Listening to spoken English

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Bibliographic Information

Listening to spoken English

Gillian Brown

Pearson Education, 1990

A Pearson Education print on demand ed

  • : pbk

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Note

Reprint of 2nd ed. Originally published: London : Longman, 1990. (The effective teacher series)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [175]-176) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

For those who are familiar with the first edition, it will be convenient to have some indication of where the main changes lie. Chapter one has been largely rewritten to give an outline of current approaches to a model of comprehension of spoken language. Chapter two has a new initial section but otherwise remains as it was. Chapter three incorporates a new section on pause and how this interacts with rhythm, and rather more on the function of stress. Chapter four has an extended initial section but otherwise remains largely as it was. Chapter five on intonation contains several sections which have been rewritten to varying extents. Chapter six of the first edition has disappeared: in 1977, very little work had been published on fillers and it seemed worthwhile incorporating a chapter that sat rather oddly with the phonetic/phonological interests of the rest of the book. Not that there is a great industry of descriptions of the forms and functions of these and similar phenomena there seems no reason to retain this early but admittedly primitive account. The chapter on paralinguistic vocal features, now chapter six, has some rewriting in the early part but considerable rewriting in the last sections. The final chapter on teaching listening comprehension has grown greatly in length. It still incorporates some material from the original chapter but most of it is completely rewritten.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 The need to teach the comprehension of spoken English: "slow colloquial English" and normal speech
  • "testing" or "teaching" comprehension?
  • the nature of comprehension
  • the processes of comprehension
  • the accent of English described in this book. Part 2 "Ideal" segments, syllables and words: the phoneme
  • the consonants of English
  • place of articulation
  • voicing and voicelessness
  • the vowels of English
  • the transcription of vowels
  • the "ideal" syllable and the "ideal" word. Part 3 The function of rhythm: the rhythmic structure of English
  • stressed and unstressed syllables
  • pause - rests in rhythm
  • the function of stress
  • word stress
  • stressed words in sentences. Part 4 Patterns of simplification in informal speech: adjustment to surroundings
  • elision
  • word boundary markers
  • consonants and vowels in the stream of speech
  • reduction in visual cues. Part 5 The function of intonation: the "ideal" organisation of tone groups
  • the "ideal" placing of the tonic
  • tone group and tonic in spontaneous speech
  • pitch direction. Part 6 Paralinguistic features: pitch span
  • placing in the voice range
  • direction of pitch
  • tempo
  • loudness
  • voice setting
  • articulatory setting
  • articulatory precision
  • timing of segments and syllables
  • lip setting
  • pause
  • constructing a framework
  • using the paralinguistic features. Part 7 Teaching, listening, comprehension: identifying the problem
  • recognising the code
  • processing the complete text
  • purposeful listening
  • the social context of listening
  • combining the approaches
  • bottom up processing - the phonological code
  • topdown processing - using the context to make predictions
  • making inferences
  • methodology
  • using the phonological cues
  • learning to use contextual information
  • drawing constrained inferences.

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