
Strategic listening in the EMI classroom: How students comprehend the teacher input
Wed, Jun 12
|AAB817, Hong Kong Baptist University
Dr Daniel FUNG, The University of Hong Kong
Time & Location
Jun 12, 2024, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM GMT+8
AAB817, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
About the Event
Strategic listening in the EMI classroom: How students comprehend the teacher input
Dr Daniel FUNG
The University of Hong Kong
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in English Medium Instruction (EMI), along with other bilingual education programmes such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Students enrolled in these programmes learn content subjects (e.g., Science) through their less familiar second or additional language (L2) English. While some research attention has been devoted to classroom interaction in EMI, revealing that teacher talk dominates, there is a scarcity of research that examines what learners do when attempting to comprehend the teacher talk in order to learn content subjects effectively. For example, little is known about how students use a range of listening strategies (e.g., inferencing, recall of prior knowledge, monitoring, etc.), which can facilitate their comprehension of the teacher input.
In this seminar, the speaker will present two studies that are situated in secondary school classrooms in Hong Kong. The first study explores the range of strategies used by secondary school students when understanding the teacher input in the classroom. More effective listeners will also be compared with less effective ones in order to inform us about what strategic listening would mean in the EMI classroom. Building upon this first study, the second study develops a listening strategy instruction programme and investigates its effectiveness on EMI learners. The seminar will end with a discussion on the importance of listening strategies in EMI context as well as pedagogical implications for how students can learn to become strategic listeners in the naturalistic EMI classroom, ultimately improving their learning effectiveness.
Dr Daniel Fung is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. He is interested in research that has practical implications for the teaching and learning community, and his major areas of research include listening strategies, English Medium Instruction (EMI), and vocabulary teaching/learning. He has recently published in Language Teaching Research, System, Language and Education, and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.