1. Listening to
Transactional
Discourse
Oktari Aneliya

2. • What is transactional discourse?
• How do we know listeners performances on
listening transactional discourse?
• What are listening strategies to listen
transactional discourse?

3. What is transactional discourse?
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•
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Watching television program
Announcement on a train platform
Listening to news
Classroom lectures

4. How do we know listeners
performances on listening transactional
discourse?
1. On-line tasks
(activity performed
while listening)
Open task: notetaking in lectures
Closed task:
completing an
information grid

5. On-line task
open tasks: note-taking
1.
Provide some evidence of how they focus on
information during parts of lecture.
2. No clear correspondence between quantity of notes
and quality of understanding (DiViesta and
Gray, 1972; Dunkel, 1985; Chaudron et al., 1988).
3. Experienced note-takers learn to type of shorthand
and thus minimize the time they must focus on
writing (Janda, 1985).
4. Experienced listeners will take notes in accordance
with their expectations for subsequent tasks
(Dunkel, 1985; Chaudron et al., 1988).

6. Types of listener notes
Topic-relation
notes
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•
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•
Topicalizing
Translating
Copying
Transcribing
Schematizing
Conceptordering notes
• Sequence
cuing
• Hierarchy
cuing
• Relation
ordering
Focusing notes
• Highlighting
• Dehighlighting
Revising notes
• Inserting
• Erasing

7. Closed task
completing an information grid
1. Closed tasks are easier to interpret than open
tasks.
2. The listeners must at times focus on the act of
completing the grid rather than on the listening
text.
3. Completion tasks may provide useful evidence
of listener attention and understanding when
completions tasks are limited to minimal
writing, minimal visual interpretation, and
maximal attention to the spoken text.

8. How do we know listeners performances
on listening transactional discourse?
Listener representations
2. Retrospective tasks
(activity performed after
listening to a text)
Strategies for updating
representations
Type of the task:
1. Open task: summarizing
2. Closed task: multiplechoice selection

9. Listener representation
1.
Verbatim
: recall specialized terminology or
names or numbers
2. Propositional : representing the gist of a text. The
listener must select and reduce the information to a
generalization which can be later modified
(Schank, 1982).
3. Schematic
: formulaic ways of representing a
text without assigning a specific semantic
relationship.
4. Argument
: functional models of a text. They
account for what the speaker is trying to do in the
text.

10. Strategies for updating
representations
1. Context implication
: contextual cues to
generate relevant links between two or
more propositions in the text.
2. Generalization of ambiguous segment : using
a principle of analogy
3. Selection and prioritization on inferences :
identify salient lexical items or propositions
and give priority to inferences based on
these items.

11. Type of the tasks
1.
Open task : summarizing
summary-writing strategies:
- The zero strategy
- Deletion/selection
- Addition/invention
- Reduction/generalization
Evaluating summaries:
1. Effectiveness of summary.
2. Including facts which supports the main ideas.
3. Overall fluency and cohesion of the summary text.
4. Originality in wording.
(Angel and Young, 1981; Zabrucky, 1986; Flottum, 1985; Brown
and Day, 1983)

12. Type of the tasks
2. Closed task: Multiple-choice selection
individual items on m/c tests may be
considered as selected probes of text
representation rather than indications of the
listener’s understanding of the overall text.

13. How do we know listeners performances
on listening transactional discourse?
3. Prospective task (pre-listening tasks):
prediction
- Provide another indirect type of evidence of
listener text representation strategies.
- Prediction involves using a contextimplication strategy in which the listener
projects schematic expectations onto the text.

14. Strategies for updating listeners
representations of transactional
discourse
1. Formulating propositional sense for a
speaker’s utterance
- Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar lexical
items.
- Inferring information not explicitly
stated, through filling in ellipted
information, making bridging inferences.
- Inferring links between two or more
propositions.

15. 2. Formulating a conceptual framework that links utterances
together.
- Recognizing indicators of discourse for introducing an
idea, changing topic, emphasis, clarification and expansion of
points, expressing a contrary view.
- constructing a main idea or theme in a stretch of
discourse, distinguishing main points from supporting details.
- Predicting subsequent parts of the discourse at conceptual
levels.
- Identifying elements in the discourse that can help in
forming a schematic organization.
- Maintaining continuity of context to assist in prediction and
verification of propositions in the discourse.
- Selecting cues from the speaker’s text to complete a
schematic prediction.

16. Principles for developing listening skills
1. Listening ability is knowledge-based:
- The listener uses pragmatic knowledge to
estimate sense of unknown/ unclear items and
to make predictions about discourse events.
- The listener uses procedural knowledge to
accomplish tasks based on what is understood.
- The listener remembers and represents
discourse meaning in a usable form.

17. 2. Listening ability is interaction-based:
- The listener identifies understanding
problems – detecting meaning problems in
speaker’s contribution; identifying
inadequacy of speaker’s message for task at
hand.
- The listener demonstrates understanding or
non-understanding in an appropriate way.
- The listener, in some settings, collaborates
with an interlocutor to arrive at acceptable
mutual understanding or to accomplish
collaborative task.