BALEAP 2017
29 July 2017
Listening in Lectures: Are they transferring the
skills and strategies from Pre-Sessional to PG
Lectures
They’ll listen how
they want
Christine Lee
Teacher view at PS Induction
EAP Tutor
University of Bristol
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29 July 2017
Overview
Background – why ‘Listening’ as a topic?
Pre-sessional Listening Programme 2015
Strategies taught
Follow up interviews / results / implications
What happened next – Pre-sessional Listening programme 2016 –
collaborating with departments
What now for 2017?
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Why ‘Listening’?
“While we have learned more about the
cognitive nature of listening and the role of
listening in communication, L2 listening
remains the least researched of all four
language skills” (Vandergrift, 2006)
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Why ‘Listening’?
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Why ‘Listening’?
“It is widely accepted that university lectures
are much more than a way of neutrally
conveying information; they are value-laden
discourses in which lecturers certainly aim to
inform, but also to evaluate and critique the
source materials that they are bringing to
students’ attention” (Lee, 2009)
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Pre-sessional
programme
Strategies taught
Strategies applied in
the lecture hall
•Cognitive: decoding
sound into meaning;
marking relevance; making
a note
• Less likely to focus
on discourse clues
•Metacognitive: applying
background knowledge
• Fewer notes than
on pre-sessional
•Socio-affective: seeking
clarification
• Minimal prep
•Problem/solution
strategies (see Field, 2008)
• No review/listen
again
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Student perceptions:
• On the pre-sessional course:
“I just get distract, the distract for few minutes then I come back
and I don’t know what he was talking about, yes, so I feel it’s very intense.” (SL1)
• On the Masters’ programme:
“They just talking about the theory and ideas and, ok it’s very difficult.
I try to write something down but sometimes I couldn’t remember everything.” (SF3)
“Even when I came back home, even when I read it,
I just can’t understand so I just manage myself”. (SL1)
“I just, like very quick look through it, so I can get the basic idea
of what teacher going to talk about.” (SL1)
Post-lecture
• “I might, like…um… reorganise my notes”,
• “Review is always done before exams”. (SK4)
Did they need more support with listening now?
• “I think more the writing because I think we also…uh…have assessment on
writing but not… not for listening so everybody will think the writing skill is
much more” (SF3)
• “More help now? I think it’s no. No. But other, like writing I think” (SS2)
• “the most I learn is when you doing research. It’s not from listening
course for me.” (SF3)
• “you can’t not learn everything from lecture because it’s too general”.
(SF3)
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• Perception from interviews with students
• Lecture listening not as important as productive skill
of writing
• It’s not assessed (like PS) (so not important)
• Use ppt slides – so read instead of listen
• Only listen again if there’s a clear purpose
(exam/assignment)
• Fewer notes/annotations
• PS listening much easier
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How important is the skill of Listening to PS students?
PS6 Pre-course Class Expectations
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What happened next? PS2016
Continuation of in-class lectures as before
Plus:
Collaboration with subject
areas/departments
- 2 x discipline-specific lectures
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PS6 class feedback Lecture 1 (EFM)
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Feedback from first lecture
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Positives:
Negatives
Lecture experience
Accent
Topic highly relevant to PG studies
Lack of interaction
Powerpoint slides
Lack of intonation
Structure
Majority found it dull and difficult
to understand
Examples
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Feedback from First Lecture
• I cannot hear clearly because of the accent and pronunciation;
• in addition there are numerous professional words to understand
difficultly
It’s hard to keep full attention for 1h during speech
For the perspective of myself I found it difficult to understand some
professional phrases within the powerpoint, due to the lack of
background knowledge of this discipline
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Feedback from second lecture
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Positives:
Negatives
Lecture experience
Accent
Topic highly relevant to PG studies
Lack of interaction
Powerpoint slides
Lack of intonation
Structure
Majority found it dull and difficult
to understand
Examples
More interesting
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Feedback from Second Lecture
Topic is the same, so I became familiar with the information about the lecture, and
also the accent
When it comes to some curve, I hope there can be graphs, as sometimes the
description would be a little abstract
I found that it is a little difficult to understand some academic phrases,
because of the lack of economic and financial background
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Main feedback and implications for this year’s PS
A need to balance process and product
Work with subject lecturers to get slides in
advance and work with them as pre-lecture prep
Monitor amount of writing on slide to encourage
pre-lecture prep
Do more with post lecture notes – set up
activities to show value of notes
(gapfills/quiz/summary with mistakes etc.) Write
questions for lecturer
Compare outcomes between lectures
Raise awareness with tutors
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Accent will always be
an issue – international
university
More bite-sized
exposure
Next steps
• Collaborate with departments on lectures as
well as academic language and literacy
• Raise awareness of importance of strategies
with Pre-sessional tutors and students
• Manage student expectations
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References
•
Deroey, K. L. B. (2015). Marking Importance in Lectures : Interactive and Textual Orientation, (October 2013), 51–72.
http://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amt029
•
Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge
•
Lee, G. (2009) Speaking up: six Korean students’ oral participation in class discussions in US graduate seminars English for Specific
Purposes, 28 (2009), pp. 142–156
•
Vandergrift, L. (2006). Second Language Listening : Listening Ability or Language Proficiency ? Modern Language Journal 90 (1), 6-18
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