Developing academic listening skills

Fiona Aish and Jo Tomlinson

Outline

• Overall challenges of listening

• Academic listening challenges – General features and strategies

– Linguistic features and practice

• Challenges revisited

Discussion Question

Discuss your context:

What challenges do you face when

‘teaching’ listening?

Listening - Challenges

Some ideas: 1. Listening is a means to an end

2. Monitoring student progress

3. Materials tend to test not teach

4. Scripted vs authentic material

Academic Listening - Challenges

The only differences are the contextual and

linguistic features which are specific to academia

Approaching the challenges and understanding the content requirements…

Listening as a means to an end

Aim of lectures: Understand & record information

‘Lectures’: The listening is the end

Book content developed from authentic lectures

What strategies and language are required? • Pre & post listening strategies

• Academic skills e.g. note-taking

• Language features of academic English

• Pronunciation features

• Functions

Academic Listening - General Features

• No surprises – course/ module handbook

• Dense subject specific content

• More explicitly structured than GE listenings

• Extended monologues

• Students are expected to take notes

• Multi processing (thinking, understanding, taking notes,

evaluating)

• Evaluative: persuasive, critical, analytical etc.

• Factual vs perspective/ opinion

General Features - strategies

Pre and post reading academic skills:

• Pre-reading set texts/ articles

• Looking up key vocabulary

• Reading around the topic on the Internet

• Choosing a note-taking system

• Reviewing lecture notes

• Discussing lecture notes with classmates

• Rewriting notes

• Filing and organising notes

Academic Listening – Linguistic Features

Feature Example

Functions Fact/ opinion Structure Main & supporting ideas Rhetoric

Grammar/ Vocab

Signposting Reporting verbs Noun phrases Phrasal verbs Passive Idiomatic phrases Hedging

Pronunciation Accent and intonation Connected speech and chunking Speaker error

Listening - Challenges

1. Listening is a means to an end

What are your students listening to and why?

2. Monitoring student progress

How do you measure if students are improving?

3. Materials tend to test not teach

How can you exploit ‘simplistic’ materials for your students’ needs?

4. Scripted vs authentic material

Can you use scripted materials in order to build up to authentic listening?

Thank you!

Any questions?

Follow us here Twitter: @TargetEnglishUK

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TargetEnglishUK

Website: www.target-english.co.uk