Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Box 7.5 L2 learning and listening processes
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L2 listening is an active process involving background schemas, and so on.
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Both top-down and bottom-up parsing are involved.
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Ineffective L2 students rely too much on bottom-up parsing.
Box 7.6 Listening, reading and teaching
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Build up students’ background knowledge.
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Vocabulary should be emphasized in the teaching of texts.
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Allow for students’ inherent loss of efficiency in processing the L2.
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Help students to appreciate different cultural schemas.
Teaching involves getting students both to decode messages and to codebreak
the language system from what is heard.
Discussion topics
1
How important do you now feel memory is for the student?
2
Do conventional teaching techniques strain students’ memory? If so, what
can we do about it?
3
What mental scripts pose a particular problem for L2 learners? Are these
covered satisfactorily in the classroom?
4
How can one go about supplying the background information students
would need for a particular text?
5
Do you agree from your own experience that codebreaking and decoding are
separate processes, or do you feel, like Krashen, that they are essentially the
same process?
6
Do you approve or disapprove of students codeswitching between their first
and their second language in the classroom?

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Further reading
For the areas of short-term memory processes, reading and listening, readers 
can go to the original sources referred to in the chapter, as no book-length 
SLA research treatments exist that cover the areas adequately. Intercultural 
training is provided in Cushner and Brislin (1996) Intercultural Interactions: 
A Practical Guide.
Listening and reading processes