Types of text for listening

There are two basic types of listening material used in school. They are descriptive texts and narrative texts.

1) Descriptive texts are regarded as a representation of a complex of certain characteristics possessed by an object. Such features of an object are united by a common topic. In descriptive texts there isn’t any action in its development. In such texts it is not always easy to single out main facts and disjoin them from secondary, minor facts. It’s just because logical connections and causal relations between facts are lessened. Cohesion being slackened becomes possible because of a free rearrangement of facts, sometimes done at random. Description is static by its character. Listening comprehension is composed mainly on the basis of the sum total of the facts understood. The product of comprehension is kept in the listener’s memory while he continues listening. A descriptive text consists chiefly of simple sentences, sometimes including homogeneous parts. Variability of syntactical structures is limited. Complex and compound sentences are used rather seldom. They are used mainly to express adversative and adherence relations. As a rule, only one fact is described in a sentence. E.g.: My Family. – This is my family: my wife, my son, my daughter and me. I’m Mr. Black. My wife is Mrs.Black. I’m Mrs.Black’s husband. I am a man. My wife is a woman. We have two children: a boy and a girl. The boy’s name is John. He is 12 years old. The girl’s name is Mary. She is still quite young. She is only 8. She is 4 years younger than John. John is 4 years older than she is. Etc.

2) Narrative texts differ from descriptive ones in one main thing. It is the dynamism of the events described, actions displayed, characters depicted. Logical elaboration of the plot gives an opportunity to single out a logical centre and to make it noticeable. All minor facts and circumstances are grouped round a logical centre. There exist strong logical connections and causal relations between separate parts in a narrative next. Comprehension of the general picture of a narrative text is impossible without clear understanding of its separate facts. However, comprehension can’t be achieved through pure drawing conclusions from the sum total of facts narrated in the text. The derived facts have to be re-estimated, otherwise the listener will be drawn amiss. The listener has to draw the implications hidden behind the facts. He has to interpret what has been derived.

Narrative texts are notable for:

a) explicitly marked sense connections and relations between separate facts;

b) a consequent fact vivid dependence on the previous facts;

c) main facts dependence on the minor facts.

These connections and dependencies are revealed in syntactical structures of certain complexity and length. They serve to convey one main idea with a number of supporting ones as its specification, its further detailisation. Thus, to be able to comprehend narrative texts our students need to understand complex and compound sentences. Tense forms of Past Simple and Past Perfect are usually used in narration. Teaching listening to a narrative text a teacher should bear in mind that the length of a phrase in oral speech must not exceed 11 words. It is especially vital for elementary level students, for their memory capacity is not excessive. It usually equals not more than 6 notional words in a sentence. E.g. Disappointed

Little Mary ran into the house very excited. ‘Oh, Mother’, she cried, ‘don’t be angry with me for being late to tea, for I’ve had such a disappointment! A horse fell down in the street and they were going to send for a horse doctor. So, of course, I had to stay. And after I had waited and waited, he came. And oh, Mother, what do you think? It wasn’t a horse doctor at all. It was just a man! ’

As special surveys and interviews show, schoolchildren are interested rather in narrative than in descriptive texts. They say narrative texts are much easier for comprehension.