Teaching Listening: Theory and Practice

Fall 2006
Tentative Course Syllabus

Instructor: Stephanie Chen

Office: 821 Cheng
E-mail: t22007@ntnu.edu.tw
Phone: 23632664, ext. 221 (Please do not leave messages.)
Office Hours: By appointment; Tuesday 12:00-1:00 PM

Goal:
This course provides the opportunity for participants to explore issues
related to the teaching and learning of L2/FL listening.

Objectives:
Upon finishing the course, you will be able to
1. describe and/or explain second/foreign language listening comprehension
research to date,
2. describe and/or explain indices/guidelines/standards of listening,
3. compare and evaluate teaching materials on teaching listening,
4. utilize internet resources concerning listening,
5. describe and/or explain strategies of listening,
6. design and conduct listening activities,
7. describe, explain, and create ways to assess listening,
8. propose a study on the teaching and learning of listening.

Textbooks:
Buck, G. (2001). Assessing Listening. UK: Cambridge University Press.
* Flowerdew, J., & Miller L. (2005). Second Language Listening: Theory and
Practice. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening. UK: Pearson Education.

Supplementary Materials:
Berne, J. E. (1998). Examining the relationship between L2 listening research,
pedagogical theory, and practice. Foreign Language Annals 31, 2: 169-190.
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to
Language Pedagogy. NY: Pearson Education.
Oxford. R. L. (1993). Research update on teaching L2 listening. System 21,
2: 205-211.
Rubin, J. (1994). A review of second language listening comprehension research.
The Modern Language Journal 78: 199-221.
White, G. (2001). Listening. UK: Oxford University Press.

Activities/ Requirements:
The activities in class are lectures, discussions on assigned readings (with
class members as facilitators), demonstrations, oral reports, and presentations on
research projects. The required responsibilities of a participant in this class
are thus as follows:
1. Facilitating the discussion for the assigned reading or readings (30 min.),
2. Leading a 10 to 15 min. discussion on a topic/question or issue related to
the teaching and learning of listening,
3. Doing two of the three tasks below and presenting the results,
Material/textbook evaluation (30 min., with a partner)
a listening activity (30 min., with a partner)
designing testing samples or assessment tools (30 min., with a partner)
4. Doing twice a 15 min. oral report of a research article of your choice,
5. Doing a 20 min. presentation on ways to collect data for a
hypothesis/research question of interest to you,
6. Writing a paper of 7 to 10 pages, with at least 5 references. (The paper
should include the following sections: rationale, research questions/hypotheses, 5
annotated references, data collection procedure/method, limitation, and
references.)

Attendance and Participation:

Please note that participation is 10% of your final score. At the end of the
semester, you will be asked to evaluate each other on this part of the scoring.
Criteria relevant to the evaluation will be discussed in the first day of class.

Scoring:
Facilitation (0% or 10%) 10%
Presentation: Material/Textbook Evaluation (peer evaluation) 15%
Demo: Listening Activity (peer evaluation) 15%
Presentation: Testing/Assessment Tool (peer evaluation) 15%
Oral Report: Self-Selected Research Article (0% or 10%) 20%
Presentation: Data Collection for a Hypothesis/Research Question 10%

Paper 20% Participation (peer

evaluation) 10%
Extra Credits (2-3%, max. 5%) 5%

Tentative Course Plan:

Week Date Content
1 9/26 --getting started
--previous research in listening (Burne, Oxford, Rubin)
---DW:
about the paper: what experiences you have had teaching and/or learning listening,
what interests you most, what would you like to know about most, what are the
problems
2 10/3 historical background
F&M chapter 1:
F&M chapter 2:
F&M chapter 3:
F&M chapter 4:
3 10/10 no class
4 10/17 listening styles and strategies; pedagogical model
F&M chapter 5:
F&M chapter 6:
F&M chapter 7:
due: annotated reference #1
5 10/24 case studies; listening and technology
F&M chapter 8:
F&M chapter 9:
Oral Report (4):
6 10/31 input; instructional design
Rost chapter 9:
Rost chapter 10:
Oral Report (4):
7 11/7 listening and technology
Guest Speaker: Prof. Howard H. Chen
8 11/14 Material (2 pairs):
Oral Report (5):
due: annotated reference #2 & # 3
about the paper: rationale & research questions/hypotheses
9 11/21 testing listening
F&M chapter 10:
Material (2 pairs):
 Oral Report (4):
10 11/28 testing listening
F&M chapter 11:
Activity (2 pairs):
Oral Report (3):
11 12/5 testing listening
Buck chapter 2:
Activity (2 pairs):
Oral Report (3):
due: annotated reference #4
12 12/12 testing listening
Buck chapter 4:
Activity (1 pair):
Testing (2 pairs):
Oral Report (3):
due: annotated reference #5
13 12/19 testing listening
Buck chapter 5:
Buck chapter 6:
Testing (3 pairs):
14 12/26 researching listening
Rost chapter 12:
Rost chapter 13:
15 1/2 Individual Conference
16 1/9 Presentation: Data Collection
17 1/16 Presentation: Data Collection
18 1/23 paper due

Participants ( ):
Visitors ( ):

Teaching Listening
Fall 2006
Instructions: Annotated References

You are asked to write 5 annotated references to fulfill the requirement of the
course. When you write the references, please note the following:
1. Select a research article or a book chapter (which cannot be a chapter that
is already selected for class discussion) that seems interesting to you. The
article or the chapter must have to do with teaching and/or learning of L1/L2/FL
listening.
2. Read the article/chapter.
3. Write an essay between 250 and 300 words about the article/chapter. The
essay must include a short summary of the article, and may include any of the
following: questions that you want to ask, ideas or ways to do research you find
interesting and/or useful in the article/chapter and why, ideas or ways to do
research you find problematic and/or questionable and why, a research idea that
you have in relation to this article/chapter, etc.
4. Remember to write down on top of the essay your name, the number of the
reference, the date, and the source. For example:
Name: Stephanie
Reference: #1
Date: Oct. 17, 2006
Source: Flowerdew, J., & Miller L. (2005). Second Language Listening: Theory and
Practice. UK: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1.
5. The due days of the annotated references are: 10/17, #1; 11/14, #2 and #3;
12/5, #4; and 12/12, #5.
6. Select the references carefully so that they would help you develop some
research questions and hypotheses for your final paper.
7. Use two of the references to make the oral reports in class.
8. Collect all references after they are returned to you and attach them to
your final paper.

Teaching Listening
Fall 2006
Instructions: Oral Report

You are asked to do two oral reports on research articles or book chapters
of your own choice. The purpose of the task is for you to introduce to your
classmates what you find interesting and useful in the recent development of
teaching and learning listening that is not sufficiently covered by the assigned
readings in class.
Each time when an “Oral Report” is scheduled, there will be 3 to 5
presenters doing their oral reports at the same time. The reports will take the
form of poster session presentations, which allow the presenters to enjoy more
communication with participants (one-to-one to one-to-a small group). For such
presentations, you use charts, graphs, illustrations, and summaries to convey
information quickly and effectively, without the formality of other types of
presentation.

Please read the instructions below for more information.

1. Sign up for the task on the first day of class. You are required to the
reports twice.
2. Begin to look for and select articles or book chapters appropriate for the
annotated references and this task early in the semester.
3. The selected articles or book chapters should not be too dated (say, before
1986). Of course those “classics” are exceptions in this case.
4. Read the article/chapter and write the annotated reference(s).
5. Prepare materials (speaking and visual) to present in the report(s) using
your annotated reference as an guideline.
6. During the presentation, first each presenter will announce their topics so
that participants can decide which presentations they will go to.
7. Then the presenters conduct a 15 to 20 minutes on the article/book chapter.
8. Finally participants have 5 minutes to ask questions
9. Each time an Oral Report is scheduled, there will be 2 to 3 rounds of
presentations, depending on the number of presenters. (Each round is about 25
minutes in length, as described above.)
10. This task is pass or fail. No scoring will be done.
11. Please note that audio-visual equipment cannot be used.
Teaching Listening
Fall 2006
Instructions: Listening Activity

Instructions:
1. You are asked to do a 30-minute pair-work presentation/demonstration on how
a listening activity is designed and conducted.
2. In the presentation you will
a. give the activity a name,
b. describe and explain your motivation(s) of designing the activity,
c. state the aims/goals of the activity,
d. provide specifications such as level, time, preparation, listening/viewing
materials (where you get it and how you modify it), other materials (pictures,
tables, questions, etc), equipments, procedure, variations (if any), and follow-
ups (if any),
e. demonstrate how the activity is conducted,
f. and describe and explain the difficulties and problems you encounter, and
the decisions you make during preparation.
3. You as a pair can share the work (preparation and demonstration) any way you
want as long as it is fair.
4. Your presentation/demonstration is 15% of your final grade and it will be
peer evaluated on pair basis.
5. In the last 5 minutes, designated listeners (your classmates) will be asked
to give you feedback orally, and all listeners will give you written feedback when
the activity is finished.