Listening Cherry 20 – Of mush and mess

Image from here.

One of the technical terms that I use in teacher workshops is ‘mush’. By ‘mush’ I mean the messy rush of non-prominent syllables in the stream of speech, where the sound shapes of words are so distorted, and pass by so quickly that learners find it impossible to handle. Expert and native listeners have no problems with the mush – they are experts in meaning perception. Unless, that is, they are teachers of listening, when they do have a problem – they (despite being experts in perception) are unaware of the fact that much of the stream of speech is a messy mush.

This non-awareness is a partial cause of one of the failings in current practice in listening pedagogy, the assumption there is nothing ‘linguistic’ to teach – no content which is unique to listening, no teachable items that are not covered elsewhere in the other syllabuses of ELT, such as grammar and vocabulary.

Instead, in current listening pedagogy, there is testing (answers to get correct), there is an over-focus on communicative (coping) strategies, there is the gradual acquisition of competence through extensive listening (‘exposure’), there is unknown vocabulary to cope with, but no ‘facts’ about the sound substance of speech.

We test understanding through listening comprehension, we practice skills through exposure to help learners cope with the sound substance (stream) of speech. But we don’t teach them the facts of the substance of speech, and we don’t (despite all our strategy training techniques) give them a handle on the mush.

There is something ‘linguistic’ to teach, there are facts about the sound substance of the stream of speech which are teachable, and there are techniques (‘vocal gymnastics’) which enable students to get a handle on the mush.

Here are some some examples of facts:

• the words ‘and that’ often sound like ‘annat’
• the words ‘in the’ often sound like ‘inner’ (i.e. identical to ‘in a’)
• the word ‘probably’ can sound like ‘probooly’ or ‘prowubbly’ or ‘prolly’
• ‘middle’ can sound like ‘mill’

And vocal gymnastics? Come to my talk at IATEFL Birmingham on Saturday 16th  April 2016 at 11:10 to experience the gymnastics. (Leotards are not required).