Part 1, Listening Comprehension
SECTION A MINI-LECTURE
Understanding Academic Lectures
Good morning, everybody.
Now at the university you, as students, are often called on to perform many types of listening tasks: listening in a group discussion, listening to a teacher on a one-to-one basis, and listening to academic lectures.
So what I'm going to talk about today is what a listener needs to be able to do in order to comprehend an academic lecture efficiently.
OK. What do you need to do in order to understand the lecture?
Now there are four things that I'm going to talk about.
The first thing is that you need to be aware of all of the parts of the language that carry meaning.
You all know that words carry meaning.
So you've got to be aware of the vocabulary of the language, but there are some other features.
For one thing, you need to be aware of stress.
Let me give you an example.
"I went to the bar."
"I went to the bar."
It makes a difference.
In the second example, I'm stressing the fact that it was me and not someone else so that this means stress has some meaning.
Now the next thing you might want to listen for is intonation.
For example, if I say "He came." "He came?"
There are two different meanings.
One is a statement, the other one is a question.
And another thing you need to listen for is rhythm.
For instance, "Can you see, Mary?" VS "Can you see Mary?" Dadadadada. Dadadadada.
Those two mean something different.
In the first one, they are talking directly to Mary, while the second one means
"Can you see Mary over there?"
Now the next thing you must do when you listen is that you need to add information that the lecturer expects you to add.
All lecturers assume that they share some information with their audience and that their audience does not need them to explain every word.
And listeners have an ability to add this information due to two sources of information.
That is: 1) their knowledge of a particular subject; and 2) their knowledge or experience of the world.
So remember, listening is not a matter of just absorbing the speaker's words - the listener has to do more than that.
The listener is not a tape recorder, absorbing the speaker's words and putting them into his or her brain.
Rather, listening involves hearing the speaker's words and reinterpreting them, adding information if necessary.
So the meaning is not in the word alone, rather it is in the person who uses it or responds to it so that the second thing that a listener must do - add information that the lecturer assumes that they share.
OK. The third thing that a listener needs to do, and this is to me the most important thing of all, and that's to predict as you listen.
Now let me give you two reasons why you have to predict.
For one thing, if you predict it helps you overcome noise.
What do I mean by noise?
Maybe there's noise outside and you can't hear me.
Maybe you're in the back of the room and you can't hear all that well.
Maybe the microphone doesn't work.
Maybe there's noise inside your head.
By that I mean maybe you're thinking of something else.
And then all of a sudden, you'll remember "Oh, I've got to listen."
By being able to predict during the lecture, you can just keep listening to the lecture and not lose the idea of what's going on.
So predicting is important to help you overcome outside noise and inside noise.
And another reason that predicting is important is because it saves you time.
Now when you listen you need time to think about the information, relate it to old ideas, take notes, and if you're only keeping up with what I'm saying or what the lecturer's saying, you have no time to do that.
And I'll bet a lot of you are having that problem right now because it's so hard just to follow everything I'm saying that you don't have time to note down ideas.
So predicting saves you time.
If you can guess what I'm going to say, you're able to take notes, you're able to think, you have more time.
OK? And there are two types of predictions that you can make: predictions of content and predictions of organization.
Let me give you an example in terms of content.
If you hear the words "Because he loved to cook, his favorite room was…" what would you expect?
Kitchen. You can guess this because you know people cook in the kitchen.
OK? And you can also predict organization.
So if I was going to tell you a story, you expect me to tell you why the story is important, give you a setting for the story.
So you have expectations of what the speaker is going to talk about and how the speaker will organize his or her words.
Now let's come to the last thing a listener must do: the listener must evaluate as he or she is listening, decide what's important, what's not, decide how something relates to something else.
OK? There are again two reasons for this.
The first one is evaluating helps you to decide what to take notes about, what's important to write down, what's not important to write down.
And the second reason is that evaluating helps you to keep information.
Studies have shown that we retain more information if ideas are connected to one another rather than just individually remembered.
So for example, if I give you five ideas that are not related to one another, that's much more difficult to remember than five ideas that are related.
So you can see evaluating helps you to remember information better because it connects ideas to one another.
OK. From what I've said so far, you can see there's a lot involved in listening to lectures - language awareness, adding information, making predictions and evaluations.
I hope these will be useful to you in lecture comprehension.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Now both the government and the opposition party agreed that state schools are not good enough.And the Opposition is coming up with some new proposals of their own to improve them. But is their approach really all that different from the government's? Today we have Theresa May, the shadow education secretary from the Opposition with us on the radio show.
M: Good afternoon, Theresa.
W: Good afternoon.
M: Can I remind you of what John Major said only a few years ago when he was Prime Minister? He said we should give people opportunity and choice. "We don't mean some people. I mean everyone, opportunity for all." Well, that is precisely what the present government is saying, opportunity for all.
W: The hallmark of this government is that what they say and what they actually do is always different. And that's no different in education. What we see from the present government is that they may talk about opportunity for all, they may talk about choice, but actually they are cutting opportunity and reducing choice. And what I think is most damaging is that actually they are giving a message "Don't bother. If you are from a state school, there are barriers to be put in your place." But this is far from the truth. Universities have been doing a very great deal to encourage state school pupils to apply. The point is that we still haven't got enough state school pupils applying to our leading universities.
M: But your government had 18 years to get more of them into Oxbridge.
W: And indeed we increased the number of young people in this country going to university, from one in eight to one in three. The number of state pupils being accepted by Oxford and Cambridge and other leading universities, the proportion of state pupils has actually increased. But there is a problem in many of our secondary schools - of expectations. And it is the present government that has been leveling down expectations rather than raising them.
M: But I was talking about pupils from state schools going to the so-called elite universities. That didn't go up during your time.
W: The number from the state schools who are going to leading universities has increased over the years. But there's still an issue about ensuring the pupils from our state schools apply to going to the universities. And if you look at the Oxford figures, for example, you see that the percentage of students applying to Oxford from the state schools is about one percent, whereas from the private schools it's over 4.5 percent, so that you know that's the problem. It's expectations in the state system that have been driven down by this government over the years.
M: But again you had the opportunity to do that as well. I mean to get more children from state schools into those leading universities and it didn't happen.
W: We have been getting more children from state schools into the leading universities and the universities have been working very hard at doing that. But I think there's going to be a real problem in the short term as a result of what the present government has been doing, because they have been giving a message that there are barriers there. And we've seen it today. There are reports already that Cambridge have been finding state school pupils ringing up and saying that they are not going to bother to apply now. That's the real damage the government has been doing. Far from opening opportunities, they are actually closing down opportunities.
M: Well, they'd argue with that of course. And what they would say is "one of the things we want to do is improve the standard of our schools". Now one of the ways they want to do it is to give the schools the opportunity to run themselves more completely than they are doing at the moment. To give schools more powers, exactly the same as you. You made a speech last night laying out the way you see the education system changing in this country. I see no difference here at all between you and them.
W: There's a very great deal of difference actually. The present government talks about freedom for schools. It talks about getting money into schools. But if you look in the detail of what they are proposing, the reality is very different. We genuinely want to make schools free and give them the freedom to have all of the money to spend on what is going on in their schools.
M: All of it?
W: Well, the government say in the future 85 pence in the pound will go to the schools. I want to make sure that every pound spent on schools is a pound spent in schools. I think schools should have the money and have the power to decide how to spend it because they know best what's in the interest of their pupils.
M: Right. So the answer to my question was "Yes. All of that money will go to the schools", was it?
W: I want to see every pound spent on schools.
M: Well, you say all of the money being spent in schools going into the schools. Fine. But what does it mean in practice? Does it mean, I repeat the question, that all of that money, all of it, will go to the schools?
W: What it means is that all that money at the moment that is being spent on the schools should be spent in the schools rather than, - M: And on local? -rather than money that is supposed to be spent on schools but is being held back in bureaucracy.
M: So at the moment a certain amount of money goes to schools. A certain amount of money goes to local education authorities. Are you saying that in future no money will go to local education authorities but all of the money will go to the schools. I mean that's a very straightforward question, isn't it?
W: At the moment what happens is that money goes to local education authorities and they decide how much money is then going to be spent on the schools. Money's held back at those education authorities and is held back initially at central government as well for them to decide how it should be spent. I want that money to be actually in the schools for the schools to decide how it should be spent.
M: OK. Thank you very much, Theresa, for talking to us on the program.
W: Pleasure.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News 1:
A media research study said that 91% of adults in Britain watched their main TV set once a week - up from 88% in 2002. It said the popularity of smartphones and tablets was taking teens out of bedrooms back into family rooms. Far from technology pulling family time apart, it said, the huge growth in mobile was actually having the opposite effect. Family members are being brought together just as they were in the 1950s when a TV was likely to be a home's only screen. There are a number of factors for this. People are now watching on much bigger, better television sets. But also, there's the rise of connected devices, such as a smartphone or tablet. People are coming into the living room today clutching those devices. They offer a range of opportunities to do things while watching television.
News 2:
Uruguay's lower house passed a marijuana legalization bill Wednesday, bringing the South American nation one step closer to becoming the first to legally regulate production, distribution and sale of the drug. After more than 12 hours of debate, the bill garnered the 50 votes it needed to pass in the House of Representatives. Forty-six lawmakers voted against the bill. Uruguay's President has said he backs the bill, which would allow marijuana to be sold in pharmacies and create a registry of those who buy it. Only those 18 and older would be allowed to purchase the drug. Critics of the measure have said it promotes drug addiction. Supporters of the measure have said it will fight criminal drug trafficking and marks a turning point and could influence other Latin American nations to take a similar approach.
News 3:
Access to clean water and soap not only improves hygiene but may boost growth in young children, research suggests. A review of global data found evidence of a small increase in height - about 0.5cm - in under-fives living in households with good sanitation. The studies took place in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Chile, Guatemala, Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Kenya and Cambodia. Dr. Alan Dangour, a public health nutritionist who led the studies, said providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene is an effective way to reduce deaths from symptoms such as diarrhea. "What we've found by bringing together all of the evidence for the first time is that there is a suggestion that these interventions improve the growth of children and that's very important," he told BBC News. He said there is a clear link between dirty water, diarrhea and poor growth outcomes, because repeated illnesses in early childhood can affect growth.
