Learners encounter common L2 listening difficulties, such as time commitments, repeated mistakes, and activities in their lessons. Research suggests that journals can help learners reflect on their performance, plan their approaches to listening, and help learners attend to their real-time listening difficulties.

This study analyzed 60 Japanese university learners’ listening journals to understand their out-of-class listening selections. Learners completed one homework journal for five weeks, using metacognitive knowledge prompts to reflect on their listening selections, task ease and difficulties, and their listening goals.

The results showed that learners selected familiar listening resources. Learners reported that familiar accents and listening texts with visual aids were beneficial, while speed and unfamiliar topics contributed towards listening difficulties. Learners’ reported listening for key words, manipulating the speed, and listening in sections as goals in their future listening lessons. The presentation concludes by outlining how to use learner journals in listening lessons for educators to use in their own classrooms.

What constitutes an appropriate curriculum for developing the listening skills of language learners? Most would agree that a healthy dose of comprehensible input should be the cornerstone, along with regular comprehension checks to ensure that students are coping. However, as the language skills required of modern graduates become increasingly specialized, teachers are often obliged to create their own resources to ensure that curriculum objectives are met. This presentation will introduce an online course aimed at developing STEM-related listening skills for first and second-year university students enrolled in science and engineering programs. The course leverages AI avatars, speech recognition and speech synthesis to provide engaging and interactive online listening lessons. Through a mix of self-assessment and auto-generated feedback, the course was able to deliver measurable improvements in listening ability during the period of remote emergency teaching brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who attend this presentation will be provided access to the course for use with their students.

This presentation offers a three-step pedagogic framework for fellow educators to develop academic listening lessons. First, practice selecting suitable TED Talks using an aspects checklist that compares the resource to academic lectures. Second, create vocabulary profiles for the chosen TED Talk to develop lists that are suitable for learners’ levels. Thirdly, choose from different listening activities to help learners build on their background knowledge about the TED Talk. The presentation will focus on using listening journals to develop learners’ metacognitive knowledge and critical reflection that help them to plan and carry out more effective listening. Real class examples will demonstrate how to use these approaches when teaching listening. These lesson planning approaches will illustrate how we can select a suitable resource, grade the vocabulary for learners, and develop activities to use with our chosen selections in listening lessons.