Abstract

Listening is a notoriously challenging skill to research, given its elusive and ephemeral nature. When researchers have tried to understand what goes on inside a listener’s mind, they have often done so using research methods that are displaced in time from the actual listening event. For example, data from questionnaires about listening experiences or post-listening comprehension tests are generated after listening events, making them vulnerable to time and memory lags. This keynote presentation, however, explores exciting new opportunities for L2 listening research that have the potential to overcome limitations of previous research by introducing real-time, in-situ data collection procedures that monitor listening as it happens. 

After first critically examining previous research methods, an idiodynamic perspective (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022; Siegel, et al., 2025) on listening research will be introduced. This view represents listening as a complex dynamic system (de Bot, et al., 2007) that accounts for variations in individual listeners’ pre-existing conditions (e.g., language background, prior subject knowledge, etc.). These new directions in listening research are illustrated through the ReMoDEL project (Real-time Monitoring of Dynamic English Listening), funded by the Swedish Research Council and conducted at Stockholm University. The ongoing multi-year study involves monitoring lecture comprehension experiences among EMI students by collecting and cataloguing listening challenges they face when developing disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2025) through L2 English. These challenges include top-down and bottom-up aspects of listening along with multimodal, environmental, and teacher-related issues. Procedures and findings from the project illustrate how previous methodological obstacles can be overcome with the aim of stimulating L2 listening research to tackle old questions more precisely than in the past as well as opening up new possibilities for exploration of aural comprehension and learning. Based on students’ experiences collected during the project, examples of practical considerations for EMI and L2 teachers are also discussed, demonstrating the pedagogic value that can come from new methodological approaches.