Vices of Listening Comprehension

Sometimes titles pop into your head, and they are of such a nature that they make writing very easy. One such title for me was ‘Faith, Hope and Charity – the Three Vices of Listening Comprehension.’ (I have a Catholic background). As the title had arrived before the ideas, I had some serious work to do. But it was easy – there is just so much wrong with the teaching of listening that it could have gone in a number of different directions.

I put words beginning with ‘Mis-‘ in front of each of the vices – thus getting ‘Misplaced Faith’, ‘Misguided Hope’ and ‘Misdirected Charity’. I argued that the teaching of listening places too much faith in research into first language research, too much hope in the fact that students will be able to catch stresses, and we show too much charity to learners giving them ‘what they can manage’ rather than ‘what they need to learn to cope with’.

The article was written as a teaser to entice people to come to a conference at which I was talking – and a ‘more mature’ and ‘considered’ version later appeared as ‘Grasping the nettle – the Importance of Perception Work in Listening Comprehension’ which is available on the web here. It’s become a reasonably commonly read piece on teacher-training courses, and one day someone, on being introduced to me exclaimed ‘Oh, so you are Grasping-the-nettle-Cauldwell!’

I should have kept the original title – imagine the thrill of being saluted ‘Oh you are Three-Vices-Cauldwell!’

Image from R & N Horological here.