Listening in the Language Classroom

A new and welcome release in the ‘Cambridge Language Teaching Library’ series is Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field, a publication that has won the 2009 Ben Warren Trust prize for being ‘the most outstanding work in the field of language teacher education’ (International House 2009: page unknown). The author is well known and active in the realm of L2 listening pedagogy and research, and the broad aims of his book are to present a ‘radical’ approach to listening instruction which primarily adopts a psycholinguistic perspective, as well as provide a range of small-scale practice activities informed by theoretical aspects covered. Following an introduction, Field succinctly overviews the rationale for, and current limitations of, teaching listening to set the scene for the remainder of the book, which consists of six parts. Part I covers background material. Chapter 1 provides a review of changes to listening teaching practice since the 1970s. Chapter 2 is a critical look at the comprehension approach (CA), and failings of the CA identified provide the impetus for the proposed approach covered in subsequent parts. The limitations of the CA tradition are clearly worthy of mention and underscore and reiterate practices which are best avoided in the listening classroom.