The listening instructionProcesses taught in the course, which placed emphasis on the bottom- up skills of:

• Identifying the full forms of words in reduced/connected speech. • Distinguishing segments (ones tailored to address common segmental difficulties for

Chinese learners of English)• Identifying various types of intonation cues (accentual, grammatical and attitudinal)

Bottom-up skills and strategies: The course content.

Suprasegmental skills Identify words in reduced/connected speech -- focusingon such aspects as reduced function words, liaison, assimilation, elision).

Identify stressed content words. Identify grammatical intonation cues: tone units; cues signalling question types, levels of finality, etc. Identify/use accentual intonation cues: tonic stress placement indicating such aspects as contrast, emphasis, new information. Identify attitudinal intonation cues: indicators of speaker’s attitudes and emotions.Strategies Use stressed words to help construct meaning. Use discourse markers to guide comprehension. Segmental skills Distinguish minimal pairs/identify segments. Distinguish tenses and plural forms by identifying regular verb suffixes.

The processes in listed above is mentioned (from top to bottom) in order of the emphasis that was placed on them in the course.

Listening processes. How the listening processes were usually taught

Bottom-up skills:

Identify various aspects of reduced/connected speech --- Transcription exercises targeting the relevant phenomena Identify stressed content words --- Identify these words in utterancesIdentify grammatical intonation --- Distinguish same-word sentences using tone unit cues. Identify/use accentual intonation --- Identify in short utterances how tonic stress placement signals

contrast, emphasis, new and old informationIdentify attitudinal intonation --- Identify in texts a speaker’s emotion and/or attitude based mainly

on intonation cues Distinguish, identify segments --- Identify differences in minimal pairs, verb suffixes.

Strategies:

1. Use stressed words to construct meaning --- Use these cues in listening texts; jot down stressed words as the basis to construct meaning.2. Use discourse markers to guide comprehension --- Re-order jumbled sentences in a text using discourse marker cues.3. Monitor mental model/ interpretation of text --- Identify anomalous sentences inserted in text; monitor texts that have initial misleading schema