Listening to lectures

Lectures remain a key, high-stakes pedagogical genre in higher education. However, effective lecture comprehension, note-taking, and ultimately retention are complex processes. First, lectures are typically multimodal events in which auditory and visual input needs to be processed simultaneously in real-time. Second, the efficacy with which students process and record this input depends on a myriad of student- and lecturer-related factors, including language proficiency, lecturing style, and lecture discourse features that accommodate and engage the listeners. Third, academic mobility and the associated rise of English as a medium of instruction have resulted in diverse contexts in which some lecturers and students are unfamiliar with each other’s language, cultural, and educational backgrounds. Fourth, online lectures bring with them specific listening affordances and challenges. Lecture listening training can help students benefit from lectures, while research into lecture listening and lecture discourse increases our understanding of students’ needs as well as how lecturers and EAP teachers can meet these. This chapter surveys research that has contributed to our understanding of lecture comprehension as well as the effective design of lecture listening materials and training.