pretty good guess at what was being said. That in turn may have enabled you to segment the utterance further. Alternatively, it may have made you feel: 'Why should I bother? I know more or less what this phrase means'.

d) Aiming for meaning
Adults, in particular, try to be very efficient in using their attention or mental energy. In processing language, we tend to aim as quickly as we can for meaning; in other words, if we can arrive at a plausible interpretation through guesswork, we tend not to make the extra effort to check exactly what has been said.

... because the listener has limited processing resources, he will attend primarily to the communicative function of the communication and only secondarily to the formal (ie grammatical) manifestations of that function. (Rost, 2002: 26)

This highlights an advantage and a disadvantage for the second language learner. Second language users can often guess meaning adequately even if they don't understand every word. However, if they rely too much on guesswork, then they are unlikely to pay much attention to potentially important grammatical features of the target language. This in turn may slow up their ability to acquire those features.

In comprehension, then, we aim to focus in quickly on key lexical items. As we identify key words, so we try to work out the likely links between them, or what have been referred to as 'semantic roles' (ie the agent or do-er, the patient or person/thing affected by an action, details of time and location). Researchers (eg Rost, 2002: 27) believe that we build these roles particularly around our understanding of the main verb.

Reflection task 5

1. News bulletins about strikes will typically tell you
   • who is striking;
   • against whom;
   • why;
   • in what way;
   • for how long.

   This is part of a content schema for the idea 'strikes'.
   

2. It is normal to exchange basic greetings (eg 'How are you?') and then if the conversation doesn't develop from there, to make some comment on the immediate situation (eg 'The bus is late, isn't it? Are you off shopping? It's so cold, today, isn't it?'). This is part of a formal schema for the organization of casual conversation.
   
   
3. In the first few minutes, you might expect an introduction in which the lecturer tells us what the lecture is going to be about (eg 'In today's lecture, we're going to review the work on differences in learning styles...' ). In the last few minutes, we generally expect some kind of conclusion, and possibly a link to the next lecture (eg 'So, today, we've talked about the basic contrasts in defining learning styles, between analytic and holistic styles. Next week, we'll move on to investigate how learning styles have been researched...'). This is part of a formal schema for the organization of lectures.
   
   
4. Information about which train is leaving from which platform; information about delays; information about keeping an eye on your luggage. This is part of a content schema for the idea 'railway travel'.
   
   
5. (This will very much depend on your individual perspective.) The funding problems of the railways currently; the poor service; delays; lack of infrastructure; the need to encourage more people to use trains. This is part of a content schema for the idea 'trains in Britain'.
   
   
6. News bulletins in Europe typically end with a lighter or cultural item. Then there will typically be a summary of the main headlines. This is part of a formal schema for the organization of news bulletins.

Reflection task 6
The student experienced problems making sense of the long second 'sentence' in the interview, where the interviewee digresses into fairly subtle discussion of definitions. She seemed to pick up some elements from the initial utterance and the final one.

Her strategy appears to be a sensible one: try to make sense of all information noted using background knowledge. But she has interpreted the four key items of information according to her own (perhaps more obvious) schema which opposes 'culture' and 'business', but recognizes culture's need for business sponsorship.

Unfortunately Catherine Clément is in fact saying the opposite - and the initial utterance 'Je suis tout à fait d'accord' (in fact noted down by the student) should have jolted the student into rethinking her first interpretation.

The problem here seems to be that the student does not have an extensive enough active vocabulary and and thus has poorly automatized skills for dealing with longer chunks of target language input delivered at normal speeds.

Reflection task 7
Again, a problem for this student seemed to be coping with the length and complexity of the interview. As is evident from the extracts above, Catherine Clément tended to digress around the definition of words she was using, adding in qualifications and asides, such that her main point was often made in a rather circular way. This type of discourse challenges less proficient listeners because it requires them to process multiple propositions in short-term memory before being able to identify key points.

A specific difficulty was the switching time perspective, which is key to understanding the main point of this section. As you can see in Student 2's response, he missed this and interpreted the whole passage as relating to one time period (the past).

His strategy seems to be different from the one taken by Student 1 in the case studied in Reflection task 6. This student seems to note down a basic proposition for the elements he has understood, but does not reflect on how these might 'make sense'. In other words, he does not seem to use his background knowledge to question his understanding (or at least, what he has reported as his understanding!).

It seems extraordinary that a student with some background knowledge of French history, in fact any knowledge of European history, should imagine that 1922 was a time when France was colonized, and should associate the view of cultural equality with a time of colonialism.

When this was discussed with the student after the examination, he acknowledged that he knew that France was a coloniser, not a colonized country at the beginning of the 20^th Century. What became clear was that he had been unable to mobilize that knowledge in the exam to help him interpret this complex interview, because the bottom-up processing had proved too demanding.

Reflection task 8
There is a lot of evidence that native speakers instinctively adjust the way they speak to non-native speakers.

Long (1983) has found that native speakers adjust the way in which they manage the interaction with non-native speakers, rather than just simplifying the vocabulary and syntax that they use. Typically, they:

• select salient topics or make topics salient through talk;
• limit the amount of complex information they provide;
• use questions to establish mutual understanding;
• frequently check comprehension.

Long hypothesized that where opportunities for interaction are greater, comprehension will be greater. Research seems to have borne this out. Pica, Young and Doughty (1987) found that low-intermediate learners of English as a second language understood instructions better when there were opportunities for interaction When the instructions were given to them in linguistically simplified form, but without interaction, levels of understanding were lower. Of course, through interaction, learners benefited from repetition and also pauses after key units of information.

All of this suggests that in the second language classroom, we need to remember that interactive speaking tasks also develop reciprocal listening skills. We need to ensure that we give our learners sufficient opportunities to develop their confidence as listeners in reciprocal situations, for example developing conversation management strategies such as the ability to:

• indicate lack of understanding;
• request slower delivery or repetition;
• ask a range of questions in order to check comprehension;
• reformulate what another speaker has said in order to check comprehension.

Paradoxically, we often deny our learners opportunities for naturally practising conversation management strategies since as language teachers we have become adept at adapting our own speech to the level of our learners.

Reflection task 10
Principle 1: The interviewee's answer introduces a lot of different references: the association, the notion of expansion, colonialism, Western countries, countries, the essence of France, reciprocity, theatre tours, cultures.

Principle 2: Many of these concepts are not clearly distinct one from another: 'expansion' and 'reciprocity', for example, are the words used for the aims of the association, but at different moments in time - and in fact, much time in the interview is spent finessing definitions of these terms.

Principle 3 and 4: The interview does not refer to much in the way of spatial relationships, but under Principle 4, there is a clear example of moving backwards and forward between different time perspectives. The interviewer starts by asking 'What are the aims of the association?' The interviewee answers by referring to past time. She then moves twice between past and present perspectives, before finishing in the present. This certainly threw Student 2 (Reflection task 7) who processed all of the information he retained as relating to past time.

Principle 5: Inferences are required to 'fill in' the link between the notion of 'expansion and 'colonialism'; the difference between 'expansion' and 'reciprocity'; how the example of 'theatre tours' illustrates the notion of 'expansion of French culture', and of course, the references 'what happens now', 'we're no longer there', require inference from the listener, as does understanding who 'we' refers to.

Principle 6: The point being made by Catherine Clément is a fairly subtle one, focusing on a difference between the notion of diffusion of culture (a form of cultural colonialism) and reciprocity of cultures or cultural exchange (a more appropriate role for the Association, given contemporary international relations). Without a background understanding of these issues, it is hard to interpret the interview, as we saw in the case of Student 2 (Reflection task 7) who was not able to come up with a coherent schema for this passage.

Reflection task 12
You probably guessed from the visual context that the first scene concerned a group of young friends. You may have noted their rather gloomy attitude, together with gestures such as clasping the head. While many conclusions can be drawn from this, one is that they are feeling unwell: given their age and their context, you may have thought they were recovering from a party! Which would not be so far from the truth ...

The fair-haired young man gets up to leave the group: why? Well, if they are feeling unwell, he may be going to get something to help them feel better. Again, not too far from the truth ...

The second scene confirms something along these lines: the situation is quite clearly a doctor's surgery and, given scene 1, we can assume the young man is consulting the doctor about the symptoms which he and his friends are suffering. Obviously, the visual track alone cannot provide precise details, but you may have noticed the gestures to the head and to the stomach. The possible complaints that get mentioned in the consultation are food-poisoning and gastric 'flu.

In this video extract, the images provide good support to top-down comprehension processes, allowing learners to guess more effectively at what is being said.

But while this can be helpful, it may also distract attention away from the forms of the language, and from bottom-up processing which will enable learners to retain new forms. It may be that the more we understand from the pictures, the less we focus on the language. By this argument, video recordings could be considered to be less helpful than audio recordings. However, we can exploit this potential of video to good ends by separating work on the visual channel and work on the sound channel in language teaching activities.