The effects of prosody instruction on listening comprehension in an EAP classroom context

2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882199034
Author(s):  
Mark McAndrews

In many English language teaching contexts, listening activities resemble listening comprehension tests. Scholars have argued that this product-oriented approach is not particularly effective in helping learners improve their listening skills and have advocated for the inclusion of instruction that targets specific features of spoken language. The current study tested these claims in the context of an English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) listening and speaking course. Sixty-four post-secondary learners of English were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In addition to their regularly scheduled listening activities, one group received 100 minutes of instruction for two prosodic features (paratone and prosodic phrasing), while the other group received an equal amount of product-oriented listening instruction. After the instructional treatment, learners in the prosody group outperformed those in the product-oriented group on comprehension of the target prosodic features, and on general listening proficiency tests. It is argued that short periods of instruction targeting prosodic features can improve the effectiveness of traditional product-oriented EAP listening instruction.

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Gopal Prasad Pandey

English for academic purpose (EAP) emerged as a branch of English for specific purposes in the early 1980s. EAP grounds English language teaching in the linguistic demands of academic context, tailoring instruction to specific rather than general purposes. There is a growth of interest in EAP in the recent years. The interest in EAP developed in response to the growing need for intercultural awareness and of English as a lingua franca (ELF). EAP has become a major area of research in applied linguistics and focus of the courses studied worldwide by a large number of students preparing for study in colleges and universities. The increase in students’ undertaking tertiary studies in English-speaking countries has led to a steady demand for the courses tailored to meet the immediate, specific vocational and professional needs. Thus, most universities in the present day world prioritize the role of academic skills. The aim of the paper is to examine the key approaches to the teaching of English for academic purposes, current trends in teaching EAP, and to argue the centrality and significance of EAP in the academia. The paper concludes by arguing that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on methodology in EAP.


Author(s):  
Didem Erdel ◽  
Mehmet Takkaç

In this study, classroom leadership styles of English language instructors were investigated within the Full Range Leadership (FRL) framework with the purpose of determining the relationship between instructors’ leadership styles and the outcomes of leader (the instructor in the classroom context) effectiveness, students’ extra effort and student satisfaction. Classroom Leadership Instrument, a modified version of Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, was administered to 300 students from English Language Teaching and English Language and Literature Departments at a Turkish state university. Research data were analyzed through inferential statistical tests and the results revealed that transformational leadership and active traits of transactional leadership significantly correlated with all three leadership outcomes. Consequently, the instructors with such leader characteristics appeared to be more effective teachers, whose students felt more satisfied with their teaching and displayed extra effort at a higher extent in the courses.


Author(s):  
Steven Kirk ◽  
David Casenove

Over the past two decades, flipped learning has become a buzz word in education discussions. Flipped learning was first applied to science teaching, where lecture has traditionally been the primary means of delivering new content to students (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). While many teachers have heard the term, it is often not well understood, and its application to English language teaching has not yet been explored in depth. This chapter aims to show how the flipped learning paradigm can be applied to an EFL academic writing class. This will be supported with empirical research involving surveys of students in an EFL scientific writing class, to examine how students interact with the video content, and their perceptions of the flipped learning format. This research differs from most previous research in focusing on how students are interacting with the materials in a flipped classroom context, rather than only focusing on the learning outcomes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Aronin ◽  
Bernard Spolsky

The goal of this article is to make research on English language teaching and learning published locally in Israel more widely available. Given that so many Israeli researchers are internationally trained and maintain wide connections, it necessarily omits much important work that appears in European and US journals. It focuses on shorter studies, commonly unfunded, that university teachers in EFL programs or in teacher training programs at smaller colleges conduct in their own time. It represents a wide range of good quality research, ‘glocal’ in that its local production does not compromise potential contributions to global concerns. The main themes treated are the early start of teaching English, the development of an integrated methodology, detailed studies of the teaching of lexicon and writing, specialized studies of dyslexia, computer-assisted instruction, English for academic purposes, and teaching Israeli students who already know some English from home or visits abroad. The overall quality of the research is high, matching all but a few top international journals.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (Special) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
SASAN BALEGHIZADEH ◽  
PAYAM PAYAM

This study was an attempt to investigate the particular role of learners’ depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in their listening comprehension. Moreover, it also sought to find out whether there is any difference between high and low listening proficiency groups in performance on depth and breadth dimensions of vocabulary knowledge. To this end, a total of 117 junior university students majoring in English language and literature participated in the study. In order to assess the learners’ listening comprehension, the listening section of a paper-based version of the TOEFL was administered. Their depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge were measured through performance on Word Associate Test and Vocabulary Levels Test, respectively. The results of data analysis indicated that both depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge are determining factors in successful listening comprehension. However, it was found out that breadth or size of vocabulary knowledge provides a more significant contribution than depth to listening comprehension. Furthermore, the results of the study indicated that depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge are not significant predictors of listening comprehension in the low listening ability group.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 36-44
Author(s):  
Urmi Satyan

 Along with Hindi, English is given a status of an official language in India as per the Official Language Act, 1963.(Dept. of Official Language, India). English is studied in India as a Second Language and so English is the most sought after language in India. There are many university students who aspire to obtain a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English. With a view to make the process of teaching English language interesting as well as enriching, some popular English songs were selected for the class of postgraduate students of English Language. It was realised, during and after the activity, that pop songs can be effectively used in an English Language class. Songs and music have a natural quality to induce interest and enthusiasm to the listeners/learners and so it was aimed to redirect the students’ attention to the linguistic varieties present in the songs. As the songs are easy to memorise, they effortlessly develop English vocabulary of the students. These songs are selected to learn the use of adjectives, figures of speech and idioms. The whole process of learning English Language through popular songs also helped students to improve their listening comprehension. The present paper is an attempt to study how content analysis of the selected pop songs is proved effective and impactful in the postgraduate class of English Language. The songs for the present study are selected from a popular album named Imagined Dragon.  


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Refai Refai

Instructing listening comprehension to EFL students need good plannings. Authentic listening materials as a strategic teaching media are best utilized by English instructors to facilitate the EFL students’ listening comprehension in classrooms and language laboratory. Applying authentic listening materials as teaching media in listening practice activites are challenged to bridge EFL students and not only enhancing their listening skill but also improving and developing their knowledge of the real life, culture, and social affairs of English native speakers.The source of authentic listening materials applied in the subject class are mostly taken from youtube.com. A popular open source website which provide online videos. The aim of the study was to find out EFL students’ attitudes and perceptions when and after using the authentic videos in an EFL listening class. The participants of the study were the second semester EFL students of English Language Teaching department in Universitas Muhammadiyah Metro Indonesia. The data were gathered from a questionnaire and open interviews. It is found out that most of EFL students who were instructed by the authentic videos show positive attitudes and have good perceptions in utilizing youtube videos as one of the alternative authentic materials in comprehending English utterances.


Author(s):  
Steven Kirk ◽  
David Casenove

Over the past two decades, flipped learning has become a buzz word in education discussions. Flipped learning was first applied to science teaching, where lecture has traditionally been the primary means of delivering new content to students (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). While many teachers have heard the term, it is often not well understood, and its application to English language teaching has not yet been explored in depth. This chapter aims to show how the flipped learning paradigm can be applied to an EFL academic writing class. This will be supported with empirical research involving surveys of students in an EFL scientific writing class, to examine how students interact with the video content, and their perceptions of the flipped learning format. This research differs from most previous research in focusing on how students are interacting with the materials in a flipped classroom context, rather than only focusing on the learning outcomes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Cheng-hua Hsiao

Guided questions are crucial in teaching listening courses because they lead students to focus on the critical parts of the course. How teachers ask questions affects their students listening comprehension and output. The purpose of this study was to study the types of teacher questions and the feedback offered by teachers in two listening classes. Two teachers were selected as the subjects: one had taught English for seven years, and the other was a graduate student on an English language teaching master's program. Both subjects were teaching an English listening class as a teaching demonstration that was part of their graduate course. Three research questions were raised in this study: (1) What questioning models did the teachers use in the listening classes? (2) What types of questions were asked in these classes? and (3) What were the functions of the teachers’ feedback on students’ responses? The findings indicated that both teachers adopted a process approach in their teaching of listening classes. The questions that the experienced teacher asked with highest frequency were Wh-questions, whereas the intern asked Yes/No questions. The experienced teacher often used the feedback types of comprehension checking and expansion, whereas the intern often provided evaluations and used repetition in feedback.


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