I would like to share the ORE Directory (Open Research in English Language Teaching). This is a brilliant resource that I came across on Twitter, thanks to Huw Jarvis. Basically, it’s a directory of Open Access journals on (English) language teaching-related topics. There is a similar function in DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) but that doesn’t seem to be actively maintained.
ORE would be great for anybody looking for work from a specific country, or just in general to see some different journals. It would be especially good for DipTESOL and Delta candidates, too.
I have been teaching an elective intermediate Authentic Listening class for two years at one of the universities I work at. During that time, I have had my students submit extensive listening journals as part of outside class study (something institution-wide). This is a place I am going to put down a few ideas about what has been more and less successful over the last 4 semesters.
Problematising listening
In setting the listening journal homework, I had my students log what problems they had with the authentic texts they were listening to. This allowed me to see whether there were problems with decoding, using top-down strategies, dealing with allophones/phonemic variation and more.
This has been most useful when done thoughtfully, though some students had just treated it as a proverbial hoop to jump through and logged the same problem week on week with insufficient detail.
Subtitles
In the first three semesters I requested students not to use subtitles with their listening. My rationale was that this was not sufficiently authentic and that all some students would do is read the subtitles and not listen sufficiently. In August 2019, though, I went to New Sounds and saw a great presentation by Natalia Wisniewska and Juan C. Mora (2019) on the use of L1 and/or L2 subtitles in listening. In her study, she stated that L1 subtitles allowed learners to gain more meaning, while L2 facilitated more accurate pronunciation.
Seeing as both types of subtitles had their benefits, I set my students to listen with a mix of L1 subtitles, L2 subtitles and no subtitles in the semester just completed. The results were rather good for the students who followed my instructions properly. It also resulted in more homework actually done than in previous semesters, although quite a few students did less listening without subtitles than I would have liked.
A balanced listening diet
TED talks are extremely popular with my students, though not my cup of tea, to be honest. Where students have used a lot of the same type of text, I tried to recommend something very different, such as dramas or bits of films for the TED enthusiasts, and some interviews on a popular video site for the Netflix addicts. Most students tried to balance their listening here, with at least two listens to something a bit different, but we all have our preferences, and sometimes it’s hard to expand a listing palate over just one semester. This is something I do want to build on, though.
These are just a few ideas that I plan to build on and reflect on over coming years and syllabi.
References
Wisniewska, N., & Mora, J. C. (2019) Can Watching Captioned Movies Improve L2 Pronunciation? (Presentation) August 31, 2019. New Sounds 2019 Conference, Waseda University.
There is a massively underused number of potential journal articles resting on teachers’ hard disks, cloud storage and flash drives.
This is how I sorted out my dissertation and took some best bits from other assignments for articles.
If you are interested in doing it, this might be useful. It’s how I did it and no indication of good practice.
Open Word file and save as something else. Probably in a ‘working on’ file.
Go through the dissertation. You need it to be between 3000-7500 words including references.
You will keep much of the literature review unless you have a long lit review or a literature review of several parts. What is essential. Feel free to come back this later.
Discussion and evaluation. Cut the fat. If you are doing half the dissertation this means only the pertinent bits. The evaluation only needs your caveats, probably.
Results. Maybe you just need to give the results, maybe you need a minimum explanation.
Methodology. Keep the what and unless you did something crazy and new, discard most of the why. How should be bare bones.
OMG. Still over. Check refs. Do your quotes need to be full quotes?
Damn. Sacrifice your favourite bit that is a bit odd. Is it coherent?
Finished? No. You have to strip the metadata in preparation for a double blind.
Set aside at least two hours to submit.
Rest for 3-9 months. Seriously.
Go through the dissertation. You need it to be between 3000-7500 words including references.
You will keep much of the literature review unless you have a long lit review or a literature review of several parts. What is essential. Feel free to come back this later.
Discussion and evaluation. Cut the fat. If you are doing half the dissertation this means only the pertinent bits. The evaluation only needs your caveats, probably.
Results. Maybe you just need to give the results, maybe you need a minimum explanation.
Methodology. Keep the what and unless you did something crazy and new, discard most of the why. How should be bare bones.
OMG. Still over. Check refs. Do your quotes need to be full quotes?
Damn. Sacrifice your favourite bit that is a bit odd. Is it coherent?
Finished? No. You have to strip the metadata in preparation for a double blind.
Set aside at least two hours to submit.
Rest for 3-9 months. Seriously.
This is just my experience. I used part of the Applied Linguistics module, my DipTESOL independent research project, a corpora essay and half my dissertation.
