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Guest Author: Daniel Richardson

Daniel Richardson is Deputy Head of French and French Teacher at a private school in Victoria, Australia. He has recently completed an MA in Education (Teaching and Learning) and his dissertation was on effective listening instruction in French. @DanJRich

The Problem with Listening in Language Classrooms

Listening has long been considered the ‘Cinderella skill’ of second language (L2) acquisition (Nunan, 2002; Vandergrift, 1997), often sidelined in favour of reading, writing and speaking. Historically misconceived as a passive skill, listening was assumed to develop naturally without explicit instruction (Rost, 2002). However, learners consistently report listening as the most challenging skill (Graham, 2002, 2006), an observation reinforced by research showing it receives the least attention in L2 pedagogy (Goh, 2017).

A common approach still prevalent in L2 classrooms is the Comprehension Approach (CA), which involves playing audio and asking students to answer comprehension questions (Field, 1998). While this may appear practical, it reduces listening to a test of understanding rather than a skill to be taught and practised. In this model, students are asked to perform listening rather than learn how to listen (Siegel, 2014).

Why the Comprehension Approach Falls Short

The CA has several critical flaws. It places undue cognitive strain on learners by focusing on outcomes over process (Field, 2008). Expecting novices to interpret fleeting audio without any prior instruction in listening would seem to contravene what we know about cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988). This is particularly unfair given that decoding and parsing spoken language, especially in phonologically complex languages like French, requires systematic practice (Goh, 2000; Simpson, 2017).

Moreover, the CA undermines learner self-efficacy. Repeated failure at comprehension tasks without guidance reduces motivation and self-concept (Graham, 2007), violating Bandura’s (1997) principle that mastery experiences are essential for confidence and growth.

What Research Says: The Need for Explicit Instruction

Recent research distinguishes between two key types of listening processes:

• Bottom-up processing: Decoding sounds, words, syllables and syntactic structures (Graham, 2017; Vandergrift, 2004).
  
• Top-down processing: Using background knowledge, context and prediction to interpret meaning (Richards, 2003; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010).
  

While most intervention studies focus on top-down strategies (e.g., prediction and verification), fewer tackle the systematic development of bottom-up skills like phoneme segmentation and parsing (Goh, 2000; Simpson, 2017). Yet it is clear that both are essential and interdependent. For example, Mayberry (2006) found that the lack of phonological decoding can inhibit the effective use of top-down strategies.

Time to be the Fairy Godmother: Recommendations for the Classroom

Drawing on the research and on the findings of my own recent MA dissertation in listening instruction, the following recommendations are proposed for teaching listening in L2 classrooms:

• Abandon the Comprehension Approach as the default. Use comprehension questions as assessment tools, not instructional methods.
  
• Explicitly teach bottom-up skills such as:
  
  • Phoneme and syllable segmentation
    
  • Discrimination of similar sounds
    
  • Parsing and chunking phrases
    
  • Recognising linking and liaison in connected speech (especially in French)

Consider Gianfranco Conti’s EPI (Extensive Processing Instruction) as a framework for achieving recommendation #2. The NCELP has some great resources for explicit teaching of French phonics also.

• Incorporate top-down strategies including:
  
  • Predicting vocabulary and content before listening
    
  • Verifying and adjusting predictions during listening
    
  • Reflecting on what was understood and why
    
  • Setting goals for strategy use in future tasks
    
• Use a teacher’s voice or slowed audio in the early stages to scaffold decoding, before gradually introducing authentic speed.
  
• Teach both processing modes interactively. Top-down strategies may “compensate” for weak bottom-up skills initially (Vandergrift, 2004), but the goal should be confirmatory interaction, where both processes reinforce each other (Graham & Macaro, 2008; Yeldham & Gruba, 2014).
  
• Focus on building self-efficacy. Mastery experiences, such as successfully applying strategies to decode speech, are crucial to student confidence (Bandura, 1997).
  

Conclusion

Listening cannot be effectively taught by simply exposing learners to spoken language and quizzing their comprehension. It is a complex, active skill that requires deliberate and scaffolded instruction. By integrating both bottom-up decoding skills and top-down strategies into a coherent pedagogical framework, teachers can equip students with the tools they need not only to understand spoken language but also to feel confident and competent doing so.

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References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. Freeman.

Field, J. (1998). Skills and strategies: Towards a new methodology for listening. ELT Journal, 52(2), 110–118.

Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Goh, C. C. M. (2000). A cognitive perspective on language learners’ listening comprehension problems. System, 28(1), 55–75.

Goh, C. (2017). Cognition, metacognition, and L2 listening, in Hinkel, E. (ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 214–228), Routledge. [Online]. Available at: https://repository.nie.edu.sg/server/api/core/bitstreams/a4de448c-2b46-431c-a9d4-a3542b4e9dc3/content

Graham, S. (2002). Listening strategies in French: What are they? Language Learning Journal, 25(1), 22–28.

Graham, S. (2006). Listening comprehension: The learners’ perspective. System, 34(2), 165–182.

Graham, S. (2017). Research into practice: Listening strategies in language learning. Language Teaching, 50(1), 107–119.

Graham, S., & Macaro, E. (2008). Strategy instruction in listening for lower-intermediate learners of French. Language Learning, 58(4), 747–783.

Mayberry, M. (2006). The effect of instruction on second language listening comprehension. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

Nunan, D. (2002). Listening in language learning. In Methodology in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press.

Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening. Longman.

Siegel, J. (2014). Exploring L2 listening instruction: Examinations of practice. ELT Journal, 68(1), 22–30.

Simpson, E.K. (2017). ‘Can speech stream segmentation instruction improve listening comprehension and listening self-efficacy in lower intermediate learners?’ [Master’s thesis]. University of Oxford. [Online]. Available at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2fff1b50-db92-44db-bb00-b8f908685f8b

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.

Vandergrift, L. (1997). ‘The Cinderella of communication strategies: Reception strategies in interactive listening’. The Modern Language Journal, vol. 81, pp. 494–505.

Vandergrift, L. (2004). Listening to learn or learning to listen? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 3–25.

Vandergrift, L., & Tafaghodtari, M. H. (2010). Teaching L2 learners how to listen does make a difference. Language Learning, 60(2), 470–497.

Yeldham, M., & Gruba, P. (2014). Adaptation of a process-based L2 listening intervention. Language Teaching Research, 18(1), 33–53.