Listening or reading: Is one more difficult than the other?

Students often identify a lack of vocabulary as one of the main problems they have with understanding spoken and written English. However, many students find a conversation much easier to understand when they are given the transcript. Why is this?

Rate of input

When students listen to spoken English in the classroom, they rarely have control over the speed at which people speak. Students often try to understand every word and when they are not able to do this successfully, they ‘get lost,’ and then start to panic.

The framework outlined above is designed to help students become more confident with listening to spoken English. The lead in and prediction stages help to familiarize students with the context. The pre-teaching stage focuses on any vocabulary which might ‘block’ their understanding of key parts of the text.

Setting clear, achievable tasks before students listen gives students a reason to listen. (After all, we rarely listen to anything in real life without a purpose.) It also discourages students from trying to understand every word. Finally, encouraging pair checks and replaying the audio when necessary helps to reduce anxiety and increases the likelihood that students will be able to complete the tasks successfully.

Word recognition

Many students find they can understand a TV program much more easily when they can see the subtitles (– even if the subtitles are written in English). In this case, the rate of input is the same, but the written version is still easier for many students to comprehend.

a) Individual words

Students who find it difficult to recognize individual words in spoken English often have weak pronunciation. For instance, a student who thinks that the word ‘chair’ is pronounced like “cheer”, they will have a hard time identifying this word in spoken English.

Many non-native speakers find English hard to pronounce. Initial consonant clusters often cause difficulties, especially when they contain /r/ or /l/ sounds, as in words like ‘spring’ or ‘close.’ Phonemes which exist in English but not in other languages, like Chinese, such as /θ/ or /ð/ can be problematic, and students may also find it hard to distinguish between vowel sounds such as /ɪ/ and /iː/.

Time spent raising students’ awareness of tricky sounds is time well spent. If students find it difficult to hear the difference between as /ɪ/ and /iː/ for example, minimal pairs activities can be helpful. Minimal pairs are pairs of words which differ by one phoneme – such as ‘fit’ and ‘feet.’ Tell the students that you are going to say either ‘fit’ or ‘feet.’ If they think you said ‘fit,’ they should say ‘one.’ If they think you said ‘feet,’ they should say ‘two.’ Spending just a few minutes a day on discrimination tasks like this can help to hone students’ listening skills.

b) Connected speech

Features of connected speech also play a part in making spoken English difficult to ͜ understand.                                                                           

                   /w/

The feature highlighted above is known as ‘intrusion.’ An extra sound such as a /w/ is added across a word boundary, which can make comprehension challenging.

Linking, in which ͜ a consonant sound ͜ at the end ͜ of one word links with ͜ a vowel sound at the beginning of the next word can make it hard to identify where one word ends and the next one begins.

A word on ‘real life’ listening

It’s worth noting that ‘real life’ listening often involves interacting with other people. When we have a conversation, we have the opportunity to ask the other person to speak more slowly or repeat what they have just said. We also have the chance to pick up on gestures and facial expressions which can facilitate comprehension.