Activity 11. Approaches to listening: Bottom-up and top-down

Approaches to listening: Bottom-up and top-down

Top-down strategies focus on the ‘big’ picture and general meaning of a listening text. Often the starting point is to discuss the topic and then to use a ‘gist’ or ‘extensive’ task to listen for the overall meaning. Top-down strategies rely on students knowing something about the topic and either knowing how particular exchanges in certain social situations work or what ‘chunks’ of language ‘fit’ the particular topic or situation.

Top down

• Review your notes for any information that is incomplete
• Go to friends or go to office hours with questions about information you missed

• Review assigned material
• Consider how new information will relate to previous lectures
• During lecture, identify the organization pattern (i.e., problem/solution, literature review, etc.)
• Note the number of main topics being covered and how they are related
• Listen for phrases that introduce, summarize, or shift topics

Before lecture, review and predict lecture topics

After lecture, continue to engage with the topic

Top-down listening strategies

Bottom-up strategies, on the other hand, focus on listening for details and involve tasks that focus on understanding at a sound or word level. Tasks are ‘intensive’, as they focus on looking for particular details.

Bottom-up

• Focus on stressed wordsListen for longer, louder words (usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). These words carry the most important information.
• Pay attention to repeated terms and pausesTake these as cues for possible key points in the lecture

• Keep goingAvoid trying to understand every word. In spoken language, not all words are important nor are they always grammatical.

Bottom-up listening strategies

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