Listening in/To Germany, Pale Mother

A newly restored version of Helma Sanders-Brahms’ 1980 film, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (Germany, Pale Mother), was premiered in 2014 as a “Berlinale Classic”. This article reveals a complex composition of archival and (re)constructed sound that amplifies the film’s problematisation of the relationship between public history and private memory and the competing claims to authenticity and authority in telling the stories of the past

Identifying student- and class-level correlates of sixth-grade students’ listening comprehension

Despite the importance of listening, little investigation of potential correlates of listening comprehension in the language of schooling is done. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate which student- and class-level characteristics are related to sixth-grade students' listening skills in Flanders. A sample of 974 students in 70 classes completed a listening test in order to gather information on their ability to understand and interpret oral information. Further, different questionnaires were administered to the students, their parents and teachers. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis with multilevel design showed that the differences in listening comprehension skills could be primarily attributed to differences in student-level characteristics. The results indicated that students with higher working memory ability, more vocabulary knowledge and lower extrinsic listening motivation performed significantly better on the listening test. In addition, the educational level of the parents and the language diversity in the class was significantly related to students' listening skills in the language of schooling. This study is an important starting point in unraveling the black box of listening skills in the elementary school context. Suggestions for further research and practice were made

The relationship between listening and other language skills in international English language testing system

Listening comprehension is the primary channel of learning a language. Yet of the four dominant macro-skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), it is often difficult and inaccessible for second and foreign language learners due to its implicit process. The secondary skill, speaking, proceeds listening cognitively. Aural/oral skills precede the graphic skills, such as reading and writing, as they form the circle of language learning process. However, despite the significant relationship with other language skills, listening comprehension is treated lightly in the applied linguistics research. Half of our daily conversation and three quarters of classroom interaction are virtually devoted to listening comprehension. To examine the relationship of listening skill with other language skills, the outcome of 1800 Iranian participants undertaking International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in Tehran indicates the close correlation between listening comprehension and the overall language proficiency

Listening Project

In an effort to better serve Southeast and Coastal Georgia, The Coastal Rivers Water Planning & Policy Center tapped the thoughts of several key stakeholders on water issues in our region.The Center was created in 2001 with a continuing mission to "assist policymakers in the formulation of policy designs to best manage sustainable economic growth and natural resource conservation via water planning, research, education and technical assistance." In order to best accomplish this mission, it is necessary for us to engage stakeholders in our region to determine those issues of critical importance.The Listening Project is designed to identify the perspective of water users throughout the Coastal Rivers Region by listening to the actual concerns and ideas for improvement of those who have a stake in the water future of the region. Using this information, the Center can better meet the research needs of stakeholders in the region.The objective of the first round of listening sessions is to identify issues, and not to take a quantitative measure of any given constituency. Thus, the results of the process do not lend themselves to conclusions that any one constituency has a certain viewpoint, but rather gives an idea for the type of issues that arise when representatives of one particular constituency gather to discuss their hopes and fears around the future of water use in Coastal Georgia region.The balance of this paper is organized in the following way: In Section II we discuss the process used in this first round of five listening sessions. In Section III we report the verbatim ideas of the participants in each of the five sessions. Section IV reports the same verbatim ideas put forward by the participants, but the ideas are organized according to dominant themes emerging from the sessions, where various constituencies' ideas on each theme are easily readable in the same place. Finally, in Section V we offer concluding remarks and describe our plans for Phase II of the project. Working Paper Number 2005-00

Metacognitive instruction does improve listening comprehension

This paper reports on a small-scale study, which looked into the impact of metacognitive instruction on listeners’ comprehension. Twenty-eight adult, Iranian, high-intermediate level EFL listeners participated in a “strategy-based” approach of advance organisation, directed attention, selective attention, and self-management in each of four listening lessons focused on improving listeners’ comprehension of IELTS listening texts. A comparison of pretest and posttest scores showed that the “less-skilled” listeners improved more than “more-skilled” listeners in the IELTS listening tests. Findings also supported the view that metacognitive instruction assisted listeners in considering the process of listening input and promoting listening comprehension ability

The role of multiple intelligences (MI) in listening proficiency

Not many studies have so far quantitatively investigated the role of Multiple Intelligences (MI) in language teaching and almost no research has explored the role of MI in listening proficiency. In this study, the role of MI was investigated by giving one hundred and fifty-one junior and senior English language students an actual TOEFL listening comprehension test and a Multiple Intelligences Development Assessment Scales (MIDAS) questionnaire. The results suggest that, although all the intelligences positively correlate with performance on TOEFL listening comprehension, only linguistic intelligence has a statistically significant but low correlation with TOEFL listening. Furthermore, the results of regression analysis indicate that linguistic intelligence is included as a predictor of listening proficiency while other intelligences are excluded. The results provide quantitative data that, except for linguistic intelligence that has a small role, other intelligences do not make any contribution to performance in listening proficiency and learners with different intelligences have equal chances and only those with low linguistic intelligence need more help

Exploring the Relationship between Pronunciation Training and Listening Ability

This study was an attempt to examine the effect of pronunciation training on students’ listening ability. TOEIC listening scores of students who took a pronunciation training class for one-semester or two-semesters were compared with students who did not take any pronunciation training. In the first data set, one-semester pronunciation training, both the experimental group and the control group TOEIC listening scores decreased. In the second data set, two-semester pronunciation training, both the experimental group and the control group TOEIC listening scores improved somewhat, but the improvement was not statistically significant