Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (CLTL)

2021 Fall Workshop

Meaning through Sound:

Rediscovering Listening in the Language Classroom

October 22-23, 2021

Hosted Virtually by Brown University

Overview

As a vital component in second language acquisition, listening comprehension has been neglected until recently. This workshop identifies this pedagogical issue across languages and stresses the importance to rediscover and redesign the listening component in the language proficiency development. The keynote speaker, Elvis Wagner (Temple University), will review and reflect upon listening as input in research and practice; discuss various aspects, factors, and issues in L2 listening comprehension development; and present various methods to assess L2 listening in deep- and shallow-orthography languages. The panel sessions will showcase the teaching practices in and out of the classroom, and provide useful resources for building listening comprehension. The break-out sessions invite in-depth discussion and hands-on collaborative work on designing effective listening materials and assessment tools.

Panel Presentations

Ruth Adler Ben-Yehuda (Brown University): "Strategies in Developing Listening Comprehension Skills"

In this talk, I will suggest guidelines in choosing authentic cultural content that is appropriate for practicing the skill of listening (and viewing), especially at the novice and intermediate levels. I will also discuss the methods of developing listening strategies for learners to help them understand the content they are listening to. Finally, I will talk about the outcome and show ways to develop the learners’ ability to communicate both in speaking and in writing.

Rym Bettaieb & Reem Faraj (Columbia University): "Shahid Listening Website: Interactive Activities for Self-Assessment, Evaluation and Reflection"

Shahid project aims at creating an Arabic language website that is safe from hacking, is permanent, and easily accessible to students and faculty of the Arabic language. With the help and guidance of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), it will incorporate tools for learning Arabic through technology. The goal is to have a new Arabic listening website, that offers authentic listening material for students of First Year and Second Year Arabic, such as quizzes, self-assessment drills and handouts in the form of listening questions, video scripts, and follow up activities.

Shiva Rahmani Khanghahi (The University of Chicago): "A Music-mediated Language Experience in F2F, Online and Hybrid Classes"

Most of the time, fear and insecurity limit or prevent interaction with others in the learning environment, diminishing its educational value. In this sense, the implementation of a music-mediated experience fosters learners’ willingness to participate in the language classroom and develops students’ interpersonal and collaborative competencies. This workshop equips you with the tools to use music as an effective tool for learning languages, using the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes of communication, to engage students in synchronous and asynchronous task-based activities. You will learn how to create interactive group activities requiring creative thinking skills; and plan a collaborative language lesson involving auditory, visual, and tactile tools.

Angela Lee-Smith (Yale University): "Building Listening Repertoires for Language Learners: Multimodal Podcast Repository"

This presentation demonstrates the multimodal podcast repository, which allows learners to be exposed to various listening inputs in the following four categories: i) appreciative listening (e.g., songs, spoken word, audiobooks, dramas), ii) empathetic listening (e.g., oral history, interviews, diasporic conversation), iii) comprehensive listening (e.g., cooking directions, lectures, presentations), and iv) critical listening (e.g., TED Talks, spoken editorials, PSAs, debates). The audience will gain insight into i) different ways of implementing multimodal listening in their daily teaching and ii) how to design multimodal listening tasks, assessments, and reflections.

Verónica Moraga (The University of Chicago): "Listening To Your Community"

The Spanish Club, El Cafecito, creates occasions and spaces for students to meet members of the Latinx community, explore grassroots themes emerging from these communities, gain practice in the target language, and build relationships with peers and guests. Students practice cultural humility by listening attentively to guests and learning from them. Students reflect on their own values and beliefs before ultimately communicating with native speakers in an authentic context. Listening to your community is an integral stage of language learning in which students begin to recognize and understand the varied perspectives and lifeways of other cultural and linguistic communities.

Diana Palenzuela (The University of Chicago): "Rethinking listening comprehension strategies: TalkAbroad as a resource for intercultural understanding"

This session will present the benefits of using TalkAbroad as a tool that goes beyond mere listening comprehension, creating a space for cross-cultural interaction through authentic communicative situations with speakers of the target language who have different origins and backgrounds. It will show some activities aimed at promoting the development of the 5 C's: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. Activities that are aimed at educating critical thinkers, capable of connecting and comparing cultures, as well as negotiating meanings and finding common ground in today's globalized world.

Janet Sedlar (The University of Chicago): “Listening Comprehension in Study-Abroad Settings: Unscripted Audio Recordings as the Foundation of a Study Abroad Spanish Course in Barcelona”

This panel presents an unconventional approach to an intermediate-level Study-Abroad Spanish course designed specifically for American students living short-term in Barcelona. The two primary learning goals are: 1) for students to successfully navigate everyday communicative situations in Spanish; and 2) for students to expand their awareness of cultural differences between Spain and the U.S. The course content revolves around two sets of unscripted audio recordings: one modeling important linguistic functions needed by students in daily life; the other featuring short interviews with native speakers on cultural differences between Spain and the U.S.

Nandipa Sipengane (Yale University): "YouTube Reactions in the L2 Classroom"

During the session, instructors will be introduced to an innovative way of using target language YouTube music videos as a mode of learning in the L2 classroom context. Insights will be shared on strategies to encourage students’ participation in music related learning activities which encourage both listening and reflecting. The presentation will showcase student projects to provide attendees with a practical perspective on the value of YouTube music video reactions in enhancing listening skills, critical thinking skills as well as creative expression.

Meejeong Song (Cornell University): "The Redesign of Listening Materials Using MBLA (Mobile-Based Listening Aid)”

This presentation will showcase the various phases over 5 years of utilizing MBLA (Mobile-Based Listening Aid) in and outside the Elementary Korean classroom. The MBLA was first created in 2015 with the fund from the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning to enhance students’ listening comprehension. Students tended to reside in the textbook conversations, so to help them come out of their comfort zone, I created model conversations in more realistic settings incorporating the old and new grammar points. The comparisons of different phases of the MBLA will be demonstrated to find helpful ways to improve students’ listening skills.

Orit Yeret (Yale University): "What do you SEE? What do you HEAR? What do you UNDERSTAND? Creating meaning through listening AND viewing activities for L2 language learners"

With the fast advancement of technology worldwide, language instructors nowadays have different resources to choose from when designing learning activities. For listening purposes, the use of short videos – commercials, movie trailers, web series, etc. – can provide learners many opportunities to convey and construct meaning. Videos link together audio and visual information, and generate a multi-sensory experience for learners, which, in turn, increases motivation levels. Videos can also be played, replayed and paused, which helps reinforce listening habits, and grants learners control over their learning process. My presentation will discuss the benefits of using short videos for advancing the listening skills of L2 language learners.

Hands-on Sessions

Elsa Belmont Flores (Brown University): Listening through Film: Navigating Unfamiliar Accents

Implementing authentic materials for listening can be particularly challenging in Arabic, where different registers and dialects are used by the same community of speakers. In this session, the presenter will share her experience using film scenes to expose students to Arabic dialects they are unfamiliar with. Listening activities aim at developing students’ skills to navigate ambiguity and construct meaning when listening to an unfamiliar dialect or accent. Together, we will design a template for future listening activities that attendants may wish to implement. Attendants are encouraged to have a film or scene in mind when joining this breakout session.

Gunhild Iris Lischke (Cornell University) & Isabel Choinowski (Cornell University): "I Think She Said … Cooperative Listening"

The listening skill remains a challenge even at the higher language proficiency levels and, therefore, a lot of attention and time is needed to develop it. I will demonstrate a cooperative in-class listening task, fully integrated in the curriculum at my upper-intermediate “German Business Culture” class as well as one in a 1^st semester level class. The model is easily adaptable to other educational settings and levels however, the principle of a cooperative and mediated task remains the same.

Claire Menard (Cornell University): "Life does not come with subtitles – how subtitles can help students develop an organic relationship with listening skills”

This workshop will explore the use of subtitles to strengthen students’ listening comprehension skills. Video subtitles are often seen as a rather passive - sometimes even distracting - tool, as sometimes students focus too much attention on what is written and not enough on what they should be actually listening to. On the contrary, this workshop suggests that language instructors can use browser-based caption editors to help students make sense of the target language syntactic structure by making them active participants in the captioning process.

Grit Matthias Phelps (Cornell University): "Implementation of Technology in L2 Listening"

With diversity increasing in our classes, teaching pronunciation has also become more important. Thus, I have incorporate in-class pronunciation exercises in my first and second year of German language instruction. Two important aspects of learning how to correctly pronounce a foreign language is awareness and reflection. In order to improve ones pronunciation, it is not only essential to differentiate and hear the sounds that make up the foreign language, and learn how to produce those sounds, but also to become aware of how oneself sounds and be able to compare it. In order to accomplish this, my students record themselves in class with a partner and listen back to their recordings together.

Olufeyisayo Soetan (Brown University): "Teaching Tones: Achieving Competence through Listening and Performance"

Feyi Soetan, a Fulbright Teaching Assistant at Brown University, will share her experience teaching Yorùbá, a tonal language spoken in Nigeria. She will be sharing how she employs the use of repetition, familiar rhythms and music to teach tones in her Yorùbá class. Participants should be prepared to learn about the challenges and rewards of teaching tones. They will actively engage in practicing tones during the session and learn strategies for working on cadence and pronunciation.

Lulei Su (Brown University) & Fan Liu (Yale University): "Devices and Resources for Creating Audio Files"

This session will lead the participants to compare recording devices, such as cardioid and omnidirectional, condenser, and dynamic microphones, as well as lavalier lapel mic for creating audio files in the lab setting as well as in authentic real-life situations. In the end, we will also show online resources supporting Artificial Intelligence to create audio files for learning and assessment for multiple languages. Participants will be able to create some audio files for their languages by the end the session.

Co-organizers

Lulei SuBrown University(lulei_su@brown.edu)

Claire MenardCornell University(cm879@cornell.edu)

Fan LiuYale University(fan.liu@yale.edu)