(MUSIC)
Hello and welcome to the How to succeed
in the English B1 level exam MOOC.
Today's video class is about coping strategies
when a listening activity is too difficult.
We are going to see the following.
First of all, the meaningful listening process.
Facing a listening comprehension activity.
Strategies, reflections, techniques
that are useful before, during and after the activity.
Then we are just going to see a fake example
that has been frozen in time.
about the process that typically takes place in our mind.
Subconsciously, without us realising.
Then we'll see a description
of the listening comprehension section.
in the B1 exam.
Then I'll suggest some useful references
for you to read about this listening activity.
Okay.
The meaningful listening process, what do we do when we listen?
Well, there's a double process here.
On the one hand,
we have in front of us a segment.
We have to segment the chain of sounds into words
using linguistic, that is vocabulary
and real world knowledge.
So we segment the chain of sounds using two types of knowledge.
And then we divide the chain of words into sentences
using grammatical and also intonational information.
Finally, we join the sentences to make up full messages.
This is what happens at the perceptual level.
But there are other strategies
that intervene in this process.
One can also perceive top down
from general to specific
and try to grasp the overall idea
and then proceed to identify little details
and specific data within the text or within the message.
There is, therefore, a parallel processing.
We are elaborating predictions real time
and confirming or dismissing them as appropriate
also real time
when we start taking in further information.
That's further contextual information
further real knowledge information
real world knowledge information.
And also reading or listening further.
So there's a parallel process going on.
There are several intervening elements
real world knowledge, linguistic intelligence
and also emotional filters.
These are important
because if you're excessively anxious
about not understanding something
you're not helping yourself at all.
One has to be relaxed
and realise you might not understand 100%
but understanding 80%, 40% or 20%
is better than understanding 0%.
If we are anxious, then...
that amount of success will be diminished.
Right. The listening process.
Let's see again the strategies that we can use
in order to achieve a successful listening experience.
Oral reception skills involve three major stages.
Decoding.
That is perceiving, hearing, listening to...
to a segment of sounds
and chopping them into meaningful words
and word segments and so on.
So, decoding, understanding
putting the meanings of discrete words together
trying to predict and...
think what those individual meanings
might build from a semantic point of view
when they're together.
And finally, interpreting.
At this level, we might consider how a message is told
the implications that the speaker might want to...
might want to bring up
and we evaluate or judge
the speaker's communicative intents.
It has been found by experts
that elementary students
or students at the elementary level
are likely to find frequent problems in the decoding stage.
The segmenting stage.
Intermediate students find problems understanding
putting individual meanings together.
And advanced students find problems interpreting.
They might be able to decode
the sounds into words and put the meanings together
but might have difficulties grasping the overall meaning
and evaluating it.
There are several things we can do to help ourselves in this process.
We must be aware of individual differences.
The fact that even in the English language
some people speak too fast
they join words together
verbs and auxiliaries, when they speak.
The pronunciation might be very different.
Even the intonation.
So we have to be aware of those.
Those individual differences.
Also, the reiterative nature of language.
That can help us.
The fact that some words are likely to appear with others.
There are idiomatic expressions.
Tag questions at the end.
All of that can be used as canned language
and be identified in itself.
Concepts in English can be expressed in different lexical categories.
That means the same lexeme can be a noun, an adjective, a verb
so we have to...
be aware of that fact when making our predictions
which are real time.
Okay, patterns of sounds are prosodic
syntactic and even informational
so we can predict to a certain extent
the intonation, where it might lead us to
the syntax after a subject.
In a statement, after a subject, a verb is to be expected.
After a verb, an object.
Adverbials, etc. Adverbial phrases.
From an informational point of view
at the beginning of a message
if it fits the discourse, we might expect an introduction.
At the end, a conclusion.
All that is useful information that can help us
in the listening process.
And also to be aware of...
polysemic words, words with more than one meaning
and homophones, words that...
are written differently but sound exactly the same.
Like their / there or many others.
That happens a lot with grammatical functional words.
Audio skill is a process that can be taken iteratively.
With repeated access to the audio
this fuzziness we might perceive at the beginning
will become gradually clearer
and predictions will become stronger
so listening to a text more than once will surely help.
Okay, techniques.
It is very positive to prepare for the activity.
Try to concentrate and create a good listening atmosphere
by removing distracting objects, clearing your mind
and have an open mind to be prepared to modify
preconceived ideas, which is very important.
Well.
Focus according to your level.
If I had to train myself, in any language
I'd always undergo a metacognitive process
to try to establish where my level is
and you can use the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
and once you have assessed what your level is
(CLEARS THROAT) Excuse me.
Then you might decide that...
you are a B1 or A2
and listen to as many texts as possible
that are not too difficult or too easy.
So it has to be only comfortably difficult.
Only comfortably difficult or challenging.
And then you can take notes
and when you identify words, write them down
in the same order that you hear them, which is also a good technique.
To train your ear, because it helps you focus.
And, of course, repetition.
You may pause the text, stop, go back, as you find suitable.
Let's see a frozen example.
Imagine you hear somebody say Wadjagonnado?
Well, the intonation indicates a short question, doesn't it?
We know there are yes / no questions and wh- questions.
Wadjagonnado?
The 'w' at the beginning indicates a wh- question.
And we know that a short wh- question
would probably have a wh- word, a pronominal subject and a verb.
We can expect that grammatical structure.
Wadjagonnado?
The final monosyllabic 'do' will be openly pronounced.
You can grasp that.
So the most plausible skeleton for this sentence
will be "what you do?"
Wadjagonnado?
And in the middle, we'd expect an auxiliary
because we know English grammar.
So you can recognise the intermediate 'g'.
And that would render "what you going do".
"What you going do?"
Our linguistic knowledge would complete the sequence
which fits the intonation pattern.
"What are you going to do?"
Wadjagonnado?
Of course, I have broken down this process to the maximum
but we do this all the time.
If there is a context, of course
the previous and subsequent context will be considered.
When is the listening activity over?
When further listening of focuses
confirm the previous interpretation and there's no informative gain.
We might reach a point where we've understood half the text
and that's all we're going to achieve
which is fine.
Because practice will do its work in due course.
What about this listening section on the exam?
The candidate is expected to listen to an audio
using an onine tool that's very easy to use.
Very intuitive.
Then he or she will read and listen to three questions.
The first two are directly related to the text
and you're evaluated on your listening.
And question number three is indirectly related to the text
and it's about speaking.
So, if the text is about football
Brazilian football
you might be asked to express your opinion on sports.
And the evaluation criteria are the following
for questions number one and two
is the answer accurate with respect to the text?
But in question number three
the evaluation criterion will be
is the candidate skilful at oral production?
So you're expected to produce a longer answer
to allow for the evaluation of fluency, cohesion, etc.
Remember listening and speaking must be a pass
in order for the whole oral test to be a pass too.
And the whole process is repeated
so there'll be two audios and six questions in total.
Here's a few references that might help you
with this process of improving your listening skills
and there's an article that explains
the listening comprehension process and the most frequent problems
and you have the reference of the Council of Europe.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
where you can use the tables to assess your own level.
Thank you for your attention. Good luck.
Bye for now.
Subtitles: Tomás Costal.