An Interactive Approach to Effective Listening Strategies

At Hakodate University, students are required to take a variety of Englishlanguage classes from first year in the International Department of the Faculty ofCommerce. There are English writing, reading, speaking and listening classes,among others. These classes focus on individual skills for the most part, howeverskills are often integrated. Traditionally, reading and writing are taught as twosides of the same coin and speaking and listening are as well. For example,in order to develop and produce good writing skills, students are required toread essays and compositions. It follows that to further speaking skills, thedevelopment of good listening abilities is necessary.The ability to understand spoken language allows students to interact withspeakers of English. Nevertheless, developing strong listening skills in Englishcan be a challenge as students are not familiar with many listening strategies toassist with listening. When students’ English listening skills are low, they havedifficulties performing well in tests, such as the TOEIC test (Test of English forInternational Communication) and the Japanese Step Test. Speaking activitiesalso become more challenging. In order to increase students’ awareness oflistening strategies and assist them with improving their listening skills, a varietyto activities were presented to a first year University class in the Fall 2019academic year