was not sure about her retelling and also reported the reason why she didn’t
comprehend this part:“That is why I didn’t understand it. I thought differ can’t
follow a person...I didn’t know that you can use somebody differ in blabla...”It
shows the syntactic pattern contradicts to her prior linguistic schema and therefore
she didn’t process this piece of information during Phase 1. On the other hand, Tan
got the correct answer for this gap in Phase 1 but failed to retell the key sentence
relevant to the gap:“I know I missed this sentence, but I cannot recall it, though I
wrote it in notes.”Tan’s retelling protocol reflects the fact that she didn’t really
understand this sentence. Linking it back to her previous protocol in Phase 1“I
cannotfigure out what the previous notes mean”, we can arrive at the conclusion
her correct answer comes rather from selective attention than real comprehension.
Only Zhou and Gao are consistent through Phase 1 and Phase 2. Zhou’s protocols
in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 show she did miss the key verb“differ”, while Gao’s
protocols in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 indicate she did understand this part.
We have two interpretations here:first, verbatim may not necessarily equal
understanding. Comprehension involves internalization of the new information or
integration of new information to the developing mental representation of the
discourse. Paraphrase facilitates internalization of new information. For inference
gaps, selective attention in the listening process helps participants with their
note-taking for later information retrieval and the notes are actually the written
representation of the selected input. Second, retelling the same part containing the
inference gap is easier because the immediate information for retelling is stored in
the working memory while for Phase 1, the answer would evade the participants if
they fail to select the relevant propositional units and write them down in their notes
(Table7.7).
Table 7.8 Retelling protocols related to Gap Type 3-Inference gaps of 2013 TEM 8 (2)
Protocol 1 (Gap No. 9; No answer;
TEM 4: 78; TEM 8 Mini: 3.5)Zhou: So long. Active learners will evaluate and
change their behavior if theyperform undesirably
while passive learners, they simply don’t change.
Um...they don’t care
R: And what would they do?
Zhou: They will blame professors and they will be
angry at professor when they get on bad scores or
just on their bad performance, and only when a
learner learns for the sake of his or herself, that
learner can be called an active learner
Protocol 2 (Gap No. 9; Wrong answer;
TEM 4: 81; TEM 8 Mini: 4)Tan: When active learners arenot performing well,
they will look into the question of, andfind a cause,
so that next time they can do better and avoid this
Tan: Passive learners on the other hand, they would,
um, blame, for the example, blame the professors
and others when they are not doing well. An active
learner mustfirst accept the responsibility
(continued)116 7 Using Retelling Protocols to Explore Listeners’...