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Contexts of Listening Comprehension: Who listens to What, When, Where, How, and Why?
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Preamble
Language does not necessarily depend on sound. --- Vygotsky ---
What is the sound of the falling tree in the middle of the forest where nobody is there?
This is a rather familiar Zen’s question meant to stimulate us to think deeply. According to Lian (2000):
“ All is perception.
Our perception is not direct.”
Our experience has shaped our thought, feeling, and behavior. Where is the meaning? The meaning is not discovered; it is constructed, and therefore is imposed.
When we listen to something, what is it that we are listening? We all have our history. That history has been kept, somehow, somewhere, within the context of existence. The history, in a loose sense, actually mediates what we can know.
I remember a line from Thoreau’s classic: Walden, mentioning something about the language heard and the language read. He wrote:
“ To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. “
He seemed to suggest that reading is an art. So it requires training just like other forms of arts. He put it:
“ It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. ” (p. 77)
How should we make sense of books? He gave some good advice. “ Books must be read deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language.” (Ibid.)
One must bear in mind the fact that Thoreau wrote his book in 1850s. His view regarding reading and speaking aptly reflects the traditional approach of dividing language into four skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading. Back then, only the few were actually literate. Books were scare, and education opportunities were very limited.
However, with the advancement of sciences and technologies, nowadays, we have to deal with the more complex world in terms of literacy. The language of the Net has indeed brought about both opportunities and concerns.
A new approach to text is broad, for it has taken into accounts other factors e.g. the language being used on the Net. It seems a healthier way of dealing with text is to re-categorize that hypothesized object. The work of Carter and Mc Carthy has given us a useful example.
Carter and McCarthy (1994, cited in McCarthy, 2001, p. 95) talk about the two modes of communication (more or less writerly or speakerly) and the medium of communication (spoken or written). As the distinction between speech and writing has become blurred, it is quite a useful analysis.
- Everyday conversation
- Impromptu speech
Spoken
Written
Widdowson (1984, quoted in McCarthy, 2001, p. 95) has repositioned his stance on the dichotomy of reading/writing versus speaking/listening in the four skills paradigm. Instead, his focus is now on ‘being a reader ’ or ‘being a speaker. (Ibid).’ According to McCarthy:
“ Readers can allow themselves to be carried along by the text, or can challenge its cognitive schemes, while speakers have to enter a more negotiated process in real-time face-to-face talk.” (Ibid.)
Alan Davies posted the message below at the discussion list LTEST-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU on Sat, 22 Dec 2001 11:43:27 +0000.
He wrote:
Wendy Lesser will publish her new book Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering in the US next year. She writes (The Guardian 22 December Õ01):
“ Nothing points out how personal reading is more than rereading. The first time you read a book, you might imagine that what you are getting out of it is precisely what the author put into it. And you would be right, at least in part. There is some element of every aesthetic experience, every human experience, that is generalisable and communicable and belongs to all of us. If this were not true, art would be pointless. The common ground of our response is terrifically important. But there is also the individual response and that, too, is important.”
He went on:
“ I get annoyed at literary theorists who try to make us choose one over the other, as if either reading is an objective experience, providing everyone with access to the author’s intentions, or it is a subjective experience, revealing to us only the thoughts in our own
minds.
Why? Why must it be one or the other, when every sensible piece of evidence indicates that it is both? It really is important, and not just for testing purposes to keep a balance between the wilder vagaries of relativism and the suffocation of universalism. Texts do contain multiple meanings, it is true, especially at the poetic end, but it is also true that there are limits on reasonable interpretations, otherwise we would never understand or agree on, for example, the meaning of instructions. And if all (or at least most) texts are
intended for communication rather than display, then it is surely legitimate to ask questions about what it is that is being communicated, including what is implied.
But first we need a consensus on what is being implied and even more perhaps on what is not. Test construction provides us with a methodology for doing precisely that.
Within the classical semiology, writing can be viewed as “ merely a species of general communication which is employed in the absence of the addressee, when he or she is no longer present within earshot.”
“ And, of course, “ opines Critchley (1999, p. 33), “ what is true for the addressee is also true for the addressor or author of writingWriting breaks the context of communication
- Toasting
- Constitutional statements
Writerly
Median
- Serious textbooks e.g. Physics, Chemistry
- Governmental notice
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