Abstract

This chapter proposes a cognitive view of lecture comprehension instruction which includes use of “on-line” listener reports. The chapter first illustrates a method for accessing listener comprehension processes during lectures, and reports on a study in which a videotaped lecture was presented to 36 non-native speaker (NNS) subjects in a university preparation program. Summaries were elicited “on-line” – at pauses during the lecture. The summaries were analyzed by comparing them with ones written by expert native speaker (NS) listeners in order to assess comprehensibility of the lecture segments and to identify a range of strategies in lecture understanding. The chapter suggests pedagogic applications which incorporate the use of summaries.

Background issues

Investigating listening processes

This study starts with a simple question: How can we find out what listeners are understanding during a lecture? One of the challenges of investigating understanding processes in any discourse setting is trying to get inside the listener's mind, to understand the subjective nature of the listener's task. This challenge is quite pronounced in lecture settings, where the discourse is markedly asymmetrical – the listeners have few opportunities to demonstrate comprehension or confusion and little chance to interrupt or redirect the discourse.

Models of speaker encoding and production processes may serve as a rough mirror of understanding, but there are severe limitations to paralleling production and comprehension processes. Lecturers' behavior and the resultant input text to listeners can be analyzed in order to describe speaker production – the composing, simplifying, and encoding processes that the lecturer undertakes.