The ‘ Teaching English’ series offers a mixture of methodology and practical ideas for teachers of English as a foreign language. Integrating Authentic Listening into the Language Classroom: Practical guidance on how to teach real-life listening forms part of this series. There is a need for this book because, historically, English language teachers have not been trained in how to teach authentic listening effectively. In addition, the scripted and graded recordings used to model new language (lexis and grammar) in coursebooks are very different from the spontaneous spoken English students encounter beyond the classroom. Consequently, teachers tend to avoid using authentic recordings in class and students struggle to deal with authentic speech in the real world. Integrating Authentic Listening into the Language Classroom address these shortfalls and equips readers with the knowledge and skills to use authentic recordings in their teaching with confidence.
Introduction
Part 1: Theory
Exploring listening in the ELT classroom
Common misconceptions and contentious issues
A critique of the current approach to 'teaching' listening
Myth versus reality
Teaching listening: The challenges of connected speech
The characteristics of formal public spoken English
The characteristics of informal spontaneous spoken English
L1 and L2 listening processes: Decoding challenges for L2 learners
Meaning building challenges for L2 learners
Part 2: Practice
Guiding principles behind the integrated approach
Firm foundations: Teaching learners about listening
Listening goals
Practising listening using written comprehension tasks
Practising meaning building with the teacher as a facilitator
Practising decoding and increasing automaticity
Further uses of authentic recordings
Using International English recordings
Rationale for using authentic recordings in high-stakes international
examinations
Appendices
Sheila M. Thorn is an experienced ELT teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and examination writer with a special interest in authentic listening. She has worked as a listening paper item writer for Cambridge ESOL (First, Advanced), Trinity (ISE) and Helbling (Austria and Germany - listening papers for 18 and 19-year-olds) since 2011. She founded The Listening Business in 1998 and is the author of the Real Lives, Real Listening series (Collins) - a series of books featuring authentic recordings and listening training materials for students from elementary to advanced level. Sheila regularly speaks at national and international conferences on various aspects of authentic listening training and testing and has written a number of significant articles in this field for Modern English Teacher, and other publications.
