- Email: [email protected]
Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action
Book reviews / System 40 (2012) 565e574
567
Lawrence Jun Zhang School of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1150, New Zealand E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2012.10.006
Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action, Larry Vandergrift, Christine C.M. Goh. Routledge: New York and Abingdon, Oxon, UK (2012). xx þ 314 pp. This book has much to recommend it. It has summaries of relevant up-to-date research, a variety of theoretical perspectives on listening, as well as excellent teaching plans and ideas for developing listening skills and strategies inside and outside the classroom. The authors write with a mission for their so-called ‘metacognitive approach’. In their terms ‘Metacognition, or the act of thinking about thinking, refers to the ability of learners to control their thoughts and to regulate their own learning.’ (p. 5). The book consists of three parts. Part I, ‘Learning to Listen’ (Chapters 1e4), Part II, ‘A Metacognitive Approach to Listening’ (Chapters 5e10), and Part III ’Listening in Other Contexts’ (Chapters 11 and 12). There are also very useful appendices containing lists of listening strategies and the Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Questionnaire (MALQ). Not surprisingly for a book taking a metacognitive approach, readers are asked to reflect on issues related to teaching and learning listening in a prologue, which is then followed up in an epilogue in which these issues are summarised in the light of the content of this book. Each chapter begins with a scenario from a classroom, followed by more pre-reading reflection questions. I liked the scenarios but found the rather earnest reflection questions tiresome. In Chapter 1, ‘Challenges and Opportunities in Listening Instruction’, we are given the authors’ views on teaching listening over the past 50 years. I found myself constantly challenging many of their assertions. What is certain is that we were all trained in phonetics and phonology as well as in grammar in the 1960s and 1970s and certainly expected to train our listeners in the trickier linguistic aspects of listening in English as well as in more global listening. From my (obviously biased) perspective, it could be argued that CLT itself, paradoxically, contributed to a weakening in teaching listening comprehension as a separate, skilled activity at this time, owing to its emphasis on the message being communicated. Even if I disagree with much of what they say, their hearts are certainly in the right place and in the UK context of foreign language teaching from which I write, they are certainly correct in their advocacy of much needed change. Chapter 2, ‘Listening Competence’ provides a solid overview of key concepts such as bottom-up and top-down processing, and controlled and automatic processing before moving to discuss Anderson’s Perception, Processing and Utilization model as a source of insights into how learners construct meaning during listening. In this section, the authors highlight the development of word segmentation skills as a major challenge for L2 listeners and they return to this topic repeatedly throughout the book. A highly informative section on knowledge sources is then followed by an equally useful section on strategies in one-way and two-way listening. In Chapter 3, ‘A Model of Listening Comprehension’, we are offered a ‘cognitive’ model of listening comprehension which takes Levelt’s model of speech production, adapts it for comprehension and then adds Anderson’s model along with a metacognition wrapper. I am never entirely happy with such models since the means by which they work in real-time is not convincing. Nonetheless, the key point of the model and the illustrative examples is to show that listening is active rather than passive with listeners processing and analyzing what they are listening to on the basis of both their topic knowledge and their linguistic knowledge. By now, we can see clearly where we are heading and in Chapter 4, ‘Factors that Influence Success’, we are given (mainly) brief summaries of research on ‘cognitive factors’, including vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, metacognition, prior knowledge, L1 listening ability, sound discrimination ability, and additional factors such as working memory. This is followed by sections on ‘affective factors’ (motivation, self-efficacy, and anxiety), and ‘contextual factors’ (interactive listening, listening in informal and in
568
Book reviews / System 40 (2012) 565e574
formal learning contexts). The writing is highly informative but the descriptions of research are largely uncritical and there are no cautions about the findings being reported. All studies appear to be given the same weight if they support the thrust of the metacognition argument. Chapter 5, ‘A Metacognitive Approach to Listening Instruction’ is the first of six chapters on this theme. Their philosophy is that teachers need to nurture self-regulated learning and promote peer dialogue so that learners can learn to listen in a holistic manner. The goals are entirely worthy: to develop learners who understand the challenges of L2 listening, who can think about their learning development, who can makes plans and manage their progress, who can use strategies appropriately, have greater self-efficacy, and who (as they say, ‘last but not least’) can improve their listening proficiency (which I take to mean their linguistic knowledge and skills in the service of listening). The authors attempt to make a distinction between strategies and skills, taking the stance that while both are goalorientated, strategies are consciously controlled processes, while skills are automatic processes that make little demand on processing capacity. Such as position strikes me a rather fanciful when I think of young musicians or tennis players consciously practising their skills UNTIL they become automatic. Chapter 6, ‘A Metacognitive Pedagogical Sequence’, provides plans for pedagogical sequences based on their approach. While they appear to be pedagogically sound, the trained EFL teacher in me keeps wondering about the small space left for dealing with linguistic difficulties. They rightly claim that having metacognitive knowledge is a mental characteristic shared by successful learners but in this, they are blurring the recurring problematic issue in much of Vandergrift’s work which is the link between proficiency level and strategy use. Are ‘successful learners’ not only those with sound strategies but also those with higher linguistic proficiency? If so, shouldn’t we be concentrating our limited time on developing linguistic proficiency rather than relegating these activities to the last part of the process of listening instruction? Chapter 7, ‘Activities for Metacognitive Instruction’ continues to provide high quality ideas and plans for listening classes. There is even a section on ‘Emotional Temperature Charts’ for the anxious listeners to take their anxiety temperatures. In Chapter 8, ‘Developing Perception and Word Segmentation Skills’, the authors discuss the bottom-up components of listening and provide a good overview of research on problems for learners in word segmentation, followed by an equally useful, research-based section on ways in which teachers can help learners to develop their perception and word segmentation skills with fairly standard approaches, including text selection, reducing speech rate and repetition. Chapter 9, ‘Task-Based Listening Lessons’, is a particularly rich chapter in terms of ideas for teaching listening. They rightly stress the importance of selecting texts carefully and provide a checklist for this purpose. The outlines of task-based listening lessons are particularly helpful. The last chapter in Part II, ‘Projects for Extensive Listening’, also contains good advice and ideas, especially on the forms of scaffolding for independent listening. As they say, the important thing is to develop a listening routine and instil a sense of commitment to listening practice outside class. I was glad to see that they include Stephen Krashen’s excellent article on ‘narrow listening’ in their suggestions for further reading. Part III, ‘Listening in Other Contexts’ has two chapters. Chapter 11, ‘Listening in Multimedia Environments’, looks at research on the use of video, forms of textual support, transcripts and closed captions (same language subtitles). As they rightly say, the findings on the value of the different media are rather mixed depending on the types of media, methods of delivery and their role in the learning context. Inevitably, a short chapter in a book on listening has to be highly selective in the research it reports but they do a workmanlike job and cover the main issues. Again, findings are reported in a largely uncritical way; articles on general principles of multimedia use are freely mixed with empirical studies. Chapter 12, ‘Assessing Listening for Learning’, discusses formative and summative listening assessment. The chapter has value both as a primer on (listening) assessment for the many ideas and checklists it provides. In the Epilogue, the authors take us back to the ten listening issues outlined in the Prologue. ‘Epilogue’ conjures up late-night radio preaching and, indeed, what we have is certainly end-of-book preaching for those who have not yet been converted. Are Vandergrift and Goh overselling the potential role of metacognition? From their own evidence they are basing an approach on a relatively limited aspect of listening performance as they tell us on p. 23 that Vandergrift et al. (2006) ‘found that approximately 13 percent of variance in listening performance could be explained by metacognition.” As the studies they report show, the research evidence for a metacognitive strategies-based approach remains relatively thin. Does it matter? Yes and no. Yes, it does matter because they are advocating an approach which prioritizes the use of top-down strategies such as generating prior knowledge, reflecting on the task before listening, getting the general message while relegating the linguistic aspects of listening until much later in the teaching/learning
Book reviews / System 40 (2012) 565e574
569
process (only after the third listening). In the limited time available, especially in foreign language contexts, the authors are prioritizing thinking about language and learner strategies instead of getting to grips with the spoken language itself. On the other hand, it may matter very little as what they provide in terms of ideas, plans, tasks and models are by and large very sound and could easily be adapted by (experienced) teachers to suit their own ordering of activities and priorities. This is not a reader-friendly book and the style rarely matches the intended readership of teachers and teachertrainers as it is more suited to academic articles rather than providing ‘a reference tool for developing a deeper understanding of listening skills and how these skills can be developed through focused attention in programs of instruction.’ (p xiv). However, if the intended audience can get past the academic prose and the constant references to the metacognitive mission of the authors, they will be rewarded with a rich array of useful ideas for listening in the language classroom. Reference Vandergrift, L., Goh, C., Mareschal, C., Tafaghodatari, M.H., 2006. The metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire (MALQ): development and validation. Language Learning 56, 431e462.
Robert Vanderplank Language Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2012.10.004
Language Testing: Theories and Practices, Barry O’Sullivan (Ed.). Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK (2011), p. 328. In this volume, the editor, Barry O’Sullivan, brings together research and narratives from around the world which highlight three key themes in language testing: validation, professionalism and localisation. O’Sullivan begins with a brief review of the history of language testing in order to bring to our attention the themes that he believes currently dominate the profession. He argues that current models of validity fail to take sufficient account of consequential validity, treating it as an add-on rather than as a central part of any and all test development. The book shows that there is evidence that this situation is beginning to change though, thanks in large part to the increasing professionalization of testing. This is also partly due to language testing developing as a scholarly field in its own right and partly due to the development of codes of practice and ethics to guide testing practitioners. Greater professionalization has meant that the importance of validation is better understood. This greater understanding has, in turn, prompted questioning about the validity of some of the broad-based claims made by developers of large scale tests with regard to the relevance of their tests in local contexts. This brings the themes full circle as a focus on the local (which refers to both individual test takers and the local context) makes it possible to take greater account of validity. Local tests have often been considered to be of lower quality than large-scale international tests, but as this book shows, this does not have to be the case if the expansion of professionalization, that is, the fostering of test development know-how, includes local stakeholders. There are fourteen chapters with contributions from Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, and the UAE as well as the UK and Europe. In the opening chapter, O’Sullivan and Weir point out that theories of language ability, for example, Bachman (1990), have tended to be difficult to operationalize, while models of language ability such as the CEFR have tended to be under-theorized. Their proposed solution is a model of test validation that combines theory with a focus on the evidence required to build a coherent validity argument. In their view, such an argument must take account of the interaction between the different types of evidence and that consequential validity, in particular, must inform all stages of test development. This solution builds on Weir’s (2005) socio-cognitive framework for validity.
567
Lawrence Jun Zhang School of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1150, New Zealand E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2012.10.006
Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action, Larry Vandergrift, Christine C.M. Goh. Routledge: New York and Abingdon, Oxon, UK (2012). xx þ 314 pp. This book has much to recommend it. It has summaries of relevant up-to-date research, a variety of theoretical perspectives on listening, as well as excellent teaching plans and ideas for developing listening skills and strategies inside and outside the classroom. The authors write with a mission for their so-called ‘metacognitive approach’. In their terms ‘Metacognition, or the act of thinking about thinking, refers to the ability of learners to control their thoughts and to regulate their own learning.’ (p. 5). The book consists of three parts. Part I, ‘Learning to Listen’ (Chapters 1e4), Part II, ‘A Metacognitive Approach to Listening’ (Chapters 5e10), and Part III ’Listening in Other Contexts’ (Chapters 11 and 12). There are also very useful appendices containing lists of listening strategies and the Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Questionnaire (MALQ). Not surprisingly for a book taking a metacognitive approach, readers are asked to reflect on issues related to teaching and learning listening in a prologue, which is then followed up in an epilogue in which these issues are summarised in the light of the content of this book. Each chapter begins with a scenario from a classroom, followed by more pre-reading reflection questions. I liked the scenarios but found the rather earnest reflection questions tiresome. In Chapter 1, ‘Challenges and Opportunities in Listening Instruction’, we are given the authors’ views on teaching listening over the past 50 years. I found myself constantly challenging many of their assertions. What is certain is that we were all trained in phonetics and phonology as well as in grammar in the 1960s and 1970s and certainly expected to train our listeners in the trickier linguistic aspects of listening in English as well as in more global listening. From my (obviously biased) perspective, it could be argued that CLT itself, paradoxically, contributed to a weakening in teaching listening comprehension as a separate, skilled activity at this time, owing to its emphasis on the message being communicated. Even if I disagree with much of what they say, their hearts are certainly in the right place and in the UK context of foreign language teaching from which I write, they are certainly correct in their advocacy of much needed change. Chapter 2, ‘Listening Competence’ provides a solid overview of key concepts such as bottom-up and top-down processing, and controlled and automatic processing before moving to discuss Anderson’s Perception, Processing and Utilization model as a source of insights into how learners construct meaning during listening. In this section, the authors highlight the development of word segmentation skills as a major challenge for L2 listeners and they return to this topic repeatedly throughout the book. A highly informative section on knowledge sources is then followed by an equally useful section on strategies in one-way and two-way listening. In Chapter 3, ‘A Model of Listening Comprehension’, we are offered a ‘cognitive’ model of listening comprehension which takes Levelt’s model of speech production, adapts it for comprehension and then adds Anderson’s model along with a metacognition wrapper. I am never entirely happy with such models since the means by which they work in real-time is not convincing. Nonetheless, the key point of the model and the illustrative examples is to show that listening is active rather than passive with listeners processing and analyzing what they are listening to on the basis of both their topic knowledge and their linguistic knowledge. By now, we can see clearly where we are heading and in Chapter 4, ‘Factors that Influence Success’, we are given (mainly) brief summaries of research on ‘cognitive factors’, including vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, metacognition, prior knowledge, L1 listening ability, sound discrimination ability, and additional factors such as working memory. This is followed by sections on ‘affective factors’ (motivation, self-efficacy, and anxiety), and ‘contextual factors’ (interactive listening, listening in informal and in
568
Book reviews / System 40 (2012) 565e574
formal learning contexts). The writing is highly informative but the descriptions of research are largely uncritical and there are no cautions about the findings being reported. All studies appear to be given the same weight if they support the thrust of the metacognition argument. Chapter 5, ‘A Metacognitive Approach to Listening Instruction’ is the first of six chapters on this theme. Their philosophy is that teachers need to nurture self-regulated learning and promote peer dialogue so that learners can learn to listen in a holistic manner. The goals are entirely worthy: to develop learners who understand the challenges of L2 listening, who can think about their learning development, who can makes plans and manage their progress, who can use strategies appropriately, have greater self-efficacy, and who (as they say, ‘last but not least’) can improve their listening proficiency (which I take to mean their linguistic knowledge and skills in the service of listening). The authors attempt to make a distinction between strategies and skills, taking the stance that while both are goalorientated, strategies are consciously controlled processes, while skills are automatic processes that make little demand on processing capacity. Such as position strikes me a rather fanciful when I think of young musicians or tennis players consciously practising their skills UNTIL they become automatic. Chapter 6, ‘A Metacognitive Pedagogical Sequence’, provides plans for pedagogical sequences based on their approach. While they appear to be pedagogically sound, the trained EFL teacher in me keeps wondering about the small space left for dealing with linguistic difficulties. They rightly claim that having metacognitive knowledge is a mental characteristic shared by successful learners but in this, they are blurring the recurring problematic issue in much of Vandergrift’s work which is the link between proficiency level and strategy use. Are ‘successful learners’ not only those with sound strategies but also those with higher linguistic proficiency? If so, shouldn’t we be concentrating our limited time on developing linguistic proficiency rather than relegating these activities to the last part of the process of listening instruction? Chapter 7, ‘Activities for Metacognitive Instruction’ continues to provide high quality ideas and plans for listening classes. There is even a section on ‘Emotional Temperature Charts’ for the anxious listeners to take their anxiety temperatures. In Chapter 8, ‘Developing Perception and Word Segmentation Skills’, the authors discuss the bottom-up components of listening and provide a good overview of research on problems for learners in word segmentation, followed by an equally useful, research-based section on ways in which teachers can help learners to develop their perception and word segmentation skills with fairly standard approaches, including text selection, reducing speech rate and repetition. Chapter 9, ‘Task-Based Listening Lessons’, is a particularly rich chapter in terms of ideas for teaching listening. They rightly stress the importance of selecting texts carefully and provide a checklist for this purpose. The outlines of task-based listening lessons are particularly helpful. The last chapter in Part II, ‘Projects for Extensive Listening’, also contains good advice and ideas, especially on the forms of scaffolding for independent listening. As they say, the important thing is to develop a listening routine and instil a sense of commitment to listening practice outside class. I was glad to see that they include Stephen Krashen’s excellent article on ‘narrow listening’ in their suggestions for further reading. Part III, ‘Listening in Other Contexts’ has two chapters. Chapter 11, ‘Listening in Multimedia Environments’, looks at research on the use of video, forms of textual support, transcripts and closed captions (same language subtitles). As they rightly say, the findings on the value of the different media are rather mixed depending on the types of media, methods of delivery and their role in the learning context. Inevitably, a short chapter in a book on listening has to be highly selective in the research it reports but they do a workmanlike job and cover the main issues. Again, findings are reported in a largely uncritical way; articles on general principles of multimedia use are freely mixed with empirical studies. Chapter 12, ‘Assessing Listening for Learning’, discusses formative and summative listening assessment. The chapter has value both as a primer on (listening) assessment for the many ideas and checklists it provides. In the Epilogue, the authors take us back to the ten listening issues outlined in the Prologue. ‘Epilogue’ conjures up late-night radio preaching and, indeed, what we have is certainly end-of-book preaching for those who have not yet been converted. Are Vandergrift and Goh overselling the potential role of metacognition? From their own evidence they are basing an approach on a relatively limited aspect of listening performance as they tell us on p. 23 that Vandergrift et al. (2006) ‘found that approximately 13 percent of variance in listening performance could be explained by metacognition.” As the studies they report show, the research evidence for a metacognitive strategies-based approach remains relatively thin. Does it matter? Yes and no. Yes, it does matter because they are advocating an approach which prioritizes the use of top-down strategies such as generating prior knowledge, reflecting on the task before listening, getting the general message while relegating the linguistic aspects of listening until much later in the teaching/learning
Book reviews / System 40 (2012) 565e574
569
process (only after the third listening). In the limited time available, especially in foreign language contexts, the authors are prioritizing thinking about language and learner strategies instead of getting to grips with the spoken language itself. On the other hand, it may matter very little as what they provide in terms of ideas, plans, tasks and models are by and large very sound and could easily be adapted by (experienced) teachers to suit their own ordering of activities and priorities. This is not a reader-friendly book and the style rarely matches the intended readership of teachers and teachertrainers as it is more suited to academic articles rather than providing ‘a reference tool for developing a deeper understanding of listening skills and how these skills can be developed through focused attention in programs of instruction.’ (p xiv). However, if the intended audience can get past the academic prose and the constant references to the metacognitive mission of the authors, they will be rewarded with a rich array of useful ideas for listening in the language classroom. Reference Vandergrift, L., Goh, C., Mareschal, C., Tafaghodatari, M.H., 2006. The metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire (MALQ): development and validation. Language Learning 56, 431e462.
Robert Vanderplank Language Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2012.10.004
Language Testing: Theories and Practices, Barry O’Sullivan (Ed.). Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK (2011), p. 328. In this volume, the editor, Barry O’Sullivan, brings together research and narratives from around the world which highlight three key themes in language testing: validation, professionalism and localisation. O’Sullivan begins with a brief review of the history of language testing in order to bring to our attention the themes that he believes currently dominate the profession. He argues that current models of validity fail to take sufficient account of consequential validity, treating it as an add-on rather than as a central part of any and all test development. The book shows that there is evidence that this situation is beginning to change though, thanks in large part to the increasing professionalization of testing. This is also partly due to language testing developing as a scholarly field in its own right and partly due to the development of codes of practice and ethics to guide testing practitioners. Greater professionalization has meant that the importance of validation is better understood. This greater understanding has, in turn, prompted questioning about the validity of some of the broad-based claims made by developers of large scale tests with regard to the relevance of their tests in local contexts. This brings the themes full circle as a focus on the local (which refers to both individual test takers and the local context) makes it possible to take greater account of validity. Local tests have often been considered to be of lower quality than large-scale international tests, but as this book shows, this does not have to be the case if the expansion of professionalization, that is, the fostering of test development know-how, includes local stakeholders. There are fourteen chapters with contributions from Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, and the UAE as well as the UK and Europe. In the opening chapter, O’Sullivan and Weir point out that theories of language ability, for example, Bachman (1990), have tended to be difficult to operationalize, while models of language ability such as the CEFR have tended to be under-theorized. Their proposed solution is a model of test validation that combines theory with a focus on the evidence required to build a coherent validity argument. In their view, such an argument must take account of the interaction between the different types of evidence and that consequential validity, in particular, must inform all stages of test development. This solution builds on Weir’s (2005) socio-cognitive framework for validity.