Listening Remembering

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Subject: [PD 3878] listening, remembering?
From: Janet Isserlis
Date: Wed Aug 5 11:42:51 EDT 2009

All

A question -

As someone very much tied to print-based information, I'm wondering what people can tell us about those who rely more on text-to-speech//speech-to-text technology.

I'm not at *all* suggesting that one is better than the other, but am interested in strategies that learners use to remember, manipulate/use information that is received orally/aurally.

We hear, anecdotally, about strategies that non-readers have for remembering things (e.g. landmarks instead of street signs) - how are we asking learners and practitioners to think about strategies for accommodating and integrating information that isn't received through print?

thanks

Janet Isserlis

Subject: [PD 3879] Re: listening, remembering?
From: Wrigley, Heide
Date: Wed Aug 5 12:15:49 EDT 2009

Hi, Janet and all

I've not seen research directly related to what is remembered from text to speech and what strategies learners use.

There seems to be consensus in linguistics that listening comprehension in many ways parallels reading comprehension and that comprehension strategies help make information stick. Text to speech where a learner can easily "relisten" - the way one might in rereading can reinforce the connection even more (since sound is so ephemeral)

Some of the strategies that show promise for both reading and listening are activating background knowledge (to prepare oneself for understanding to create a place in the brain where new information can link to prior knowledge); listening for key content vocabulary and try to identify big ideas as well as details; thinking about purpose (why am I listening to this; what am I supposed to do with the information; is this a functional text where I should listen for who/what/where/and why or a story where I should relax and enjoy the language); visualizing as you listen; listening again to catch more details or to clarify points that may not have been clear on the first round.

As for remembering, I can see a few information processing strategies that would be helpful: retelling (to oneself and to others), mentally summarizing, creating a story board or flow chart of a sequence (on paper or in the mind); working with others to talk things through through various strategies associated with "reciprocal learning" such as question asking and question answering (one student asks a factual or inferential question based on the text and another student tries to remember and answer

Of course, these are all strategies that might/should work given what we know from reading research and some of the parallels between listening and reading

But it would be great to have studies that tell us what learners do to help them make sense of spoken text and remember key points (or beautiful language) - I don't think we know what's remembered easily Clearly chances are that texts that speak to one's interest, contain a surprise or have an emotional component that resonates might be more easily remembered

But what about texts that must be understood because you need to pass a class or need to prepare for certification or some license - what strategies work best in these circumstances?

You can't quite annotate a spoken text especially of literacy is still a challenge.

So in spite of having a long post trying to answer, Janet your question still stands

What do adults do to gain meaning from oral texts (ok, I added that one) and remember what they read

Best

Heide

Heide Spruck Wrigley
Mesilla,NM

Subject: [PD 3881] Re: listening, remembering?
From: The Lendoaks
Date: Wed Aug 5 13:25:14 EDT 2009

Hi Janet,

Re/ question ...."strategies to accommodate and help remember..."

Writings by George Gopan PhD suggest that listeners and readers can accommodate new information better if the health educator gives the context first. Then, when given the new information, the listener can more readily associate and link it to what they already know.

Remembering can be fostered in many ways. One of the easiest is for the health educator to add a vivid example so the listener can mentally "illustrate" the information. Further, since pictures are said to have more access points in the brain than individual words, people are more likely to remember.

best wishes,

Len and Ceci Doak

Subject: [PD 3882] Re: listening, remembering?
From: Reba Dibartolomeo
Date: Wed Aug 5 13:26:54 EDT 2009

I have used my iPhone to play podcasts for my students. I choose something that is five minutes long. There is a good grammar podcast that can be used with GED students. There is also a Story of the Day from NPR that is often short enough to use. Anyway, most job-related communication is spoken, and I use the podcasts to build listening skills when there isn't a visual cue or kinesthetic component. Students can find it very daunting to listen on command.

That brings me to my point. There are many programs that will read a document. Few of them do the Karaoke part of showing you what is being read. That part is necessary to bridge to print. Otherwise, you might as well have a podcast. My experience with teaching beg-lit has been that for students, keeping up with or understanding where the reader is, electronic or human, is the hardest part.

In terms of listening and remembering, I found that my students did best when there was a delay in the answer. Meaning, they were more likely to learn and recall if they had to type the word into a speaking dictionary. It seems that if it's too easy, students become dependent. In the case of the podcast, success at comprehension was across the spectrum. Things like topic and mood of the student were huge factors in recall. Students also had to learn to let go a little, otherwise, all that they were remembering was that they had to remember something.

Danielle Reba DiBartolomeo
Move Up Instructor
IMPACT SEC

Subject: [PD 3885] Re: listening,remembering?
From: Tom Sticht
Date: Wed Aug 5 14:22:44 EDT 2009

Janet, Heide: You can find a lot of research on listening and remembering in the references below following the note I wrote last March. Tom Sticht


March 13, 2009

Beyond the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) Report: A Focus on Adult Language and Literacy Development For Native English Speakers

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education

The NELP (online at www.nifl.gov) looked at how well various measures of literacy (e.g., alphabet knowledge, etc. and measures of oral language, including oral vocabulary and listening comprehension) predicted reading achievement when children entered school. The authors concluded that along with other variables, "...more complex aspects of oral language, such as grammar, definitional vocabulary, and listening comprehension, had more substantial predictive relations with later conventional literacy skills" p. 79. In these analyses, listening comprehension of preschool children tended to correlate mildly with their reading comprehension in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade.

For those interested in how listening and reading correlate beyond the second grade and into adulthood you can download a free book entitled Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model (Google it). This book was written with adult literacy education in mind but it presents a developmental model about how the typical child in our literate society grows up to become literate. The idea was to make it possible to understand how some adults grow up without much language or literacy skills by comparison to the theoretical child’s model.

The book summarizes dozens of studies of the relationships of listening comprehension (auding) to reading comprehension at grade levels from the first grade up into college students. The data show that listening and reading correlations increase over the school years. This is explained by the fact that in the early grades the correlation of reading with listening comprehension will be low because there is not much variation in children’s ability to comprehend the written language. As their skill increases with additional practice in the school grades, the correlations of listening and reading increase as those with high listening skills before school become the better readers, while those with low preschool listening skills once again gain access back to their relatively low listening skills. This has been substantiated by considerable research presented in the Auding and Reading book and in other research with adults since that book was written. The Auding and Reading book also presents data indicating that it may take as long as the first eight years of school for children to become as efficient in processing the written language as they are the spoken language. These findings and many other aspects of the listening and reading processes of adults are discussed in the following free one day workshop.

Workshop on Listening & Reading Processes of Adult Native English Speakers

Recently there has been a growing interest in listening research and instruction with adult literacy learners in various industrialized nations. For this reason adult literacy providers may be interested in my workshop that I first presented in 1999. I have recently (2006) participated in seminars in London, England on listening, speaking, and reading processes and instruction with adult learners and have incorporated new research into my workshop. In January of 2009 I presented a workshop in Toronto, Ontario on listening and reading focused on adult language and literacy development FOR ADULTS WHO ARE NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS, not ESOL (though much may apply to ESOL learners, too).

The Workshop on Listening & Reading Processes of Adults addresses aspects of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, Title II: The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act that focus attention on relationships among listening and reading abilities of adults. In particular, this includes information about phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension in reading and how this builds on and adds to adult's listening skills. The questions, methods and findings of four decades of research on adult's listening and reading skills will be summarized. The workshop emphasizes the role of adults' listening and speaking skills in family and workplace literacy contexts and provides examples of teaching activities for adult listening that focus on acoustic, linguistic, and semantic features of speech.

Listening has been identified as a critical work-related skill but it has been almost totally ignored in national assessments of adult literacy. 2008 was the 100th anniversary of E. B. Huey's 1908 classic book, "The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading" in which he stated that, "The child comes to his first reader with his habits of spoken language fairly well formed, and these habits grow more deeply set with every year. His meanings inhere in this spoken language and belong but secondarily to the printed symbols...." . This workshop presents extensive research and data from the United States and United Kingdom on the oracy (speaking and listening) skills of adults and how these skills relate to workforce development and the intergenerational transfer of language and literacy skills from parents to their children.

Goals. The goals of the Workshop on Listening & Reading Processes of Adults are (1) to summarize four decades of R & D on adults' listening and reading skills; (2) to present information on writing as a second signaling system for speech and how that involves phonemic awareness and phonics training in bridging from listening to reading for information and for learning, (3) to illustrate techniques for training listening skills for learning by listening and to improve reading fluency and comprehension, (4) to illustrate how listening and literacy practices can be assessed using various methods including the use of the telephone to provide assessments of the need for listening and literacy education among the local adult population, and (5) to illustrate the role of adult’s language and literacy skills in the intergenerational transfer of language and literacy from parents to their children.

Outcomes. Following the workshop, participants will be able to (1) discuss the R & D on listening and reading using specific references to the R & D literature and use this information in their planning for adult literacy education, (2) incorporate information about the place and manner of articulation and other types of information relating listening and reading processes of adults into their planning for program development that helps adults bridge from oral to written language skills, (3) use this information in planning for the development of teaching and learning activities for both native language speakers and for English as an additional language for non-native English speakers, and (4) apply the information to the design and conduct of local needs assessments for adult literacy education including the assessment of adults' knowledge and literacy practices by listening in telephone interviews.

Related References

Sticht, T. (2003, September). From oracy to literacy. Literacy Today (No. 36).[1]

Hofstetter, R., Sticht, T., and Hofstetter, C. (1999). Knowledge, Literacy and power. Communication Research, 26, 58-80.

Sticht, T., Hofstetter, R., and Hofstetter, C. (1996). Assessing adult literacy by telephone. Journal of Literacy Research, 28, 525-559.

Sticht, T. and Armstrong, W. (1994, February). Adult Literacy in the United States: A Compendium of Quantitative Data and Interpretive Comments. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Sticht, T. & McDonald, B. (1992). Teaching adults to read. In: J. Samuels & A. Farstrup (Eds.) What Research Has to Say about Teaching Reading. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Sticht, T. and James, J. (1984). Listening and reading. In: P. Pearson (Ed.) Handbook of Research on Reading. New York: Longmans.

Sticht, T. (1984). Rate of comprehending by listening or reading. In: J. Flood (Ed.) Understanding Reading Comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Sticht, T. (1979). Applications of the AUDREAD model to reading Evaluation and instruction. In: L. Resnick and P. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and Practice in Early Reading: Vol. 1, Hillsdale, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.

Sticht, T. (1978). The acquisition of literacy by children and adults. In: F. Murray and J. Pikulski (Eds.) The Acquisition of Reading. Baltimore, MD.: University Park Press.

Sticht, T., Beck, L., Hauke, R., Kleiman, G., and James, J. (1974).Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model. Alexandria, VA.: Human Resources Research Organization.

Sticht, T. (1972). Learning by listening. In: R. Freedle and J. Carroll (Eds.) Language Comprehension and the Acquisition of Knowledge. Washington D.C.: V.H. Winston & Sons.

Sticht, T.G. and Glasnapp, D.R. (1972). Effects of speech rate, Selection difficulty, association strength and mental aptitude on learning by listening. Journal of Communication, 22, 174-188.

Sticht, T.G. (1970). Mental aptitude and comprehension of time-compressed and compressed- expanded listening selections. Journal of Auditory Research,10, 103-109.

Sticht, T.G. (1969). Comprehension of repeated time-compressed recordings. Journal of Experimental Education, 37, 60-62.

Sticht T. and Gray, B. (1969). The intelligibility of time-compressed Words as a function of age and hearing loss. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 12, 443-448.

Foulke, E. and Sticht, T. (1969). A review of research on the intelligibility and comprehension of accelerated speech. Psychological Bulletin, 72, 50-62.

Sticht, T.G. (1968). Some relationships of mental aptitude, reading, and listening using normal and time-compressed speech. Journal of Communication, 18, 243-258.

I charge no fee for any of these workshops or presentations, but sponsors must pay travel expenses and make all arrangements for the events. Contact me at tsticht at aznet.net if you want to arrange for a workshop (or other presentation) in your area.

Thomas G. Sticht
tsticht at aznet.net

Subject: [PD 3889] Re: listening, remembering?
From: Gabb, Sally S.
Date: Wed Aug 5 16:06:54 EDT 2009

Hi Janet, Heide and all—thanks for this great question, Janet! It is near and dear to my experience as an adult reading specialist. Some years ago I completed a qualitative research study in which I worked with adult learners who had grown up in communities in which advanced literacy was not common, and folks relied on aural/oral exchange for most communication. I found that using the work of such reading theorists as David Pearson and others useful—especially their concept of 'schema theory'—the idea that we understand by fitting new information into our existing structures of knowledge, the network of prior knowledge components. Folks who learn by listening and observing also use their 'schemata'—visual or oral structures—in processing new information.

In addition, visual/aural learners without text fluency also create cognitive 'story boards' as Heide said—creating a narrative into which the information can be integrated. Research has demonstrated that creating a narrative with new information enables us to hang on, to 're-member' new stuff. In addition, the reinforcement/ review/rehearsal process through engaging in dialogue fits with the reciprocal teaching-learning strategies. My experience with students who use text to voice to process reading assignments suggests that both visualizing and follow up dialogue are especially important to enable the students to integrate the new information into their memory structures, their schemata. I also have found that activating metacognitive awareness with these students—encouraging them to formulate language around their processes for remembering—is essential. Students need to self monitor as they listen to be sure they are comprehending and integrating the information.

I agree that we need further research with those who use listening to process text in order to understand which practices enable them to integrate/remember information from aural/oral input. Perhaps text to speech software that allows oral annotation to which a student could re-listen could enhance the listening to learning process? With modern technology, sky's the limit.

Sally Gabb
Developmental Reading Skills Specialist
Bristol Community College

Subject: [PD 3924] Re: listening, remembering?
From: K Olson
Date: Thu Aug 6 12:21:14 EDT 2009

You can't quite annotate a spoken text especially of literacy is still a challenge.

But you could illustrate or act out or use some other form of movement as an aid to remembering. I have had a lot of success with having students draw pictures of what they remember, then using the pictures to retell the information.

Kathy Olson
Teacher-trainer
Hilliard, Ohio

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