Listening skill

Listening skill in B language is paramount to anything else. I am glad to read in the latest delivery of the JAITS 通訳翻訳研究 a text about listening skill for the basic interpreting training by Miyuki Tanaka of 大東大文化大学. The text highlights the gap within interpretation students in Japan between the fairly advanced individuals with those with a net below required competence in their B language, especially at the listening level. As already heard around, schools of interpreting here are perceived by many as a way to beef up ones shortcomings in B language. It certainly explain why there are books here claiming to exploit "interpretation learning techniques" to grow in foreign language acquisition. The author probes into possible ways to exploit what the language trainers know about reinforcing listening competence. I too have a mix of students that all more or less struggle at various degree to understand natural French in audio format. It's a good thing for alternate interpreting trainers as stating as I do that I provide strategies to raise L2 competence from the view point of interpretation. In the text, the author refers to a set of recommendations on things to do and not to do around listening, extracted from David J. Mendelsohn's paper "Learning how to listen using learning strategies" starting on page 75. In there s stated that listening should be done using video, not audio without any clue on the reasons why. In the age of iPod, I am advocating to my student quite the contrary, that is, listen first to audio sources, and not simply from the viewpoint of portability. A quick search in Amazon shows how listening for L2 growth is not a hot topic, whereas in the classroom at least, it's hotter than the sun.