Abstract
<p>Teachers’ understanding of the process of speech perception could inform practice in listening classrooms. Catford (1950) developed a model for speech perception taking into account the influence of the acoustic features of the linguistic forms used by the speaker, whereby the listener ‘identifies’ and 'interprets' these linguistic forms based on the association between them and the context of speech. This paper critically reviews Catford’s model and proposes an alternative one distinguishing between two levels of perceiving speech: word recognition and utterance comprehension. Smith and Nelson (1985) refer to these as 'intelligibility' and 'comprehensibility’, respectively. The proposed model could inform classroom practice as well as curriculum and material design.</p>
Highlights
Teaching resources on practising listening for second language learners subscribe primarily to Howatt’s and Dakin’s (1974) definition of listening ability, in which the successful completion of the listening process relies on the listener’s ability to identity and understand what is being said. Catford (1950) provides a model for speech perception which focuses on how utterances are pronounced and heard and on how the listener may cognitively receive and interpret speech.The critical review of Catford’s model in this work is based on a discussion of two main groups of concepts
Catford (1950) developed a model for speech perception taking into account the influence of the acoustic features of the linguistic forms used by the speaker, whereby the listener ‘identifies’ and 'interprets' these linguistic forms based on the association between them and the context of speech
The second process is the bottom-up process, which contrasts with top-down processing in the sense that the listener interprets a message through investigating its context and employing his/her background knowledge to grasp the possible meanings of an utterance (Pinker, 1994)
Summary
Teaching resources on practising listening for second language learners subscribe primarily to Howatt’s and Dakin’s (1974) definition of listening ability, in which the successful completion of the listening process relies on the listener’s ability to identity and understand what is being said. Catford (1950) provides a model for speech perception which focuses on how utterances are pronounced and heard and on how the listener may cognitively receive and interpret speech. The second process is the bottom-up process, which contrasts with top-down processing in the sense that the listener interprets a message through investigating its context and employing his/her background knowledge to grasp the possible meanings of an utterance (Pinker, 1994). These two processes focus on how the receiver (or listener) might perceive and process speech, marginalizing the role of the speaker in a setting. Catford’s model will be revised and an alternative one will be proposed based on integration with the other two groups of concepts
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