Listening

In this talk, we’ll see how the evidence of the ears can be influenced and thus is not as stable as we suppose. Having said that, an expert listener successfully employs a range of processes in order to understand what’s being said, but, obviously, it’s not so easy for the non-expert listener.

At the beginning of the workshop, participants will do a paused transcription activity to bring the listening processes employed by expert listeners to a level of consciousness. Expert listeners usually understand what they hear with a seemingly high degree of automaticity and lack of effort.

Findings of research into the processing of spoken language point to the constructive nature of listening. In this talk, we’ll look at how L1 listening comprehension is influenced by various elements and compare this to the L2 listening endeavour. We’ll also exchange ideas on how we could possibly exploit this information when teaching listening to adults.

What exactly are we doing when we’re listening? In this session, we’ll try a little transcription experiment to find out. We’ll see that listening is not quite as passive, automatic or effortless as it may appear. We’ll then consider the difficulties of listening to speech in a non-native language before reflecting on the implications of our observations for classroom teaching.

Listening lessons often encourage students to use strategies to guess meaning, without developing their ability to decode spoken English itself. Could focusing on language chunks be a missing link which helps students improve their listening skills? In this talk we’ll take a look at activities which might just do that.

When students listen to a text, many feel they are starting from scratch rather than building on what they have already mastered. Nowadays, technology enables teachers to create content and design effective activities which help learners make real listening progress. Come along and try out a selection of these activities!