ABSTRACT
Listening is both a language skill to be acquired and a major means of input for language acquisition. This chapter organizes around topics of current pedagogical concern in listening. It begins with findings on factors in successful listening comprehension and presents research on those factors. The chapter then looks at two widely researched issues, the use of multimedia and strategies and at two strands of classroom research, on reading while listening and extensive listening. In questionnaires and recalls, participants agreed that lexical complexity was an important factor, and they also added as less important speed of delivery, clarity of pronunciation, lack of explicitness, and syntactic complexity. Folse K. has argued for the primary importance of vocabulary in language learning, and Larry Vandergrift has argued specifically for a larger role for vocabulary in listening development. Vandergrift argued for more research into motivation as a potential explanation for variance in second language listening ability.
