The CET (College English Test) is carried out twice a year in mainland Chinese universities. Unfortunately, this testing system has been exerting increasingly adverse influences on English learning. Take writing, for instance. Since the end of 1980s when the CET was first conducted nationally, writing has long been a weak point. It is often the case that students in mainland China make very little progress in English writing no matter how many writing tasks they have completed, no matter how many mistakes in their writing have been corrected, and even no matter how many sample writings they have recited. One reason is that the controlled writing format in the CET, which deals with writing a three-paragraph essay based on three topic sentences written in Chinese, greatly hinders teachers from trying new approaches to writing instruction, and at the same time, it makes students feel more bored than interested. Another contributing factor, we believe, is that most university students are lacking linguistic information in their long-term memory, which substantially decides their output in writing.

This article proposes a computer-assisted strategy called “Listen to Write” which draws on the principles of auditory memory to improve mainland Chinese EFL college writing. Traditionally, more emphasis is laid on visual memory than on auditory memory in language learning. But, when it comes to improving writing ability, we would like to suggest that priority should be given to listening to reinforce long-term memory for writing. In addition, because we are living in an information age when CALL (computer-assisted language learning) is being adopted in various ways, our strategy also depends on computer technology. Thus, in this article, we recommend some techniques and activities on how to teach writing effectively and efficiently using auditory memory and computer technology.

AN OVERVIEW OF MEMORY TERMINOLOGY

Memory can be understood as an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information. In the eyes of psychologists, memory comprises sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory in terms of its span (Shichun, 2000). Sensory memory is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information, both visual and auditory, after the original stimulus has ceased. It is considered to operate within the approximate time frame of under 1 second (and no more than 1), and so it is very short-lived. What is caught by sensory memory is a fleeting copy of the original visual information (e.g., color, shape, size, image, text) or auditory information (e.g., voice, tone, speed, rhythm). Short-term memory (also called “primary” or “active memory”) is the capacity for holding a small amount of information actively in the mind in a readily available state for a short period of time that usually lasts 10-15 seconds without rehearsal of the material. Long-term memory is memory that can last as little as a few days or as long as decades. It differs structurally and functionally from working memory or short-term memory, which ostensibly stores items for only around 18 seconds (Peterson & Peterson, 1959). Long-term memory also encodes information semantically for storage (Baddeley, 1966). It can store information for as long as a lifetime.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LISTENING AND WRITING

Language skills are often categorized as receptive or productive (Nunan, 2003). Speaking and writing are productive skills. Listening and reading are receptive skills. However, in terms of comprehension, listening is an active, purposeful process of making sense of what is heard. While listening, people not only process what they hear but also connect it to other information they already know. As Buck (1995) pointed out, the assumption that listeners simply decode messages is mistaken: “Meaning is not in the text (text = whatever is being listened to)―but is something that is constructed by listeners based on a number of different knowledge sources.” Listening contributes not only to comprehension but also to memory, or rather auditory sensory memory. With regard to writing, it is both a physical and a mental act. Its purpose is both to express and impress. It is both a process and a product. While a person is writing, information is being actively taken out and purposefully processed in the form of memory. To be exact, writing depends much more on long-term memory than on short-term memory.

Metaphorically speaking, memory serves as a bridge between receptive and productive language skills. Traditionally, reading is accepted as the main supporting skill for writing, and listening as the main supporting skill for speaking. But actually, listening reinforces memory and, therefore, it does indeed support writing. The important role of auditory memory takes shape in infancy, and so it plays a long-term role in language development over the course of a lifetime. Moreover, auditory information may be retained more efficiently in long-term memory than visual information (Shichun, 2000). We do not mean to suggest that visual activities are less important in language input than auditory ones, but rather that it is practical to give preference to auditory input in language learning while attaching necessary importance to visual input. Thus, in writing education, listening may be a more suitable supporting skill (at least for some learners) than reading.

HOW CALL SUPPORTS LISTENING AND WRITING

Since its emergence, CALL has had a symbiotic relationship with technology and pedagogy. CALL emphasizes student-centered lessons that allow learners to learn independently using structured and/or unstructured interactive exercises. CALL is not a method but rather a tool that teachers can use to facilitate language-learning processes. CALL can be used to introduce new information, reinforce classroom learning, or provide additional practice for remediation.

The Listen-to-Write approach uses computer technology to maximize the benefits of listening for application in writing education. More specifically, it uses editing software, the Internet, and language labs. Each of these tools is described below, and these descriptions are followed by a sample text that is used in instruction along with a sample teaching procedure.

CALL Tools: Sound Editing Software

We use sound editing software such as Audacity and CoolEdit to enhance the effect of memorizing what is needed for writing. A tape recorder is a traditional means to practice listening. It is not easy to use a tape recorder to replay the exact language units, but with the help of computer software for sound editing, words, expressions, sentences, and paragraphs can be played accurately. This is helpful in reducing “listening redundancy” (an invented term), lessening confusion and thus guaranteeing the quality of memorization.

CALL Tools: The Internet

We use the Internet as a source of contemporary listening materials. Students may be assigned to collect from the Internet good and appropriate language units about a topic to be discussed or practiced for writing next time, such as “Money and Happiness.” It is better when the materials from the Internet are in the form of sound (mp3 is the best). Also, the Internet can be used as a platform for checking homework or testing students’ writing ability.

CALL Tools: Language Lab

We use language labs to guarantee the quality of listening and the effect of teaching. In mainland China, large amounts of money are invested in building language labs for listening, speaking, self-study, and testing, most of which are advanced enough to guarantee the quality of listening and the effects of teaching.

CALL Tools: A Sample Text and Teaching Procedure

Listen-to-write CALL activities can be carried out either inside the classroom or outside the classroom in either top-down or bottom-up ways. For a partial illustration (please note that more detailed descriptions of activities are provided in sections below), see the following sample text that we use:

Example 1

Stress directly affects digestion. However, the extent of the consequence depends a lot on the individual’s reaction to the cause. For example: two female employees are censured by the manageress. The stomach of one may feel as if it is being used as a backdrop for the filming of the final part of “The Towering Inferno”, while the other may experience a first-time flight down an Alpine slope. The first girl is angry. In her fury her stomach chums wildly with an increase in acid build-up. In contrast, the frightened girl’s stomach grinds to a halt, with nausea growing in intensity. (Choy & Chew, 1987)

The paragraph in Example 1 was selected from a book on writing. To guarantee the authenticity of listening, we recorded it as a mp3 file (e.g., “Stress directly affects digestion.mp3”) using a native English speaker.

Before listening to “Stress directly affects digestion.mp3” intensively, students are required to answer questions that build background information, such as: What does stress mean? How can an author present an example in writing? How can an author create contrast in writing? Then, the teacher may play some mp3 files in which some information is connected with these questions. Alternatively, the teacher may ask students to surf the Internet and listen to materials that are related to “stress” or “digestion.” These background-building activities may help students predict what is in the text and better understand the organization and development of the paragraph when it is played.

After students listen to “Stress directly affects digestion.mp3,” the goal is to help students become familiar with the given writing sample, and so we use “intensive explanation.” By this we mean that we explain the paragraph from vocabulary to sentence patterns and then from discourse organization to idea development. The intensive explanation is intended to support listening and the conversion of information from sensory memory to long-term memory.

In addition, students listen to the file intensively as homework until they can write down more than 90 percent of the paragraph. What is written down individually is to be handed in, graded, and, most important, corrected with its transcript. After all mistakes have been corrected, students will know what their weak points are. Also, the repetition of listening to the same file stimulates retention of the information in the paragraph in long-term memory.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE LISTEN-TO-WRITE APPROACH

The listen-to-write approach aims at improving college writing skills by means of staged (i.e., graded, graduated, or scaffolded) and repeated listening to selected language information for writing. This approach advocates listening as an effective way to present input for writing, while never denying or doubting the importance of visual input for writing. By staged, we mean that listening exercises start at a “low” level (e.g., words, phrases) and progress to a “higher” level (e.g., sentences, paragraphs) to ensure the effect of teaching through step-by-step practice. By repeated, we mean that what has been practiced shall be practiced again at weekly or monthly intervals to ensure the quality of long-term memory. By selected, we mean that the auditory information included in the listen-to-write approach focuses on language input that is conventionally used in college writing in China at a comparatively general level, excluding language that is not typically used. For example, the synonyms of cause such as arouse, generate, and produce are often used in college writing in China and quite familiar to students, but trigger, ignite, and fuel are not necessarily so, and so such words would be selected for advanced writing practice, not for a general level of writing proficiency.

Listen-to-Write Approach: Equipment and Materials

Listen-to-write is recommended to be conducted in a language lab. Teachers should make full use of listening equipment. It is not recommended to use too many PowerPoints (PPTs) to present or illustrate information, for this visual activity may lead to distraction. Also, the goal of listen-to-write is to concentrate on listening and repeated listening. To do this, the teacher uses both paper materials and sound materials. All materials may be designed for in-class activities and for out-of-class homework.

Listen-to-Write Approach: Timeline

The whole listen-to-write program should be divided into three levels: elementary, intermediate, and advanced. In mainland China, the three stages may be finished in one or two semesters, each semester having 16 weeks. Activities in each lesson are based on a task, and they start and end in a sequenced pattern according to the specific theory-driven techniques (i.e., bottom-up, top-down, or interactive).

Listen-to-Write Approach: Types of Activities

“Intensive listening” is often used as a bottom-up activity for homework. Students are given an mp3 writing file (usually a good writing example on a heated topic), and they are asked to write down all the words precisely from the file by listening to the file again and again. “Gap-filling” is another bottom-up activity, and “listen-and-guess” and dictation are two of the top-down activities. These activities are described more thoroughly and illustrated in the next section.

ACTIVITIES FOR THE LISTEN-TO-WRITE APPROACH

In the listen-to-write approach, both bottom-up activities and top-down activities are used as the primary learning activities, and these are supplemented with interactive activities (incidentally, these overlap bottom-up and top-down techniques). The sections below provide descriptions and some examples of activities.

Listen-to-Write: Bottom-Up Activities

Intensive Listening (Bottom-Up)

This bottom-up activity, which is often used in the listen-to-write approach, focuses on linguistic details needed in writing. Students are asked to read aloud after the speaker and write down exactly what is heard. This activity may appear to be dictation, but it differs in an important way. What is important here is that the listeners read aloud after the speaker to provide writing input information in the form of sounds. In some sense, the louder, the better, to strongly impress the listeners with what is needed in writing.

The materials shall be selected to meet the needs of writing, usually at three linguistic levels: word, phrase, and sentence. The materials may be recorded as auditory files by human native speakers or by nonhuman software programs (even better than human voice). Here are some examples.

Example 2

(a) Word: nowadays, recently, moreover, furthermore, unfortunately, conversely, controversial, disputable, essential, perspective, aspect, viewpoint, illusion, fallacy, involve, argue, assert, generate
(b) Phrase: in my opinion, after all, in some way, worst of all, on the contrary, increasing numbers of, a great many, varieties of, contribute to, lead to, give rise to, arise from, stem from, depend on, rely on, focus on, from the perspective of, because of, on account of
(c) Sentence: focusing on coordination and subordination (SV stands for a complete sentence.)

Coordination:

SV and SV.
SV, but SV.
SV, or SV.
SV, so SV.

Subordination:

SV if SV.
SV because SV.
SV although SV.

It is worth mentioning that this activity can be designed as a task-based one. The words, phrases, and sentences are all from the same writing sample. The speaker may break the order of the sentences in the original sample writing and the listeners, having written down all the sentences, are asked to reorder those sentences to form a writing and check it with the original.

Gap Filling (Bottom-Up, or Interactive With Top-Down)

This is another bottom-up activity. The materials selected shall be a good writing sample (which is recorded), and gaps to be filled include connectives (e.g., conversely, as a result, after all, what’s more, in a word), often-used writing expressions (e.g., contribute to, arise from, take effective measures), and any recommendable writing expressions (e.g., just as a coin has two sides, it goes without saying that, it is interpreted to mean that).

This activity can be conducted in an interactive way. Before filling the gaps, the listeners are asked to guess, from the perspective of writing, what is appropriate for the gap. The more brainstorming, the better. Play the recording of the writing, and then ask the listeners to check their work.

Listen-to-Write: Top-Down Activities

Listen-and-Guess (Top-Down)

This top-down activity is used in the listen-to-write approach. This activity focuses on how to write and targets those who have already had a good understanding of sentence patterns, of the ways to develop a paragraph (exemplification, cause-effect, etc.), and of the often-used structures or organizations applied in writing (e.g., what-why-how).

Example 3

(a) Play the first half of a sentence: Not until recently
(b) Ask the listeners to guess what sentence pattern it is.
(c) Play the whole sentence: Not until recently have experts reached a consensus that free music downloads should be banned.
(d) Ask the listeners to write down exactly the whole sentence.
(e) Play the whole sentences at least three times and ask the listeners to read aloud after the speaker.

Example 4

(a) Play the first sentence of a paragraph (beginning, body, or ending): In the early days of nuclear power, the United States made money on it.
(b) Ask the listeners to guess what the paragraph is like―including the beginning, body, or ending―and give reasons orally.
(c) Play the whole paragraph: In the early days of nuclear power, the United States made money on it. But today opponents have so complicated its development that no nuclear plants have been ordered or built here in 12 years.
(d) Ask the listeners to guess again. Announce the answer: This paragraph is most likely to be a beginning paragraph to present a problem or phenomenon.
(e) Play the whole paragraph and ask the listeners to read aloud after the speaker.

Dictation (Top-Down)

Dictation is adopted to help students memorize all the important and frequently used vocabulary and sentence patterns. One of the preparatory jobs to be done is extracting sounds of necessary words, phrases, or sentences with the help of video-audio editing software programs, such as Audacity, CoolEdit, and so on. Word examples are affect, extent, consequence, and individual. Phrase examples are for example, depend on, and in contrast. Sentence examples may be short or long. Before studying the given material, the teacher dictates all the extracted linguistic information and then shows the paragraph for students to check their answers. Finally, all students are required to read aloud after the recordings repeatedly, to maximize the effectiveness of memory.

Assessment of Listening and Writing

This section describes the assessment procedures used in the listen-to-write approach. Basically, assessment includes these four steps or phases:

Step #1: At the beginning of the listen-to-write course, students are asked to write a 200-word composition on the topic to be practiced through the listen-to-write approach.

Step #2: Instructors then build a database for each student, in which the students’ mistakes made in the composition are recorded and classified at word, phrase, clause, sentence, and paragraph levels.

Step #3: During the implementation of the listen-to-write approach, students are asked to write a composition every 2 weeks. Instructors should add student mistakes to the individual databases and, more important, should select and design the listening materials to help students correct those mistakes consciously and unconsciously. At the beginning, most mistakes are probably similar to what have been made previously. Most probably, improvements will emerge week after week. Meanwhile, students’ databases should include features of their meritorious performance in using the language, which mirror their progress in writing.

Step #4: Design a syllabus for each stage, with some quizzes and a final test attached, and all mistakes in the quizzes and the test can be added into students’ databases, as new references for seeking and designing new listening materials.

At the end of the whole course, students are asked to write a 300-word composition. The work is evaluated in detail according to both discourse organization and linguistic and editorial details. Both merits and mistakes are recorded in the database. The students’ progress is evaluated according to what is recorded in their database. Most results are intended to be encouraging.

CONCLUSION

“Listen to write” is a proposal for a language-learning approach aimed at improving mainland Chinese EFL college writing. Though it is true that persistent, repeated, and targeted listening does improve writing by converting linguistic information to long-term memory, it cannot be said that listening is versatile in improving writing. However, listening is an effective way to expand and sustain memory, and it is through persistence and repetition that information is converted from auditory sensory memory to short-term memory and in the end to long-term memory. No matter how advanced computer technology is used, listening needs patience; persistent and repeated listening needs far more patience; and therefore, for every mainland Chinese university student who wants to improve writing in English, “listen to write” is not only a recommended strategy but a substantial challenge as well.

REFERENCES

Baddeley, A. D. (1966). The influence of acoustic and semantic similarity on long-term memory for word sequences. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(4), 302–309. PMID 5956072.

Buck, G. (1995). How to become a good listening teacher. In D. Mendelsohn & J. Rubin (Eds.), A guide for the teaching of second language listening (pp. 113-28). San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.

Choy, T. W., & Chew, P. (1987). English, the basics. Singapore: Pan Pacific Book Distributors.

Nunan, D. (2003). Practical English language teaching. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Shichun, G. (2000). A new psycholinguistics. Shanghai, China: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Peterson, L. R., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 193–198. PMID 14432252.

Qingsong (Pine) Gu, pinegu@sues.edu.cn, is a lecturer at the School of Fundamental Studies, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai, P. R. China. In 2006, he completed his master’s studies in foreign linguistics and applied linguistics at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, P. R. China. His research interests include linguistics, language-learning strategy, and translation.

Wenhua (Angela) Chen, angelchenwh1971@yahoo.com.cn, is a lecturer at the School of Fundamental Studies, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai, P. R. China. She has a master’s degree from Shanghai International Studies University in the field of applied linguistics. Her research interests include applied linguistics and teaching methodology.

Guohua (Tim) Ding, fantastic666@163.com, is a lecturer at the School of Physical Education, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai, P. R. China. In 2005, he completed his master’s studies in physical education and sports training at the Postgraduate Department of Shanghai Institute of Physical Education, Shanghai, P. R. China. His research interests include bilingual teaching, sports pedagogy, fitness training methodology, and kinetic biomechanics.