The effectiveness of strategy instruction is context-dependent, however, the consideration of context when investigating the impact of listening strategy instruction (LSI) seems to be neglected. This ...study explored changes in listening strategy use of a group of 27 English language learners when receiving an 11-week LSI intervention in the Vietnamese context. Evidence provided from focus group interviews shows that the students reported using listening strategies more appropriately and in a variety of tasks post-LSI. These changes were discussed in connection to the culture and the English learning and teaching context in Vietnam. This study calls for creating a learner-focused environment where students are mediated by their teacher, peers and learning materials to develop their listening strategy use.
Listening has been identified as a key workplace skill, important for ensuring high-quality communication, building relationships, and motivating employees. However, recent research has increasingly ...suggested that speaker perceptions of good listening do not necessarily align with researcher or listener conceptions of good listening. While many of the benefits of workplace listening rely on employees feeling heard, little is known about what constitutes this subjective perception. To better understand what leaves employees feeling heard or unheard, we conducted 41 interviews with bank employees, who collectively provided 81 stories about listening interactions they had experienced at work. Whereas, prior research has typically characterized listening as something that is perceived through responsive behaviors within conversation, our findings suggest conversational behaviors alone are often insufficient to distinguish between stories of feeling heard vs. feeling unheard. Instead, our interviewees felt heard or unheard only when listeners met their subjective needs and expectations. Sometimes their needs and expectations could be fulfilled through conversation alone, and other times action was required. Notably, what would be categorized objectively as good listening during an initial conversation could be later counteracted by a failure to follow-through in ways expected by the speaker. In concert, these findings contribute to both theory and practice by clarifying how listening behaviors take on meaning from the speakers' perspective and the circumstances under which action is integral to feeling heard. Moreover, they point toward the various ways listeners can engage to help speakers feel heard in critical conversations.
Abstract
About one-third of all recently published studies on listening effort have used at least one physiological measure, providing evidence of the popularity of such measures in listening effort ...research. However, the specific measures employed, as well as the rationales used to justify their inclusion, vary greatly between studies, leading to a literature that is fragmented and difficult to integrate. A unified approach that assesses multiple psychophysiological measures justified by a single rationale would be preferable because it would advance our understanding of listening effort. However, such an approach comes with a number of challenges, including the need to develop a clear definition of listening effort that links to specific physiological measures, customized equipment that enables the simultaneous assessment of multiple measures, awareness of problems caused by the different timescales on which the measures operate, and statistical approaches that minimize the risk of type-I error inflation. This article discusses in detail the various obstacles for combining multiple physiological measures in listening effort research and provides recommendations on how to overcome them.
This thesis develops a critical framework for the study of musical arrangement and its relationship with concepts of listening through interpretations of music by Gérard Pesson (born 1958). It ...begins by identifying and accounting for persistent interpretative reflexes in existing discussions of arrangement, arguing that arrangement is best understood not as a type of musical object defined by fidelity to an original but rather as a way of listening influenced by this and other concepts. The four case studies that follow explore different implications of this shift in critical perspective, combining close reading and listening, philosophical reflection (in particular insights offered by conceptual metaphor theory and figures including Bergson, Sartre, and Adorno), and studies of reception. The first case study displaces the 'original' as the primary source of an arrangement's significance, arguing that Nebenstück (1998) plays extensively on the meanings of medium, through the manipulation of timbre and noise. The second considers the idea of linear temporal fidelity to a source as an engagement with notions of structural listening, using an examination of Ambre Nous Resterons (2008) to demonstrate that such fidelity is not a condition of arrangement but an ideal from which arrangements might meaningfully depart. The third complicates the relationship between the timbral and temporal aspects of arrangement discussed in the previous two chapters, exploring how Pesson manipulates both aspects in Wunderblock (2005) to suggest the absence rather than re-presentation of a source. The fourth probes the fraught relationship between notions of arrangement, fidelity, and kitsch within the overlapping contexts of modernism and historical 'authenticity', analysing the discourses surrounding Kein Deutscher Himmel (1997) supplied by Pesson himself, the transcription's commercial distribution, and a variety of its listeners. Finally, this thesis considers the extent to which musical arrangements, in particular those of Pesson, might be interpreted as offering 'critical' perspectives on listening.
English language proficiency tests designed to assess the high-level listening skills required for academic purposes have a surprisingly long history, but recent developments in English language ...testing indicate a resurgence of interest in assessing academic literacy and aural/oral skills, including the listening skills needed in an academic context. Good quality assessment requires a theoretically-grounded and empirically oriented approach that accounts for both internal
cognitive processing factors and external
contextual factors relating to the setting and demands of academically oriented tasks.
This paper briefly reviews past and present approaches to testing listening for academic purposes, showing how these reflected prevailing views of language knowledge and use. A socio-cognitive framework is used to analyse the nature of high-level listening ability in a study context, exploring how a construct of academic listening might be defined and how this can be operationalised in the form of valid, reliable and useful proficiency measures. The paper discusses the complex interplay of cognitive, context and scoring validity parameters that present theoretical and practical challenges for test designers and producers. Considerations and constraints associated with the opportunities offered by modern technology, and the implications of these for academic listening test design and format, are also addressed.
► This paper reviews past and recent approaches to testing high-level listening skills. ► We explore how best to define a construct of L2 academic listening ability. ► We discuss how to design valid and reliable tests of academic listening ability. ► We consider the complex considerations and constraints facing test designers.
This mixed-methods study examined how second language (L2) learners’ vocabulary knowledge interacted with the two main process-based listening instruction methods of (1) strategy training and (2) ...interactive training that combined strategy training with that of bottom-up skills, to influence the learners’ development as listeners. The participants were lower-proficiency listeners, and the quantitative component of the study reanalyzed data from a previous study by the author that had compared the effectiveness of the two instruction methods for these learners, and also factored in the learners’ level of vocabulary knowledge (higher vs lower). Among a range of dependent variables considered important for listener development, the study found an interaction effect between instruction method and vocabulary knowledge for the learners’ confidence, or self-efficacy, as listeners. In particular, among the higher vocabulary knowledge learners in the study, those in the strategy course demonstrated much greater improvement in their self-efficacy than those in the interactive course. Insights from elsewhere in the study, particularly analysis of qualitative data gathered for this study, helped to explain why. As self-efficacy is often considered an important requirement for effective listening, and also a precursor for future listener development, the result of the study has relevance for listening instruction.
Students’ anxiousness affects the EFL listening process. Listening anxiety is also an aspect that may impact a foreign language student’s success or failure in listening comprehension. Therefore, ...this study aimed to ascertain the factors that lead to students’ listening anxiety and the strategies lecturers use to alleviate it. Multiple qualitative case study was the method used in the study. Twenty-one undergraduate students enrolled in a listening class and three lecturers, from three universities in Palembang, Indonesia, participated in this study. Data collection methods included interviews and observation. The results of thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed four factors contributed to students’ anxiety when listening: 1) lack of listening skills; 2) lack of attention; 3) mood; and 4) classroom environment. Meanwhile, the lecturers were committed to implementing strategies that alleviate students’ listening anxiety. These strategies included: 1) preparing students for listening activities, 2) exposing them to a variety of authentic listening materials, and 3) improving the learning environment. The research findings imply that the lecturers who taught listening class have observed that each student experienced anxiety while listening due to specific factors. As a result, they have begun to devise suitable teaching strategies to foster a more enjoyable learning experience in listening classes, thereby enhancing student comfort and engagement.
This study investigated the multidimensional effects of extensive listening (EL) on learners’ actual language gains, selection of study materials, and practice styles. Language gains were measured ...through a pre- and a post-test on students’ aural vocabulary test (Listening Vocabulary Levels Test, LVLT) and general listening comprehension (TOEIC), administered before and after the intervention. Fifty-five university student participants took part in the four-month experiment; they were entirely free to select their favorite study materials online or off-line. The results showed that each student spent an average of 1,387 minutes (approximately 87 minutes per week) doing EL practice. The three most popular study materials were the following: Songs (63.64%), movies (49.09%), and talks (43.46%); materials were mainly from YouTube (74.55%), Netflix (49.09%), and other miscellaneous sources (43.63%). Their practice style was unanimously a combination of viewing and listening. From the pre-tests to the post-tests, students made significant gains in both LVLT and TOEIC, but the effect sizes were small. Some suggestions are made for implementing EL.
Second language (L2) listening comprehension is a function of many variables. We focused on metacognitive awareness, which we measured using the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ; ...Vandergrift et al., 2006), and meta‐analyzed (a) the factor structure of the MALQ and (b) the relationship between metacognitive awareness and L2 listening comprehension. We used meta‐analytic structural equation modeling to synthesize 29 studies that provided Pearson's product‐moment correlation matrices from 4,574 learners. Results showed (a) that the MALQ measured metacognitive awareness as a single factor with five subcomponents (their interrelationship and relative contribution to metacognitive awareness varied) and (b) that metacognitive awareness explained listening comprehension (b* = .306). The results were moderated by publication type, the response format of listening comprehension tests, and participant type. The findings can help researchers to better conceptualize the construct of metacognitive awareness in relation to listening comprehension as well as to score metacognitive awareness.
A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org
This study aimed to answer an ongoing validity question related to the use of nonstandard English accents in international tests of English proficiency and associated issues of test fairness. More ...specifically, we examined (1) the extent to which different or shared English accents had an impact on listeners’ performances on the Duolingo listening tests and (2) the extent to which different English accents affected listeners’ performances on two different task types. Speakers from four interlanguage English accent varieties (Chinese, Spanish, Indian English Hindi, and Korean) produced speech samples for “yes/no” vocabulary and dictation Duolingo listening tasks. Listeners who spoke with these same four English accents were then recruited to take the Duolingo listening test items. Results suggested that there is a shared first language (L1) benefit effect overall, with comparable test scores between shared-L1 and inner-circle L1 accents, and no significant differences in listeners’ listening performance scores across highly intelligible accent varieties. No task type effect was found. The findings provide guidance to better understand fairness, equality, and practicality of designing and administering high-stakes English tests targeting a diversity of accents.
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