Week 5

Listening Skills

• Elliciting specific information
• Differentiating fact from opinion
• Summarising 
• Synthesising ideas
• Inferring speaker's attitudes and moods
• Evaluating speaker's attitude and stand
• Identifying logical reasoning
• Identifying main ideas and supporting details in non contextualised speech

Listen to a talk on Educational TV programmes, tapes/CDs dialogues, news, documentaries etc.

Eliciting

Submitted by TE Editor on 26 August, 2009 - 15:14

Eliciting (elicitation) is term which describes a range of techniques which enable the teacher to get learners to provide information rather than giving it to them.

Commonly, eliciting is used to ask learners to come up with vocabulary and language forms and rules, and to brainstorm a topic at the start of a skills lesson. The definition of the term in the Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, ‘Techniques or procedures which a teacher uses to get learners to actively produce speech or writing', suggests that there may be wider applications.

Principles and advantages
Eliciting is based on several premises:

• Collectively, students have a great deal of knowledge, both of the language and of the real world. This knowledge needs to be activated and used constructively
• The teaching of new knowledge is often based on what the learners already know
• Questioning assists in self-discovery, which makes information more memorable.

Eliciting helps to develop a learner-centred classroom and a stimulating environment, while making learning memorable by linking new and old information. Eliciting is not limited to language and global knowledge. The teacher can elicit ideas, feelings, meaning, situations, associations and memories. For the teacher, eliciting is a powerful diagnostic tool, providing key information about what the learners know or don't know, and therefore a starting point for lesson planning. Eliciting also encourages teachers to be flexible and to move on rather than dwell on information which is already known.

Tools for elicitingLanguage and ideas cannot be elicited without some input from the teacher, and eliciting is certainly not an excuse for not presenting language in a clear context. Students also need prompts, associations and reminders in order to jog their memories.

• Often, the teacher provides stimulus using visuals or the board. When working on the simple present for daily routines, for example, a picture or drawing of a house and a clock combined with mime can be used to elicit both the names of household items and common verbs:

T: Six o'clock. Where is she?
S: Bed
T: Yes, she's in bed, sleeping. Seven-thirty, every day?
S: Get up
T: Good, she gets up at seven-thirty. Eight o'clock, every day?
S: Eat. Breakfast
T: Well done. Listen: She has breakfast at eight o'clock

• The teacher may also model new structures or lexis before it is introduced as the target language:

T: Do you like coffee?
S: Yes (I do).
T: Do you like tea?
S: Yes I do
T: Do you like milk?
S: No (I don't)
T: What's the question? Ask me.

• A situational dialogue, example sentences or a listening/reading text may provide the context from which the target language is elicited. In this case, the teacher is asking the learners to notice how a particular function is expressed, and eliciting is combined with concept questions. In a text or dialogue about the future:

T: Is he talking about the past, present or future?
S: Future
T: Does he know / is he sure about the future?
S: No
T: Right. It's a prediction. What verb does he use?
S: Will
T: Good. Can you give me an example?

• Eliciting ideas and background information also requires input. This may come from a teacher's anecdote or story, a text, pictures, or a video, and involves the sharing of knowledge between teacher and learners. Information is often elicited onto a mind-map on the board, but it is important that all the students have a record of collective knowledge, and may find one of the many kinds of graphic organiser useful. Reading lessons often begin with a photo or headline from the text which serves a dual purpose in providing a stimulus for eliciting and a prompt for predicting content. KWL charts are ideal records of what students already Know, what they Want to know, and what they have Learnt by the end of the lesson, and point to the conclusion that eliciting can take place at any stage of a lesson and often indicates what should happen next.

Cultural considerationsWhile eliciting clearly contributes to student involvement, it does not always produce the desired or expected results. Questions such as ‘Who can tell me something about....?' may be greeted with stony silence. Students are wrongly labelled as lacking knowledge or being too shy when there are often cultural reasons for their reticence.

In many cultures, students are not encouraged to volunteer information or ask questions while in others the teacher is seen as the sole provider of knowledge. The problem is reinforced by the fact that many units in course materials begin with open elicitation questions which create the possibility of making grammatical or pronunciation errors and therefore losing face in front of classmates.

In cultures where the group is more important than the individual it is unacceptable to stand out either as a success or as a failure. Even with constant encouragement, it is difficult to break down entrenched attitudes and beliefs, and certain strategies may be required:

• Nominate students rather than waiting for volunteers. The student is then not responsible for being made to stand out from the group.
• Give learners time to prepare an answer. Spontaneity may be ideal, but students will be more confident if they are given a moment to think about or even to write down an answer.
• Ensure that there is no right or wrong answer involved. General questions such as ‘What's your favourite colour?' or ‘What kind of music do you listen to?' are more likely to produce answers than those requiring specific knowledge.
• Encourage rather than correct. When eliciting language, comments such as ‘nearly right' and ‘try again' are more constructive than ‘no, does anyone else know the right answer?' Try not to correct when learners are volunteering background information about a topic - confidence-building, not accuracy is important here.

Tips for eliciting

• Eliciting is a basic technique and should be used regularly, not only at the beginning of a lesson but whenever it is necessary and appropriate.
• Don't try to ‘pull teeth'. Prolonged silence or incorrect answers suggest that input is required from the teacher.
• Don't ask students to repeat incorrect answers, but ask a variety of students to repeat a good answer.
• Acknowledge or give feedback to each answer with gestures or short comments.
• Provide sufficient context or information. Eliciting differs from Socratic questioning in that it is designed to find out what the learners know rather than to lead them to a conclusion which only the teacher knows.
• Learners can elicit from each other, particularly during brainstorming activities. This helps to build confidence and group cohesion as well as shifting the focus away from the teacher.
• At lower levels, more guided questioning is needed. Open-ended questions should be avoided as the learners are unlikely to have the language to answer them to their own satisfaction.

ConclusionThe success of eliciting depends largely on the attitudes of teachers and learners to their respective roles. Ideally it promotes the notion of an exchange of information, helps to break down traditional teacher-centredness, and begins to establish a variety of interaction patterns in the classroom. It is also fundamental to the inductive approach to teaching language and to learning through tasks and self-discovery, and a simple and effective way of getting learners to produce language.

Differentiate Between Fact and Opinion

Sometimes information is presented as a fact when it may be an opinion. When scientific conclusions are reported, it is important to recognize whether they are based on solid evidence. Again, you may find it helpful to ask yourself some questions.

1. 1. What is the difference between a fact and an opinion?
   A fact is a piece of information that can be strictly defined and proved true. An opinion is a statement that expresses a belief, value, or feeling. An opinion cannot be proved true or false. For example, a person's age is a fact, but if someone is asked how old they feel, it is impossible to prove the person's answer to be true or false.
2. 2. Can opinions be measured?
   Yes, opinions can be measured. In fact, surveys often ask for people's opinions on a topic. But there is no way to know whether or not an opinion is the truth.

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE FACT FROM OPINION

Human Activities and the Environment

Unfortunately, human use of fossil fuels is one of the most significant developments of the past few centuries. Humans rely on fossil fuels, a nonrenewable energy resource, for more than 90 percent of their energy needs.

This careless misuse of our planet's resources has resulted in pollution, global warming, and the destruction of fragile ecosystems. For example, oil pipelines carry more than one million barrels of oil each day across tundra regions. Transporting oil across such areas can only result in oil spills that poison the land for decades.

Opinions

Notice words or phrases that express beliefs or feelings. The words unfortunately and careless show that opinions are being expressed.

Facts

Statements that contain statistics tend to be facts. Writers often use facts to support their opinions.

Opinions

Look for statements that speculate about events. These statements are opinions, because they cannot be proved.

Summarising

Summarising requires that you use important thinking and writing skills which can be crucial to successful results. It allows you to demonstrate that you have understood the content of a text and are able to reshape information to suit the different writing tasks that you may need to carry out.

Knowing how to summarise allows you to capture the main ideas of a text in a shorter space, using key words and phrases.

This unit will help you to decide what to leave in and what to leave out when you write a summary.

Synthesising

Synthesising is an important and complex skill required in academic writing. Synthesising involves combining ideas from a range of sources in order to group and present common ideas or arguments. It is a necessary skill used in essays, literature reviews and other forms of academic writing.

Unlike summarising and paraphrasing, which only uses one author's ideas at a time, synthesisingcombines ideas from more than one text or source.
Synthesising allows you to:

• combine information and ideas from multiple sources to develop and strengthen your argument(s)
• demonstrate that you have read widely on the topic
• use and cite multiple sources.

How to synthesise

Use the following steps to synthesise information from different sources.

• Read relevant material.
• Make brief notes using keypoints/keywords. This makes it easier to compare and contrast relevant information.
• Identify common ideas.
• Cite (reference) all the authors you have used.

INFERRING SPEAKER"S ATTITUDES AND MOODS

• Objectives:
  • -Recognise speaker’s mood, tone and attitude
  • -Identify and discuss communication strategies used by a speaker
  • -Identify the para-linguistic features, hesitation and redundantly
• How do you recognise the speaker’s mood, tone and attitude?
  • Mood?
  • The speech behaviour is continuously accompanied and supplemented by various verbal and non-verbal means and emotions.
  • Mood: happy or angry, anxious, worried or upset, bored or eager, impressed or wanting to impress
  • Influence our communication
• Tone
  • Expressive power gives positive effect on natural speech
  • Vary intonation, pace volume and pitch to emphasize significant points beyond words and syntax
  • It can i) clarify intent and point of view
  • ii) sharpen impact
  • iii) provide background and emotional tone (sarcasm and irony)
  • iv) alter meaning
  • Eg: beautiful…clever…etc
  • Speech is interactive and can be altered based on audience’s responses
  • Expression or intonation can be contradicting
  • Expression or intonation can also reinforce words , creating emphasis and clarity
• Attitude
  • Acknowledged as making an important contribution to the meanings – utterances
  • Epistemic markers, facticity, irony, politeness, reported speech, sarcasm – link to speaker attitude
  • Sometimes employing attitudinal categories – challenging, surprised, sad, involvement and uncertainty (intonation contours)
• Communicative strategies
  • Assist in planning site-related communication with other people or counterparts
  • Good communicative strategies can improve interactive nature of communication & help in receiving information from target audience
  • Also maximizes shared information and minimize misinterpretations
• Why What Who When Where How Stating observation Stating objections, Expressing opposition And conflicting views Changing one’s stand Used to expediate the flow of information in sudden and Unfolding event.
• • Observation is done on purpose or purposes
  • If the issues discussed concern the listeners, it is considered as meaningful
  • It affects and influence the speaker’s responses
  • It can be seen by the way the speaker expresses his oppositions or the conflicting views
  • It can also affect the speaker’s stand
• Identifying Para-linguistics features, hesitation and redundancy
  • Communicative language tools – the components learners need in order to actually use language
  • Effective language user/communicator – wider range of tools, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, para-linguistics features, hesitation and redundancy (speaking sub skills)
• Paralinguistics features
  • Facial expression
  • Head movements
  • Hand gestures
  • Eye movements
  • Eye gaze
  Enhance fluency and as a tool that can be used when all other language tools have failed
• Hesitations and Pauses
  • Necessary and natural
  • Humans need time to think when they are talking
  • Fillers – uhm, er, uh, umm
  • - okay, you know, well, so, etc
  • Makes communication more natural
• Redundancy
  • Important to shield a message from possible flaws in transmission (unclarity, ambiguity, noise)
  • Can be used intentionally, positive artistic or rhetorical effect, humorous, non-manipulative purposes
  • Redundancy to a specific context, or dependent on the assumption of background knowledge
  • Tautology – phrases that repeat the meaning with different words
  • Eg: “an added bonus”, “and plus”, “end result”, “free gift”, “future plans”, “hot water heater”, “unconfirmed rumor”, “killed him dead”, “past history”, “safe heaven”
  • Pleonasm – any unnecessary words (or word parts) dialect usage of technically unnecessary parts
  • Eg: “of off vs “off”, “onto” vs “on”, “know that it happened” vs “know it happened” etc
  • Can also take the form of semantic redundancies
• • Sometimes redundancies take the form of foreign words repeated in the context eg: places – “Sahara Desert”
  • Status of a word as pleonastic depends on context
• Some redundant expressions are not usually redundant

EVALUATING SPEAKER'S ATTITUDE AND MOODS

Evaluation Guide

Victoria Quay Toastmasters Evaluation

Sample Meeting Agenda

General Overview

The purpose of an evaluation is to give feedback to a speaker that will have the effect of:

• Encouraging them to work on improving their presentation skills
• Helping them to improve their presentation skills.

The CRC

Australian Toastmasters have developed a very effective structure for evaluations.
It is a sandwich of Commend | Recommend | Commend – the CRC.
Recommendations for improvement are wrapped between Commendations for existing skills.
This style is based on educational research which has established that negative feedback is a very ineffective way of changing human behaviour. Clear explanations and demonstrations of proposed changes followed by praise for improvement, no matter how slight, and encouragement to keep trying, is the most effective style to facilitate change in behaviour.
At Victoria Quay we have developed an Evaluation Pro Forma which will help you in your Evaluations. It is meant as a helpful guide, not a requirement.

Praise and Encouragement

We use positive feedback at all times.
We identify skills which the speaker already has which can be used again.
We recommend ways to improve existing skills.
We recommend ways to overcome current weaknesses
We do not give negative feedback in any way.
We do not identify errors. We look for opportunities for improvement.
We do not use negative words or phrases like "criticism" or "error" or "pick on".

Help

The most effective help is identifying current skills which can be enhanced.
Recommend improvements which can be made in current skills
Recommend changes to current practices which will lead to improvement
Explain why you are making the recommendation
Explain and demonstrate how to make the change being recommended.

The importance of recommendations for all speakers

Most Toastmasters come to meetings to work on improving their speaking skills. They are looking for ways to improve their skills. This includes the very experienced, and very skilful speakers.
It may give a brief, warm glow for a speaker to hear that the evaluator has no recommendations for improvement, but it won’t help him or her to improve.
Be courageous. Make a recommendation for improvement to the very best speakers, as well as the ones you think of as the others. Express it as your personal opinion, but don’t devalue it by apologising. The very skilful speakers will be very grateful for your personal insight.
Exclude from your evaluations expressions like "I can find no recommendations for this speaker."
If all else fails, use this formula: "I recommend that all the members learn from the way Mary (John) … " and then give a very specific analysis of some particularly effective technique used by the speaker. Your analysis may clarify an important matter of technique for the speaker.

Give a brief summary at the end

It is good practice to model the standard speech structure of beginning, middle and end. A concluding summary helps members understand your points in the context of the CRC.

Keep your strongest commendation for the final one

In Western Australia we have developed a particular form of the CRC. It is not proposed to be inflexible, but gives a guide to achieving an effective balance.
Start with several commendations – probably three.
Give two recommendations.
End with the strongest commendation you can find for the speaker.


IDENTIFY LOGICAL REASONING

Logical Reasoning

Logical reasoning is the process which uses arguments, statements, premises and axioms to define weather a statement is true or false, resulting in a logical or illogical reasoning. In today’s logical reasoning three different types of reasoning can be distinguished, known as deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and abductive reasoning based on respectively deduction, induction and abduction.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning originates from the philosophy and mathematics and is the most obvious form of reasoning. Deduction is a method for applying a general rule (major premise) in specific situations (minor premise) of which conclusions can be drawn. Example:

Major premise:   All humans are mortal
Minor premise:   Socrates is human
Conclusion:        Socrates is mortal

Immediately the obviousness and straightforwardness of the conclusion can be drawn from the premises above of the example of deductive reasoning. Notice that deductive reasoning no new information provides, it only rearranges information what is already known into a new statement or conclusion.

Inductive Reasoning

The antithesis of deductive reasoning is inductive reasoning. In this form of logical reasoning specific conclusions are generalized to general conclusions. A famous hypothesis is ‘all swans are white’. This conclusion was taken from a large amount of observations without observing any black swan. Inductive reasoning however is a risky form of logical reasoning since the conclusion can as easily be incorrect when, looking at the swans example, a black swan is spotted. However, nowadays inductive reasoning is a commonly used type of reasoning in physics and philology.

Abductive Reasoning

Abductive reasoning is the third form of logical reasoning and is somewhat similar to inductive reasoning, since conclusions drawn here are based on probabilities. In abductive reasoning it is presumed that the most plausible conclusion also the correct one is. Example:

Major premise:  The jar is filled with yellow marbles
Minor premise:  I have a yellow marble in my hand
Conclusion:       The yellow marble was taken out of the jar

The abductive reasoning example clearly shows that conclusion might seem obvious, however it is purely based on the most plausible reasoning. This type of logical reasoning is mostly used within the field of science and research.

Formal and Informal Logic Reasoning

Next to these 3 types of logical reasoning it is also possible to make a difference between formal reasoning and informal reasoning. Formal reasoning is a type of logical reasoning based on valid premises and therefore valid conclusions, thus it is a form of deductive reasoning. It provides no new information, but only rearranges known information to a new conclusion.

Next to formal reasoning we also have informal reasoning. This form of logical reasoning possesses all the elements of formal reasoning, like the deduction part, however it also includes probabilities and truths about premises and conclusions. It can be said that informal reasoning is related to abductive reasoning, one of the other three types of logical reasoning explained above

Combining these two forms of logical reasoning together with the three different types results in the following distinguish in logical reasoning:

1. Deductive
   1. Formal deductive reasoning
   2. Informal deductive reasoning
2. Inductive
1. Formal inductive reasoning
2. Informal inductive reasoning
3. Abductive
1. Formal abductive reasoning
2. Informal abductive reasoning

Wrong can be Right Logically

Within logical reasoning it can sometimes happen that the premises and conclusion seem obviously wrong, but are logically speaking correct when applying one of the logical reasoning types mentioned above. Be aware that conclusions are drawn based on logical reasoning and not on the validity of the context of certain premises or conclusions. Example:

Major premise:  Eating a lot makes you lose weight
Minor premise:  Craig is obese

Question:          What can we do to make Craig lose weight?
Conclusion:       Make Craig eat a lot

By just observing the context of the words you would think that this conclusion is incorrect, since you know form everyday life that eating a lot does not make you lose weight at all. On the contrary it makes you gain weight. However based on logical reasoning this conclusion is most certainly correct, since both premises are valid, which automatically makes the conclusion a valid conclusion. What you need to understand is that the correct answer to any given logical reasoning argument requires the proper identification of relationships between assertions (typically facts and opinions), not the accuracy of those assertions.

Logical Reasoning in Aptitude Tests

Logical reasoning generally is a very important section in aptitude tests and/or IQ tests. Logical reasoning is universal and it is used in every form of reasoning, in every job, in every field every day. So if you have good logical reasoning skills you should be able to apply this everywhere. Better developed logical reasoning skills make you able to understand, analyze, and to question arguments based on statements or questions. These skills are in general used to identify clues that make an argument weaker, or to recognize a particular assumption. Logical reasoning can be tested in several different ways, however here on Fibonicci we offer the most important and most commonly accepted form of logical reasoning namely syllogisms.

INDENTIFYING MAIN IDEAS AND SUPPORTING DETAILS IN NON-CONTEXTUALISED SPEECH

The main idea is the most important element of a paragraph or selection. It is the focus of the text. Details are sentences that tell about the main idea. Details are “small pieces of information.” Facts are “small pieces of information” that can be proven true. Readers are able to determine the major points of information provided. They distinguish the relative importance of various pieces of information. Readers recall details from a selection, use details to visualize ideas, and use facts to support conclusions, predictions, and responses. Students collect details and facts that support main ideas. They identify details that reveal specific information.

Questions that help students identify main ideas and supporting details:

• Based on the title, what do you think the article will be about?
• What do you think is the BIG IDEA of this article? Of this paragraph?
• What two words would you use to describe the “gist” of the paragraph? selection?
• Which details helped you picture . . .?
• What details from the selection support this hypothesis?
• When students read, they think about what most of the sentences are describing. Is there one sentence that describes the main idea for this topic?
• What was the focus of this reading selection?