The pre-listen / listen / check comprehension approach tests listening without developing it. The process approach treats listening as decoding plus meaning-building, and trains planning, monitoring and evaluation.
Claim
“The more we tell learners before they listen, the less they need to listen.” Heavy pre-teaching and gist questions can remove the need to decode.
Model
Decoding (sound → syllable → word → sentence) interacts with meaning-building (background, contextual and co-textual knowledge). Lexical segmentation is a key failure point (Field).
Moves
- Pair-check, replay, pair-check again, then elicit.
- Jigsaw listening: groups hear different parts, then regroup to rebuild the whole.
- Before listening: discuss the genre and the kind of listening it calls for.
- After listening: learners circle the words they missed and classify why (“I heard it but couldn’t recall the meaning fast enough”).
- Mark pauses and stressed words on the transcript; point out elision and assimilation.
- Introduce new techniques before an observed lesson, not during it.
Sources
Vandergrift & Goh, Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action; Field, Listening in the Language Classroom (2008).
Apply in my context (Claude)
- The KET/PET and IELTS listening papers are product tests. Use them as material, then do the post-listening classification step. It turns past papers into teaching.
Connections
Field’s process model of listening - eight priorities · Bottom-up listening instruction alone is not enough · Why L2 listening is hard - cognitive and affective barriers · Make metacognition explicit in lessons