Getting to the bottom of L2 listening instruction: Making a case for bottom-up activities

• Authors: Joseph Siegel , Aki Siegel
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper argues for the incorporation of bottom-up activities for English as a foreign language (EFL) listening. It discusses theoretical concepts and pedagogic options for addressing bottom-up aural processing in the EFL classroom as well as how and why teachers may wish to include such activities in lessons. This discussion is augmented by a small-scale classroom-based research project that investigated six activities targeting learners’ bottom-up listening abilities. Learners studying at the lower-intermediate level of a compulsory EFL university course were divided into a treatment group (n = 21) and a contrast group (n = 32). Each group listened to the same audio material and completed listening activities from an assigned textbook. The treatment group also engaged in a set of six bottom-up listening activities using the same material. This quasi-experimental study used dictation and listening proficiency tests before and after the course. Between-group comparisons of t-test results of dictation and listening proficiency tests indicated that improvements for the treatment group were probably due to the BU intervention. In addition, results from a posttreatment survey suggested that learners value explicit bottom-up listening instruction.

Keywords

EN

listening pedagogy; bottom-up listening activities; dictation; listening proficiency

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 637-662

Dates

published

2015-12-10

Contributors

author

Joseph Siegel

• Department of International Business, Meiji Gakuin University, 1-2- 37 Shirokane-dai Minato-ku, Tokyo Japan 108-8636

author

Aki Siegel

• Department of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University, 3-34-1 Nishi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo Japan 171-8501

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Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/ssllt.2015.5.4.6