Reviews
Review in JIPA Volume 50.3 December 2020 by Mari Sakai, Georgetown University
Mari Sakai has written a long (5 pages!) review in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association which you can find here. (I think, but don’t know for sure, that it is only available online). The most wonderful thing about this review is that she tried the ideas out by creating a course for her students – which they loved!
Richard Cauldwell’s second book offers a welcome alternative to conventional L2 listening instruction by focusing on DECODING. … The intended audience is ‘teachers, teacher trainers, textbook authors, and course book authors’ … and I would add students and scholars to this list as well.
She adds:
Overall, I highly recommend this book for pre- and in-service teachers and academics. The perspective Cauldwell offers is fresh and very much needed. I believe it will motivate and energize teachers to create new lessons, and students will feel like they are gaining access to authentic speech that they could not unlock before. On a personal level,
And here’s the bit where she describes her own experience of trying this approach:
I was inspired to create an eight-week listening skills workshop, dedicated entirely to decoding. My current students love the class and come back every week excited to learn more.
And then she articulates a thought that had been in the back of my mind:
I would love to see this text created for other languages, and I encourage teachers and scholars working in non-English settings to assemble lists of sound transformations and alternations that would be valuable for decoding practice in their target languages.
Then a couple of very pleasing comments:
This text is a fantastic addition to the L2 listening pedagogy literature […] I believe this text has tremendous value, and I recommend it without hesitation.
Of course, as with all responsible reviews, some reservations are expressed – but I will leave it up to you to find them!
Review in The CATESOL Journal 30.2 by Beth Sheppard, University of Oregon
The new year (2019) brought in a (very) pleasing review from California. Beth Sheppard writes
I found the arguments for a new approach given in Parts 1 and 2 exciting and inspiring.
Two other key quotes:
I was excited to implement many of the suggested activities and skeptical about a few of them. Given the lack of well-known activities for aural decoding, I believe they are all worth a try.
[He introduces] a variety of charming terminology to support this approach … All of these terms have a positive valence, reflecting the book’s positive attitude toward the reality of aural decoding.
The full review is available in pdf here – it is the second review of three, pages 87-89 (pages 3-5).
Review in Speak Out! Issue 59 by Jonathan Marks
This review thrills me because it contains – in the reviewer’s words – wonderful explanations that I wish I could have used. Jonathan writes of
…the ‘Jungle’, where words mutate and intertwine in luxuriant and unpredictable profusion and confusion.
The review finishes as follows …
The author actually described the book as ‘essential reading’ for teachers, teacher trainers and materials writers – a rather immodest claim, but I think he’s right!
You can read the full version of Jonathan Marks’s review here.
Review in Modern English Teacher Volume 27 Issue 4 by Wayne Rimmer
It’s always gratifying for the author when a reviewer ‘gets’ what the point of the book is, and Wayne’s review is an example of this. He chooses at one point to focus on my critique of conventional listening methodology …
Richard, based on his own classroom experience, makes an excellent point that we are governed by ‘the smiling class imperative’ whereby we want to keep the learners/customers happy at the expense of teaching them something actually useful.
The review finishes as follows …
It is a cliche in reviews to round up with a “This book is essential reading for …”. However, this is absolutely true when it comes to A Syllabus for Listening. Anyone involved in ELT needs to read this book and change their practice, whether that’s somebody teaching an evening course at a language school or a textbook writer integrating listening into their material. With its firm anchoring in theory, wealth of real-world examples and classroom activities, there can be absolutely no excuse to ignore its contents. We can make learners better listeners, hence massively improving their effectiveness as communicators as well as their success in high-stake situations such as examinations, but this can only happen if we teach listening differently. A Syllabus for Listening shows the way forward and provides a more than helping hand on this journey.
You can read the full version of Wayne Rimmer’s review here.