ELT365 · Day 154 — Bottom-Up Processing

Idea — Bottom-up processing builds meaning word by word, sound by sound — decoding the signal before constructing sense. It dominates when language is unfamiliar.

Example — A learner meets an unknown phrase: they segment sounds, identify morphemes, then attempt a meaning. They work from signal to sense.

Try — Give learners a transcript with five words blanked. Ask them to predict each missing word using surrounding grammar and vocabulary alone.

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