Listening is not a passive process but it is an active process. To develop listening comprehension it is necessary that learners pay attention to the speaker to collect and comprehend data.  The comprehension of  oral texts requires enduring attention and understanding that is the reason for which the reconstruction of ideas is a wide challenge for students. According to Johnson, Smith, Smythe & Varon (2009) challenges enrich critical reflection about life because learners have to strength their endeavors to learn, and they achieve self-awareness. In this sense, it goes further decodification of ideas in memoristic or mechanic modes because the operative thinking processes increases. As Lems, Miller & Soro (2010) point out, listening is not associated exclusively with hearing of sounds, but rather it intertwines intense mental workout.

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Into Listening Coprehension there are two processes: Bottom-up and Top- down. In one hand Bottom- up allows to comprehend language taking into account specific patterns e.g. syllabic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, phonemic and interpretative aspects. According to Field (2003), quoted by Nation & Newton (2009), listeners can build meaning of the whole information step by step with the respective function of each part of the speech . Therefore, this process is holistic because students develop and enhance other components at the same time. 

 

On the other hand Top-down is the process whereby someone relates contextual cues to understand a spoken message. In this process “...the listener uses what they know of the context of communication to predict what the message will contain, and uses parts of the message to confirm, correct or add to this. The key process here is inferencing” (Nation & Newton, 2009, p. 40). In that sense, learners have to associate their prior knowledge with the context of the spoken text to decipher the whole meaning. In this process learners can reach different goals.  Peterson (2001) mentions some of them: discriminate between registers of speech and tones of voice, identify the speaker or the topic, find main ideas and supporting details, and make inferences.

 

Interactive processing combines the two operations explained before. According to Peterson (2001), together allows learners to use word stress to understand the speaker’s intention, to recognize missing grammar markers in colloquial speech and to reconstruct the message, to use context and knowledge of the world to build expectations and to listen to confirm that.

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References

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Johnson, L F.; Smith, R., S.; Smythe, J. T; Varon, R. K. (2009). Challenge-Based Learning:

An Approach for Our Time. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

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Lems, K., Miller, L. D., & Soro, T. M. (2010). Teaching Reading to English language

learners: Insights from Linguistics. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

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Nation, I. S. P.  & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/ EFL Listening and Speaking. New York,

NY: Routledge Chapter 3: Listening.

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Peterson, P. W. (2001). Skills and Strategies for Proficient Listening. Teaching English as a

second or foreign language (3erd ed.). Boston: Heinle.

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