John Field Universities of Reading and Cambridge, uk

1. Expose: Understand the input (Brown, 1990)

• * Much variation in the signal
• * No consistent boundaries between words
• * No physical evidence: the listener needs to carry meaning forward in the mind.
• * Time pressures
• On-line processing
• Timing is largely controlled by speaker

Variability of speech

• Phoneme variation
• Word variation
• assimilation – elision
• pressures inside the intonation group
• Speaker variation
• voice – speech rate – context – accent

Implications for teaching

• Examples of the same words / phrases in different voices and contexts
• Repetition and recycling. The importance of replay.
• Attention to chunks and to rhythm (esp. as a means of decoding function words)

Focused practice in L2 input

• Identify aspects of the input that are likely to cause problems of decoding
• Practise each one intensively by means of small-scale micro-listening exercises
• Use simple exercise types such as transcribing short sentences