Academic Listening (Pre-sessional Course A)

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• take notes in lectures and seminar.
• better understand lectures at University.
• better understand academic staff and classmates
• develop strategies for improving your listening skills

The listening syllabus helps you to develop strategies for improving your listening for gist and specific

information, and focuses in particular, on how to listen effectively in lectures and how to take useful notes

while listening. You will attend a weekly lecture in order to practise the skills taught, and to accustom you to

the style of lecture used in the UK. You will also take part in a lecture follow up session where you will discuss

what was covered in the weekly lecture.

Areas that you will cover include:

 Using an introduction to help understand the lecture better

 Identifying the key points a lecturer wants to make

 Distinguishing key points from examples

 Identifying ways in which a lecturer signals key points

 Recognising when new terminology, terms and concepts are being introduced in a lecture

 Recognising ways in which information is organised in lectures

 Identifying key phrases that indicate how a lecture is organised

 Identifying main and subtopics in a lecture

 Developing strategies to use when information in a text has not been heard/understood

 Identifying phrases in a lecture that indicate connections between ideas

 Understanding emphasis in lectures

 Identifying digressions

 Understanding connected speech

 Using strategies to predict the content of a lecture

Teaching and learning methods

You will experience a wide variety of teaching and learning methods including: full class teaching; real life

and videoed lectures; individual, pair and group work in class; discussions in small groups; set tasks to be

completed outside class; use of authentic lectures for exploitation; self-directed independent study and group

tutorials.

Resources & Reading list

Internet Resources

BBC Learning English: Academic Listening.

University of Warwick.

BBC Radio 4: The Reith Lectures.

UEFAP Listening.

BBC Radio 4 podcasts.

Henry Stuart Talks: The Management & Marketing Collection.

British Council Learn English: Professionals Podcasts.

BBC iPlayer.

TED Talks.

British Council Learn English: Listen and Watch.

Textbooks

T Lynch (2004). Study Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

D Beglar and N Murray (2009). Contemporary Topics: Academic Listening & Note taking Skills Book 3. New York: Pearson Longman.

D Bell (2008). Passport to Academic Presentations. Reading: Garnet Education.

R Lowes, H Peters and M Turner (2004). The International Students Study Guide. London: Sage Publications.

C Fletcher (2013). Skills for Study level 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

C Campbell and J Smith (2009). English for Academic Study: Listening. Course book. Reading: University of Reading.

C Thaine (2012). Cambridge Academic English Intermediate Student’s book: An integrated skills Course for EAP. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A McNair and F Gooch (2013). Language for Study level 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

S Ostrowska (2014). Unlock Listening and Speaking Skills 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

E Kisslinger and M Rost (2009). Contemporary Topics: Academic Listening & Note taking Skills Book 2.. New York: Pearson Longman.

S Cottrell (2008). The Study Skills Handbook. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

L Lansford (2014). Unlock Listening and Speaking Skills 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Assessment strategy

Informal tasks designed to provide formative feedback on:

 listening skills

 strategies to improve your listening skills

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.