Academic Listening Strategies

Understanding full-length academic lectures is essential for every successful college and university student. Yet, even advanced language learners may have trouble mastering this skill. "Academic Listening Strategies" offers additional listening comprehension practice and strategies for college and university students. The exercises in this text, together with the lectures and short talks on the accompanying DVDs, will provide students with many opportunities to practice effective listening strategies. The lectures represent the discipline of healthcare, engineering, linguistics, and architecture and are similar, but longer, than those used on the Next Generation TOEFL[registered] test. By the end of the book, students will gain the skills necessary to: prepare for lectures; listen more effectively during lectures; recognize what information may have been missed; and compensate for missed information with methods other than reading and rereading the assigned texts. The video component includes four entire lectures, as well as several lecture segments and shorter informal talks. All selections demonstrate actual and authentic speech in university lectures. All in all, more than four full hours of listening material is offered on the DVDs.

Julia Salehzadeh is Lecturer at the University of Michigan English Language Institute.