The Nature of Listening: The need for listening in English for Academic Purposes

The teaching of listening skills has long been an accepted classroom activity in the General English classroom. Language teaching in the Faculty, however, has tended to lag behind in this respect and to concentrate on reading and writing skills at the expense of aural skills. We would argue, however, that listening skills, in these days of University exchange programmes requiring students to cope with English as a medium of instruction during their University career and with a European, as opposed to a national, job market, should form an integral part of any University English programme. Like it or not, we are now dealing with a student population accustomed to audio-visual input, not merely in the language classroom, but in a number of disciplines This paper seeks to examine recent g on the subject of listening and to apply this to the Higher Education classroom. In the case of overseas ’ students1 at British Universities, the psychological and pedagogical reasons for understanding spoken English need hardly be stressed. However, given the European Community’s continuing commitment to exchange programmes, with the introduction of the Socrates Programme, European students are attending courses in British Universities in increasing numbers, and exchange visits, via Erasmus and othe