Build active engagement with Contemporary Topics online classes

By Michael Rost, Series Editor

Build active engagement with Contemporary Topics online classes

Content-based instruction is a great way to increase student engagement and motivation. Basically, content-based instruction, or “CBI”, means acquiring language while learning content — or through learning content.

CBI doesn’t necessarily involve using a curriculum with academic lectures — history, physics, economics, philosophy and so on. In CBI, the course content can be practical “how to” demonstrations, current event documentaries, inspirational talks, or pop culture events like films and music. The choices are virtually endless. What is important is that the content is substantial — it is appropriate, relevant and worth learning for your students.

The Contemporary Topics series, now in its fourth edition,  has grown in parallel with the developments in content-based instruction and also through my own research on how students acquire language. Over the years I have grown to believe that CBI can accelerate language learning in a variety of contexts, with learners of all ages and levels of proficiency, and not just in academic programs.

The key reason that content-based instruction is so effective ­is that you are working with affective, cognitive, and social engagement at the same time.  

Of course, the results are not automatic. Just using content as a basis for your course won’t guarantee success. In order for CBI to be successful, the instructor has to be patient, flexible, and willing to create three conditions for success:

  1. The content is inherently interesting and relevant to your students — or as the instructor you must find ways to make it more interesting and relevant, through framing of activities, grading of material, and supplementation with other media.
  2. Activities are primarily idea-focused (rather than language-focused) and involve discussion to develop solicitation of others’ views, critical thinking, and agreement or disagreement. If the course material that the class is using is not sufficient in these ways, again you as the instructor need to expand and adapt activities in order to develop more topic-oriented discussion.
  3. Peer interaction is the primary means through which learning takes place. This interaction involves predicting, brainstorming, pair sharing, small group discussion of opinions, peer review of content, and original student presentations on meaningful topics, along with a format for feedback from classmates.  

It may be impossible to achieve all of these conditions fully, but it is important to have these instructional goals in mind, and to work toward establishing them in every class.

Because many English classes are now being taught online, instructors may feel limited, unable to achieve the learning conditions that they could achieve in live face-to-face classes. While it is true that face-to-face instruction is superior for some aspects of language learning, we can still achieve the same levels of successful learning in our online classes.

To teach classes online you basically need a meeting platform with options for screen sharing and grouping.  Most online meetings platforms, such as Google Meet or Zoom, operate in a similar transparent fashion: The instructor enrolls participants and controls “the room”, enabling what students see on their (computer/tablet/phone) screen. The instructor also sets up formats for students to participate either in whole group settings or in break out rooms. The technical format seems foreign at first, but once you learn the mechanics of the online meeting (and realize that there’s always more to learn!), you should be able to start teaching in much the same way you would conduct a face to face class. The essential advice for making this transition is not to worry about the limitations or differences, but simply to do your best with (“embrace”)  the realities of the situation you have!


Working with these principles, here are some practical suggestions for organizing and accelerating learning in online only classes with Contemporary Topics.

1. Flip the classroom to allow for maximum interaction during live sessions.

Contemporary Topics Level 1 cover

Essentially, this means to have the students do as much listening, reading, and practicing on their own before class, so that you can use class time for coaching and interaction and student presentations and feedback.

One rule of thumb for flipping your class is to ask: Can this activity be done alone? (If so, be sure it’s an individual assignment, not done during your online class meeting time.) Can this activity best be done in pairs or small groups? (If so, plan the activity for a “Break Out” session, in which the students work in pairs or small groups in an online meeting room.) Is this activity best done as a whole group activity? (If so, be sure to plan time for the students to work as a whole group and be sure to give a specific task to the whole group, not just the presenter.)

–> Here is a basic formula for flipping the classroom with Contemporary Topics.

2. Consider yourself to be a coach for active learning.

Contemporary Topics Level 2 cover

A major part of the teacher’s role, particularly in online learning, is to provide coaching. Coaching involves specific directions on how to improve skills, but maybe more importantly, coaching involves providing motivation to guide and sustain students in their language learning efforts and struggles.

Try to give at least one personal coaching tip to each student in each class. Try to include a coaching tip in each interaction you have with your students, especially if you meet only once a week.

–> Here is a set of coaching tips that you can use with your own students.

3. Prepare a menu of “core speaking activities” that you can do in break-out groups.

Although “variety is the spice of life” may be true for a lot of relationships, it definitely does not hold for online teaching. Because of the challenges — and the sheer time-consumption — of explaining and demonstrating the procedures for a new activity, it’s most efficient to have a small number of “core speaking activities” that you use again and again. Just three or four “go to activities” is all you need. If you have clear ground rules for the activities, you can just give minimal instructions, such as, “Okay, let’s do our Notes Review Activity now in groups of three. Go to your groups now. You have 10 minutes.” Of course, you’ll need to spend time at the beginning of the semester to get the procedures right, but once things get going smoothly, everyone will be grateful for the time-saving routines you have created.

Student participating in an online class

Aim to have at least three 5-10 minute speaking activities in each online class. These should be activities in which the students do all of the talking, with a clear task. In CBI, it’s very important to give students time to “process” and “own” the material — content-based teaching is definitely not all about being passive and receptive.

–> Here are some core speaking activities that I use with Contemporary Topics.

4. Use media supplements to complement the coursebook content.

Because it is important to keep the content in CBI alive and relevant, you will want to supplement the course material with media and other activities that will personalize the class. It doesn’t take a lot to achieve this effect. Even just one supplement every two or three class meetings can keep your course content fresh and motivating.

You can think in terms of sources you already know — such as TED presentations, YouTube interviews, Spotify songs, or other pieces of media you have archived. (Hint: If you don’t have an archive of favorite sources to supplement units in Contemporary Topics, start one now!) Some popular sites that I use for supplementary material are Newsela and Listenwise. Just type in some topical words and you can find current content that is related to the course material.

Remember: The key with this type of supplementation is that you are using “authentic” sources that focus on ideas and events, not on language learning per se. They give extra dimensions to the content of the course. And remember also, you don’t need to use every bit of media as a thorough comprehension exercise. You’re trying to spice up the content of the class, trying to keep motivating your learners to engage more. Aim to arouse curiosity and generate insight.

Contemporary Topics Level 3 cover

Of course, you can also use language-related supplements. One of my favorites is Quizlet – it’s very fast and easy to create your own vocabulary quizzes for a unit. Add other terms that you think are useful. You can allow Quizlet to give you translations, definitions, and even sample sentences and graphics. All with a free account. Just create your quizzes and pass along the link to the students. They can practice in pairs, quizzing each other.

Just adopt an experimental mindset — and see what kinds of supplements “click” with your students. And, of course, don’t be afraid to ask your students to suggest supplements or types of topics they’d like to learn more about.

–> Here are some suggestions for supplementary activities you can use with Contemporary Topics.

5. Emphasize student participation as a key component of success in the class.

It really can’t be emphasized enough that successful online classes require active student participation – via activities in break out groups, use of the chat and survey functions to respond to questions and ideas during classes, and preparation and delivery of individual and group presentations.

If intrinsic motivation – the students’ natural desire to learn – isn’t enough to infuse a sense of active participation in the class, don’t hesitate to introduce some extrinsic motivational forces, like grades, to give an extra push.  I recommend having participation measures for every class, if possible, and certainly for every unit in course.

Student in online class with teacher

One ingredient of successful participation in Contemporary Topics is the preparation and delivery of individual presentations, which is the last activity in each unit. A few hints for maximizing the use of presentations:

  • To save time (yours and the students’), the instructor prepares a small set (2 to 4) of reliable resources for each presentation. By using just these known resources (which may be articles or videos that you have pre-screened), you can be more certain that the students are doing sound research, rather than simply finding any sources on the internet and asking your approval.
  • To allow for maximum use of student practice time, have every student prepare a presentation for every unit.  Of course, you won’t have enough online class time for every student to present to the whole class “live”, but you can take advantage of free software like Flipgrid to have every student record and submit (after they are happy with their performance) their presentations. (If possible, you will also want to have students submit an outline for approval and comment by you before they do their presentations.)
  • Because presentations in any format (live or recorded) are intended for a real audience, be sure that you and/or your students are viewing every presentation and giving some kind of substantial feedback. Develop a simple rubric that the audience can use to give feedback.

–> Here are some ideas for supporting student presentations.


These are some ways that you can promote engagement in classes in which you’re using Contemporary Topics.  The units themselves are organized to promote maximum participation and engagement, but it is up to the instructor to orchestrate the class and make decisions about timing, grouping, and supplementing the course material.

As I have mentioned, one thing that I am sure of is that content-based instruction can provide you with a flexible framework for engaging students, for creating a learner-centered course, and for achieving maximum progress. Good luck!


Michael Rost is series editor of Contemporary Topics, a three-level series, now in its fourth edition. You can contact him with questions and feedback via your Pearson representative.

Contemporary Topics, now in a fourth edition, expands on its highly respected approach to developing academic listening and study skills. Organized around realistic college lectures, the text guides learners through carefully sequenced activities in skills such as note-taking, focusing attention, intensive listening, and vocabulary building. Learn more at pearsoneltusa.com/contemporarytopics4E

Build Self-Directed Learners

Build Self-Directed Learners

Dr. Ken Beatty
By Dr. Ken Beatty

“One hour.”

The answer is heartbreaking. More fortunate teachers and students say “Three hours,” but it’s still disappointing.

Both are answers to the question I ask, “How many hours a week do your English language students attend classes?” Often the answer is “Not enough.”

Surprisingly, even in countries that claim they want to help all students become bilingual, class times and resources can be severely limited. Governments may expect students to achieve a CEFR B1 Level on graduation but, without additional support, it’s impossible for most to achieve. This is particularly true when the teachers themselves are not at a B1 Level, and opportunities for professional development are limited or non-existent.

Students need quality classroom hours. To progress from CEFR A1 to A2 requires about 100 contact hours but, to get to A2 to B1, requires 350 to 400 hours. Question: If students only have one or a few contact hours a week doesn’t that make it impossible for students to learn the English language? Surprisingly, many students do succeed. How? What are their secrets?

It usually starts with the teacher. Teachers are naturally used to identifying and overcoming problems in innovative ways. Teachers faced with limited contact hours make the most of the ones they have, and help students become more self-directed.

Here are five strategies for helping students to become more self-directed, autonomous  English language learners:

1 Needs assessments

A starting point for helping students to learn on their own is to discover, together, each student’s strengths and weaknesses. This means lots of formative assessment where students can test themselves to see where they need to improve before taking summative assessments. Every student is different. Keep an eye on less-able students and work with them to figure out what gets in the way of them improving. It’s often that they don’t understand key building blocks in language learning. For example, although they may be able to memorize different verb forms, do they really understand why we sometimes use the simple past tense, but use the past progressive at other times?

2 Point to resources

Students studying on their own can find extra resources, but they need to be pointed in the right direction. One set of resources that is often overlooked is the student book and the online resources that come with it. StartUp, an eight-level series for young adults and adults, has both a Student Portal and a Teacher Portal packed with resources like photocopiable masters that can be shared online. Another key part of StartUp is the Pearson Practice English App. Once students download the content, it’s on their phones and available anytime, anywhere. This means students can use the app to do vocabulary and grammar exercises, listen to student book audio clips, and watch grammar, pronunciation, and conversation videos. Studying while they travel or wait makes the best use of their time.

3 Suggest extra tasks

learning on your own

Encourage students to expose themselves to more English. In terms of lifelong learning, nothing is better than a love of reading. Students who read English for pleasure will unconsciously pick up vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, genres, the rhythms of language, and more. The same is true with listening; students can search online to find podcasts on almost any area of personal interest. Beyond reading and listening, it’s important for students to be productive, speaking and writing. A good starting point is for students to write about what they’re reading and listening to, and then share with peers what they’ve learned and enjoyed.

4 Flip learning

Flipped learning is about getting students to do more preparation outside of class. Limited classroom time should not be taken up with having students read, write, or watch videos. Instead, the main focus should be using English in conversation. Ask students to study the unit content ahead of time. They will come to class with questions, better prepared to practice and learn.

5 Raise expectations

Actor Natalie Portman was a top student, but she recalls how when she came home from school with 97 percent on a test, her father’s response was: “Where is the other three percent?” His high expectations–along with support–helped Portman in her movie career, as well as to graduate from Harvard University. You need to encourage your students but, at the same time, continuously raise expectations, pushing them to see what more they can do. They learned new vocabulary? Good. Now learn the synonyms and antonyms. They gave a speech clearly? Good. Now work on saying it more fluently. They wrote an excellent paragraph? Good. Now try rewriting it to make it longer, better, and more engaging. Learning a language is a life-long process of continuous improvement.

Regardless of how many classroom hours students have, each of these strategies will help move them closer to their English goals. Perhaps your students only come to class one hour a week, but the important question is how many hours they study. If the answer is many then, like you, they’re sure to be successful.


StartUp

StartUp is the new general English course for adults and young adults who want to make their way in the world and need English to do it.


Dr. Ken Beatty has worked in secondary schools and universities in Asia, the Middle East, and North and South America. He is author of 77 textbooks for Pearson and has given 500+ teacher-training sessions and 100+ conference presentations in 33 countries. His most recent books are in the LEAP series, and he is Series Consultant for StartUp.

Exploring Engagement in ELT Teaching

Part III: Cognitive Engagement

Reflecting back on the last year has me, and most likely many of you, asking were my students engaged in this new normal? If this is to be a normal way of delivery, how can I engage them even deeper?  Well, if you have been following along, you are probably pretty familiar with the definition of engagement I have been working from–“the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught”. We know that engagement involves emotional engagement, which we looked at in the first blog, and behavioral engagement, which we looked at in the last blog, and cognitive engagement, which we will unpack in this blog.

What is Cognitive Engagement?

When we think of cognitive engagement, we may ask, Are my students interacting with content and applying the new content? Are they developing their learner autonomy? It’s really about effort and investment. However, this effort and investment begins with the teacher. The delivery of the content, or the manner in which we teach the content, can either foster or discourage cognitive engagement. What exactly do I mean? Well, the content has to be accessible to leaners, and that includes the terminology we use to teach the content. We also have to scaffold learning or take them up Bloom’s taxonomy. So, how can we build lessons that cognitively engage our students?

Strategies to Build Cognitive Engagement

Very much like both behavioral and emotional engagement, it’s all about leveraging our traditional teaching methods and the types of activities we have students participate in. When we unpack this a bit more, we can really break this down into four key segments: language of our delivery, allotted time for ‘learning’, scaffolding content, and time for learner engagement with content.

Element #1: Language of Delivery

Have you ever explained an English grammar lesson, used the correct terminology, albeit subject, object, participle, etc., and looked out at your class and saw blank stares? Or worse yet, called out a question on Zoom and were met with silence? For many of our students these terms may be familiar, but for many more they simply aren’t. The level at which a student entered your program may be a factor in how familiar they are with terms. So, how can we overcome this? Well, a silver lining in our COVID world is the tools we have available to us and are using. Imagine teaching a grammar lesson, and students ‘watching’ the grammar come alive.

video

Take a look at the screenshot of this video from the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod. It is done in the Khan Academy style. As the teacher is talking through the lesson, students are hearing the lesson, but also seeing it. The visual helps to support the terms the students are unfamiliar with. Furthermore, we need to make sure we focus on not just the what, but the how and the why—think language, form, meaning, and use.

Element #2: Allotted Time for Learning

We often have a lot to do in a little time. We may use our entire class period to present one lesson. However, how many of our students are truly able to absorb it all? How many are ‘engaged’ the full amount of time? In today’s digital world, with today’s digital learners, it is not realistic to think that they can listen to a lecture for an extended period of time, and ‘learn’ all the content and that is why microlearning has become some popular. Microlearning is about learning in small digestible pieces. Students learn in chunks, and then have an opportunity to practice one chunk before moving forward. Studies have shown that microlearning enhances retention and engagement for students. So, when planning a lesson, consider the chunk-chew-check method. Chunk the learning, give students a task or simple activity to chew on the new information, and then check—think formative assessment.

formative assessment

Element #3: Scaffolding

When we deliver a lesson, it is natural to build tasks and practices in complexity. That is really what scaffolding is all about. However, we often work on remembering and understanding in the classroom, or during class time, and then allow students to do the heavy lifting at home—creating. In order for students to be cognitively engaged, and not lose their motivation, it is important we walk them through each step in class, giving them the tools and skills they need to walk themselves through each step outside of class. Scaffolding needs to be thoughtfully designed in and out of class tasks. Take a look at a lesson in the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod. You will notice how the lesson walks students up Bloom’s taxonomy, each time asking a bit more of them, all the while engaging students in their own learning process.

grammar lesson

Element #4: Learner’s Time

Lastly, our students have busy lives, but we know that for a student to be truly engaged in learning, they need time outside of class to engage with content. This allows them to interact at their own frequency rate, but it also helps ELT students build those very critical academic skills, like autonomy. As educators, we need to set that expectation. We need to let students know that learning a language is a partnership—we can provide lessons, but outside of the classroom, they need to dedicate time. The digital world has once again come to our rescue and provided tools that we can use to engage students outside of class. Whether you use a Learning Management System (LMS), or another digital environment, your students can interact with content outside the classroom through additional practices and interactions.

live or student-paced lesson

Imagine launching a lesson in class, but students being able to work through that same lesson again outside of class. With the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, you can launch a lesson during class, or as a student-paced lesson, or both. The engaging platform allows students to interact, scaffolds the lesson, and provides a microlearning lesson.

In the end, we know the more engaged our students are, the more they learn. That is our goal, isn’t it?


Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod
Want to know more about the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod? Visit pearsoneltusa.com/nearpod.

Christina Cavage is the Curriculum and Assessment Manager at University of Central Florida. She has trained numerous teachers all over the world in using digital technologies to enhance and extend learning. She has authored over a dozen ELT textbooks, including University Success, Oral Communication, Transition Level, Advanced Level, Intermediate Level and A2. Recently, Ms. Cavage completed grammar and academic vocabulary curriculum for the new Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, which is now available. Learn more here.

Exploring Engagement in ELT Teaching

Part II: Behavioral Engagement

By Christina Cavage

We are bombarded by the term engagement these days. While it was challenging to build engagement under normal classroom circumstances, building engagement in remote environment and sustaining it is even more challenging. In the last issue, we broke down exactly what it means to be engaged. You may recall that engagement in learning is simply about “the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught” and how motivated they are to learn and progress. We delved into emotional engagement—how we can break down those walls and create a comfortable learning space. Today, we are going to examine behavioral engagement.

What is Behavioral Engagement?

When we think of behavioral engagement, we have to consider our students’ behaviors in class.  Are they participating? Are they working in groups effectively and efficiently?  How attentive and active are our students? Essentially, how involved are they in the learning process?  Now, in a traditional face-to-face class we might be able to clearly see this. We know the students who come to class with their assignments completed, with their books open and ready to go, with their hands up to answer the questions we pose to the class. However, in a remote or hybrid setting, this can be extremely difficult to observe especially when many of our students have learned to Zoom with their cameras off. So, what can we do to foster and maintain behavioral engagement in this new normal?

Strategies to Build Behavioral Engagement

Very much like emotional engagement, it’s all about leveraging our traditional teaching methods and the tools we have. Often times selecting the right tools and using them at the right times can actually lead to a greater amount of engagement. Let’s unpack this a bit more by looking at four effective strategies.

Strategy #1: Make Learning Active

Set the expectation early on that you will be asking your students to do rather than just receive. Imagine you have asked your students to begin to develop a thesis statement for a writing assignment. Rather than have them submit the assignment to you, consider using a tool like Nearpod, to have students post and share their thesis statements. When students know that their work will be shared, there are fewer excuses and fewer long moments of silence as you call on names via Zoom or some other vehicle.

Collaborative board on Nearpod

Strategy #2: Build in Peer-to-Peer Learning

Being an active learner, also means being an active partner or group member. Whether you are using breakout rooms, or discussion boards, it is important to set clear guidelines as to what you want students to accomplish. Using a model is often very helpful, especially for our lower levels. The below example is taken from Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod. Here students need to share with a partner, then post their findings.

Read-Pair-Share in Nearpod

Peer-to-Peer learning may also mean peer-to-peer competition. Students love to ‘race’ against one another. I have found that warming-up with a race is a great way to get class going. It is also very effective in setting the tone for the rest of the class period. It communicates many messages—from how prepared I expect you to be to how active I expect you to be.

Time to Climb Activity, a race for students
Time to Climb activity: a race for students

Strategy #3: Break Learning into Small Pieces (Microlearning)

Microlearning is not a new term. However, it really has been coming to the forefront during these unprecedented times. Attention spans are dwindling and seem to be more so with the distractions of sitting in one’s own home taking classes. Microlearning is about presenting learning in small manageable pieces. This makes learning more accessible. The best practice is presenting content in small pieces, and then building in active tasks so students can immediately apply what they have learned. A great example of microlearning exists in Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod: Grammar. Within each grammar lesson there is a short video lesson on the grammar structure. Within these lessons, there are formative questions that students have to answer to move on. It makes their learning real and immediate.

Grammar lesson in Nearpod

Strategy #4: Personalize Learning

Lastly, in an online environment it becomes even more important to create lessons that are tailored or personalized. Tailored or personalized learning allows students to make greater connections to course content. How can you personalize lessons? Well, most simply, incorporate students’ names into lessons and include information about students into learning materials. What about personalizing or tailoring learning on a more global scale, or in other words, tailoring to your specific program or course?

Well, using a tool like Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, you can add, modify, or delete content. This allows you to customize the content to best meet the goals, objectives, and student learning outcomes of your course. By doing so, you are able to give your students exactly what they need to master your course and programmatic goals.

Personalizing with Nearpod

Overall, engaging students online is not much different and more challenging than engaging them in the classroom. Engaging students when they are learning the English language remotely is even more challenging. It is about selecting the right tools and implementing those tools strategically.

References: Student Engagement Definition. (2016, February 18). Retrieved January 05, 2021, from https://www.edglossary.org/student-engagement/


Christina Cavage is the Curriculum and Assessment Manager at University of Central Florida. She has trained numerous teachers all over the world in using digital technologies to enhance and extend learning. She has authored over a dozen ELT textbooks, including University Success, Oral Communication, Transition Level, Advanced Level, Intermediate Level and A2. Recently, Ms. Cavage completed grammar and academic vocabulary curriculum for the new Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, which is now available. Learn more here.

Ten Tips to Accelerate Academic Listening

 By Michael Rost

Academic listening is a special kind of listening. It is listening in order to encounter, understand, learn, discuss, and remember new ideas. No matter what your teaching situation, helping students become better academic listeners is an important part of language teaching.

Over the years, through teaching, observation, and research, I have come up with ten teaching tips that can accelerate academic listening.

Tip 1: Use great content

Academic listening is really about content learning. You want the content to do the teaching! Your goal as a teacher is to get the students excited about the new content and about sharing their perspectives. It is easiest to do this when the content itself is compelling, when there is substance that is really worth trying to understand. Whether you are teaching history or math, biology or art, literature or physiology, try packaging and presenting the content in ways that make it more interesting and provocative. Try supplementing the content with different forms of multimedia (audio tracks, video clips, web pages) and activities (tasks, games, experiments, surveys) in order to make it more engaging and more motivating for your students. (See Philp and Duchesne, 2016 for a clear summary on the interaction of engagement and motivation.)

But what about the language teaching aspect? Don’t we need to teach the language? Of course, yes. But it is well established that the most effective way to teach the language is through the learning of content in the target language — provided that there is sufficient language support (See Cenoz, 2015 for discussion of the role of language support in L2 content instruction.)

Tip 2: Teach “academic conversations” as a social learning tool

Academic listening is also about exploring, negotiating, and sharing ideas and learning new perspectives. Classroom learning of academic listening depends crucially on the learners having frequent collaborative “academic conversations” with one another — and with you, the teacher. Learners need to feel safe brainstorming, sharing personal thoughts, questioning ideas, reacting emotionally at times, and working out problems understanding one another and the course content.

But trying to have meaningful academic conversations often runs into a wall. Left to their own devices, most learners, regardless of age, will settle on minimal verbal and non-verbal interaction in the classroom, often attempting to finish learning tasks as quickly — and with as few words — as possible. The challenge for learners is that academic learning involves making our thinking explicit, so it is necessary to teach and reward the use of explicit gambits in order to develop this elaborated style of thinking (Crawford and Zwiers, 2011; Zwiers and Soto, 2017).

Implementing this tip involves two practical steps: (1) presenting conversation prompts, interaction models, and academic phrases and (2) promoting “positive regard” for others. Presenting interaction models is best done by identifying specific critical thinking skills as “focus points” for learning. The most commonly recognized critical thinking skills are: identify main ideas, comparing similarities, contrasting differences, attributing facts to sources, evaluation of validity, inferring missing information, explaining results, and applying information to solve problems.

Here is an example of displaying the relationship between focus, conversation gambit (for posing questions), and language frame (for responding and formulating ideas).

Focus Conversation Gambit Language Frame
Describe the main idea.

 

What is the gist of the lecture?

What do you think is the central idea?

What was this part of the lecture about?

The presentation was mainly about…

The speaker is basically saying…

The main idea of the talk was…

The second aspect is promoting “positive regard,” which means seeking and acknowledging each speaker’s contribution. Positive regard can be achieved through active listening to one another’s ideas, supporting each other’s efforts to learn, and respecting alternate points of view. Teachers assist through modeling and monitoring of conversational interaction to be sure that “positive regard” is systematically practiced (or at least aimed for!) in all classroom interactions (Singer, 2018).

Tip 3: Shift responsibility to the learner

The essential insight behind this tip is: It is the learners themselves who decide whether or not they want to understand. Set up optimal learning conditions — and let the learners do the work. This suggestion may seem obvious, but I have often seen learning get short-circuited when teachers try to guide or help their students too much. Think in terms of letting the students take the lead, in whatever ways you can. Have the students run the technology, let them select content supplements and decide on activities when possible, have them lead group discussions, have them give presentations, even have them design the tests.

But are we being too “harsh” if we really think learners decide whether or not they want to understand? Shouldn’t we be making the content easier for the students to understand if they are having difficulties with the language? Well, yes and no. The paradox is that by setting high expectations and allowing the students to struggle to succeed, we are actually empowering them with the skills and strategies they need outside of the classroom (See Ferlazzo, 2016 and Asgedom, 2014 for powerful discussions of this issue of teachers challenging students with high standards.)

Tip 4: Teach “active listening” as a reliable learning strategy

 Active listening is more than the notion of “being animated when you listen.” It is actually a broader range of cognitive and emotional activity that could be described as “engaged processing.” Active listening starts with a mindset: an open-mindedness, curiosity, and a “positive regard” for the speaker and his or her ideas — a supportive intention to try to understand without judging. Beyond these intentional aspects, active listening involves the specific teachable behaviors of paying full attention, asking clarification questions, paraphrasing, reflecting, summarizing, and asking creative follow-up questions to probe further into the speaker’s meaning (Rost and Wilson, 2013).

For all of these behaviors, there are specific gambits we can teach students to help them adopt an active listening mindset:

  • Asking clarification questions: “When you said …, did you mean…?” “I’d like to ask if you can explain more about…”
  • Paraphrasing: “What I hear you saying is…” “Let me see if I understand you correctly. I believe you said…”
  • Reflecting: “That is very interesting to me. It reminds me of…” “I see a parallel between … and ….”
  • Asking follow-up questions: Is there another way to think about this? For example, is it possible that…?”

I often talk with teachers who believe that active listening is way beyond their learners’ abilities. After all, their students may be struggling with basic vocabulary and grammar issues. Don’t they need to master the language more fully before they can use these “advanced” academic formulas and interaction gambits? Research has shown that teaching this type of “metacognitive thinking” actually helps students, even lower-level students, handle new and complex language more readily, without simplification of content. It empowers learners to engage gradually with more complex ideas (Goh, 2018; Vlach and Ellis, 2010).

Learning to use structured academic language can also create more meaningful interactions — “learning conversations” — between the students. This language provides students with “islands of reliability” for interacting in pairs and groups in ways that promote more “comprehensible output” — that is, speaking or writing output that challenges the learner to use his or her maximum language capacity (Keene, 2011; Graf and Birkstein, 2007). And in my own experience, teaching active listening strategies makes listening more enjoyable for the students!

Tip 5: Provide a clear purpose for listening

 One my own mentors in language teaching, Joan Morley, used to say, “The only way to improve aural comprehension is to spend many hours practicing listening…. However, a directed program of purposeful listening can shorten the time.” What she meant was that improvement of listening skills can be accelerated by immediate task completion along with feedback on accuracy (Morley, 1990). Morley claimed that this type of instruction provided “an urgency for focusing attention.” One clear way to convert this advice into instructional practice is to create selective listening tasks so that the students know what to listen for before they begin listening.

Common selective listening tasks include:

  • completion of a chart or table with specific words or numbers
  • notation of specific words or facts
  • completion of a text (such as lyrics of a song) with certain words blanked out
  • confirmation that a speaker said or did not say specific things
  • drawing a picture to conform to a speaker’s description
  • following physical commands (like “stand up, walk to the door,” etc.).

Tasks of this type can greatly improve students’ confidence in listening to longer or complex inputs because they need only focus on specific sequences. Many teachers argue that this type of task doesn’t really test students’ general listening proficiency, but that is precisely the point. We want students to get acclimated to listening to difficult passages by giving them the opportunity to selectively focus on parts of the text they can understand (Kanaoka, 2009). This type of practice has a scaffolding effect, allowing students to gradually understand more, improve their working memory, and listen for longer stretches (Bransford and Johnson, 2004). 

Tip 6: Use short segments to focus on skill building

Academic listening can be overwhelming for students because it involves sustained listening, sometimes up to 30 minutes or longer. Once a student becomes overwhelmed and fatigued, learning efficiency — engagement and enjoyment, as well as memory function — obviously diminishes. What I like to do to counteract this is to punctuate a class with intensive work on shorter listening extracts: cuing an audio or video track to just 30, 60, or 90 seconds of input. I may play the track three or four times, each time with a new task:

  • “Listen and write down just the verbs.” (Drawing attention to the need to identify key words.)
  • “Listen and write the full forms for these reduced forms.” (Drawing attention to reductions and assimilations.)
  • “Listen and tell me which of these words or expressions you hear.” (To develop selective listening. I write several words on the board, only some of which are actually in the passage to be played.)
  • “Listen and summarize the main ideas.” (Orally to a partner or in writing.)
  • “Listen without taking notes. Then at the end, try to reconstruct exactly what the speaker said.” (I may provide a partial transcript to facilitate this process.)

You might object that this type of activity doesn’t resemble true academic listening – as in a university lecture or a business presentation. That is correct, but in order to effect transfer of skills to academic listening contexts, students also need the training opportunities to build up the sub-skills of word recognition, phonological discrimination, extracting key information, and building short-term memory (Field, 1998; Goh and Aryadoust, 2013; Wilson, 2003). Working with short extracts also helps the teacher and students diagnose specific decoding problems and take concrete steps to remediate, rather than relying entirely on inferencing in order to guess “the missing pieces” (Cross, 2009).

Tip 7: Teach listening strategies through specific tasks

Listening strategies are cognitive and social techniques for “how to understand,” deliberate plans to construct meaning more deeply. Some have argued that effective strategies are a by-product of motivation and emerge in learners naturally without being taught (this is the “soft skills” theory), and others argue that listening strategies d o not emerge unless they are demonstrated explicitly, and that direct teaching of listening strategies improves motivation (Graham, 2017). The realized benefits may be a matter of individual differences and cultural learning styles. I have found that most learners will benefit from some explicit instruction in “how to listen,” particularly if it is done in the immediate context of a listening task.

What are listening strategies? In my own research tracking and interviewing learners (Rost, 2016), as well as through the research of colleagues (e.g. Vandergrift, 2007), we have identified eight recognizable categories of listening strategies.

1. Planning

Developing an awareness of the steps needed to accomplish a listening task, anticipating content that may be introduced, coming up with an “action plan”

Advance organizing: Clarifying the goals of a task before listening

Self-management: Rehearsing the steps to take to deal with a listening task

 

 

2. Focusing attention

Concentrating on the input and task at hand, avoiding distractions and disruptive thoughts, reminding oneself of the plan

Directed attention: Attending to the listening task, consciously ignoring distractions or any tendency to give up

Selective attention: Attending to specific aspects of the listening input, such as key words or ideas that have been anticipated

Persistent attention: Attending to broad meaning, keeping flow of attention even if temporarily distracted by unknown language

Noticing attention: Attending to new language, specific language, rhetorical forms in the input

 

 

3. Monitoring

Verifying or adjusting one’s understanding or way of understanding during a task

Comprehension monitoring: Checking how well one is understanding, identifying problematic aspects in the input

Double-check monitoring: Verifying one’s initial understanding and making revisions in understanding as needed, during the second listening to the same input

Emotional monitoring: Keeping track of one’s feelings, encouraging oneself to keep listening, finding ways to counter negative emotions and anxiety

 

 

 

4. Evaluating

Checking the outcome of one’s listening process against a standard of accuracy or completeness

Performance evaluation: Checking one’s overall attainment of the task goals

Problem evaluation: Identifying what specific issue needs to be solved or understood or what part of the listening task still needs to be completed

Revision evaluation: Choosing a second listening to assist understanding or selecting an alternative way of accomplishing a listening task

 

5. Inferencing

Using information in the input to guess the meaning of unfamiliar language, to predict content, or to fill in missing information

 

Linguistic inferencing: Using known words to guess meanings of unknown words or blurs of sounds

Contextual inferencing: Consciously using knowledge of the setting and extralinguistic features (items in the environment) to create or amplify meaning

Speaker inferencing: Using the speaker’s tone of voice, paralinguistic cues (stress, pause, intonation) or guessing intended meanings, facial expressions, body language, and baton signals (hand and arm movements) to guess intended meanings

Multimodal inferencing: Using background sounds, visual cues, supplementary text, and intuitive sense of the input to infer meaning Predictive inferencing: Anticipating details in a specific part of the input (local prediction) or anticipating the gist of what is coming in the input (global prediction)

Retrospective inferencing: Thinking back over a large chunk of input to fill in gaps and consolidate one’s understanding

 

6. Elaborating

Using prior knowledge from outside the input and relating it to content in the input in order to enrich one’s interpretation of the input

 

Personal elaboration: Connecting with prior personal experiences

World elaboration: Connecting with knowledge gained about the world

Creative elaboration: Making up background information to contextualize the inputs, generating questions that relate to the input, or introducing new possibilities to extend the input

Visual elaboration: Using mental visualizations to represent aspects of the input

 

7. Collaborating

Cooperating with the speaker, other listeners, and outside sources for assistance with improving comprehension or enriching interpretations

 

Seeking clarification: Asking for repetition, explanations, rephrasings, or elaborations about the language just heard

Seeking confirmation: Asking for verification that what you have said has been understood

Backchannelling: Showing the speaker that you are engaged, following the input and ready to continue listening

Joint task construction: Working together, with the speaker or with another listener, to solve a problem or complete a task

Resourcing: Using available referencing resources to deepen language and idea comprehension

 

8. Reviewing

Condensing, reordering, or transferring from one modality to another, of what one has processed to help understanding, memory storage and retrieval

 

Summarization: Making a mental or verbal (oral or written) summary of information presentation

Repetition: Repeating or paraphrasing part of what was heard as part of a listening task

Noting: Writing down key words or ideas in another form (abbreviated verbal or graphic form) to assist in recall or performance of a task

Mediating: Rendering ideas from the input to the listener’s L1, orally or in writing

 

(From Rost and Wilson, 2013)

But how do we teach listening strategies? And is it important for students to learn all of these various categories? Much of the language used to describe the strategies (“metalanguage”) is very abstract and unfamiliar to our students. Will this really help them? The key to helping students learn and adopt these strategies is in designing tasks, or steps in an activity, that focus on one specific listening strategy. For example, to promote “advance organizing,” we might give a series of images related to an upcoming lecture to the students, and ask them to come up with a list of ideas that might be included in the lecture. For “joint task construction,” we might play a segment of a lecture or presentation and have students work in pairs to complete a cloze summary of the section. And because listening strategies are conscious plans to improve understanding, it is important for students to reflect on their utility. At the end of an activity, we may simply ask, “What did you think of that activity? Did it help you listen better? Why or why not?”

Tip 8: Teach note-taking as a review tool

Note-taking is widely viewed as one of the most important macro-skills in academic listening, but there is little agreement on what constitutes effective practice. Different techniques have been taught, including the Cornell Method (columns and indenting to show relationships), Mind Maps (graphic connections to show associations), and Key Words (noting only key words and phrases to show sequencing and prominence). However, no one method has been shown to be superior to others, although there is evidence that certain modalities of note-taking represent deeper levels of information processing than others (Bohay et al., 2011; Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014).

So does it matter if we have students take notes? Yes! Even though there is no consistent correlation between specific types of notes or quantity of notes and comprehension scores, as a teacher I have consistently seen a positive effect of note-taking instruction on student participation and an increase in student responsibility in trying to understand. I have seen advantages of providing interventions while students are actively engaged in listening to academic lectures — not just before or after. Interventions — short instructional episodes during a language processing experience — provide a way for students to focus their attention and learn specific note-taking strategies that promote comprehension. And as other researchers have found, I also believe that the note-taking interventions improve long-term memory during and after listening, particularly if notes are used for collaborative tasks and review for tests — or even if notes are allowed to be used during tests (Flowerdew and Miller, 2005).

Tip 9: Provide stimulating out-of-class listening homework 

Because accelerating academic listening involves nurturing a full-time active mindset, it is important to have productive outside homework assignments between classes.

For each course I teach, I try to curate a set of at least ten topically related YouTube, Vimeo, or TEDTalk or other videos, or FreshAir or other short interviews that are in the public domain. (I ask students to provide suggestions to add to the list as the course progresses.) This is a technique for keeping learning alive for students between classes and for “flipping” the roles of classwork and homework as needed (Jensen et al., 2015).

As a safety procedure, I recommend watching the videos all the way through or listening to interviews from start to finish first, to be sure the content is appropriate for your students. In a typical eight-week course for me, the homework for the students is to listen to at least five videos and complete a short task — usually some variation of “Summarize in your own words.” “What is one thing that you learned in this presentation?” “What is one follow-up question that you would like to ask the speaker?” “What are five words or expressions you learned in this video?” If the class has a discussion board in its learning management system, I may require that each student comment on each video they watch, and respond to one other student’s comments for each video. If the class has time for presentations, I may have students prepare a presentation in pairs, related to the ideas in one video they have watched together.

Tip 10: Demonstrate to learners how to “get an A” in your course

The concept of academic listening — and academic study generally — may be unfamiliar to your learners at first, so it is helpful to “gamify” the concept by demonstrating to students the specific active behaviors they can use to “win the game.” For example, in one of my CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) classes, I give the students guidelines that include a number of “active listening” ideas:

How to Study and Earn an A in This Course

These guidelines are the best way to master the material in this course and earn an A:

  • Come to class on time, listen actively, and participate. Take good notes and participate in the discussions and in-class exercises. Be certain that your comments improve on the silence.
  • Participate in the online discussions and make use of web resources, especially the videos.
  • Take notes as though you will be explaining the content to a friend who missed the class.
  • Communicate with the instructor — about possible absences, late assignments, or anything else that will affect your performance in class.
  • Ask questions if you don’t understand something! Just because others aren’t asking questions doesn’t mean they understand. If something isn’t clear to you, it may not be clear to your classmates. Do them a favor and raise your hand.
  • Summarize, rewrite, and review your notes between classes. Don’t wait for the night before an exam to re-familiarize yourself with the material covered.
  • Take some action to personalize the material. Develop your own set of study notes, summarize each lecture or reading to a classmate (learning partner), or write out what you think would be a likely essay question on the test.

But aren’t these guidelines too strict? Don’t we need to be sensitive to learner differences? Don’t we need to modify course expectations to fit a range of cultural learning styles? To an extent, yes, but we also need to allow students to understand and modify their own study habits and to clarify cultural differences (between their home culture and the target culture) for themselves. By showing the “rules” of the system, we are helping them succeed, both in content learning and cultural learning (Hattie, 2012; Hofstede et al, 2010).

So those are the ten tips that can accelerate academic listening. Using them is no guarantee that all students will immediately increase their listening ability, but trying them out in your classes may well trigger some fresh energy for students to improve. I hope you will try them.

References

Asgedom, M. (2014). The 5 powers of an educator. Chicago: Mawi Learning.

Bohay, M., Blakely, D., Tamplin, A., and Radvansky, G. (2011). Note taking, review, memory, and comprehension. The American Journal of Psychology, 124, 63–73.

Bransford, J. and Johnson, M. (2004). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. In Balota, D. and Marsh, E. (Eds.) Cognitive psychology: Key readings. New York: Psychology Press.

Cenoz, J. (2015). Content-based instruction and content and language integrated learning: The same or different? Language, Culture and Curriculum, 28:1, 8–24.

Crawford, M. and Zwiers, J. (2011). Academic conversations: Classroom talk that fosters critical thinking and content understandings. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Cross, J. (2009) Diagnosing the process, text, and intrusion problems responsible for L2 listeners’ decoding errors. Asian EFL Journal, 11, 31–53.

Ferlazzo, L. (2016, September 9). “Why we teach now”: An interview with Sonia Nieto. Education Week. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2016/09/why_we_teach_now_an_interview_with_sonia_nieto.html

Flowerdew, J. and Miller, L. (2005). Second language listening: Theory and practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Goh, C. (2018). Metacognition in second language listening. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1–7. New York: Wiley.

Goh, C. and Aryadoust, V. (2013). Examining the notion of listening sub-skill divisibility and its implications for second language listening. International Journal of Listening, 29:3, 109–133.

Graff, G. and Birkstein, C. (2007). They say/I say. The moves that matter in persuasive writing. New York: Norton.

Graham, S. (2017). Research into practice: Listening strategies in an instructed classroom setting. Language Teaching, 50:1, 107–119.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., and Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Jensen, J. L., Kummer, T. A., and Godoy, P. D. d. M. (2015). Improvements from a flipped classroom may simply be the fruits of active learning. Life Science Education, 14:1, 1–12.

Kanaoka, Y. (2009). Academic listening encounters. New York: Cambridge.

Keene, E. O. (2011). Comprehension instruction grows up. In H. S. Daniels (Ed.), Comprehension going forward: Where we are/what’s next (pp. 111–127). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Morley, J. (1990). Trends and developments in listening comprehension. In J. Alatis (Eds.). Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 317–337). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

Mueller, P. and Oppenheimer, D. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25:6, 1159–1168

Norrick, N. (2008). Negotiating the reception of stories in conversation: Teller strategies

for modulating response. Narrative Inquiry, 18:1, 131–151.

Philp, J. and Duchesne, S. (2016). Exploring engagement in tasks in the language classroom. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36,50–72.

Rost, M. and Wilson, J. J. (2013). Active listening. New York: Routledge.

Rost, M. (2016). Teaching and researching listening, 3rd edition. New York: Routledge.

Singer, T. (2018). EL excellence every day: The flip-to guide for differentiating academic literacy. New York: Sage.

Vandergrift, L. (2007). Recent developments in second and foreign language listening comprehension research. Language Teaching, 40, 191–210.

Vlach, R. and Ellis, N. (2010) An Academic Formulas List: New methods in phraseology research. Applied Linguistics, 31:4, 487–512.

Wilson, M. (2003). Discovery listening—improving perceptual processing. ELT Journal, 57:4, 335–343.

Zwiers, J. and Soto, I. (2017). Academic language mastery: Conversational discourse in context. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.


Michael Rost, principal author of Pearson English Interactive, has been active in the areas of language teaching, learning technology and language acquisition research for over 25 years. His interest in bilingualism and language education began in the Peace Corps in West Africa and was fueled during his 10 years as an educator in Japan and extensive touring as a lecturer in East Asia and Latin America. Formerly on the faculty of the TESOL programs at Temple University and the University of California, Berkeley, Michael now works as an independent researcher, author, and speaker based in San Francisco. Michael is the author of critically acclaimed works on second language development, including Teaching and Researching Listening (Routledge) and Active Listening(Routledge), Dr. Rost’s interests focus on spoken interaction and listening. He is also author or series editor of a number of successful EFL/ESL courses, including the global series Worldview and English Firsthand, as well as the academic listening series, Contemporary Topics (Pearson).