Stratégies d'écoute au niveau universitaire: le cas des étudiants d'immersion

Mme Dr. Knoerr can answer questions in English and French. Slides in English will also be available.

La Dra. Knoerr podrá responder preguntas en ingles y francés. Diapositivas en inglés estarán disponibles.

Stratégies d'écoute au niveau universitaire: le cas des étudiants d'immersion

In a context of increasing international mobility, the number of students taking university courses in a foreign language is constantly increasing. In the Canadian context, in addition to this international clientele, there is a national clientele from the other official-language community, who study in their second language (L2): immersion students. English-speaking students who choose to pursue their post-secondary studies in French face many challenges. To be successful, they need to be aware of their needs, of the way in which they learn, and how to implement these strategies (Hacker, Dunlosky & Graesser, 2009). In other words, they need to develop their metacognition in academic listening (Baker, 2002). Research based on metacognitive theory (Wenden, 1998) and listening theory in L2 (Goh, 2008) underscores the importance of listening strategies for the academic success of these audiences. The difficulty is increased by the fact that immersion students are confronted with a specialized language, which uses complete syntax and highly specialized vocabulary. In addition to the pitfalls associated with the transition from high school to university, experience by all students, they find themselves as the minority in courses mostly populated by francophone students, whom they hardly understand or not at all, and taught by francophone teachers, who are unaware of their presence in the classroom and therefore make no accommodations in their pedagogy, rate of speech, vocabulary or references to culture and specialized subject matter. How can teachers equip these students so that they can understand a lecture, follow a guided discussion session, or participate in discussion in their discipline?

Listening and note-taking being at the heart of the challenges faced by immersion students in their second-language discipline courses (Weinberg, Knoerr & Vandergrift, 2011), we focused our research on metacognition, which frames and guides the listening process. The term was introduced in cognitive psychology by Flavell (1976) to describe the learner’s knowledge of cognitive functioning and his ability to act on it. O’Malley and Chamot (1990) identified a number of learning strategies, divided into three categories: metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies. The effective listener uses metacognitive strategies to solve his difficulties and facilitate his understanding (Bacon, 1992; Goh, 2000; O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Vandergrift, 1997, 1998, 2003). Vandergrift (1997) showed that skillful listeners use twice as many metacognitive strategies as their clumsy counterparts. But it turns out that metacognition can be taught and learned through guided listening tasks (Goh & Taib, 2006; Vandergrift, 2002, 2003), with measurable results in listening performance (Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010).

This conference will provide a theoretical update on second-language listening and present some research on the teaching, application and evaluation of listening strategies conducted among different cohorts of students in the French Immersion Program at the University of Ottawa.