Linguistics Department Colloquium:

Joseph Siegel (Stockholm University)

Development and Variation in Academic Listening and Notetaking

Listening in academic contexts entails high-stakes situations in which accurate aural comprehension of gist and detail is crucial for learning. Traditionally conceived as one-way listening via the lecture, in recent years, the concept of academic listening has evolved to encompass two-way listening in the forms of, among others, seminars, class discussions, and one-on-one interactions. To succeed in learning from such events, students often employ notetaking to aid learning and create an external record of content for later use. When listening to and operating within a second language (L2), these tasks become increasingly challenging.

This seminar focuses on academic listening and notetaking in an L2, drawing on relevant concepts from second language acquisition (SLA). After reviewing key concepts related to listening, such as bottom-up and top-down processing, challenges faced by L2 students, etc., it moves on to describe research on L2 student notetaking and their attempts to comprehend, record and learn from academic input. Data in the forms of note samples and survey responses collected from high school students in Sweden will be used to demonstrate the various notetaking strategies they employed. Potential benefits and drawbacks of certain approaches to notetaking will be considered with reference to SLA concepts. The session will finish with discussion of pedagogic options for notetaking instruction and development of academic listening abilities.