Multimodal Listening in ESL Classrooms: Implications for Language Teachers

Despite Gardner’s (2001) observation that “listeners as a group have generally been neglected in language research” (p. 1), this issue persists, with Mondada (2016) likewise pointing to widespread analytic inattention to recipients. Given that the majority of students’ time in classrooms is spent listening, a more complete understanding of what I am calling multimodal listening is needed. Drawing on 45 hours of video-recorded classroom interaction in an adult English as a Second Language classroom, this multimodal conversation analytic study focuses on the performance of listening as action to answer the following questions: 1) what does “doing being a listener” look like in classroom interaction? 2) how can language teachers use this knowledge to inform their teaching practice? Extended turns (by teachers or students) were identified, and rich multimodal transcripts were created following Mondada (2011/2014), focusing on listeners’ actions during these extended turns. Gaze is one of listeners’ most important visible demonstrations of participation and engagement (Mortensen, 2013), and thus the analytic focus here is heavily oriented towards gaze, though as my analysis demonstrates, a range of students’ embodied actions work in concert to display their (non)participation and potentially their (dis)engagement as well. Students were found to engage in a range of behaviors that make their participation in the listening activity visible to their co-participants, including postural alignment, eye gaze, head movements (including nods), etc. Notably, some students engaged in embodied actions that at first glance seem to indicate non-participation and disengagement (e.g., eating, grooming); however, upon closer examination of the temporality and sequentiality of these students’ actions, it is clear that they were, in fact, attending closely to the unfolding interaction. This analysis highlights students' skillful adaptation to constantly shifting expectations for participation and underscores the need to raise teachers’ awareness of students’ multimodal actions.