Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action (original) (raw)

Routledg: Newyork and London 214 pages, ISBN: 978-0-203-84337-6 (ebk), $33.75 Reviewed by ADANECH ZEMEDE WOLDEMARIAM The book, Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action, intended for teachers who are teaching listening, to help them to understand the process of teaching listening, to identify the role of metacognition in listening development, and how to teach listening. Teachers can use or adopt this book for teaching listening inside and outside the class rooms; its approach focuses on language learners. It is designed to be as a text book and as a reference book. As a text book, it uses for Diploma and MA/M.Ed courses. As a reference, it uses for developing a deeper understanding of listening skills of learners (prologue). Further, it requires teachers to fill in 10 items with 6 Likert scales, to reflect on their teaching and learning second language listening based on their experience. Finally, it ends with the three appendices (strategies for listening comprehension with examples, Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), and online resources for listening practices), and reference lists. The book has twelve chapters with three parts. Part one focuses on learning to listen; part two focuses on metacognition approach to listening, and part three focuses on listening in other contexts. All the three parts start with scenarios and pre-reading reflection questions regarding the scenarios. In addition, each chapter ends with discussion questions and tasks with further reading reference lists. The next paragraphs will discusses each of these parts with their chapters. Part one, learning to listen, introduces the importance of listening as a skill comparing with the other major language skills. This part encompasses four chapters (chapter 1-4). Chapter one, challenges and opportunities in listening instruction, emphasizes the experiences of teaching listening in the past decades in which the listening activities tend to focus on the outcome of it (p. 4). Therefore, learners face many challenges such as anxiety, not knowing how to listen or they need time to get the speakers' message, the nature of spoken text does not allow them