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Anderson (2010) claims that language learning involves certain steps and proposes a cognitive framework of language comprehension based on perception, parsing and utilisation. Although these three phases are interrelated, recursive and possibly concurrent, they differ from one another. At the lowest cognitive level of listening, perception is the decoding of acoustic input that involves extracting phonemes from a continuous stream of speech.

Perception

With regard to the first stage, Anderson (2010) argues that there are at least two problems in speech perception or recognition, i.e. segmentation and co-articulation. The first problem, segmentation, occurs when the phonemes need to be identified, but unlike printed text, speech is not broken into discrete units. Speech is a continuous stream of sounds with no noticeable word boundaries. Thus, any new learner of English normally experiences this problem. Anderson defines phonemes as the minimal units of speech that can result in a difference in the spoken message (p. 51). Words are divided into two categories, i.e. content and function words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and demonstrative pronouns are categorised as content words (Gimson, 1980, p. 256); they convey relevant information unlike function words such as prepositions, conjunctions and determiners. Thus, function words are not generally stressed in listening. Furthermore, the segmentation problem and unstressed words are firmly related. Examples of the segmentation problem include assimilation, contraction, deletion, elision, liaison/linking and reduction (Yoshida, 2002, p. 32).

According to Ladefoged (1982, p. 99), assimilation occurs when one sound is changed into another because of the influence of a neighbouring sound (e.g. ‘Red Cross’ can be heard as /reg kros/ and ‘hot pie’ as /hop pai/).

Contraction is defined as a vowel-less weak form by Knowles (1987, p. 146). Examples of contractions in sentences, especially in rapid speech, include ‘going to’ which becomes ‘gonna’, as in ‘I’m gonna do it tomorrow’; ‘got to’, which becomes ‘gotta’, as in ‘I’ve gotta go’ and ‘I would’, which becomes ‘I’d’, as in ‘I’d say so’.

Deletion is the removal of a part of the pronunciation. For example, in rapid speech, ‘because’ becomes ‘cuz’, as in ‘I’m studying English cuz I’m going abroad’, and ‘them’ becomes ‘em’, as in ‘Why don’t you go with em?’

Rost and Wilson (2013, p. 305) use ‘elided’ to describe elision, which is defined as the omission of sounds in rapid connected speech. They also state that this is usually the result of one word ‘sliding’ into another, and the sound omitted is usually an initial or final sound in a word (e.g. ‘soft pillow’ can be heard as /sof pilow/ and ‘old man’ as /oul man/).’

According to Cutler (2012), liaison is ‘a final sound pronounced only when the following word begins with a vowel…it interacts with segmentation of the speech stream’ (p. 206). Examples include ‘I’ll need to think about it’, ‘The sheep licked up the milk’ and ‘Not at all’.

Finally, as an example of reduction, which reduces the number of vowels that occur in unaccented syllables (Knowles, 1987, p. 97), Yoshida (2002) introduces a sentence such as ‘You dropped your handkerchief’ in which the word ‘your’ is not stressed (p. 32). This phenomenon occurs because the word ‘your’ is a function word and is unstressed.

The second problem in speech perception involves a phenomenon known as co-articulation (Liberman, 1970). Ladefoged (1982, p. 52) defines co-articulation as the overlapping of adjacent articulations; that is, as the vocal tract is producing one sound, it moves towards the shape for the following phoneme. For example, the sound of /b/ itself and the /b/ in ‘bag’ are different. Thus, when pronouncing /b/ in ‘bag’, the vocal tract is already moving towards the next sound /a/. In addition, when pronouncing /a/ in ‘bag’, the root of our tongue is raised to produce the /g/. These segmentation problems pose complications for any learner of English, since an independent phenomenon of segmentation does not usually occur in a single sentence. Rather multiple phenomena of segmentation might occur in just a single sentence. Moreover, these difficulties exist only in perception, the lowest cognitive level of listening. Anderson (2010, p. 52) describes that speech perception poses information-processing demands that are, in many ways, greater than what is involved in other types of auditory perception.

Many Japanese learners of English encounter these segmentation problems. Ikemura (2003) indicates that the auditory recognition of words is one of the major problems at the speech perception level for Japanese learners of English. This is because reading and writing are generally emphasised at schools in Japan; this is evidenced by the fact that it was only since 2006 when a listening comprehension test was introduced in the national examination of Japanese universities.

Parsing

Next, the second stage in Anderson’s cognitive psychology theory (2010) is parsing. In parsing, words are transformed into a mental representation of the combined meaning of the words. This occurs when a listener segments an utterance according to syntactic structures or meaning cues. According to Anderson (2010), people use the syntactic cues of word order and inflection to interpret a sentence (p. 366). Thus, when a sentence is presented both with and without a major constituent boundary, it is more difficult to comprehend the latter form.

Utilisation

The third and final stage is utilisation. In this stage, it is sometimes necessary for a listener to make different types of inferences to complete an interpretation of an utterance, especially since the actual meaning of an utterance is not always the same as what is stated. That is, to completely understand a sentence, a listener sometimes needs to make inferences and connections so that s/he can make the sentence more meaningful. In addition, mental representation is also required to comprehend the speaker’s actual meaning.

上記の２つの理論に基づいてリスニング中位層学習者を対象に実験を行ったところ、最下層の音素の識別を繰り返し行うことで
徐々に意識しなくてもできるようになると、文法的区切れを意識する余裕が生まれ、
同様に、文法的区切れを自動化することができると、話者の意図理解に集中することができるということが実証されました。

そこで、上田メソッドを適応させることができるかを把握するため、まずは学習者が中位層学習者に該当するかを測定しましょう。

Firstly, it’s vital to ascertain learners’ listening comprehension ability with any standardised test (i.e. the TOEIC®, the TOEFL®, IELTS, Cambridge, EIKEN, etc.). In order to apply the Ueda Methods, learners need to be at the Intermediate level.

 

TOEFL®／TOEFL iBT®／IELTS／EIKEN／Cambridge (CPE、CAE、FCE、PET、KET)／TOEIC®

The TOEFL iBT® test measures the ability to use and understand English at the university level, i.e. listening, reading, speaking and writing skills for academic tasks. The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is designed to assess the language ability of candidates who seek to study or work where English is the primary language of communication. The IELTS is accepted by thousands of organisations in more than 135 countries. Cambridge = Cambridge English Language Assessment, CPE = Certificate in Proficiency in English, CAE = Certificate in Advanced English, FCE = First Certificate in English, PET = Preliminary English Test, KET = Key English Test and EIKEN = a test in practical English proficiency, which is Japan’s most widely recognised English language assessment.

At the same time, it’s vital to ascertain learners’ metacognitive awareness in EFL English with the MALQ.

認知心理学理論の3段階 (話者の意図理解、文法的区切れ、音素の識別) で、学習者がどの段階で理解できなくなってしまったのかを
明らかにすることで段階に応じた診断的で具体的な指導ができます。

認知心理学におけるAnderson (2010) の言語理解に関する理論では、
最下層からperception(音素の識別)、parsing (文法的区切れ)、Utilisation (話者の意図理解)と
三段階あり、相互関係にあるとされている。

Based on Anderson’s theory, O’Malley et al. (1989) conducted a milestone study on listening strategy with 11 Hispanic intermediate students. They revealed that the mental processes of the students in listening comprehension actually parallel Anderson’s (2010) cognitive psychology theory in four ways:

1. the students were listening for larger chunks, shifting their attention to individual words only when there was a breakdown in comprehension;
2. they utilised both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies, whereas ineffective listeners repeatedly attempted to determine the meanings of individual words;
3. they were adept at constructing meaningful sentences from the input received, even though the meaning slightly differed from that of the actual text and
4. they applied their knowledge in three areas, i.e. world knowledge, personal knowledge and self-questioning.

Differences in the listening strategies by proficiency levels

Differences in kinds and numbers of the listening strategies and knowledge when to use by proficiency levels

Differences in metacognition ability regarding listening strategies by proficiency levels

Metacognitive knowledge and its usage is the key to become a successful listener.