Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Listening

Listening as a second language skill area is taught in many language programs, sometimes as a separate course and sometimes in a form integrated with speaking or even reading and writing. Listening activities and tasks typically have two purposes: (1) to help students improve aural processing and comprehension and (2) through that comprehension, to support acquisition of new language forms or to aid in the development of sociocultural and pragmatic understanding of how those forms are used. Technology can play an important role in both. As noted in Otto (this volume), throughout the 20th century there were technological

developments that allowed the human voice to be captured and then replayed across time or broadcast through the airwaves. Vinyl records, film, and audio and video tapes brought native speaker voices, visages, and culture into the foreign language classroom. Radio and television also played a role, often in conjunction with recording tools.

 For second language listening, a qualitative shift can be traced back to two technologies from the 1980s: the laser videodisc and the appearance of digitized sound on PCs and early Macintosh computers. In both cases, the key transformation was the enhanced control these technologies allowed. No longer were teachers and learners forced to rely on time‐consuming search, fast forwarding, and rewinding through unwanted material to get to what was desired. The computer programs allowed teachers, for example, to jump to any desired portion of an audio or video recording instantly to support their teaching activities or to toggle L1 and L2 subtitles off and on at will. Similarly, learners could get an immediate repetition of a segment that was not fully understood. Beginning in the 1990s, CD‐ROMs and the World Wide Web made such controllable digital video and multimedia mainstream. Podcasts, YouTube, and other streaming media, and the mobility of mp3 players, smartphones, and tablets have placed listening materials within the reach of language learners across a large and growing portion of the globe. Modern digital tools have permanently changed the ways in which we interact with recorded media.

Reference :

A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Listening. India: Willey backwell