Our Listening Course

Introduce the objectives of this course and then the concept of a corpus and its relevance to language learning.

Introduce the most common pronunciation features of different English varieties. Select some examples from corpora to demonstrate the segmental features and suprasegmental features of Inner-Circle (IC) English accents, Outer-Circle (OC) English accents, and Expanding-Circle (EC) English accents

Listening practice with IC English accents (e.g., American English, British English, Australian English, etc.). The teacher will select speech samples of IC Englishes from the corpora and play them to students.

Listening practice with OC English accents. The teacher will select speech samples of each variety of English the corpora and play them to students.

Listening practice with EC English accents. The teacher will select speech samples of each variety of English the corpora and play them to students.

Focused listening practice I with IC English accents (listening stimuli are selected from spoken corpora, e.g., IDEA/SAA/EdUC/TED)

Focused listening practice II with OC English accents (listening stimuli are selected from spoken corpora, e.g., IDEA/SAA/EdUC/TED)

Focused listening practice III with EC English accents (listening stimuli are selected from spoken corpora, e.g., IDEA/SAA/EdUC/TED)

Students reflect on their errors in the listening exercises, identify the potential listening challenges caused by pronunciation issues, and give a presentation focusing on their personal listening difficulties, specifically highlighting the pronunciation issues they have identified. They may follow the following steps.

• List all the words/phrases that they could not get from the listening exercises from different English varieties.
• Categorize the errors into different categories: vowels, consonants, linking, stress, unfamiliar words, speech rate…
• Think of possible remedies to the listening comprehension problems

• Students will do a final listening test in which the listening stimuli were selected from various English accents and see if there is any improvement in understanding different English accents.
• Introduce some practical skills in addressing students listening difficulties, such as making predictions, story retelling, and note-taking skills.