Listening

Listening is the skill most often tested rather than taught. Sources agree on combining bottom-up decoding (segmentation, connected speech) with top-down and metacognitive work, and on listening as input for learning, not only as an exercise.

Where the sources disagree

• How central is comprehensible input? Smith: “the main driver”. Weller: “necessary but not sufficient” (Swain’s output, Schmidt’s noticing). Conti: structured, flooded input followed by structured output.
• How much decoding? Field/Smith and Conti put decoding and word recognition first; Smith still calls communicative interaction “the go-to way”. Transcription is “dull” for teens.
• Silent period: Harding da Rosa treats Krashen’s silent period as fact; SLA research shows it varies widely between learners (Claude).

Notes

• Bottom-up listening instruction alone is not enough
• Scaffolding dictation for beginners
• MARS-EARS - the EPI instructional sequence

More notes (by source)

A Journey in TEFL

• Shadowing - a ladder from echo to performance
  Barefoot TEFL Teacher (David Weller)
• Comprehensible input is necessary but not sufficient
  Clare’s ELT Compendium (Clare Maas)
• Teach the signals lecturers use to flag importance
  Film English (Kieran Donaghy)
• Film lessons in five stages - from expectation to expression
  Gianfranco Conti (The Language Gym)
• Diagnostic listening - find why an answer was wrong before re-teaching
  Jamie Clayton
• Extensive listening homework needs monitoring and shared texts
  Jane-Maria Harding da Rosa (TEYL)
• The silent period and listen-and-do
  Lizzie Pinard
• Make metacognition explicit in lessons
• Process listening vs the comprehension approach
  My English Pages
• Krashen’s five hypotheses - what survives the critiques
  Side Notes on ELT (Lina Gordyshevskaya)
• Visualise sentence stress with audiograms
  Steve Smith (Language Teacher Toolkit)
• Bottom-up listening micro-drills - a repertoire
• Field’s process model of listening - eight priorities
• Learners decode far less than teachers think (fuzzy lexical representations)
• Why L2 listening is hard - cognitive and affective barriers
  That ELT Blog (Sanchia)
• Song listening beyond gap-fill - upgrade, transcribe, correct

Key terms (DELTA M1)

bottom-up vs top-down processing · interactive model · segmentation · connected speech (elision, assimilation, catenation) · metacognitive cycle (Vandergrift & Goh) · listening for learning vs listening for testing · narrow listening · decoding

Open questions

• Read next: Field, Listening in the Language Classroom (2008). It’s on Millin’s pre-DELTA list.