When we think of listening, most of us will imagine “deciphering” sounds and “catching” words. After all, if we don’t have any incoming “data” to work with, are we really listening? Or are we just imposing our own imagined meanings on what is coming toward us?
While the “data” gathering aspect of listening is fundamental — and essential — I try not to overemphasize its importance. If we only focus on the incoming data, and don’t do enough with connecting that data with higher level concepts and meaningful connections, we are not really listening either. The age-old proverb of “missing the forest for the trees” applies here: you need to be able to recognize the trees – but you also need to “see” the trees as part of something much larger, much more significant.
Within this metaphor, linguistic processing can be conceptualized as “recognizing the trees”.
Linguistic processing during listening involves a complex set of coordinated cognitive activities. There are essentially three interactive levels of linguistic processing: phonological processing (sounds), morphological processing (words), and syntactic processing (structures).
These three decoding processes—of sounds, words, and syntax—are often referred to collectively as bottom-up processing. Bottom-up processing refers to a type of information processing where the understanding of a whole or higher-level concept is built from the recognition of individual elements or lower-level features.
Bottom-up processing is a fundamental concept in cognitive psychology and sensory perception, and it is used to describe how we process sensory information, including in the domain of listening.
> Phonological processing involves decoding the sounds of speech, recognizing the sequencing of phonemes, and identifying rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns.
> Morphological processing involves identifying the smallest units of language that carry meaning, such as prefixes, suffixes, and lemmas, or root words, and identifying boundaries of words.
> Syntactic processing involves parsing the sentence structure, identifying the relationships between words, and applying the grammatical rules that govern how words are combined.
For native speakers and fluent nonnative speakers of a language, these bottom-up processes are largely automatized. They normally take place without our conscious awareness. Only when some kind of anomaly or ambiguity is detected do we become aware of these processes. (Unfortunately, for us L2 learners, particularly in the beginning stages, the experience of anomaly and ambiguity are the norm for listening!)
Proper functioning of these processes is necessary for a complete understanding of the input, although it is possible to create meaning if only parts of the incoming signal are decoded. This type of compensation is possible because of the power of semantic or top-down processing.
So the key to teaching linguistic processing is a kind of paradox:
• Teach the listener to recognize progressively more sounds, words, and syntactic structure.
• At the same time, teach the listener to compensate for what wasn’t recognized by reasonably guessing what was said, using their expectations and their knowledge of the language .
