1. Introduction
In her article, Graham (2017) concludes ‘that very little of the research regarding the teaching of listening has made it into the classroom in England, not least in a positive way’ (p. 117). She suggests that teachers rarely delve into the process of second language (L2) listening in class; instead, listening comprehension is treated more as a test than a task. She continues that there is an over-application of the widely shared findings that pre-listening tasks aid listening comprehension – particularly tasks which involve predicting the vocabulary which will be heard during the listening task. Given the suggestion that learners find listening tasks difficult has been addressed within schools simply by making such tasks easier, Graham feels a more pedagogically apt approach might be to examine more closely what has made the task difficult and to modify teaching to address this.
Here I will discuss my experience as a classroom teacher of French, German and Spanish in English comprehensive schools. I will also incorporate some thoughts regarding my experience as a teacher educator in the UK within several different teacher-training contexts.
Perhaps some context would be useful here. At secondary level, language learning is compulsory in England for only the first three years of secondary education (year 7 to year 9), although about 50% of the cohort opt to study a language – almost always French, German or Spanish – for the school-leaving exams known as the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), which are taken in the academic year in which students turn 16. A high grade in these exams is roughly the equivalent to a B1 grade in the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference), and an average grade is roughly equivalent to A2.Footnote 1 On average, learners might have two hours’ a week tuition. UK secondary level teachers are contracted to teach 22 out of 25 contact hours per week. They have additional pastoral duties which take up at least one hour a week, and additionally have planning and marking obligations: the typical term-time workload (39 weeks a year) is between 50 and 60 hours per week. Teacher morale is generally low, with 40% of all teachers stating that they plan to leave the profession within five years, and 18% within two years (National Education Union, 2019). Most UK languages teachers teach at least two languages, and they can be asked to teach a language in which they are not qualified to degree level, which adds to both workload and morale issues.
It is within this context that one must discuss the extent to which academic research into listening being applied to the English modern foreign language (MFL) classroom and discuss the reasons for this.
2. Going about listening tasks in the English classroom
2.1 The comprehension approach
Graham reports that there is very little indication that teachers of MFL English go beyond listening comprehension tasks: that is to say, they follow what Field (Reference Field2008) describes as the ‘Comprehension Approach’, whereby a listening track is introduced, comprehension questions are asked, and after the task is completed, the teacher gives the answers and perhaps collects a mark. Both Field and Graham state that teachers tend to assume that the skill of L2 listening will develop of its own accord; this is also my own experience – for example, on asking three of my colleagues whether they believe they teach listening, or whether they simply ‘do’ listening, two accepted that listening is ‘done’ rather than ‘taught’ in the classroom. Rarely is there discussion in the classroom as to how learners came to their answers. This has also been the case with the many pre-service teachers that I have observed: the driving force in these tasks is the correct answer – the product – rather than any process which has taken place. The third colleague is resistant to unidirectional listening tasks in general, considering them to be artificial, and prefers to consider listening skills as a key element of the communicative skill of conversation, yet still when listening tasks take place in her classroom, they follow a similar format.
One might conclude from this that teachers are not usually interested in reading research, let alone applying the findings to their own classroom; however, this is not my own conclusion. On the contrary, teachers are hungry for research but struggle on three counts: first, they may not know where to begin looking for it; second, if they do find it, it is often inaccessible due to paywalls or inaccessible language; and third, assimilating research sufficiently to redesign classroom activities demands time and motivation, both of which are in short supply among many English schoolteachers.
2.2 Strategy use
However, if there is one key finding regarding listening that has made its way to the classroom, it is that of prediction of vocabulary before a listening exercise. Graham (2017) suggests vocabulary prediction is over-applied, particularly as there is no evidence as to whether this is helpful for long-term listening development. My own experience is consistent with Graham's findings, particularly at slightly higher levels (years 10 and 11 – ages 14–16). The observation is also consistent with the format of the GCSE exam, in which each question is introduced with a number and a title, and then a short period of time is left before the track itself is heard. Many teachers train their students to use this time to note the kinds of words they can expect to hear when the track begins. However, Graham suggests that such prediction can be unhelpful: listeners can be overly focussed on listening out for their predicted words, ignoring the sense of the passage, or fail to check whether their predictions were correct.
Graham also discusses research concerning metacognitive strategies in order to increase listening success, concluding again that little takes place in schools, particularly with regard to peer discussion post-listening. On a personal level, this is pertinent as my school is in its second year of pushing metacognition as a school-wide learning policy, as an upshot of findings from the Education Endowment Foundation (2019). This can be defined as a unified teaching approach across the school whereby pupils are helped to think explicitly about their learning and are taught specific strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. Observations focussed on metacognition have taken place, and at departmental meetings we have worked hard on establishing what metacognition looks like in our subject.
Metacognitive work within MFL is not without complication, though: one colleague, who prefers not to use any English during a French lesson (she speaks only French with the students), feels that her 100% target language approach is incompatible with the metacognitive strategies due to the complex conceptual and lexical demands it imposes. However, it is also my experience that within MFL, there is a certain tendency to conflate strategy use as it pertains to test-technique with metacognitive strategies pertaining to listening success per se; for example, in my institution, teachers do tend to stop, take stock with the class and ask them ‘how are we going to go about this task’, examining the questions carefully and anticipating answers in advance. This test-wise strategy then gets recorded as metacognition.
3. Conclusions
In her conclusion, Graham poses the valid question of whether teachers’ practice when giving listening exercises stems from current research findings and concludes that this is unlikely. I am inclined to agree; teachers tend to learn from observing and speaking to other teachers. The system in England and Wales for training teachers is fragmented; many are being trained in school-based programmes, with little or no access to research. Even for those whose training is within a university setting – and therefore can access the relevant academic journals – spend far more time in their pre-service year in a school, watching and receiving feedback from experienced teachers whose access to research is in most cases somewhere between minimal and non-existent.
The focus of Graham's article is L2 listening, and she points out that listening is a key skill underpinning L2 acquisition more generally. Similarly, the disconnect between English MFL teaching and the research community encompasses far more than just listening research; one might say that the situation I have described with regard to the L2 listening classroom is simply one example – symptom, even – of the wider issue, that is, teachers and researchers are confined to their own worlds, with minimal overlap.
Although some research suggests that teachers do not engage with research (Borg, Reference Borg2010), I perceive a hunger among teachers for up-to-date research, yet they are faced with many challenges when it comes to applying research findings to their classroom practice. Graham suggests that one way to improve this might be to ‘allow teachers to examine their own current beliefs and practices in the light of what the research literature says’ (2017, p. 116), and discusses an intervention (Graham, Santos, & Francis-Brophy, Reference Graham, Santos and Francis-Brophy2014) that consisted of two two-hour workshops and six online modules completed over the subsequent eight weeks.
Unfortunately, though, despite such positive interventions, for the typical teacher, access to research remains difficult, and most teachers continue to address listening tasks in the fashion suggested by text-books and in the same way in which they have seen their trainers and mentors do in the past. However, it is possible that the tide is turning, through such intermediaries as Conti and Smith (Reference Conti and Smith2019), whose work is making waves within the English MFL-teaching community. It is perhaps largely only through innovations such as theirs that academic research into listening will make it into the English MFL classroom.
Kedi Simpson is a teacher of MFL – French, German and Spanish – at a comprehensive secondary school in the south of England, where she teaches around 200 students aged 11 to 18 each fortnight. She is a mentor of student teachers of MFL who are placed in the school for internships of two to six months as part of their Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). She also teaches on the PGCE course and tutors on two M.Sc. courses in Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford, one of which is a dedicated course for language teachers. She is in the third year of a part-time doctorate in applied linguistics in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, where she is researching the developmental trajectory of L2 listening, focussing on young English learners of French.
