organized according to Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1985) in ‘frames’ or ‘scripts’.
These help the listener process incoming information with reference to what she
already knows and to make predictions of what will follow. Top-down processing
according to Burgess (1996, unit 0, p.7) is listening for meaning and helps the listener
comprehend a spoken discourse as a coherent whole . Richards (1990) notes that a
listener’s failure to make use of top-down processing may render an utterance
incomprehensible .
The bottom up processing
Burgess (1996, unit 0) points out that bottom-up processing is processing for
form and refers to the use of incoming data as a source of information about the
meaning of a message. This information is used to confirm, reject or modify
hypotheses which the listener had made using the top down approach.
Although bottom-up processing is an invaluable tool for testing hypotheses,
over reliance to it does not allow the listener to form an overall idea about what she
listens to nor helps her listen flexibly according to her purpose. As McKeating
(1981:62) points out in real life we have the ability to filter out what we hear when we
have a specific purpose in mind. Ur (1984:15) stresses that successful comprehension
is not total comprehension and a listener who fails to realize that is in danger of not
seeing the wood for the trees.
1.3. Implications
What has been referred to so far can help us consider the pedagogic
implications that arise for the teaching of listening. These refer to the characteristics
of the input material, the tasks that accompany it and the kind of feedback the teacher
provides students with. I will refer to these in turn.
1.3.1.The input material
The well established fact that students do well in classroom but fail to
understand spoken discourse under real life situations is, according to Porter and
Roberts (1981), because there is a mismatch between the characteristics of the
discourse we normally listen to and those of the language the student normally hears
in the ELT classroom. Spoken texts intended for use in the classroom are usually
written texts read aloud which lack the characteristics of spontaneous spoken
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