The Effectiveness of Teaching Reduced Forms of Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This classroom research investigates the effectiveness of teaching reduced forms (e.g., "gonna" for "going to") for improving listening comprehension among EFL students in the People's Republic of China. A randomly selected experimental group (n = 16) received thirty lessons of approximately ten minutes each on reduced forms. This was part of their regular course work. At the same time a control group (n = 16) received "placebo" lessons of ten minutes on minimal pairs in pronunciation. Three measures of listening comprehension were used to pretest and posttest the students. The results indicate that teaching reduced forms does aid listening comprehension, but this is reflected to varying degrees in the three measures. The discussion explores causes for these differences, as well as solutions to some of the problems encountered in small classroom research.The literature over the last three decades contains only a handful of advocates of teaching reduced forms in the ESL classroom. Kingdon (1950) encourages the teaching of what he terms &dquo;weak forms&dquo; and attempts to classify and describe these forms grammatically by tabulating what he considers the 50 most common according to word class. He also includes phonetic transcriptions of each word in its various sentence environments and a few teaching suggestions. The classification seems less than comprehensive with only 38 selected function words and 12 miscellaneous ones (some of which are &dquo;Sir&dquo;, &dquo;Madam&dquo;, and &dquo;Saint&dquo;). However, this Kingdon article stands almost alone during the fifties except for two additional works of his own (1958a; 1958b). Bowen (1975) classifies, explains and illustrates informal speech: 1) reduction, or usually the dropping of strong vowels when a syllable is weak-stressed, 2) assimilation, or usually the changing of adjacent or nearby consonants to resemble each other, and 3) contraction, or specific sets of words where assimilations occur whenever specific sounds are brought together in sequence. Bowen's detailed description of each *This is a much revised version of a paper delivered at the TESOL Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii in 1982.

Investigating the Effect of Reduced Forms Instruction on EFL Learners’ Listening and Speaking Abilities

“…Results also showed that experimental participants had outperformed on "reduced forms" recognition and production tests than their peers in the control group as the result of the treatment they received during the course of study. These findings are in line with Brown and Hilferty's (1986) and Jia and fu (2011) who also confirmed the effectiveness of "reduced forms" instruction on increasing learners' "reduced forms" awareness. The results are also in line with Underwoods (2012) who also confirmed the effectiveness of "reduced forms" instruction on enhancing learners' ability of "reduced forms" production.…”

“…The term "reduced forms" is taken from Brown and Hilferty (1986) and refers to the phenomenon of phonological simplification and variation commonly observed in the informal speech of native speakers. According to Cele-Murica, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) "reduced forms" involve unstressed vowels, omitted sounds, and other alternation of the full form".…”

Captions and reduced forms instruction: The impact on EFL students’ listening comprehension

“…Reduced forms are defined as the ''phonological simplifications or variations'' (Ito, 2001) and depict ''the spontaneous pronunciation changes in adjacent words or sounds spoken at a natural speed'' (Bowen, 1975). Collectively, reduced forms designate ''the processes of contraction, elision, assimilation, and reduction'' (Brown & Hilferty, 1986).…”

Determining the Difficulty Level of Listening Tasks

“…Brown & Hilferty (1986) suggest that there is a correlation between the frequency and variety of ESL students' contractions and their proficiency in ESL. A study (Brown, 1986) of the language of six ESL students provides data that indicate that 1) contraction frequency correlates with general proficiency in English as…”

“…It is believed that providing greater preparation time in pre-task planning stage on a tape-based oral test will reduce stress and the perceived difficulty level. Brown (1986) reported other difficulty factors including inadequate response time, unfamiliar vocabulary, speed of voices on the tape, lack of clarity in instructions, unclear prompts, too much input material to process and lack of familiarity with the task type. Whereas tasks features that lead to more difficulty level can be revised, the control for the attributes of the candidate is difficult.…”