DEVELOPING LISTENING FLUENCY

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convinced me of its correctness. After you have heard my reasoning and weighed my evidence, you may judge my conclusions; and your judgment may possibly change mine. Until then, I ask you to "listen" with patience and without prejudice.

What is the new paradigm? Simplistically, it asserts that listening should be taught first and foremost and that oral response should be delayed until listening fluency is well started. At another level of explanation, it asserts that language acquisition can and does take place without any overt performance and, therefore, the primary methodology of language teaching is to create the stimulus conditions which facilitate the attentive and retentive transformation of sound information into an internal cognitive structure or language competence. Finally, the paradigm asserts that language performances, such as speaking, occur after language competence has been acquired, and are guided by that acquired competence. In other words, the new paradigm is focused on language acquisition as distinguished from language performance learning.

Asher has recommended that "for at least one semester in college or six months to a year in high school, the goal of foreign language learning should be listening fluency only".¹³The listening fluency should be so keen that when the student visits Mexico, he can understand almost anything he hears on the street, on television, or on the radio. When this level of comprehension is achieved, the student may be ready for a graceful transition to speaking Spanish. Winitz and Reeds completely agree with this position.
lt is a well documented fact that comprehension precedes speaking in the young child.
.. We regard this sequence of development--comprehension first, production
second-- a functional property of the human brain, which should not be violated in
language instruction. Therefore, we take the point of view that foreign language
instruction should discourage speaking until a high degree of comprehension is
achieved, that is until the student can understand a non-technical conversation and
decode it with ease.^{1 4}
For those who are strongly response oriented, who believe that some sort of speech training is required to learn correct speech, Winitz is clear and uncompromising. "One may ask, is speech production not taught at all? Our answer is an emphatic yes".¹⁵ Winitz makes a clear distinction between allowing students to speak andforcing students to speak.
Speech should be responded to appropriately by clinicians since language will often be
used by children to indicate understanding... however, we do not recommend
mimicry, pattern drills or chaining of words as clinical techniques.¹⁶ Postovsky recognized that speaking was not necessary for the learning of other language skills when he was first involved with a Russian course for stenographers. The course was primarily one of listening to Russian and writing down what was said. While the teaching itself required no speaking, Postovsky was surprised near the conclusion of the course when he found that the "stenographers" could not only listen to and write Russian, they could also speak it. What startled Postovsky the most was that in conversations between the "stenographers" and students from his own "A-L" class, the "stenographers" often spoke Russian with better pronunciation and with fewer grammatical mistakes than the members of his regular "A-L" course.¹⁷His findings led him to prepare a course in which oral response (speaking) was delayed for 180 hours, and then introduced only gradually-- no more than 25 minutes out of a six-hour day at first, and finally up to 90 minutes out of a sixhour day at the end of the course.¹⁸

The "A-L" paradigm, including modern modifications of it, involves listening. But in the classroom focused on speaking, a student "listens" not so much to comprehend as to mimic (in repetition drill) or to respond in correct form (in pattern response drill). Active oral

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JAMES R. NORD

response has and continues to receive far more attention than aural comprehension.

Problems arise in achieving functional listening ability when a course is developed according to the "A-L" approach and focuses on "oral production" rather than on "aural comprehension". Even the basic materials are not readily useful for a listening approach. First, the emphasis on speaking severely limits the amount of listening comprehension normally taught since it restricts the exposure of vocabulary and structure to those which can and should be spoken. It also limits the type of listening which can be practiced. In most courses oriented to the productive mode of speaking, the vocabulary selection is based less on the actual frequency of use and more on the "utility" from the point of view of the speaker. Finally, the rate one can learn listening comprehension is restricted by the rate at which one can learn to speak, generally a much slower rate.

Many of the early advocates of the "oral approach" recognized the distinction between listening and speaking or receptive and productive skills. Fries, for example, pointed out,
The two complementary aspects of communication are recognized in the two phrases
"oral production" and " receptive understanding" . It seems important to recognize
the fact that one's mastery of any language--even of one's own native language--is
always on two major levels, production and recognition".^{1 9}
He went on to point out,
These two levels are practically never equal. The range of "words" that we can
recognize and understand exceeds that of the "words" we actually use in speech or
even in writing.²⁰
Then, however, he rejected the distinction from any but a conceptual point of view. He stated,
This recognition of the differences between the productive and the receptive controls
of the language does not imply a mechanical separation of the materials into
"practices" in producing for the sake of production only and "practices" in recognition
for the sake of receiving only.²¹

And then he expressed the primary position of the behaviorist school of learning, the basic assumption of the speaking paradigm. "As a matter of fact, practice in production is one of the best means of developing recognition".^{2 2}

This assumption that "practice in production (speaking) is one of the best means of developing recognition (listening)" is not a "matter of fact" . It is an opinion held by many. It is a theoretical position used to justify a general practice. But it is not a matter of fact or data. This paper will argue the other point of view, that "... Iistening carefully in order to hear accurately may be used to advantage in learning to produce"²³, but that speaking before understanding can be detrimental. There appears to be extensive evidence to support the positive transfer from listening to speaking. There also appears to be little evidence of transfer from speaking to listening.

Simon Belasco writes that at the end of the 1960-61 Pennsylvania State University French Institute, he was "jolted by the realization that it is possible to develop so-called 'speaking' ability (vocalizing) and yet be virtually incompetent in understanding the spoken language".²⁴For many years, investigators of child behavior have noted that when children learn their first language, listening comprehension of many complex utterances is demonstrated before these children produce any intelligible speech .^{2 5}There are also cases of youngsters, who because of congenital disability, can never learn to speak; yet they learn to comprehend and are not prevented from comprehending the language because of their inability to speak.²⁶On the other hand, children with listening difficulties, such as deafness, have very great difficulties over learning how to speak.