Commencing

 Image courtesy of Maegan Tintari 

When I initially proposed the idea of having an ELT Research Blog Carnival to share what we as English language professionals had been learning through academic journal articles, I never really anticipated the response I would get. Deep down, I thought that this idea wouldn’t really catch on and it would die before it ever got started. I was pleasantly surprised, actually shocked would be more apt here, at the response I received from others. I thought I might be too optimistic to think that 2-3 people would join me in the first run, but instead there are a total of seven posts to share! I believe it shows how much ELT instructors care about learning and growing in their field. They are happy to question and reflect on what is happening in their classroom in order to help their students grow. I am proud to be a part of this community of teaching professionals, even if we don’t always feel like we are treated as such. All I can say is thank you.

To get things rolling here, I am going to summarize each of the posts that people have written for this edition of the blog carnival and provide you with links to each of them. What I would like you to do as the reader is to interact with the content. Give comments and feedback, share your story, connect it to your classroom. I ask you not to be passive, but to actively engage with what these seven people have taken time to find, read, think about, and share. If possible, take time to read the original article and see if there is something else that you can pull out of the material. I hope you find this to be an experience that adds to your growth as a teaching professional.

1. Carol Goodey (@cgoodey): Listening for learning. Carol shares Jenny Kemp’s article on listening logs in the classroom and the connection to motivation and metacognition.
2. Glen Cochrane (@GlenFCochrane): OER for your Ear – Adapting Audio Material for Language Learning. Glen explores the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as a source of authentic listening material and the difficulties he has encountered. It is in response to an article by Philip Hawke on podcast use in the ELT classroom.
3. Tyson Seburn (@seburnt): Accommodating language learners in university lectures.Tyson looks at the problems EAP students face when listening to university lectures. His inspiration comes from an article by David Mendelsohn that examines the use of ‘study buddies’ for ELLs in university.
4. Lizzie Pinard (@LizziePinard): Listening: “Metacognitive awareness and second language listeners” by Christine Goh. Lizzie considers the use of listening diaries over an extended period of time to help students become more aware of their progress. Lizzie was prompted to write this post after reading Christine Goh’s research in China.
5. Steve Brown (@sbrowntweets): Listening – “Mining Texts”. Steve summarizes an article by Sheila Thorn on the use of ELT coursebook listening material. He questions the use of scripted, specially-designed listening material to test comprehension and explores other options.
6. Carissa Peck (@eslcarissa): Bottoms up! Carissa shares her thoughts on the use of bottom-up listening skills and how this affects the learners. She bases her ideas on an article by Joseph and Aki Siegel which studied the listening skills of ELLs at Japanese universities.
7. Nathan Hall (@nathanghall): Preparing. Nathan looked at a study done by Chang and Read which analyzed a number of different pre-listening techniques to see which ones where most effective. Nathan then suggests a number of applications in the language classroom.

Thank you to those who took time out of their busy schedule to participate in the inaugural ELT Research Blog Carnival. Now, who would like to host the second one?