I’ve been teaching English for about 17 or 18 years now and I’ve seen lots of listening mistakes that are common among the students. One of the common mistakes that my students make is assuming what they heard. This is a pernicious mistake because you’re not aware of making it at all. Furthermore, it stems from some good intentions. It’s also based in the way the brain works.
How the Brain Works
You see the brain likes to find patterns. If it finds an incomplete pattern it fills in the blanks. As an example, suppose you write an A on the board. You ask the students what it is, and they say “It’s an A”. Naturally, they are correct and they have done a good job. Now suppose we write an A on the board but we erase some parts of the lines. What remains on the board is similar to an A, but it is incomplete.
Simple Example
If you ask the students at this point what is on the board most of the students who are familiar with English will say “It’s an A” . Once again, they are correct. You wrote an A and erased parts of the line but it was intended to be an “A”. It’s still an “A” even though some parts are missing. The brain looks for a recognizable pattern and will fill in parts to make the pattern recognizable.
Listening Problems
This is how it is with listening as well. The students listen to someone speaking, but they can’t make out all the words completely. This may be due to several reasons. Perhaps the speaking was unclear. Or the pronunciation of the spoken English differs from the written form, or the words have been reduced, or the student may not be able to remember all that information at once. Whatever the reason, they did not ‘get’ all the words. Their brain then tries to fill in the gaps based on prior experience.
A Real Actual Listening Problem Example
I had just such an experience today with one of my students.
I asked the question: “Do you like TV?”
She answered “Yes, I do.”
Then I asked, “Do you have a pet?”
She again answered “Yes, I do.”
Then I asked “Do you read books?”
Then she had difficulty, finally she said “No, I don’t.” This is an acceptable answer, but I thought perhaps it was not the correct answer, so I checked with her in Japanese to ascertain whether in fact she reads books. We discovered that she had two problems. The first was confusing the word “book” with “box”, and the second, she had assumed that I was asking if she liked them. She had experience with “Do you like ~”, and “Do you have ~” but she had very little or no experience with “Do you ~ ” followed by different verbs. So she filled in the gap she experienced with a word that she had experience with. This was the word “like”. She also had trouble recognizing the word book, and pattern matched to the word “box” which she knew better.
To Students
How can you avoid this problem? It is difficult to avoid completely but there is a simple action you can take to reduce these mistakes. Simply repeat what you hear. Practice repeating things you do not understand. Practice with a teacher is best at the beginning. Your aim is not to understand. Your aim is to reproduce the sounds as best you can. This has to become a habit. When you can reproduce the sounds reliably, you have built leeway into your listening skill. You can now listen and repeat and compare the sounds your mouth is making with the words you are thinking.
In the case of my student, she would probably notice that although she was thinking the word “like”, in fact it was not similar to the sound her mouth was making, which was “read”. Then she can go back and give more attention to the words her mouth said. If she still could not understand, then she could ask for help.
Repeat to Prevent Listening Problems
Simply repeating everything you hear, in particular the questions, vastly improves the communication in my experience.
The biggest difficulty is making the habit of repeating the words that you hear.
Good luck!
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