Listening from the Inside Out

Listening from the Inside Out

Elizabeth G. Joiner University of South Carolina

Since the topical paper on listening comprehension presents a rather comprehensive treatment of what has been discovered by researchers in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics as well as by second language teachers, it seems appropriate to choose a somewhat more speculative approach for this reaction paper. Such an approach will not be limited to what is known and, thus, will permit a brief excursion into the mysterious realm of the human brain in addition to a somewhat longer so- journ in the more familiar and very real world of the classroom.

One of the reasons listening comprehension has been so difficult to describe is that it is a covert activity. Consequently, language teachers and linguists have had to rely on observable responses to oral stimuli for proof that comprehension has occurred and on introspection and self-reporting for indications of what must be going on inside the brain when oral language is processed. Even with these limitations, we have accumulated a con- siderable body of evidence which Byrnes has used to support her argument for the critical priority of listening comprehension in language learning.

While we have been engaged in building a theory of second language acquisition based on listening comprehension, psychobiologists have found ways of penetrating the mysteries of the human brain which may help us to refine even further our understanding of how language is acquired. Remarkable advances in brain research have been made possible not only by the famous split-brain studies but also by other non-surgical experiments conducted using equipment such as the CAT scanner, the P E T scanner, and the BEAM scanner, machines that have laid bare the structure of the human brain and allowed scientists to observe it in action. For example, scientists now have a way of measuring brain waves that enables them to tell whether or not a person is comprehending the language that he or she is hearing (Restak, 3). Col-

Foreign Language Annuls, 17, No. 4, 1984 335

laborative efforts involving psycholinguists and psychobiologists, and making use of the tools at the disposal of psychobiologists, offer the hope of a much clearer understanding of the listening process than we presently have.

While waiting for those experiments to take place, we can learn much simply from examining studies in brain research that are closely related to language learning. Psychobiologists have conclud- ed, for example, that the tendency for speech to localize in the left hemisphere of the brain seems to be genetically programmed, since infants as young as twenty-four hours old have been shown to respond to human sounds with the speech- processing area of the left hemisphere. With non- speech sounds, on the other hand, brain activity is recorded over the right hemisphere (Blakeslee, 1) . This same phenomenon has been observed in adul ts . When different words a re heard simultaneously by each ear, a person will tend to report words heard on the right (sounds processed by the left hemisphere) and ignore those heard on the left. If the same test is done using music or natural sounds, the advantage reverses to the left ear (Blakeslee, 1). It would be interesting to know if students hearing a second language rely more on their “musical” ear or on their “speech” ear, and this should not be very difficult to find out. Cer- tainly, one would expect that good second language listeners would use their ears in much the same way as they do for receiving the sounds of their native language.

The split-brain studies suggest that both brain hemispheres have a role to play in language comprehension, even though language expression is almost exclusively associated with the left hemisphere. First, it has been observed that the melody of language seems to be to a large extent the province of the right hemisphere. Without a right hemisphere, people lose the ability to sing and to recognize intonation patterns and may not even

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be able to tell whether a voice is that of a male or a female. While able to understand perfectly the precise literal meaning of words, they will not be able to cope with metaphor, inflection, and emo- tional tone (Blakeslee, 1) . Byrnes has stressed the importance of the ability to deal with intonation contours in first language acquisition and has iden- tified the ability to deal with intended rather than literal meanings at a very sophisticated level of comprehension. It would seem, then, that the involvement of the right hemisphere in speech processing is necessary from the most basic stages of language acquisition through the later stages of in- terpretive comprehension.

Right hemisphere involvement in comprehension of words has also been demonstrated. The number of words comprehended has been found to be sur- prisingly large and to include verbs as well as nouns-all of them concrete. Abstract words and propositions seem to be the province of the left brain (Blakeslee, 1) .

In normal people, of course, the two brain hemispheres work in tandem, with each com- plementing the other in language comprehension. The role of the right hemisphere is emphasized here because I believe that the language teaching methods which will be most successful with post- adolescent learners will be those which succeed in activating the right hemisphere and engaging it in the language learning process from the earliest stages of instruction. Numerous critics of our educational system have decried the way in which teachers typically teach to the left hemisphere and neglect: the right hemisphere in the instructional process. Blakeslee (1 ) asserts that as a result of this “training” of the left hemisphere the gulf betwen the language abilities of the two hemispheres widens. At the very least our educational system seems to foster an unhealthy disequilibrium of the two brain hemispheres.

Two language teaching methodologies that seem to have avoided this tendency are Asher’s Total Physical Response and Lozanov’s Suggestopedia. Both approaches focus on listening, and each seems to have found a means of activating the right brain hemisphere and involving it in the language learning process.

TPR, of course, is based at first on simple one- word commands intended to elicit a physical response on the part of the listener. There is reason to believe that such activity involves prmarily the use of the right hemisphere. For example, victims of Wernicke’s aphasia, whose left brain thought processes are disordered and who have practically no understanding of spoken language, can still

understand and obey “whole body” commands such as “stand up,” “stand at attention,” and “assume the position of a boxer” (Blakeslee, 1). It seems possible that this is the language ability of the intact right hemisphere in action. To be sure, TPR progresses to long strings of commands, but physical activity remains an important feature of the method. Asher has used TPR to teach a variety of languages to post-adolescent students with remarkable success. Results have shown that the TPR students not only achieve greater listening comprehension but also greater reading comprehension than control groups despite the fact that reading is not specifically taught. In one study the TPR students acquired these skills five times faster than the control group (Krashen, 2).

This finding brings to mind the claims of greatly accelerated language learning made by Lozanov and other proponents of a suggestopedic method of language instruction. This method, while it does make use of dialogues, role-playing, and other techniques of instruction that have now become commonplace, has as its focal point the concert ses- sion, a time period during which students relax and listen to the teacher read aloud in the foreign language against a background of baroque music. One could speculate that, since musical sounds are processed by the right brain, the presence of music guarantees that both hemispheres will be activated during the concert period. It is possible, too, that the meter of the music as reflected in the teacher’s oral reading may enhance comprehension. In August of this year, Poetry Magazine published an article which claims that metered language activates the right hemisphere and that the brain best com- prehends metered language broken by pauses a t 3- to 4-second intervals. This type of metered language has been found to dominate the whole tradition of both Western and Eastern poetry.

I do not suggest that we abandon all our present methods and embrace either suggestopedia or TPR, for there are perhaps features of each with which many language teachers could not feel com- fortable. It seems likely, however, that those methods that stand the best chance of revolutioniz- ing language teaching within the next twenty years will probably share two characteristics with TPR and suggestopedia. They will accord a prominent place to listening comprehension, and they will find some means of engaging both brain hemispheres in the process of language learning.

But we have been asked not so much to predict the future as to find immediate practical applications for what is currently known about listening. Let us return, then, to the formal classroom set-

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ting in which a group of second language learners interacts with a teacher. The model is one of face- to-face communication with the teacher serving primarily as the source of comprehensible oral input. As Byrnes points out, this model can simulate rather well the first language acquisition experience if the teacher uses typical caretaker speech with lots of repetition and redundancy and also provides the learner with extralinguistic aids to facilitate his in- terpretation of speech sounds.

What may be absent from classroom language learning is the warm, supportive aspect of the child- parent relationship. We must assume different motivation to learn on the part of the second language learner, the presence of some anxiety brought about by testing and grading, and some kind of attitude on the part of the learner toward the teacher and toward the speakers of the languages in question. The ideal teacher-caretaker for a listening-based method would seem to be a warm, caring person whose manner would help to allay anxiety and whose method would be design- ed to motivate students by capitalizing on their needs and interests.

It seems clear that in a listening-based method, classroom priorities would be reordered in order to give students a maximum amount of comprehensible input. In recent years, we have argued for more student talk and less teacher talk in the early stages of language learning. A listening-based method would call for the reverse, provided, of course, that the teacher talk consisted of high- interest, comprehensible input. This input might take a variety of forms. It might at first be commands to which students respond physically as in TPR. It might also take the form of a dictation or of a show of hands in response to oral questions such as “Who in this class plays the guitar? Who plays the piano? the violin?” All these techniques provide for active, observable participation on the part of the learner and promote the idea of active listening. The dictation, further, requires the learner to segment the stream of speech into bits of information, to draw the words out of the music.

In addition to the listen-do activities described above, students at some point should be given prac- tice listening to longer passages of uninterrupted speech. These would correspond roughly to modes 3 and 4 of the four modes of oral language iden- tified by Byrnes. If this activity consists of the retel- ling in the foreign language of a story already familiar t o listeners in their native language, they can draw on already existing frames of expectation in order to make intelligent guesses about the sounds they are hearing.

In addition to the short recorded situations that Byrnes mentions, students might also listen to a continued story where the information contained in one episode enables the listener to anticipate what might occur in the next. The BBC listening programs distributed in this country by EMC are useful for this purpose. The best of these are suspenseful dramas that combine romance, adven- ture, and linguistic material so artfully that students are motivated to listen to them actively.

While the BBC listening programs described above are exceptional, most teaching materials are based on written texts and are filled with produc- tion rather than comprehension activities. Unfor- tunately, such textbooks dominate classroom prac- tice, and until they are changed, a significant increase in comprehension activities is unlikely. Some laboratory materials have begun to give equal time to listening, but many of these exercises involve sound discrimination rather than listening comprehension. Furthermore, when students are forc- ed to listen to tapes in a laboratory, negative at- titudes toward listening sometimes develop. Almost every student today has access to a portable cassette player and could very easily increase exposure to the sounds of the foreign language dramatically if allowed t o have a personal copy of the recorded material of the course as well as recordings of authentic material from the target culture such as radio broadcasts.

In the future perhaps we shall find ways of making tapes, both audio and video, available to students outside the classroom and the language laboratory. Indeed, one would expect a video com- ponent to be especially effective in providing important extralinguistic information and also in activating the right brain which tends to “think” in images. Films, television programs taped from satellite, and even slide-tape presentations, could be used to foster comprehension provided that care is taken not to present material of such difficulty that the student will become discouraged by it.

How long will we need to wait from the time of the learner’s first exposure to the sounds of the foreign language until we can present him with taped television programs, for example? We simply do not know at this point. Byrnes suggests that a comprehension approach may require more time than usual because of the massive amount of input required to lead to the ultimately desired level of comprehension. On the other hand Asher’s students using a listening approach learned five times faster than the control group, and Lozanov has claimed greatly accelerated learning for students taught by his suggestopedic method.

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That this paper ends with a question, i.e. how much time is needed to develop comprehension, emphasizes that there is still much to discover about the process of comprehension and its role in language acquisition. This does not mean that we should do nothing until all the evidence is in. Rather, what we know is enough to issue a call to action, to increased experimentation by researchers and teachers in both laboratory and classroom set- tings. Certainly, we know as much as Columbus did when he set out to sail to the Orient. Like him, we may find the unexpected on our route, but if we continue to pursue the goal of listening comprehension, our findings, even those unexpected

ones, will surely be significant and perhaps even revolutionary.

REFERENCES 1 . Blakeslee, Thomas R. The Right Brain. New York:

Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980. 2. Krashen, Stephen D. “Applications of Psycho-

linguistic Research to the Classroom,” p. 63 in Charles J. James, ed. Practical Applications of Research in Foreign Language Teaching. Skokie, IL: National Textbook Company, 1983. Restak, Richard M. The Brain: The Last Frontier. New York: Warner Books, 1979.

3 .

FREE LANGUAGE LAB CONSULTATION at the 1984 ACTFL ANNUAL MEETING

November 17 and 18, 1984 The International Association for Learning Laboratories (formerly NALLD) will be offering free language lab or media equipment consultation services again at the next ACTFL Annual Meeting for those planning to install new language labs or to redesign their old installation. Experienced consultants will be available to speak with you and to give you some ideas on beginning to write specifications for your lab. You must, however, make an advance reserva- tion by filling out the form below.

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Listening from the Inside Out