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Are You Listening?

Backchannel Behaviors

Anne Berry
Georgetown University, United States

Level: High intermediate/advanced

Time: 5 minutes to prepare, 35-45 minutes in class

Resources: A list of interesting topics that one might find in everyday conversations with friends

Goals: To promote awareness of short responses during conversations such as uh-huh and yeah, known as backchannel behaviors; to increase awareness of cultural differences in backchannel behaviors; to practice behaviors that indicate active listening.

Description of the Activity
This activity provides a situation in which students can observe their own behavior and the behavior of their classmates when listening. It also provides the basis for a discussion about how these behaviors may vary from person to person, situation to situation, culture to culture.

For the activity to work, students must be able to observe conversations in action. Observable conversations can be found everywhere, even where the teaching situation is outside of an English-speaking country. Conversations on television sitcoms and dramas are far more natural looking and sounding than they used to be. Conversations on talk shows (radio and television), although structured to some extent, often occur with enough spontaneity that the turn-taking is not choreographed. Within an English-speaking country observable conversations abound, and "eavesdropping" takes place all the time, even when unintended and undesired. Although students can take advantage of such situations to watch how listeners behave, the conversations that are observed in this activity actually occur in the classroom.

Since one of the goals of the activity is to show students how listening behaviors vary from culture to culture, observing the conversations in which they themselves participate is quite useful. For this to occur, the teacher must set up the classroom with pairs of speakers and pairs of observers (see procedure below). While the pairs of students are talking, the observers keep track of who has the floor, who is listening, and what the listener is doing while s/he doesn't have the floor. Occasionally, students feel they are being observed, and their conversations are not natural. However, even when this is the case, there is a surprising amount of variation in the behavior of individual listeners. If the teacher participates as a listener, the amount of variation is greater still.

Procedure

1. Warm-up discussion (5 minutes)
   Tell students to think about a friend of theirs whom they would consider a good listener. Ask students why they consider that person to be a good listener; what does that person do to show that s/he is listening?
   
   
2. Set-up (5 minutes)
   Put students in pairs and give them a list of interesting topics that might be found in everyday conversations (e.g., a new relationship, a recent vacation, an accident that someone had or saw). Tell each student to choose a topic that they could talk about for a few minutes.
   
   
3. First set of conversations (5-10 minutes)
   Choose half of the pairs and put them face to face at the front of the classroom. (In other words, if there are 12 students in the class, there should be six pairs. Put three of the pairs at the front of the classroom with partners facing each other.) Tell one student in each pair to talk about the chosen topic until told to stop. Tell the second student to listen to the speaker and react naturally; questions and comments are okay, but remember that the first student is supposed to be the primary speaker for the moment. Tell the observers to focus on one of the pairs and to pay attention to the way the second student listens; what does s/he do and say while listening?
   
   
4. Second set of conversations (5-10 minutes)
   Repeat this step with the second half of the pairs at the front of the classroom conversing while the first group returns to their seats to become the observers. If there are students of different cultural backgrounds and different native languages in the class, choose the listeners such that a variety of cultures is represented.
   
   
5. Follow-up discussion (10-15 minutes)
   Ask students to sit in a circle and discuss the following questions: What did the listeners do or say while they were listening? Did you notice any difference in the behaviors of the different listeners? Did you (the speakers) feel that the listener was paying attention to you? Why or why not? Did you (the speakers) feel that the listener was interested in what you were telling him? Why or why not? Think about how you act or speak when you are listening to your friends tell you something in your native language. Do you make any noises or comments, ask any questions, use any gestures or facial expressions? Do you behave like any of the listeners in these situations? Do you listen (or show that you are listening) in a different way when you are speaking to your teacher, boss, or family? Do you think you act this way because of your personality?...the personality of the other speakers?... the situation? Do other speakers of your language act the same way?
   

Rationale
Backchannel is a topic of interest to discourse analysts and sociologists because of what it contributes to the study of cultural differences in terms of conversational turn-taking. The term was coined by Yngve (1970) and is derived from the notion of a "back channel" through which the listener sends the speaker short messages, such as "yes" and "uh-huh", that are not a bid for the floor. Which types of utterances can be considered backchannel activity is often debated. The very short messages like "mmm," "yeah," "right," -which are common in English- clearly qualify because they add a great deal to the quality of the interaction without really adding meaning to the conversation. However, Yngve also considers questions such as, "You've started writing it, then,…your dissertation?" and short comments such as, "Oh, I can believe it," to be backchannel utterances. Duncan (1974) added other types of utterances to the list, such as sentence completions, requests for clarification, and brief restatements, since their purpose is not actually to claim a turn, but to provide the speaker with needed feedback.

Comparative research on conversational styles shows that speakers from different cultures exhibit different backchannel behaviors. For example, Berry (1994) found that both the English speakers and the Spanish speakers who participated in her study used a variety of backchannel comments. However, the Spanish speakers tended to use longer and more explicit comments in their backchannel contributions ("Ay, sí, es verdad, sí" [Oh, yes, that is so true]), and they were more likely to repeat or rephrase what the speaker was saying as a way of showing understanding.

Looking at backchannel informs our understanding of turn-taking, helps clarify the notion of floor-holding, and explains some of the misunderstandings that occur as a result of cross-cultural conversations. Listening behaviors that are considered polite in one culture may not be considered polite in another. In interviews with her Spanish and English participants, Berry found that the Spanish speakers considered comments and questions that overlap with the speaker to be a positive part of conversation because they show that people are paying attention, having fun, or responding emotionally to the other speaker; whereas the English speakers said that if two speakers are talking at once, they are not listening to each other. Moreover, although the English speakers consider backchannel comments such as "mmm" and "yeah" to be cooperative, the Spanish speakers generally agreed that a constant "uh-huh, uh-huh" makes a listener sound uninterested and pressures the speaker to hurry up and finish.

Understanding backchannel is a necessary part of learning a second language. In fact, anyone who has contact with someone from another culture can benefit from a heightened awareness of listening behaviors, even if both speakers are using their native language. (Consider the difference between a high-involvement style and a high-considerate style, both of which were found in American speakers of English (Tannen, 1984)). This activity, even when done with a class of students from the same cultural background, is a good first step toward helping students become aware of this aspect of language.

Alternatives and Caveats

1. Follow up by listing listening behaviors (comments and gestures) that are common among English speakers from the United States (e.g., "uh-huh," "oh, really," "wow," "you're kidding," nodding, raising the eyebrows). Discuss how they are similar to and different from listening behaviors among speakers of other languages. Then, put students back into pairs; this time, if possible, pair up students of different cultural backgrounds. Have one student talk about one of the topics from the list while the other practices using the listening behaviors that have been discussed.
   
   
2. If students are in a country where the target language is spoken, send them out to observe conversations between native speakers as a way to confirm their conclusions about listening behaviors.
   

References
Berry, A. (1994). Spanish and American Turn-taking Styles: A Comparative Study. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, 5, 180-190. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Division of English as an International Language.

Duncan, S. (1974). On the structure of speaker-auditor interaction during speaking turns. Language in Society 2, pp.161-180.

Tannen, D. (1984). Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Yngve, V. H. (1970). On getting a word in edgewise. Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, pp. 567-577.

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