Jakarta, 7 November 2015

Pre-Reading Summary: Listening Skills

By Hanifa Febsayana Khoirunnisa 1406568910
Faculty of Nursing, University of Indonesia,
Undergraduate Regular Program 2014. Email: hanifafebsayana@yahoo.co.id

In learning English, listening is inevitable during the process until the actual
situation. By listening, learners (listeners) are provided with the aural input which serve
as the basis for language acquisition and enable them to interact in spoken
communication. Therefore in English, listening has specific skills to deal with variety of
situations, types of input, and listening purpose. With these skills, it can help the
listeners develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each
listening situation. In this writing, the listening skills will be elaborated in three
strategies which are top-down strategies, bottom-up strategies, and meta-cognitive
strategies.
Top-down strategies are listener based, which means the listener taps into
background knowledge of the topic, the situation or the context, the type of the text, and
the language (NCLRC, 2004). Top-down strategies focus on the big picture and general
meaning of a listening text (Tennant, 2015). In this strategies, it is often the starting
point is to discuss the topic and then to use a gist or extensive task to listen for the
overall meaning. Top-down strategies rely on listeners knowledge about something
about a topic, how particular exchanges in certain social work, or what expression of
language that fit a particular topic or situation. These backgrounds knowledge activates
a set of expectation which later help the listeners to interpret what is heard and
anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include listening for the main idea,
predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing.
Bottom-up strategies are text based, which means the listener relies on the
language in the message, that is the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that
creates the meaning (NCLRC, 2004). In other words, bottom-up strategies rely on the
listeners linguistic knowledge to recognize linguistic elementsvowels, consonants,
words, sentencesto do the construction of meaning (Lingzhu, 2003). Bottom-up
strategies focus on listening for details and involve tasks that focus on understanding at
a sound or word level (Tennant, 2015). Usually, the tasks are intensive as they focus on

1 Universitas Indonesia
 2

looking for particular details. Bottom-up strategies include listening for specific details,
recognizing cognates, and recognizing word-order patterns.
Metacognitive strategies are used by listeners to plan, monitor, and evaluate
their listening (NCLRC, 2004). These strategies rely on listeners metacognitive
knowledge, such as personal knowledge, task knowledge, and strategic knowledge
(Chang & Chang, 2014). Therefore, in these strategies listeners plan by deciding which
listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation. Then, they monitor their
comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies. Eventually, they evaluate
by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension objectives
and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was effective.
Commonly, listeners have specific taskssuch as finding meaningto do
through the listening process. There are four basic steps to extract meaning from a
listening text. Listeners need to: 1) figure out the purpose for listening, 2) pay attention
to the parts of the listening input which are relevant to the identified purpose and
overlook the rest, 3) select either top-down or bottom-up strategies that are appropriate
to the listening task and use them flexibly and interactively, and 4) check their
comprehension while listening and when the listening task is over (NCLRC, 2004).
It is almost impossible and unnecessary to separate listening tasks and strategies.
It is better to use good listening activities and to talk about how listeners processed what
they heard in order to do the task. If listeners are unable to do a particular task, then it is
equally important to talk about why and see if it is possible to overcome the problems.
The focus on listening process should not be on getting the right or wrong answers, but
how these answers were reached.

Universitas Indonesia
 3

References
Chang, C. & Chang, C. (2014). Developing Students Listening Metacognitive
Strategies Using Online Videotext Self-dictation-generation Learning Activity.
[online journal]. Retrieved from
http://ojs.upv.es/index.php/eurocall/article/view/3636/3865 (on November 8, 2015
at 01.05 AM Western Indonesian Time).
Lingzhu, j. (2003). Listening Activities for Effective Top-down Processing. [online
journal]. Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Lingzhu-Listening.html (on
November 7, 2015 at 11.13 PM Western Indonesia Time).
The National Capital Language Resource Center (2004). Teaching Listening: Strategies
for Developing Listening Skills. [article website]. Retrieved from
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/stratlisten.htm (on November 7, 2015 at
11.10 PM Western Indonesia Time).
Tennant, A. (2015). Listening Matters: Top-down and Bottom-up Listening. [article
website]. Retrieved from
http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/teaching-tips/listening-
matters/listening-matters-top-down-and-bottom-up-listening/154567.article (on
November 7, 2015 at 11.12 PM Western Indonesia Time).

Universitas Indonesia