Active Listening

Book excerpt: Listening is now regarded by researchers and practitioners as a highly active skill involving prediction, inference, reflection, constructive recall, and often direct interaction with speakers. In this new theoretical and practical guide, Michael Rost and JJ Wilson demonstrate how active listening can be developed through guided instruction. With so many new technologies and platforms for communication, there are more opportunities than ever before for learners to access listening input, but this abundance leads to new challenges: how to choose the right input how to best use listening and viewing input inside and outside the classroom how to create an appropriate syllabus using available resources Active Listening explores these questions in clear, accessible prose, basing its findings on a theoretical framework that condenses the most important listening research of the last two decades. Showing how to put theory into practice, the book includes fifty innovative activities, and links each one to relevant research principles. Sample audio recordings are also provided for selected activities, available online at the series website www.pearsoned.co.uk/rostwilson. As a bridge between theory and practice, Active Listening will encourage second language teachers, applied linguists, language curriculum coordinators, researchers, and materials designers to become more active practitioners themselves, by more fully utilising research in the field of second language listening.