bottom-up: Language learning that proceeds from the most basic blocks of

language, such as words, and then proceeding to more complex structures, and
finally to meaning. This can be contrasted to top-down learning where students try
to understand the general message without understanding all of the constituent
parts. Listening for exact phrases and words would be considered a bottom-up
listening activity, whereas listening for the gist would be considered a top-down
activity. Also, studying individual grammatical structures or sentence structures
would be bottom-up.

top-down: Studying language as a whole. Trying to understand the meaning of a
reading or listening selection without worrying about the individual components of
language. Listening for the gist and reading for the gist are two types of top-down
activities. The learner is trying to understand using cues such as intonation, tone of
voice or body language without focusing on specific words and structures. Top-down
learning is thought to be important for producing automatic processing . Top-down
techniques can be contrasted with bottom-up techniques.
The bottom-up approach sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first decoding
(or understanding) the smallest elements of what they hear the sounds. /p/ is
recognised as being /p/ and not /b/, /i:/ as being /i:/ and not /i/ or /e/ and so on. These
sounds are then combined and the individual words are decoded the listener
recognises that s/he has heard /pi:t/ and not /pit/ /bit/ /bi:t/ /bi:d/ or some other word.
The words are then combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning
of /pi:t/ : as in I saw Pete yesterday or I bought some peat for the garden. To this will
be added recognition of features such as intonation and so on, until we finally reach
the non-linguistic context.
The top-down approach starts from the opposite end : it sees understanding as
starting from the listeners background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of
working down towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively interpret what
they hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the world in general.
For example, imagine I tell you :
McKenzy brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried it in
the garden. I think Im going to have to put a bell round his neck.
You will certainly understand all the words in this passage, but do you understand
the meaning? Think back to what happened as you read. The first sentence probably
went quite smoothly. But there was more than just decoding of words going on.
Without your even being aware of it, subconscious expectations were forming in your
mind based on your knowledge of the world McKenzy is probably a friend,
probably a man as only the surname is used, the present will be something nice etc.
The existence of these presuppositions is shown by the fact that you probably did a
double-take when you got to the second sentence buried it? Eh?? And at that point
you will have started to search quite consciously for the meaning.
Maybe by the end youd worked it out. If so, then notice that it was your knowledge
of the world which helped you understand not whats in the text. Or maybe youre
still in the dark. I can help you by giving you some contextual or situational
knowledge : McKenzy is the name of my cat. Combine that with your knowledge of
the world (the habit cats have of bringing their owners presents of half dead birds
and mice which theyve caught, and the fact that the noise of a bell will prevent the
cat from creeping up on them unheard) and you have the meaning of the passage.
However much help you did or didnt need, you can see that in understanding the
passage a lot more was going on than just passively decoding the sounds (or in this
case letters, as you were reading it - but the principle is the same) then the words,
then the sentences. Your mind was working actively to interpret the passage, and
using a large amount of non-textual information to do so. And how easy it was will
depend on how close to the forefront of your mind that information was. If, as you
read the passage, your cat was sitting on your lap, you probably tuned in
immediately. If you have never owned a cat, it may have taken longer.