Seth Lindstromberg

This column gets its title from the fact that now and then I run counter to what is currently viewed as best practice in UK EFL circles.

Using transcripts

For some decades years now packages of EFL course materials have included audio cassettes. In the 1950's and 1960's most of the audio material was intended for 'intensive' hearing by the learners. In some cases a dialogue might even have been intended for eventual memorization, with the recorded version being there in order to provide a model of pronunciation even down to the finest details. From the 1970's--at least in the U.K.--authors and publishers began to provide longer listenings (i.e., audio recorded texts) intended for use in developing learners' ability to perform what is sometimes called 'extensive listening'. That is, listening to a more or less ungraded, unsimplified text and catching something of the gist--in fact, comprehending it in a patchy and superficial fashion.

It is no doubt it is a good thing too for learners to learn not to panic when they hear authentic, ungraded English. Perhaps the classroom is even a good place for such training to take place. And, plainly, patchy and superficial understanding of what you hear is better than no understanding at all. But I wonder about some aspects of this issue.

First of all, it is expensive to buy separate pronunciation courses—which is where material for intensive listening may be zoned. Why not more fully exploit material linked to the main coursebook? Second, few if any longer texts (as opposed to short texts or isolated sentences) are linked to intensive listening tasks. (Can it be true that people never listen intensively to longish texts?) Third, I have observed—or think I have anyway—that many learners are unsatisfied by 'extensive only' tasks. Let me be clearer about this last point.

Suppose that Unit 00, Section 00 of your coursebook is entitled 'Listening'. Its first section will almost certainly be a pre-listening task. For instance, your students are supposed to discuss a topic relevant to what they are going to hear. Then they read three or four questions. Then they hear the text. You are then supposed to ask what they heard. If many of your students seem to have missed the answers, maybe you play the thing again. And check again. Then maybe next in the coursebook is another task—e.g., . "Take notes. What does Jill say about X? What does Jack say?" Before you play the text a 2nd (or 3rd) time, you might ask your class what notes they can already write. (After all, they have heard the text at least once already.) Then you play the text again. And check task two. What's next in the coursebook? If it is like any I have seen lately, what comes next is not further work on the recorded text. That's finished. Done with. Next may be a related reading or a grammar section, or something else. So what has happened during the listening phase?

Some of the learners will have heard everything the coursebook asked them to. Some won't have heard even that. Probably nobody will have heard the text in much detail. If your students are like me, they will be thinking, "There was I lot I didn't hear there. What was it? Will I ever find out?" What can you do for students like me?

Sometimes (but not very often) the relevant transcript is in the back of the student's book. If not, it might be somewhere in the teacher's book and so available for photocopying. In either case, you can ask everyone to read it and then play the tape again. Sadly, by doing this you run the risk of boring everyone to tears. The listening probably wasn't that interesting to begin with and so hearing it a 3rd or 4th time will probably be tedious to most of your students. Before offering some alternatives. I want to say a bit more about what is at stake here.

Intensive listening—that is, hearing fine details of wording--is sometimes referred to as 'bottom up' listening. Very intensive (or 'very bottom up') listening, consists in hearing details of sound. Being able to do this fairly well is necessary for a learner to acquire new grammatical and lexical items through listening. In other words, they are fairly unlikely to hear details of wording if their ability to hear individual sounds is poor. It ought to go without saying that improvement in listening and in pronunciation go hand in hand. But for this to happen the listening work must sometimes be very intensive. In other words, some 'listening' texts which students hear--and some tasks associated with the texts--should help learners become aware of particular aspects of pronunciation. 'Extensive' (or 'top down') listening exercises are, by definition, not designed to do this.

So, it is my opinion that the majority of listening texts in coursebooks are terribly under-exploited. Students are expected to hear only a bit and then move on, with the bulk of the wording unheard and uncomprehended. I think this is poor practice--and wasteful.

But there is another problem, or so I believe. The course materials I am familiar include few longish listening texts interesting enough to exploit intensively. What to do?

The best thing is use songs (plus lyrics, of course). If the song is one students like, getting them to listen intensively is no problem at all. I don't have much new to offer about using songs. The ideas you know already probably work just fine (although I do think that 'fill in the blank' exercises are much over-used).

But you may decide you can't use songs all the time. So why not try excerpts from films or TV dramas and comedies? Alas, one problem with TV material is that transcripts can be hard to obtain. Also, TV comedies are almost always disfigured by audience laughter. So I prefer films—especially since whole or partial transcripts of many films can be obtained off the internet.

In the last issue I mentioned www.filmsite.org as a source of free partial transcripts. There are other various other sites from which you can buy complete transcripts. Sometimes you can also find free ones just by going to a search engine and keying in the film title. (Reviews are very easy to find in this way.) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go step by step.

Preparation

1. Find a short bit of a film that you think your class might find interesting and not too difficult.
2. Find the transcript of that bit on the internet, copy it and create a file on your wordprocessor. Go through the transcript and highlight (e.g., with the 'bold' function) the most prominently stressed words/syllables. Not all the stressed syllables! Just the ones whose extra stressing is especially prominent. (You may also decide it's worthwhile to mark silent letters, weak vowels and word connected by liaison.) When you've marked the transcript, photocopy a class set. This will be worksheet 4.)
3. Make one or two worksheets to use in connection with early, non-intensive listening exercises—for example,
   • Copy ten or so key lines from the excerpt and put them in a numbered list. (I'll call this Worksheet 1.)
   • Make a numbered list of questions in the usual way. (Worksheet 2)
4. Make another copy of the excerpt and alter it in one or all of the following ways.
   • Insert words that could be there but which the character does not actually say.
   • Leave out words that the character does say (but don't replace a deleted word with a blank).
   • Replace a word or phrase with one that is synonymous.
   The result is that you now have two versions of the transcript—one that is what the actors actually say…with stress marked (worksheet 4)…and one that is different…with stress unmarked (worksheet 3). The altered transcript (worksheet 3) will form the basis of the intensive listening exercise seen below at Step 14.
   
   Procedure (over two short lessons or one long lesson)
5. Tell your class a bit about the excerpt--who is who, where they are, why they are there and so on. (But don't tell them anything you think they might be able to infer from the lines on worksheet 1.)
6. Hand out worksheet 1. Ask students to guess who says what and why.
7. Tell everyone they are going to see and hear the excerpt and that they should mark (e.g., with initials) which character says each line.
8. Play the excerpt then check the worksheet.
9. Hand out worksheet 2. Give everyone time to read the questions.
10. See how many questions students already know the answers to.
11. Turn the video so that your students cannot see the screen. Play the excerpt again and then see who heard which answers. If there are answers that no one heard, don't say what they are yet.
12. Hand out worksheet 3. Tell everyone to read through it and see if they can find the answers to all of the questions. Ask them to compare their ideas in pairs.
13. Tell them the transcript (worksheet 3) has been altered and say how it has been altered. Tell them you are going to play the excerpt again and that they should mark all the changes you made.
14. Play it. Then ask students to compare their marks in pairs. Did they mark the same things in the same way? If you asked them to underline any changes, ask them if they can remember what was really said.
15. Hand out the authentic transcript. Ask them to check what they marked on worksheet 3.
16. Ask everyone to choose one line they would like to say really well. Give them time to underline it.
17. Ask students each to say their line and say why they chose it Help them to say the line right. Ask if anyone else chose that line and get them to say it too. Occasionally ask a couple of students to repeat the line of the student you happen to be working with at the time.
18. Make sure they all understand how you have market the transcript (worksheet 4) to indicate pronunciation.
19. Tell everyone to form twos (or threes, depending on the number of actors) and rehearse the excerpt. Tell everyone what you want is emotion and lots of it.
20. Play the excerpt again with the screen visible.
21. Tell everyone not to look at any of their worksheets. Ask who can remember a line other than the one they said before.

There is a lot of preparation involved here but—if you choose an interesting excerpt, and one that is not too difficult or too long—you can use it again and again. My students tell me they appreciate the thoroughness of this method—though of course they don't want to do it every lesson!