ESP and Listening

Handbook- Chapter 3
UNlaM
20 professional areas in which we
need English for effective
communication

aviation, commerce, customer

care, engineering, finance, human
resources, information technology,
law, law enforcement, maritime
communication, media, medicine,
nursing, telecommunications, and
tourism
ESP vs General ESL LISTENING
The two share many fundamental characteristics

While specificity of subject/domain content

for ESP listening is useful, it is the general
ability to listen in the target language (ESL
listening competence) that would have a
greater impact on learners’ overall ESP
listening performance.
Differences between ESP and
ESL listening
Learners who require ESP training already
possess some level of proficiency in the
language that enables them to communicate
in English.

Learning materials for these learners

therefore tend to focus on developing the
specific vocabulary of the field of work or
study.
 AVIATION
In the aviation industry, pilots, air
traffic controllers and ground crew are
expected to use and recognize phrases
specific to their area of work so that
they can communicate effectively with
speakers of English from different
countries.
 EAP
Students in English-speaking
universities are expected to have a
level of mastery of English as indicated
by scores on international standardized
tests of English (Test of English as a
Foreign Language (TOEFL), the IELTS
(International English Language Testing
Service)
 EAP
The purpose of academic listening
instruction in tertiary institutions is
typically to develop skills such as
lecture comprehension that will help
students participate and succeed in
academic-related discourse
Exploring ESP Listening
The goal of second language listening
instruction is to develop active listeners and
this is also the goal of the more defined area
of ESP listening.
ACTIVE listener: someone who constructs
reasonable interpretations on the basis of
some input and recognizes when more
specific information is required. The active
listener asks for the needed information
To listen actively, language
learners need to:
• have an available source of
relevant knowledge to
support cognitive processing
• use listening skills to
facilitate comprehension and
interaction
• engage in metacognitive
processes to enhance and
regulate their own
comprehension and listening
development
Metacognitive strategies methods
used to help sts understand the way
they learn, processes designed for sts
to “think” about their “thinking
 Interactive vs. One-way
Listening
• Active listening can occur in all types
of listening contexts and is not
restricted to situations where the
individual is interacting with others.
• talking to another person (interactive
listening)
• listening to a talk or a lecture (one-
way listening).
In interactive listening,
listeners engage their
interlocutors in repeating
and explaining messages to
obtain greater clarity in their
attempt to construct an
understanding of the
message
 One-way listening
In one-way listening, active
listeners make use of appropriate
strategies to cope with difficulties
and facilitate their comprehension
by making predictions or drawing
inferences, as well as monitoring
and evaluating their
understanding
ESP Listening and ESL
Listening
ESP listening has many similarities to ESL
listening.
It involves the same cognitive processes
that draw from a number of similar
knowledge sources to process spoken
input, and requires the use of the same core
(or “macro”) skills that enable effective
attention to information in accord with the
purpose for listening.
Where the two types of
listening differ is in the
additional skills and specific
types of knowledge required
for EAP and EOP purposes
 Listening problems
Listening problems encountered by learners in
both General English and ESP contexts are similar
and are linked to factors that influence
fundamental cognitive processes:
• Accents
• Vocabulary
• The demands of interactive
listening that require quick and
appropriate responses
Cognitive processes and
knowledge sources
To recognize the sounds they hear, and construct
meaning from the spoken text, all second language
listeners need three types of knowledge:

• knowledge about the language (phonology,

syntax, and vocabulary),
• knowledge about language use (discourse and
pragmatic)
• knowledge about context, facts and experiences
(prior or background knowledge, or “schema”)
Two types of PROCESSING
Successful listening comprehension is
the result of the interplay of two types
of processing that draw on these
knowledge types:
• bottom-up (sounds- and text-driven)
processing
• top-down (schema-driven) processing
• Bottom-up processing involves the
decoding of sounds
• Top-down processing uses prior
knowledge to help listeners draw
inferences.
For optimal comprehension of input, both
sets of processes interact in a harmonious
manner to enable the listener to construct
an understanding of the message.
Knowledge about language and
language use which affects overall
language proficiency plays an
important role in second language
listening comprehension. When
learners can apply this knowledge
quickly or in an automatized manner
during listening, they will have more
cognitive capacity for deep meaning
construction to occur
Knowledge about SOUNDS
Listening comprehension is built upon
effective sound discrimination, which is
dependent on listeners’ knowledge of the
English sound system and ability to convert
those sounds to recognizable words or
strings of words in a process called
perception or perceptual processing
While this ability is largely automatized
or “second nature” in first language
listening, it requires a range of word
recognition and segmenting skills in
second language listening
Less proficient listeners are generally
slow at doing this and suffer
interference in their echoic memory, a
type of sensory memory that retains
aural input long enough for processing
Comprehension is affected
when word recognition and
segmentation skills are not
adequately automatized
Syntactic knowledge
Knowing how information is structured
grammatically in an utterance, is needed for
parsing: process by which an utterance is
segmented according to meaning units
based on the grammar of the language in
order for the listener to create a composite
mental representation of the combined
meaning of the words
Listeners’ syntactic knowledge is also
helped by their knowledge about how
tense and aspect are indicated in the
English language.
Research suggests that some second
language listeners rely heavily on
syntactic clues to process what they hear
and there are indications of a fairly
strong correlation between grammar
knowledge and listening comprehension
Vocabulary Knowledge
Another source of knowledge for
comprehension is vocabulary or lexical
knowledge and it includes not only knowing
the literal meaning of words but also other
semantic references of the same words
used in variety of contexts.
Vocabulary has been shown to be a key
factor affecting the outcome of L2
comprehension even in advanced learners
ESP Listening
ESP listening depends on knowledge about
language forms and vocabulary that directly
facilitates the perception and parsing of spoken
input.
Vocabulary: a challenge for ESP listeners
• Each discipline has its body of technical and
specialized terms
• Even after a learner has encountered these
words and become familiar with their meanings,
they may still have problems recognizing the
words in a stream of speech.
IDIOMS
Another challenge related to vocabulary is
ESP listeners’ lack of familiarity with
idiomatic and fixed expressions that may
be used by their interlocutors or lecturers
“off the beaten track/path”
or other expressions which may have
specific sociocultural connotations “a
sandwich short of a picnic”
Knowledge of Discourse
Need to understand how the speech they are
listening to can unfold in predictable ways
according to speaking event
Second language learners use their knowledge of
the structure of a genre to facilitate listening
comprehension and recall while those who are
involved in two-way or interactional listening can
also predict the development of a conversation if
they have some prior knowledge of how the
discourse in that context is typically structured.
Pragmatic Knowledge
Listening is an intention to complete a
communication process.
Pragmatic knowledge is as important for
general listening as it is for listening for
specific academic or occupational purposes.
In many listening contexts of an interactive
nature, listeners have to interpret what
they hear and respond appropriately by first
understanding the function of an utterance
and its intended effect.
Demonstrating pragmatic knowledge
through behaviors such as asking for
repetitions or rephrasing statements for
clarification.
Receipt tokens that (“mmm,” “yeah,” “mm
hm”) provide speakers with crucial
indicators of listeners’ feedback are a sign of
good listenership
Core Comprehension Skills
Effective listeners use these Comprehension Skills
either singly or in combination in order to achieve
their desired comprehension goals
• Listen for details
• Listen for main ideas
• Listen for global understanding
• Listen and infer
• Listen and predict
• Listen selectively
Core Comprehension Skills
• Understand and identify specific
information
• Understand and summarize key points in a
text
• Understand the gist of the messageFill in
the gaps in one’s understanding by using
knowledge about the language forms and
use, and relevant prior knowledge
• anticipate what one will hear
 Core Comprehension Skills
in ESP
These skills relate to turn-taking and include
recognizing turn-giving cues, and gaining the
floor, as well as using a variety of questions to
check understanding, seek clarifications and
probe for more information.
Second language speakers in general need
these skills as well as others (e.g. recognizing
gestures and other nonverbal cues), in order to
manage spoken interactions in interactive
listening events
Thanks for listening to
Listening and ESP