Top-Down Processing in Listening

In a class setting, this processing is reinforced every time teachers:

1. Ask learners to predict what they are going to listen based on the title of
the listening passage.
2. Show pictures about the topic learners are about to listen so they can use
their background knowledge to predict what they are going to listen.
An example of this processing happens when a friend tells you how great her
trip to the beach was and you predict what she is about to say using your
background knowledge.
You might ask questions such as:
• Were there many people
• Did you play any games on the beach?
Another example is when you turn on the TV and it is said on the news that
there was an earthquake in Haiti last night and immediate you start asking
yourself questions such as:
• What was the magnitude of the earthquake?
• Did people die
As you can see, people can predict or make these question because they
have a previous knowledge about what going to the beach implies and the
catastrophe that earthquakes cause.

Activities that develop top-down listening skills

Do you ever get your students to predict the content of a listening activity
beforehand, maybe using information about the topic or situation, pictures, or
key words? If so, you are already helping them to develop their top-down
processing skills, by encouraging them to use their knowledge of the topic to
help them understand the content. This is an essential skill given that, in a real-
life listening situation, even advanced learners are likely to come across some
unknown vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context and co-text, they
should either be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or
understand the general idea without getting distracted by it.
Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a
series of pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and
identifying where they take place, reading information about a topic then
listening to find whether or not the same points are mentioned, or inferring the
relationships between the people involved.

Top-Down Listening Activities

• Putting a series of pictures or sequence of events in order.
• Listening to a conversation and identify where they take place
• Reading information about a topic then listening to find whether or not
the same points are mentioned.
• Inferring the relationship between the people involved.

Combining bottom-up and top-down listening in a listening lesson

Top-Down processing refers to the use of schemata or knowledge of learners to
understand the information received. It happens when we use background
knowledge to make sense of what we are listening to. while the Bottom-Up
processing refers to the process of understanding the information through the
analysis of sound, sense of the word, and grammar. It happens when we
understand language sound by sound or word by word, with less use of
background knowledge.
Most of the time, your students will combine some bottom up and top-down
listening to make sense of what they hear and perceive in the world around
them. Sometimes, however, it can be helpful to offer them strategies suited to
the specific type of listening you are working on. The more cognizant students
are about each type of listening and the strategies it embeds, the better
equipped they will be to do good listening work.

Pre-listening
Pre-listening Phase are things learners do before a listening activity in order to
prepare for listening. These have various purposes, including pre-teaching or
activating vocabulary, predicting content, generating interest and checking
understanding of task. A good pre-listening task provides support, generates
interest, and builds student confidence.
Example
The learners are going to listen to a radio programmer about sharks. First, they
work in groups to pool their knowledge of sharks and then tell the rest of the
class.
In the classroom
Pre-listening tasks include discussion questions, true or false statements,
vocabulary work, prediction tasks and brainstorming the topic.