- Email: [email protected]
Reasons for listening
REVIEWS
303
Si l'ont peut utilement consulter ce dictionnaire b. c6t6 du DFC, il va de soi q u ' o n le conseillera encore davantage pour compldter un dictionnaire c o m m e le Petit Robert. Voici un dictionnaire de synonymes qui, grfice a son principe contextuel et collocationnel, est extr~mement profitable pour qui veut produire des textes de francais langue 6trangbre. Une suggestion: un index des bases de collocation permettrait de valoriser encore plus ce dictionnaire. I1 s'agirait tout simplement de relever les substantifs qui servent de bases aux verbes et aux adjectifs. Ainsi ~. l'article donner on trouve la collocation administrer une gifle, comme on trouve ~ l'article rapide la collocation un coup d'oeilfurtif. Ne pourraiton pas r6unir dans un index gifle et coup d'oeil avec renvoi aux articles donner et rapide? A peu de frais, le dictionnaire permettrait de cette fa¢on l'acc6s au collocatif non seulement par voie de synonymes mais encore ~ partir de sa base textuelle. Franz Josef H a u s m a n n lnstitut ftir Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft Universit~it Erlangen-N~rnberg Gl~ickstrafSe 5 D-8520 Erlangen R6publique F6derale d'Allemagne
Lynch, Tony, Study Listening. Understanding Lectures and Talks in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Student's Book, iv + 92pp., £2.25; Guide for Teachers and Self-Study, iv + 92pp., £3.50; 4 Cassettes (duration 205 minutes approx.), £22.50. Scarbrough, David, Reasons for Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Book, 144pp., £2.95; 2 Cassettes (duration 113 minutes approx.), £12.00. St Clair Stokes, Jacqueline, Elementary Task Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Student's Book, i v + 4 4 p p . , £1.95; Teacher's Book, viii+ 107pp., £5.50; Cassette (duration 33 minutes approx.), £6.00. The materials considered in this small survey are addressed to clearly distinct groups of students. While Elementary Task Listening (ETL) aims at the lower end of the proficiency scale ("elementary and lower-intermediate students", back cover), Reasons for Listening (RfL) and Study Listening (SL) class their prospective users at the upper end of the scale: RfL is designed for students "at upper-intermediate and more advanced levels" (back cover), whereas SL tries to be useful to learners " f r o m intermediate level u p w a r d s " (back cover). (The gap between ETL and R f L / S L can be bridged by a further Listening Comprehension course from C . U . P . , viz., Task Listening, by Lesley Blundell and Jackie Stokes, which was published in 1981). While the difference between ETL and RfL is mainly in the level of proficiency addressed, SL differs from RfL in that the former tries to develop a special kind of listening skill: the ability to understand lectures, talks, presentations, seminars, etc.
ETL consists of 21 units covering a wide range of different thematic orientation. There are units dealing with travelling and tourists' activities, such as changing travellers cheques, reserving hotel accommodation, and visiting places of interest. Some units are obviously
meant to help find one',~ \~a} in foreign smroundings, e.g. working ottt how to, Ev~ downtown, finding a garage, making enquiries in a department store; others deal with even more " o r d i n a r y " activities such as describing someone, making a drink, o~ suggesting ~ birthday present. The main poinl ~n each unit is, of course, the listening text and the lask connected with it, but, in addition, each unit provides material for a reading and a writi[l~ exercise. The tape recordings of E T L are presented as being of "unscripted English spoken at normal speed" (Teacher's Book', vii). While this is true of most of the recordings, there are exceptions: one of the recordings is most likely based on scripted material (Unit 5), while another one (Unit 4) is rathe[ rapid (perhaps too rapid for the learner level addressed). The recordings are comparatively short, varying between 40 seconds and 2 minutes 24 seconds, with the majority bet,aeen I and 2 minutes in length. Nearly all of then1 in\.ol,,e two speakers, one of whom i>, in sexerat cases, an American speaker, whi{e a fev, recordings present non-native English (by Japanese, French, Spanish, and Swiss German speakers). The Stuclent~s' Book, which is to be used like a workbook, has two pages to go with each unit; on the left hand page, there is the task to be completed in connection with the listening, wilile the right hand page provide~ material for additional reading and writing activities. To do the listening tasks the studenl has to fill in some missing information, to decide whether a particular piece oi information ~a~ given or not, or to do some rearrangement of items which have been mixed up. The reading and writing tasks vary in kind and includc things like filling in a U.K. landing card, writing directions to a particular place on a street map, and completing or writine ,,hort letter,, The Teacher's Book to ETI_ is comparatively extensive: For each of the units it presents the objectives, information about the tape recording, and suggestions for the teaching procedure. The Teacher's Book has no key in the traditional sense, but reproduces the two pages of the Student's Book with the answers to the listening and writing tasks filled in. In addition to the tapescript, ~he information about the recording includes details of length, number of speakers, accents and setting. The tapescript is followed by the key language section which contains the main lexis and structures from the recorded text. The suggestions for the teaching procedure mainly provide ideas on how to introduce the listening task and how to make sure that the students know the key expressions necessary for completing the listening, reading and writing tasks of the unit.
Reasons f o r Listening consists of 10 sections each of which contains up to four recordings; there are 27 of them altogether. [ h e headings of the sections show the variety of listening material offered: It ranges from short telephone messages, news summaries, and announcements (airport, railway station), over talks (that individuals give about themselves), documentaries (like " A visil to a sausage factory") and stories, to sports commentaries, interviews (with for example, Michael Parkinson), and discussions (on social class in Britain and America, for example). Each recording is accompanied in the book by a few lines in which the author tries to give a "reason {or listening", i.e. to say why someone would have an interest in listening to the material in question. There follows, under the respective headings of "Before listening", "[.istening", "After listening once", or "After listening", a variety of tasks, which differ in kind and demand from recording to recording. Randomly chosen examples of tasks are: to identify from a football commentary which of a list of footballers plays for which team; ~o fill in the missing words in a written version of a story
after having listened to it; to answer questions on some bits of information given in the recording. The book that goes with the two cassettes contains, in addition to the "reasons" and the tasks, the complete transcripts of the recordings as well as the key to the tasks. A few introductory remarks address the student, while the book closes with some advice for the teacher on how to use the material. At the end of each section (except for sections 1, 6, and 10), a wordlist is given presenting explanations for those items of vocabulary that are most likely unknown to the student; there are between 7 and 31 items per text, with a total of 380 expressions explained and an average of 17 expressions per texl. Scarbrough presents tile recordings of his course as examples of "authentic language" (p. 4). If " a u t h e n t i c " here is to mean 'not produced for the sake of being used as material for a course on listening comprehension', this can hardly be said of several recordings, such as the "telephone messages" for example, which are obviously 'made up', or of " A weekend in L o n d o n " , where the text can be identified as 'invented' simply by looking at the "reason for listening", given on p. 27 ( " Y o u have booked a weekend holiday in London and the tour organizers have sent you a recorded description of the programme together with a map").
Study Listening consists of 20 units and is subdivided into four phases, preceded by the introductory Unit 1. In Phase 1 (Units 2-6), the student is taught to find central information in single sentences: The units of this phase provide opportunities to practice recognizing spoken sentences (Unit 2); to identify the means of voice emphasis used to stress a word or a phrase (Unit 3); to recognize certain phrases used by speakers as importance markers (Unit 4); and to practice the skill of guessing information which one has not actually heard or understood (Unit 5). Phase 1 ends with a first attempt at note-taking from excerpts of talks (Unit 6). The central issue in Phase 2 (Units 7-12) is tile problem of recognizing tile connections between sentences. These connections are constituted by the chains of reference that a talk contains (Unit 7); ideas or facts can be related furthermore by using addition markers (Unit 8), and connections can be sho~vn by the contrast between ideas (Unit 9) or by the relation of cause and effect (Unit 10); simple listing of different points is again another way of connecting them (Unit 11). In Unit 12, the student is given initial practice in taking notes from a complete talk. Phase 3 (Units 13-16) practices evaluating the importance of information. Unit 13 tells the student how to recognize the sections of a talk; Unit 14 shows typical ways in which speakers recycle important points and ideas; Unit 15 looks at how speakers expand their argument through explanations and examples; Unit 16 practices listening for the most important points in a talk. While students work on parts of talks in Phases 1-3, Phase 4 (Units 17-20) is entirely devoted to note-taking from complete talks lasting from 13 to 23 minutes. Units 17-20 do not focus on different methodological and practical issues with regard to note-taking, but simply present different topics: "Competition for land use" (Unit 17); "Preventi\e medicine" (Unit 18), " M i c r o t e c h n o l o g y " (Unit 19), and "Development and aid" (Unit 20). Apart from Units 12 and 17-20 (i.e. those that deal \vith actual note-taking), each unit begins with a few theoretical remarks on the special topic to be treated in the unit. (These remarks could equally well be read as hints for speakers oil ho\~ to structure and organize a talk). There follow, in most units, several discussion points (~arying m number from 2 to 8 per unit), which prepare the ground for the listening exercises. These listening exercises (up to 6 per unit) constitute, of course, the most important part of each unit; the tasks
!/)e,
REVIEWS
to be completed with the help of the extracts on tape vary in kind and difficultx : the ,,rudest[ starts by, for example, writing down no more lhan single words or phrasc~, goes on t~ take a few notes on particular aspects o t the talks, and ends up with extcnsi~ c n o t c - t a k ~ g on complete talks. S o m e o f the units close on a "final n o t e " or on further suggestio,:~ for post-listening discussions. The Student's Book is, here as well, conceived like a w o r k b o o k with space left blank to fill in the solutions and notes. The complete transcripts o f the five talks which furnish most o f the material o f the whole course are given at the end o f the Sludenl "~Book, while the answer key with the transcriptions o f the extracts from the talks and with possible notes (solutions) is contained in the Guide Jbr Teachers and Self Study. The most valuable and most welcome o f the three courses under survey will be, I think, L y n c h ' s Study Listening, followed by Elementary Task Listening, and then Reasons j o t Listening. SL is the one course which actually tries to teach special skills and strategies in the area o f listening comprehension, and does not content itself with simply testing whether or not students can understand the recorded texts. This basic a p p r o a c h requires the student to work his way t h r o u g h all the units, which show a clear progression, whereas there is no need to work systematically t h r o u g h either RfL or ETL as their units/sections are not arranged in any particular order o f difficulty. The solution adopted for the problem o f vocabulary explanation, however, is one minor weak point o f SL: As the number of words explained is extremely low (about 20 altogether), the choice cannot be but arbitrary (while soft drink is explained, rickets or disincentive are not). It would have been more sensible either not to give any explanations at all, or to give a lot more than are actuall:,, given; RfL and ETL do m u c h better in this respect. The strong point o f St Clair Stokes' Elementary Task Listening is undoubtedly' its Teacher's Book, which contains very detailed suggestions for the teaching procedure to be followed with each unit. Especially helpful for the teacher will be the range of activities proposed to be carried out before having the students tackle the listening tasks. S c a r b r o u g h ' s Reasons f o r Listening is hardly more than another collection o f listening materials; as it indeed covers " a variety o f situations" and gives students ',a wide range o f listening practice" (back cover), it comes as no surprise that there is " g o o d " material (such as the c o m m e n t a r i e s or the interviews o f sections 4 and 5) and " b a d " material (like the stories o f section 9); selection on the user's part is really necessary here. A last remark on the title o f S c a r b r o u g h ' s course: It obviously becomes more and more difficult to find an original title for o n e ' s course, as we have seen quite a few new listening comprehension courses appear during the last five years or so (I am not implying that there have been too m a n y or even e n o u g h courses); Scarbrough has indeed f o u n d a reasonably original title, but he strains it a bit too much: He stresses the importance of the "reason for listening" in his instructions to the teacher and to the student ( " A l w a y s ensure that the reason for listening is fully considered before the recording is p l a y e d " , p. 143), and he gives one or these reasons for each and every one o f the 27 recordings. But the reasons given (between 2 and 9 lines per recording) are in most cases hardly more than trivial (el. for example, section 8, stories, " T h e interview": " T h e reason for listening to this story is to be entertained by a piece of g o o d w r i t i n g " , p. 68; or, section 4, commentaries, " H o r s e r a c e " : " Y o u ,a.ill listen to this c o m m e n t a r y if you have an interest in horse racing and you want to know how each horse p e r f o r m s " , p. 41).
REVIEWS
3()~
The technical quality of the recordings as well as that of the printed material (layout, illustrations, etc.) is excellent with all three courses. The transcripts are very precise and contain all the repetitions, false starts, and hesitation phenomena of unscripted speech While RfL and ETL still stick to the convention of sentential segmentation (except for the sports commentaries in RfL), SL transcribes the pauses in the speech stream simply by vertical strokes, without using any punctuation marks. O f the minor divergences between transcripts and recordings, I will list the following three: ETL--p. 37, 1. 22 should read seventy-eight (instead of twenty-eight); RfL--p. 106, 1. 17 should read I wish it had happened (instead of I wish it happened); SL--p. 91, 1. 58 should read that (instead of which). Jens Bahns Englisches Seminar der Christian-Albrechts-Universit~it Sprachlabor Olshausenstr. 40, Haus N 50 d D-2300 Kiel 1 Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Bufe, Wolfgang, Deichsel, Ingo und Dethloff, Uwe (eds.), Fernsehen und Fremdsprachenlernen. Untersuchungen zur audio-visuellen Informationsverarbeitung: Theorie und didaktische Auswirkungen. T0bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1984, 309 pp., DM 46.00. Die 0blichen, grenznahen Infiltrationszonen des Fernsehens einmal beiseite gelassen, verffigte man im Saarland, jenem Scharnier zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich, 1970 bereits tiber Moglichkeiten, die dem ~brigen Europa praktisch erst mit Beginn des Satellitenfernsehens 15 Jahre sp~.ter zug~inglich wurden bzw. werden. Nach Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunkts " S p r a c h l e h r f o r s c h u n g " im Jahre 1973 begann man am Romanischen Seminar der Universit~.t Saarbriicken damit, die bereits vorliegenden positiven Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz authentischer Fernsehsendungen aus Frankreich in der Sprachausbildung deutscher Studenten kritisch zu hinterfragen. In dem vorliegenden Sammelband setzen Autoren und Herausgeber einen vorl~iufigen SchluBpunkt unter ihre jahrelangen Bemtihungen. Mit Blick auf das die Nationalgrenzen uberwindende Satellitenfernsehen fragt man sich nat/irlich, welchen Beitrag die saarl~.ndischen Forscher far den Tag X geleistet haben. Welches sind ihre Fragestellungen, Methoden, Ergebnisse? Wit werden uns auf zwei der Beitr~.ge konzentrieren und deshalb vorab die Autoren nennen, deren Aufs~.tze es aus Platzgriinden unm6glich war, einer ausf/ihrlichen Wiirdigung zu unterziehen: Hans Scherer: Audiovisuelle Informationsaufnahme. Eine theoretische Skizze (pp. 19-47) Hubert D. Zimmer: Kognitionspsychologische Aspekte des Fremdsprachenerwerbs oder visuelle und verbale Komponenten der W o r t b e d e u t u n g im Fremdsprachenerwerb (pp. 49-66)
303
Si l'ont peut utilement consulter ce dictionnaire b. c6t6 du DFC, il va de soi q u ' o n le conseillera encore davantage pour compldter un dictionnaire c o m m e le Petit Robert. Voici un dictionnaire de synonymes qui, grfice a son principe contextuel et collocationnel, est extr~mement profitable pour qui veut produire des textes de francais langue 6trangbre. Une suggestion: un index des bases de collocation permettrait de valoriser encore plus ce dictionnaire. I1 s'agirait tout simplement de relever les substantifs qui servent de bases aux verbes et aux adjectifs. Ainsi ~. l'article donner on trouve la collocation administrer une gifle, comme on trouve ~ l'article rapide la collocation un coup d'oeilfurtif. Ne pourraiton pas r6unir dans un index gifle et coup d'oeil avec renvoi aux articles donner et rapide? A peu de frais, le dictionnaire permettrait de cette fa¢on l'acc6s au collocatif non seulement par voie de synonymes mais encore ~ partir de sa base textuelle. Franz Josef H a u s m a n n lnstitut ftir Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft Universit~it Erlangen-N~rnberg Gl~ickstrafSe 5 D-8520 Erlangen R6publique F6derale d'Allemagne
Lynch, Tony, Study Listening. Understanding Lectures and Talks in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Student's Book, iv + 92pp., £2.25; Guide for Teachers and Self-Study, iv + 92pp., £3.50; 4 Cassettes (duration 205 minutes approx.), £22.50. Scarbrough, David, Reasons for Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Book, 144pp., £2.95; 2 Cassettes (duration 113 minutes approx.), £12.00. St Clair Stokes, Jacqueline, Elementary Task Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Student's Book, i v + 4 4 p p . , £1.95; Teacher's Book, viii+ 107pp., £5.50; Cassette (duration 33 minutes approx.), £6.00. The materials considered in this small survey are addressed to clearly distinct groups of students. While Elementary Task Listening (ETL) aims at the lower end of the proficiency scale ("elementary and lower-intermediate students", back cover), Reasons for Listening (RfL) and Study Listening (SL) class their prospective users at the upper end of the scale: RfL is designed for students "at upper-intermediate and more advanced levels" (back cover), whereas SL tries to be useful to learners " f r o m intermediate level u p w a r d s " (back cover). (The gap between ETL and R f L / S L can be bridged by a further Listening Comprehension course from C . U . P . , viz., Task Listening, by Lesley Blundell and Jackie Stokes, which was published in 1981). While the difference between ETL and RfL is mainly in the level of proficiency addressed, SL differs from RfL in that the former tries to develop a special kind of listening skill: the ability to understand lectures, talks, presentations, seminars, etc.
ETL consists of 21 units covering a wide range of different thematic orientation. There are units dealing with travelling and tourists' activities, such as changing travellers cheques, reserving hotel accommodation, and visiting places of interest. Some units are obviously
meant to help find one',~ \~a} in foreign smroundings, e.g. working ottt how to, Ev~ downtown, finding a garage, making enquiries in a department store; others deal with even more " o r d i n a r y " activities such as describing someone, making a drink, o~ suggesting ~ birthday present. The main poinl ~n each unit is, of course, the listening text and the lask connected with it, but, in addition, each unit provides material for a reading and a writi[l~ exercise. The tape recordings of E T L are presented as being of "unscripted English spoken at normal speed" (Teacher's Book', vii). While this is true of most of the recordings, there are exceptions: one of the recordings is most likely based on scripted material (Unit 5), while another one (Unit 4) is rathe[ rapid (perhaps too rapid for the learner level addressed). The recordings are comparatively short, varying between 40 seconds and 2 minutes 24 seconds, with the majority bet,aeen I and 2 minutes in length. Nearly all of then1 in\.ol,,e two speakers, one of whom i>, in sexerat cases, an American speaker, whi{e a fev, recordings present non-native English (by Japanese, French, Spanish, and Swiss German speakers). The Stuclent~s' Book, which is to be used like a workbook, has two pages to go with each unit; on the left hand page, there is the task to be completed in connection with the listening, wilile the right hand page provide~ material for additional reading and writing activities. To do the listening tasks the studenl has to fill in some missing information, to decide whether a particular piece oi information ~a~ given or not, or to do some rearrangement of items which have been mixed up. The reading and writing tasks vary in kind and includc things like filling in a U.K. landing card, writing directions to a particular place on a street map, and completing or writine ,,hort letter,, The Teacher's Book to ETI_ is comparatively extensive: For each of the units it presents the objectives, information about the tape recording, and suggestions for the teaching procedure. The Teacher's Book has no key in the traditional sense, but reproduces the two pages of the Student's Book with the answers to the listening and writing tasks filled in. In addition to the tapescript, ~he information about the recording includes details of length, number of speakers, accents and setting. The tapescript is followed by the key language section which contains the main lexis and structures from the recorded text. The suggestions for the teaching procedure mainly provide ideas on how to introduce the listening task and how to make sure that the students know the key expressions necessary for completing the listening, reading and writing tasks of the unit.
Reasons f o r Listening consists of 10 sections each of which contains up to four recordings; there are 27 of them altogether. [ h e headings of the sections show the variety of listening material offered: It ranges from short telephone messages, news summaries, and announcements (airport, railway station), over talks (that individuals give about themselves), documentaries (like " A visil to a sausage factory") and stories, to sports commentaries, interviews (with for example, Michael Parkinson), and discussions (on social class in Britain and America, for example). Each recording is accompanied in the book by a few lines in which the author tries to give a "reason {or listening", i.e. to say why someone would have an interest in listening to the material in question. There follows, under the respective headings of "Before listening", "[.istening", "After listening once", or "After listening", a variety of tasks, which differ in kind and demand from recording to recording. Randomly chosen examples of tasks are: to identify from a football commentary which of a list of footballers plays for which team; ~o fill in the missing words in a written version of a story
after having listened to it; to answer questions on some bits of information given in the recording. The book that goes with the two cassettes contains, in addition to the "reasons" and the tasks, the complete transcripts of the recordings as well as the key to the tasks. A few introductory remarks address the student, while the book closes with some advice for the teacher on how to use the material. At the end of each section (except for sections 1, 6, and 10), a wordlist is given presenting explanations for those items of vocabulary that are most likely unknown to the student; there are between 7 and 31 items per text, with a total of 380 expressions explained and an average of 17 expressions per texl. Scarbrough presents tile recordings of his course as examples of "authentic language" (p. 4). If " a u t h e n t i c " here is to mean 'not produced for the sake of being used as material for a course on listening comprehension', this can hardly be said of several recordings, such as the "telephone messages" for example, which are obviously 'made up', or of " A weekend in L o n d o n " , where the text can be identified as 'invented' simply by looking at the "reason for listening", given on p. 27 ( " Y o u have booked a weekend holiday in London and the tour organizers have sent you a recorded description of the programme together with a map").
Study Listening consists of 20 units and is subdivided into four phases, preceded by the introductory Unit 1. In Phase 1 (Units 2-6), the student is taught to find central information in single sentences: The units of this phase provide opportunities to practice recognizing spoken sentences (Unit 2); to identify the means of voice emphasis used to stress a word or a phrase (Unit 3); to recognize certain phrases used by speakers as importance markers (Unit 4); and to practice the skill of guessing information which one has not actually heard or understood (Unit 5). Phase 1 ends with a first attempt at note-taking from excerpts of talks (Unit 6). The central issue in Phase 2 (Units 7-12) is tile problem of recognizing tile connections between sentences. These connections are constituted by the chains of reference that a talk contains (Unit 7); ideas or facts can be related furthermore by using addition markers (Unit 8), and connections can be sho~vn by the contrast between ideas (Unit 9) or by the relation of cause and effect (Unit 10); simple listing of different points is again another way of connecting them (Unit 11). In Unit 12, the student is given initial practice in taking notes from a complete talk. Phase 3 (Units 13-16) practices evaluating the importance of information. Unit 13 tells the student how to recognize the sections of a talk; Unit 14 shows typical ways in which speakers recycle important points and ideas; Unit 15 looks at how speakers expand their argument through explanations and examples; Unit 16 practices listening for the most important points in a talk. While students work on parts of talks in Phases 1-3, Phase 4 (Units 17-20) is entirely devoted to note-taking from complete talks lasting from 13 to 23 minutes. Units 17-20 do not focus on different methodological and practical issues with regard to note-taking, but simply present different topics: "Competition for land use" (Unit 17); "Preventi\e medicine" (Unit 18), " M i c r o t e c h n o l o g y " (Unit 19), and "Development and aid" (Unit 20). Apart from Units 12 and 17-20 (i.e. those that deal \vith actual note-taking), each unit begins with a few theoretical remarks on the special topic to be treated in the unit. (These remarks could equally well be read as hints for speakers oil ho\~ to structure and organize a talk). There follow, in most units, several discussion points (~arying m number from 2 to 8 per unit), which prepare the ground for the listening exercises. These listening exercises (up to 6 per unit) constitute, of course, the most important part of each unit; the tasks
!/)e,
REVIEWS
to be completed with the help of the extracts on tape vary in kind and difficultx : the ,,rudest[ starts by, for example, writing down no more lhan single words or phrasc~, goes on t~ take a few notes on particular aspects o t the talks, and ends up with extcnsi~ c n o t c - t a k ~ g on complete talks. S o m e o f the units close on a "final n o t e " or on further suggestio,:~ for post-listening discussions. The Student's Book is, here as well, conceived like a w o r k b o o k with space left blank to fill in the solutions and notes. The complete transcripts o f the five talks which furnish most o f the material o f the whole course are given at the end o f the Sludenl "~Book, while the answer key with the transcriptions o f the extracts from the talks and with possible notes (solutions) is contained in the Guide Jbr Teachers and Self Study. The most valuable and most welcome o f the three courses under survey will be, I think, L y n c h ' s Study Listening, followed by Elementary Task Listening, and then Reasons j o t Listening. SL is the one course which actually tries to teach special skills and strategies in the area o f listening comprehension, and does not content itself with simply testing whether or not students can understand the recorded texts. This basic a p p r o a c h requires the student to work his way t h r o u g h all the units, which show a clear progression, whereas there is no need to work systematically t h r o u g h either RfL or ETL as their units/sections are not arranged in any particular order o f difficulty. The solution adopted for the problem o f vocabulary explanation, however, is one minor weak point o f SL: As the number of words explained is extremely low (about 20 altogether), the choice cannot be but arbitrary (while soft drink is explained, rickets or disincentive are not). It would have been more sensible either not to give any explanations at all, or to give a lot more than are actuall:,, given; RfL and ETL do m u c h better in this respect. The strong point o f St Clair Stokes' Elementary Task Listening is undoubtedly' its Teacher's Book, which contains very detailed suggestions for the teaching procedure to be followed with each unit. Especially helpful for the teacher will be the range of activities proposed to be carried out before having the students tackle the listening tasks. S c a r b r o u g h ' s Reasons f o r Listening is hardly more than another collection o f listening materials; as it indeed covers " a variety o f situations" and gives students ',a wide range o f listening practice" (back cover), it comes as no surprise that there is " g o o d " material (such as the c o m m e n t a r i e s or the interviews o f sections 4 and 5) and " b a d " material (like the stories o f section 9); selection on the user's part is really necessary here. A last remark on the title o f S c a r b r o u g h ' s course: It obviously becomes more and more difficult to find an original title for o n e ' s course, as we have seen quite a few new listening comprehension courses appear during the last five years or so (I am not implying that there have been too m a n y or even e n o u g h courses); Scarbrough has indeed f o u n d a reasonably original title, but he strains it a bit too much: He stresses the importance of the "reason for listening" in his instructions to the teacher and to the student ( " A l w a y s ensure that the reason for listening is fully considered before the recording is p l a y e d " , p. 143), and he gives one or these reasons for each and every one o f the 27 recordings. But the reasons given (between 2 and 9 lines per recording) are in most cases hardly more than trivial (el. for example, section 8, stories, " T h e interview": " T h e reason for listening to this story is to be entertained by a piece of g o o d w r i t i n g " , p. 68; or, section 4, commentaries, " H o r s e r a c e " : " Y o u ,a.ill listen to this c o m m e n t a r y if you have an interest in horse racing and you want to know how each horse p e r f o r m s " , p. 41).
REVIEWS
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The technical quality of the recordings as well as that of the printed material (layout, illustrations, etc.) is excellent with all three courses. The transcripts are very precise and contain all the repetitions, false starts, and hesitation phenomena of unscripted speech While RfL and ETL still stick to the convention of sentential segmentation (except for the sports commentaries in RfL), SL transcribes the pauses in the speech stream simply by vertical strokes, without using any punctuation marks. O f the minor divergences between transcripts and recordings, I will list the following three: ETL--p. 37, 1. 22 should read seventy-eight (instead of twenty-eight); RfL--p. 106, 1. 17 should read I wish it had happened (instead of I wish it happened); SL--p. 91, 1. 58 should read that (instead of which). Jens Bahns Englisches Seminar der Christian-Albrechts-Universit~it Sprachlabor Olshausenstr. 40, Haus N 50 d D-2300 Kiel 1 Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Bufe, Wolfgang, Deichsel, Ingo und Dethloff, Uwe (eds.), Fernsehen und Fremdsprachenlernen. Untersuchungen zur audio-visuellen Informationsverarbeitung: Theorie und didaktische Auswirkungen. T0bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1984, 309 pp., DM 46.00. Die 0blichen, grenznahen Infiltrationszonen des Fernsehens einmal beiseite gelassen, verffigte man im Saarland, jenem Scharnier zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich, 1970 bereits tiber Moglichkeiten, die dem ~brigen Europa praktisch erst mit Beginn des Satellitenfernsehens 15 Jahre sp~.ter zug~inglich wurden bzw. werden. Nach Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunkts " S p r a c h l e h r f o r s c h u n g " im Jahre 1973 begann man am Romanischen Seminar der Universit~.t Saarbriicken damit, die bereits vorliegenden positiven Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz authentischer Fernsehsendungen aus Frankreich in der Sprachausbildung deutscher Studenten kritisch zu hinterfragen. In dem vorliegenden Sammelband setzen Autoren und Herausgeber einen vorl~iufigen SchluBpunkt unter ihre jahrelangen Bemtihungen. Mit Blick auf das die Nationalgrenzen uberwindende Satellitenfernsehen fragt man sich nat/irlich, welchen Beitrag die saarl~.ndischen Forscher far den Tag X geleistet haben. Welches sind ihre Fragestellungen, Methoden, Ergebnisse? Wit werden uns auf zwei der Beitr~.ge konzentrieren und deshalb vorab die Autoren nennen, deren Aufs~.tze es aus Platzgriinden unm6glich war, einer ausf/ihrlichen Wiirdigung zu unterziehen: Hans Scherer: Audiovisuelle Informationsaufnahme. Eine theoretische Skizze (pp. 19-47) Hubert D. Zimmer: Kognitionspsychologische Aspekte des Fremdsprachenerwerbs oder visuelle und verbale Komponenten der W o r t b e d e u t u n g im Fremdsprachenerwerb (pp. 49-66)